As you receive this issue of Ignite, we’re on the first day of Hanukkah (Jewish holidays start at sunset, meaning Hanukkah started on Sunday night). In Judaism across the world it’s a minor holiday, far short of the significance and importance of celebrations like the High Holy Days - Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and, of course, Passover. Part of the reason it holds less significance for most Jews is simply that it happened after the events recorded in the canon of texts included in the Tanakh (the Torah [the five books of Moses], the Nevi’im [the Prophets], and the Ketuvim [writings]). And yet, for most Americans, it’s the part of Jewish identity they know the most about. What to make of that, I wondered, in light of our conversation this month about opening to joy?

For most of the last 2,000 years Jews have found themselves cast out of their homeland, the temple destroyed by the Roman Empire in the year 70 (or 3830 in the Jewish calendar), living in isolated communities, subject to periodic persecutions, and struggling to hold onto their cultural identity in the face of an overwhelming sea of anti-Semitism. In more recent generations, at least in our country, that vile strain of hate has diminished, but not disappeared, and new challenges have arisen. Like the question of how to teach your children the joy of Judaism when it seems that everyone and everything around is focused on that most Christian of holidays, Christmas? The songs, the presents, the public holidays, they all send the implied, if not explicit, but still heard, message, that you aren’t included. And, of course, as we’ve seen recently, with the rise of anti-Semitic hate crimes and commentary, sometimes it’s a message that is not implied, but shouted from the rooftops.

I don’t know about you, but for me, there’s something inspiring in the act of facing all of that, and still choosing joy. There’s something inspiring in saying “You have your traditions, and so do we. We’ll gather round the table each night, and remember what has been handed down to us. We’ll light one candle, and then another, and hand out gelt and spin the dreidel and cook the latkes. Joy isn’t just for some, it is for all, and we’ll make sure we remember, and live that out, too.” For me, it is a reminder that often, though not always, the presence of joy in our lives isn’t about the circumstances we find ourselves in, but what we choose to make of them.

The last two years have been awful in many ways, lost friends and family, disruptions too big and too many to even be counted. But there is a message of hope in Hanukkah. We can reach back, and find the things worth celebrating. It doesn’t mean giving up the other parts that matter, perhaps even things that matter more, but it means in the face of struggle and even sorrow, we can find what’s worth remembering, eat the foods that connect us to our families and traditions, light the candles, pull out the games and the gifts, and make a joyful noise. Hanukkah Sameach!

Opening to the Joy of Liberation

As we enter the last month of 2021, we as a congregation are being invited to open to joy. I confess it is a bit hard time to write about joy. We have experienced so many losses and disappointments in our lives over the last 20 months. So many of us are still in a state of survival, making joy feel a bit precarious. Endless events are bombarding our belief in peace, liberty, and justice. How do we reconcile our 6th UU Principle when peace is the freedom from disturbance, liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions, and justice is being fair and reasonable. What if one of our tools in reconciling is imagining liberation. What if, to get free, live free, and practice freedom, we must create conditions conducive to survival to cultivate and nurture joy?

Everywhere we look, people are in varying degrees of pain, fear, and struggling to thrive, and when we get close to touching relief, another wave of grief, loss, or despair arrives. In the midst of this, we are audaciously inviting everyone to open to joy. 

Black feminism has long claimed joy as a force of survival, a political force, revitalizing energy, and practice of living and persisting when forces around you tell you to give up or in.

“Resistance,” wrote Alice Walker, “is the secret to joy.”

• Our collective survival depends on resisting entrenched patterns of oppression. 
• Resistance is a practice of joy.
• Imagining and embodying a shared community is a means of survival and a practice of joy.

Mia McKenzie, a Black American writer and activist says, “Loving each other as hard as we could was how we survived in a world that wanted to kill us, and that made our love an act of defiance- of survival, joy, and liberation.”

Shailja Patel, Kenyan poet, playwright, and political activist, writes:

Joy is good. 

