ISSUE 67

JANUARY 2022

While I was away in November, I counted that I had slept in nine different beds in less than three weeks. Between all that change and the physical and emotional work of saying goodbye to my parents, I wasn’t sleeping very well. So, I turned to a recorded sleep meditation. In addition to the soothingly delivered predictable messages about breathing and relaxing my body, I was urged to set an intention for my sleep. The disembodied voice told me to always set an intention when you go to bed.

Seriously?, I thought. (The snarky part of me always needs sleep the most and yet is the most resistant to help.) My intention is sleep. I need sleep. In the hours between now and the alarm, I need to be sleeping. That said, as I continued breathing and relaxing, I found myself getting more specific and imagining the kind of sleep I wanted.

Since that night, I have remembered from time to time to set an intention. Sometimes, knowing I needed to sleep on something, I have set my intention for rest and clarity. Sometimes, feeling stuck, I have set my intention to be restored to a large imagination. Sometimes, when frustrated with someone, I have set my intention to be freed from my righteousness and ego.

So it is with living with intention. It’s not just about claiming a goal - a box to check. It is about aligning and realigning our inner self with our highest purpose and values. In very real ways, living with intention invites us to eschew the résumé virtues, as David Brooks describes the achievements so important in the market place; and orient ourselves toward eulogy values. The ways we would love for our living to speak well of us at the end of our days.

What a worthy way to begin the year! So grateful to be on this journey with all of you.

This fall I was in a series of meetings between our JUC Community Action Network (JUC CAN) members and all three of the Jeffco County Commissioners, Lesley Dahlkemper, Andy Kerr, and Tracy Kraft-Tharp. Our conversations were about issues related to affordable housing, a theme JUC CAN members have raised in IGNITE before. But what really struck me was the way that so many of the challenges that Jeffco faces today are the result of intentions that weren’t really clear at the time, and as a result, we are living with the consequences still today.

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean. Many of you received a very small check from the county over the last month or so. I saw pictures on Facebook ranging from 48¢ to a few dollars. Those refunds were the result of the efforts by Coloradans in the early 90s to rein in government spending through something called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, known popularly in Colorado as TABOR. While tax policy quickly becomes a topic that makes our eyes glaze over, it remains a guiding consideration about how our values do or do not put human dignity at the center of public life in our communities. In those meetings with county leaders, we learned that in addition to the cuts Jeffco has already made, without repealing the legal requirement for the refunds you received (known as “de-Brucing”) the county will face additional shortfalls of more than $10M annually in the coming years. I think most voters didn’t really intend to leave us a community filled with potholes that ruin the suspension on our cars, or unable to fund basic public services, but that’s what’s happening.

Similarly, as our team has learned more about the root causes of the affordable housing crisis that is keeping our kids from being able to live here -- in the communities they grew up in -- we’ve learned more about the way that policies intended to create communities where people can live, work, and play, have led to a whole host of new problems. In land-bound communities like the major cities in Jeffco, single family zoning requirements and minimum lot sizes have conspired to raise the price of housing by limiting the number of units that can be built at all. In a recent meeting between JUC CAN leaders and Lakewood Mayor Adam Paul, we learned about the impact of the recently passed Lakewood building permit cap, which included an exception that allowed the city to declare properties blighted, and thus exempt from the limits. That means that instead of a community wide plan for adding housing, new development will be squeezed into awkward parcels wherever a blight designation can be obtained.

That’s not all, though. It also turned out that one of the impacts of limiting housing has been that people and families who have less intergenerational wealth have a harder time buying in, because things like more affordable condos and starter homes aren’t available. Because of other policies, our BIPOC (black, indigenous and people of color) friends and family have had fewer opportunities to build generational wealth. As a result, according to the most recent census data fewer than 2% of the people who call Jeffco home are African American.

Some would argue that those policies are functioning exactly as they were intended. That the people who wrote them intended for Jeffco to remain the white suburbs, or for government to be too small to do much more than issue speeding tickets. That Lakewood and Wheat Ridge and Arvada would be an escape from the “problems of the city.” But the beautiful thing about intentions is that they can change. We can create and live into new intentions. If you want Jeffco to be a place where everyone can afford to live, work, and play, then you can be a leader and help us all set a new course that will help us address the failures of prior policies. You can help your family and your neighborhood welcome more people of all kinds and all backgrounds to a community where our public services are funded in ways that allow us to assure that we’re all cared for, and we all have opportunities to grow and thrive with all our gifts and abilities. It just requires that each of us live up to our UU principles, and that we remember, at the end of the day, that in a democracy it's up to all of us to do our part, because we make the way.

Transitions

Anne Farrar died December 7.