And joy that need not be gated and walled against the pain of others is a surpassing good. 

Tender joy. Resistant joy. Disruptive joy. Quiet joy. Fierce joy.

The joy of putting your hands in the dirt. 

The joy of a bursting, ripe tomato still warm from the sun.

The joy of each breath, drawn and exhaled.

The joy of collecting in the streets, visioning and enfleshing a livable world.

The joy of saying Yes, fully. The joy of saying No, bravely.

The joy of creating.

The joy of practicing new patterns of relating.

Let us ground ourselves in our collective dreams, vision, and commitment to opening ourselves to joy through liberation. Our collective life depends upon it. Survival. Liberation. Joy. 

Still Having Joy 

I was sitting in the hygienist's chair at a new dentist. The former, long-time dentist was 30 minutes away, and I had been wanting to have my teeth cleaned more locally for some time. So there I was, "relaxing" in my chair, mouth wide open, looking mostly up, when I saw it: a hand-created sign with cutout letters -

"BE

JOYFUL

ALWAYS"

"That's amazing," I noted to my hygienist. "Just this morning, my colleagues and I were talking about all of the qualities of joy, and here is this sign by your chair, entreating me to "Be joyful always." She blinked a few times, and then we launched into our own conversation about joy, including where did I work (A Unitarian Universalist Church), what was that (I gave her a brief rundown), and how music and joy were related to one another. "Joy is a choice," she said, "It's up to you how to respond to a situation." This was the very point that Melinda, Eric, Jules, Wendy, and I had explored earlier in the day, when covering the range of ideas about joy that would be offered in December. 

Reclining in the chair, I said, "Since I don't have my glasses on, I can't read the smaller print on your sign. Would you read it to me?" "Sure! Pray without ceasing; give thanks... this is your life in union with Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18." Ah, a cross-religious conversation about joy. In my own thinking, I wondered what would it be like to rest in the universe, knowing at all times that I was connected to all things, in union with the foundation of love and life. Sounds like an experience not of happiness, but of a deep joy that maintains itself through practice and understanding. A joy worth cultivating.

December's Song of the Month, "I still have joy," is in invitation into that kind of joy. Not the joy that is contingent on circumstances, but the joy that is cultivated.

"I still have joy

I still have joy

After all things we've been through,

I still have joy.

I still have peace/faith/hope/love

After all the things we've been through,

Still have joy."

In this month of opening to joy, may you find the strength to make the choice for joy to permeate the edges, the hours, and the center of your life.

Growing up in my family of Australian immigrants in the United States was a beautiful intercultural experience. Never fully adopting every detail of the way the holiday dinners, celebrated by Americans, they made modifications to make it their own. For example, instead of turkey or pork they made the Aussie favorite meat pie, with scones and gravy, and other dishes not normally found on the American holiday table. 

All these years later, I carry their new traditions with me. As an Australian American and now vegan, I make meat pie using Beyond Beef crumbles, however I still roll out my own dough using my nana’s rolling pin. Bringing in traditions from the American side of my family I also make green bean casserole. My own cultural addition to the festivities are my favorites, Veggie Loaf and Red Quinoa Casserole. I make quite the feast for my friends, who take home heaps of leftover food after our dinners together. These foods aren’t only for Thanksgiving. In our family tradition, they are beloved for the December holidays as well. 

Sometimes, as in the case of my family coming to America and modifying holidays for themselves, then me adapting those traditions to my vegan lifestyle, we need to change with the times. 

Many families, including our faith community JUC, will need to remain apart again for safety during these pandemic times. How will we be close in this era of physical distancing? Can online options such as Zoom help us to fill that void? I’m a big proponent of Zoom, despite some people experiencing Zoom fatigue I think that having the option is important. 

Currently, we are called to respond with creativity and compassion. As many in the United States eat various meats some vegans will make Tofurkey, while I make my Beyond Beef Australian meat pie like my nana used to make, only with 100% plant-based ingredients. 

I would be happy to share my recipe if you are interested. Please send me an email at melinda@jeffersonunitarian.org and I will share my recipe with you.  

Stacie Amaya, Trustee

This past week, members of the Board of Trustees came together to fulfill our promise of a “Yard Cleanup'' sold at this year’s auction to JUC member and friend, Tom Reiley. In truth, the commitment I had made to this activity was an easy thing to forget in the intervening months since the auction this past March. When the date finally crept up on us, I hadn’t thought much about the task at hand, and I had taken it for granted that it would be an easy commitment to complete. Little did I know that Tom’s beautiful home would be surrounded by many massive, old trees and a tremendous number of fallen leaves. 

In assessing the job, one of us asked what was most important to Tom to have completed by the time we finished, as we may have had doubts that we could get to all of it in just two short hours. But, time flew by and our coordinated efforts proved brilliantly successful. With many hands the load was made lighter. 

At the completion of our task, Tom invited us all in and warmly treated us all like old friends. He shared stories of his beloved wife, Linda, and their daughter Nicole and of many of the adventures he and Linda had taken in their more than 50 years together. Linda passed away in February of this year. Tom opened his heart in sharing his stories with us, and in turn we each left a small piece of our hearts with him after sharing laughter and joyful connection in community. I like to think that with our many hearts, each of our loads was made lighter that day. 

In our Beloved Community we come together to share our joys, our sorrows, our blessings and our wisdom. It is through authentic connection that we can continue to grow our hearts in love and in joy, and it is through holding sacred space for one another that we each do the work of lightening the load so that we do not have to walk alone. May we remember to be a shelter for one another.

Transforming Affordable Housing

Mindy Mohr, JUC CAN

Did you know that Colorado has convened a group of State legislators and department heads to form an Interim Committee called the “Affordable Housing Transformational Task Force?” The Task Force (after being advised by a Subpanel of experts) must “issue a report with recommendations to the General Assembly and the Governor on policies to create transformative change in the area of housing using federal coronavirus recovery money.” The State has allocated an investment of $400 million from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to implement recommendations of this Task Force.  Expenditure of these funds is time limited and represents a one-time investment.

Several members of the Jefferson Unitarian Church Community Action Network (CAN) have been monitoring the work of the Subpanel and Task Force. The Subpanel’s eleven funding recommendations include use of both grants and loans to facilitate a variety of project types  for both production and preservation of affordable housing, for various income levels. High-ranking funding recommendations include gap funding for development projects, restoration of existing affordable housing, preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing (including mobile home parks), and development opportunities through land banking, land trusts, and community owned opportunities. Transformational policy recommendations are still being formulated.

The Task Force must finalize their recommendations by January 11, 2022. Their recommendations will be submitted to the Governor and the General Assembly for action during the 2022 legislative session – so stay tuned!

If you would like to be added to the JUC CAN Action Alert list to receive updates about housing legislation, please send an email to communityaction@jeffersonunitarian.org.

Habitat for Humanity Update: Turning Houses into Pumpkins

Andy Melick

Once again, our 2021 pumpkin patches proved a sellout success! Despite delivery delays, and hence an abbreviated duration, and thanks to some beautiful weather, both the Arvada and Lakewood patches sold out the Friday before Halloween. That’s two-and-a-half tractor trailer loads’ worth of pumpkins sold in a little over two weeks. Sales and donations totaled $85,000, of which Jeffco Interfaith Partners (JIP) keeps 40%. (The pumpkins are sold on consignment: 50% of proceeds goes to the Navajo growers in Farmington, NM; 10% goes to the truckers.)

JIP is the coalition of local churches with which JUC partners to sponsor a Habitat new build house every year. With our pumpkin patch proceeds, and funds raised from other sources this year, we will be able to contribute $50,000 toward the sponsorship of a house in 2022.



Thank you to the many JUC volunteers who helped unload pumpkins and took sales shifts at the patches. It takes a village to make it all happen. We have a great village!