Winifred “Winnie” Electra Stamberger Coffer was born to parents Elizabeth Stamberger and Matt Coffer on December 1.

Safety Team Update

Starting Sunday, January 2, 2022 we will require full vaccination against COVID-19 for everyone attending the 9 a.m. service. At 11 a.m. we will require full vaccination for all that are eligible.

Board of Trustees Report

Fall Congregational voting concluded in early December. Quorum was met, and Brooke Maddaford and Elizabeth Duhegraham have been officially voted in as members of the JUC Board of Trustees. Welcome to the Board Brooke and Elizabeth!

The Board is scheduling additional Following Our Spirit of Love workshops in January. Please sign up for the workshops, and email any questions that you may have.

Work has begun on preparation of the JUC budget for fiscal year 2021-2022.

Opening to Joy and Planned Giving

Your joy is something that can be passed on from generation to generation. Estate planning is one important tool for that process. Once you have completed your estate plan you can find joy. Joy comes from planning for possibly unpleasant events by creating a path to better deal with them for you and your loved ones. Joy comes from financially supporting the future of your loved ones and cherished causes.

We invite you to add to the joy in the beloved JUC community by including JUC as a beneficiary in your estate plan. Contact JUC’s planned giving coordinators: Bud & B.J. Meadows, Mike Kramer or Carol Wilsey

Faith Exploration- a Toolbox for Living with Intention

“Here’s what I discovered. Intention is different from setting goals or resolutions in that it “pulls us into” who we truly are. Goals and resolutions “push us out” into future possibilities. To set intentions, we must listen to our inner voice which tells us who we truly are.”

- Katie Covey, Soul Matters Director of RE Resources

My New Year resolution is not to make a New Year resolution this year. In my 55 years of being alive in this precious body, I admit, I never once have kept my annual resolutions. This outcome has me rethinking this expectation. All of my New Year resolutions included some sort of goal with a high bar to achieve. This year, I am not looking for achievements; I want to live with intention everywhere I can. These last 21 months have taught me goals or achievements can always be interrupted. Living with intention can be sustained, no matter what happens in our lives or in this unpredictable world.

As your Director of Faith Exploration, my intention in 2022 is to discover, create, and support learning and connection at JUC so that all of you, our children, youth, and families can connect with the tools and resources to live a life of intentional purpose and meaning. A life that speaks of our Unitarian Universalist values, hope, and justice - within our own lives and the world around us.

As we inch toward returning to full programming for our children and youth, we do so with great intention to support our children, youth, and families.

JUC will return to our grade-level elementary programming on January 16, 2022.

JUC is excited to offer a new program supported by a grant from EMGT called Spirit Play. In this Montessori-inspired class, Kindergarteners and 1st graders will explore learning with story and creativity.
2nd and 3rd grade Head, Heart, and Hands will connect and engage our children to our UU Principles while being supported in individual learning focuses of thinking, heart connections, and movement.
4th and 5th graders will offer our older elementary children an opportunity to discover that 9 and 10-year-olds do have the power to create change in the world when they put their Faith in Action.

Our older children and youth programming will continue.

6th, 7th, and 8th graders will continue in their journey of Neighboring Faiths - a world religion program, Our Whole Lives - our comprehensive sexuality program supported by UU values, and Coming of Age - where our emerging teens explore their own beliefs and values.
High School Youth Group will continue to meet on Sunday evenings to explore their relationships with one another, how to live their values in a complicated world, and have some fun.

In January, we will begin searching for a new Children and Youth Music Director in preparation for when music and singing will once again be a part of our programs. We are all anticipating the return of We are Family worship, choir, and family music programming.

My friends, it has been a journey, but we see hope right in front of us. JUC is living with intention to support our families in their faith journey and connections. One step at a time.

Intentionally Creating

Last summer, David and I actually boarded an airplane to visit friends and family on the East Coast. While catching up with Helen, a college musician friend in North Carolina, David and I were commiserating with her about the challenges of creating music during the shutdown. So many new skills had to be learned: rehearsing over zoom, video synchronization and editing, audio compression and equalization, new software management, not to mention maintaining a sense of common purpose and connection while physically distant. Thanks to vaccinations, the choirs that we were connected with would joyfully be soon reconvening for in-person rehearsals and singing, which delighted us all and reassured us that the art and practice of singing together in one room had a future again. As I mused in our conversation about what in the world we could sing that would be a fitting subject for such a reunion, I shared that I wasn’t coming up with music that felt like the right project to engage in.