Shop the JUC Annual Craft Faire

Saturday, December 3

9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Saturday, December 4

9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Get ready for the 25th JUC Holiday Craft Faire Yep, 25 years (minus 2020!)

We have 33 creative vendors ready to sell you unique gifts for your family and friends.  

We have dedicated volunteers ready to help you find what you are looking for (we can still use lots more volunteers, so click here to sign up). We cannot have the Faire without volunteers, and we still need cashiers, packers, greeters, and people to staff the food table and help set up and take down.

The annual JUC Holiday Craft Faire began in 1995 successfully provided an outlet for our creative JUC members, a fun time for the JUC community, and a fund-raising opportunity for JUC. The Faire has raised tens of thousands of dollars for JUC’s operational fund over the years. Vendors donate 20% of sales to the church. 

We always have a wide variety of creative items for sale, most hand made. You can find lovely handmade Christmas decorations and ornaments, unique jewelry including steampunk, soft colorful scarfs, beaded crafts of all kinds, pottery in every shape and size for any occasion, pleasant wind chimes, carefully crafted stained glass, gleaming sun catchers, fused glass candles and coasters, tote bags, ethnic textiles and international creations, sewn and woven textiles aprons, placemats, and hand towels, soft felted animal critters, soap and lotions, greeting cards to send and paintings for your walls, books signed by the author, knitted and crocheted gloves and scarves, and even colorful strips for beautiful nails.

Do all your holiday shopping in one place. Come with friends and go out to lunch or for coffee after you shop to compare your great buys.  

We are pleased to be back in spite of COVID, but it has had an impact. We won’t be able to have the lunches or the reception and there will be no eating inside the church. And we cannot have the Children’s Market. Everybody must wear a mask inside the building. However, we will also be expanding the booths into the chapel to help maintain some social distancing.

Join us, shop, support the church, and have a great time!

Interview with Longtime Guatemala Trip Leader, Lisa Bickford

The Guatemala Scholarship program supported by JUC members includes annual cultural exchange visits to Rabinal that have strengthened the personal relationships between our congregation and the Mayan community. All of the students in the scholarship program come from families impacted by the massacres in Guatemala during the 1980’s. Beginning in 2015 Lisa Bickford has been a member of five trips, first as translator and then as trip leader and translator. Two of those trips were Teen/Family trips. Lisa’s perspective as a repeat visitor is unique. In early July this year, Gretchen May sat down with Lisa over Zoom for a wide-ranging interview during which she talked about the impact of the scholarship program and changes in the program. Selections from that interview follow:

Gretchen: Let’s talk about the scholarship program. When we are talking to people about the scholarship program, they want to know what the education is like. How are the students are chosen? 

Lisa: Students are chosen by who would not otherwise succeed. When the only thing missing is money. ADIVIMA looks at what is holding that family back. For example, the couple with the bus company and the weaving business are very successful; their kids don’t qualify. At times it is single parent homes, doing well, but dad started drinking. ADIVIMA doesn’t assume money will solve every problem. They look at what is holding that family back. They try to affect the outcome by whom they choose.

I think that the way that they are managing the program is the best way it could be managed in Guatemala. One of the really cool things as a donor for me was at the market, there is a particular shoe store and you could see the receipts for the shoes that had been bought by ADIVIMA. The receipts were to ADIVIMA for the kids’ school shoes, OK? These kids have to walk for miles from home to school so they need good shoes, but they can’t afford them. They would be doing cardboard and string, some of them, without our help. You can see it at the farmers market, not in the clothing stores because they wear their traditional garb, but in that shoe store, and also in some of the weaving supply vendors, the thread vendors, because the girls make their uniforms. That’s an expense that the scholarship will also cover. So there are receipts there and in the bicycle shop that are paid for by ADIVIMA for our students. We can see where the money is going.

Schooling outside the US is very different. It took me awhile, actually two to three years of traveling to understand what exactly the process is in Guatemala. Everything through 5th grade is completely free. By that I mean they give you a notebook, a pencil, a school uniform; everything you have to have to go to school is free through 5th grade.  

Starting in MS, in the three years of MS, the tuition is free, but if you can’t afford a notebook and a pen and paper, a ruler for math class or a school uniform, or all of the incidentals, you can’t go. So a lot of people stop after 5th grade because they can’t even afford the supplies. Tuition is still free through 8th grade but the rest of it isn’t. When we are paying for kids 6th through 8th, we are for the most part not paying tuition, because that is covered at the government schools, but we are paying for their school books, and their notebooks and their transportation to school and any fees that there might be. And we are providing tutoring to keep them in school; to help them stay. In the primary school, a lot of the time those teachers might also speak Mayan. But starting in 6th grade, they definitely won’t. So the MS kids are going to school in their second language, right? They speak Mayan, they speak Achi at home. They learn Spanish in primary school, but depending on their own parents’ education, they may or may not speak Spanish at home; they may only speak Achi at home. They may get to 6th grade and not be very good in Spanish yet. And at that point, the education really becomes difficult…. In elementary if that little kid is speaking in Achi, the teacher will correct them into Spanish, but they’ll get by. Starting in MS they won’t anymore; it absolutely will have to be completely in Spanish. That is where some of the issues of the lost generation come into play. Because the kids who grew up with their grandparents in the woods hiding from the soldiers, their Spanish is minimal. They are now parents, but they don’t have the ability to help their kids. Some of the others only hid in the woods for a couple of years and then they got to another town; their Spanish may be a little better and they may be able to help their kids a little more.. The tutor has made the difference. 

With Middle School students we are mostly helping with transportation costs, supplies, and, you know, if the family is starving, then a bag of rice for the family, a bag of corn for the family. They wouldn’t feed one kid without feeding all their kids; that’s the kind of thing we are paying for. 

And then when they get to 9th grade, that’s when there is tuition, and fees. Maybe they have to do a project, and the project requires poster board. That isn’t something you have in the closet if you are a Mayan grandma, and you don’t just walk down to Staples. So in High School we are helping again with transportation and at that point technology, this is where our laptop loaners come in, and still books and supplies. And that’s one of the reasons it is hard for us to give an average kid support number. For one family we buy the kid a bike, because they will be able to bike to school and won’t need any other transportation money. For another family, the route they are on wouldn’t be safe to bike so we are giving them bus money. And then, most of our students are girls, so which bus routes are safe for girls to take alone is a big consideration.

There’s a couple in Pacux that runs the local bus service. We wouldn’t call it a bus. The man has been able to buy, a van, and also a pickup truck and they just run back and forth to town. But sometimes ADIVIMA will set up for someone like that to pick up the school kids from a particular small town and get them into the schools. Just to arrange so our students will have safe travel. We have had students who were raped on the way home from school. And when they say that, it’s never said as if that’s ok, but they do say it as though that’s a part of life. With our funds, that’s a problem they can help girls avoid, help them find safer alternatives. That’s just how it is, and that’s when Lisa starts crying. Part of the change is that the girl will tell ADIVIMA now and ADIVIMA will work with her to solve the problem. Where as in the past it was just the girl’s shame and she didn’t necessarily tell anybody. And if she had to drop out of school, she would probably get married.

Gretchen: What are some ways that you have seen the scholarship program change? 

Lisa: My favorite example is the soccer or as they call it, football game. On the first kids trip we took, one of our teens had mentioned in their bio ahead of time how much they loved soccer and they were looking forward to playing soccer. We suggested a game, so one of the things that Marvin did was rent a soccer field for an hour of play and they used ADIVIMA’s trucks to get a bunch of the scholarship kids there and promised them rides home so they could stay in the town long enough to play soccer. Some lived too far away; it would be dark when they walked home and that wouldn’t be safe. So ADIVIMA organized trips home after the game and they played soccer. Marvin (the director) and Pablo (the tutor) got out on the field and played with them. Afterwards they thanked us. They said they had never taken the time to do that. You know, they are busy people running their busy organization; they help the kids with money and with their studies, but they had never taken the time to play with them. There were connections made that day between them that we just happened to be there for. They have since had more activities like that. Because they had kids that were having problems but they didn’t tell ADIVIMA…. And ADIVIMA could have helped. One of the things they found out with that soccer game was that if they were more careful to build those connections for non-official things, a kid might tell them, ‘hey, my dad is drinking the scholarship money’, and so they might be able to solve some of those problems before they got too big. 

Gretchen: Do you know if they are doing those things, the soccer when you aren’t there on a trip? 

Lisa: The soccer thing did continue. When they switched the tutor; Pablo went on to law school and the new tutor, Amanda, part of her training, and part of her job description is to do more, not just tutoring, but getting to know them; making real connections so that the students will tell them when there is a problem.….They have always asked the history question or the math question, but we want them to ask the personal question. It was a real change in how they thought about the tutoring job. And we have been able to support that expansion. 

Lisa: Another very different change is the building that we sent funds for a few years ago. When I first started going, there was what you might basically call a carport, but bigger, that would seat 75 to 100 chairs. It was open to the elements, just had a roof, one wall and it was right there in the middle of the property that ADIVIMA has. There were tiny offices, closet size, for their staff. They’ve got staff. Their legal department works with the world court cases, and works with the forensic anthropology searching for remains in mass graves, helps get some justice. Another office runs the cultural revival to get elders to pass on Mayan skills to new generations. Another office runs the scholarship program. All programs were being run out of tiny closet sized rooms. We just had a zoom call a month or two ago where they were sitting at a conference table in what I would call a normal size conference room with windows and lights. And that’s because of the money that we sent. Watching them being able to spread out and that they can accomplish all that they accomplish a little more comfortably, a little more easily because of the support we have given them has been very rewarding. Because of COVID they haven’t been able to pull all of the kids together for study groups, but they now have the facilities to pull together study groups made up of scholarship students and to help kids with technology. Our scholarship students are getting the use of it. The last time I was there only the ground floor was finished so I haven’t seen it complete; hopefully next time

Gretchen: Is this program keeping people from migrating? 

Lisa: Only one girl has asked about going to the US with the group (trip). It was because of something happening in her family, dad was drinking the scholarship money.  

The opportunity to get an education probably does diminish the cycle..One thing for us to know as Americans is that there are two types of people coming up from Guatemala. There are those who are fleeing bad unemployment. They just want money, they don’t want to live in the states. They want to live with their family, but don’t want to live in a hovel . Their plan is to go to the states for two or three years and come back with more money than the average Guatemalan will see in a lifetime and live like a king. Then there are those who are fleeing the violence.

A scholarship student of ours would have a better opportunity to earn money in Guatemala without having the risks crossing the border illegally. So our graduates probably wouldn’t be in the first category, sending money for a nice house or if they were, they would be doing it in more of an official internship way. The second category, fleeing violence, they could be in. I mean, Juan de Dios is living under asylum…He didn’t try to be in the states. If one of our graduates got involved in fighting corruption, if with an education they become the next Frederick Douglas of Guatemala, then they might have to flee violence. 

When they tell us their goals, they want to find a job near their family, they want to run the hotel in Rabinal, work in a law office, sometimes they have to go to Guatemala City to get a job, but mostly they don’ t like living in the city. They just don’t want to have to go into the forest to pick up nuts . So no, we don’t contribute people to go the US path. If all they can do is menial work, there is menial work in Guat. If all they have is menial qualifications , then they are more likely to have to come up to States to make a living. I’m not aware that any of our kids are involved in anti government activities.

To find out more about the trips and the Guatemala Scholarship Program at JUC visit our webpage. And don't forget to support the scholarship program during I Heart Xmas on December 12!