“What about writing something of our own?” David offered. “We could look at all of the events since March 2020 - the pandemic and its impact on all of our lives, the demonstrations in support of racial justice, the challenges of making music in this time, and what it means to return to song together.” I blinked. I quietly sighed. I briefly recalled what it took to write a cantata with Rev. Wendy Williams in 2016. All of the imagination required in envisioning how each movement should sound, the feeling of a massive project hanging over my head for months, days of entering each individual note (and articulation and dynamic marking) into music notation software, and consultation with instrumentalists to make sure I was composing music that was actually playable on instruments that I don’t play. I knew that this endeavor would mean for a time, giving up the “Mountain Monday” days off that David and I enjoyed so we could compose.

At the same time, I remembered the creative interactions between Wendy and me, the ownership of the choir as we embarked on a unique project together, the importance of meaning-making on a topic that we were passionate about, and the satisfaction of creating a piece of art that had musical shape, form, color, and point of view. I looked back at David, said “let’s do it. Let’s create our own work that has relevance to the experience of these past months, this past year.” We turned to friend Helen and said, “You witnessed it here, over brunch, in Raleigh, NC.” She smiled.

And so the ideas and music began to take shape, some parts slowly, some more easily. The unifying theme we settled on was “breath.” Breath animates the choral art - without breathing, there is no singing. The breath that the virus travels upon, that was - and can still be - dangerous to share. The breath that those on respirators struggled - and struggle - with, the breath that was - and is - denied to black men dying in the streets. There is a rich Hebrew word that encompasses the sacred breath of life and the spirit: “Ruach.” The Ruach Song Cycle, as we came to call it, is a call to awaken and honor the breath of life, to be like a chrysalis emerging to a beautiful mariposa. The Song Cycle recounts the experiences of choirs rehearsing on Zoom when they couldn’t even sing “Happy birthday at the same time,” affirms that Black Lives Matter, invites us to light a candle for those we have lost, and recommits to the intention of choosing to sing, despite the circumstances of the world. In the words of the closing movement:

Let our hearts return to song,

Celebrate the new dawn,

We are here in this moment,

Together once again.

I will sing the melody,

Let me add a harmony.

We are here in this moment,

Singing as one chorus strong.

And we know the war goes on,

So many lost and more to come.

The world never the same.

Earth transformed.

May we always choose to sing,

Though the night has not ceased,

And our song be a balm

For all to hear.

Let the strings of our heart

Be strummed like a harp

And our song be a flower

Amid the debris.

Let our harmony ring

And our spirits wing.

We are free in this moment,

Breathing as one song!

The Ruach Song Cycle will be performed in its entirety in January! Here are the details:

Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 7 p.m.

Lakewood Church of the Nazarene (vaccination required) or streamed online

A fundraising concert for the Second Wind Fund (youth suicide prevention)

Performed by the choirs of Jefferson Unitarian Church, One World Singers, and Voices of Light Chamber Choir, plus orchestra, it's an event you won't want to miss! The concert is free! But please register .

Please save the date on your calendar and plan to attend either in person or on live stream.

As we at JUC move into the month of Living with Intention, may you find a way in your life to be intentionally creative in large and small ways, accepting the challenges and reveling in the joys of bringing new life into the world.

Ken Andrus, Trustee

It’s been nearly a year since Amanda Gorman delivered her precious gift to America during President Biden’s swearing in ceremony with her inspiring poem “The Hill We Climb.”

I am still moved when I reread her ageless wisdom. It aptly closes with this rousing reminder, “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

In her honor, I humbly offer my own words of hope:

Come and be bold with us.

Let’s embrace risk together, as we embrace each other with Love.

Let’s be flexible, be creative, brave our uncomfortability together.

Let’s allow ourselves the vulnerability of our human nature,

Let us lean into our discomfort, while our resilience keeps us engaged.

Let our curiosity prod us, help lead us away from old fears and stubbornness.

Let’s welcome change, uncertainty, ambiguity.

We will cast away the wasteful need to control what we can’t control

And listen, listen deeply, listen fully,

Trust the whole because we are one.

Hold ourselves accountable because we care,

We will paint a vision of the world that as of yet exists only in our collective imagination.

We will co-create images of our future together on one canvas.

Let’s unlearn, and relearn, together,

Let’s Follow Our Spirit of Love, together

If you haven’t participated yet, the JUC Board of Trustees urges you to come share your vision of the future in a JUC Following Our Spirit of Love workshop. Sign up for one of the workshops scheduled in January and join us as we explore creative possibilities of what we might do together as a church community.

Where do you see us in 5 years? In 10 years?

These workshops are a sacred, safe space for you to bare your heart and soul, with the support and trust of all of us leaning into each other as one.

Come join us in this important step to mapping out our future. Our future together.

Let’s start this new year, and our future, with Joyful and Loving Intention, by Following Our Spirit of Love.

We simply cannot do this without you.

Happy Holidays to all of you reading this! By the time this edition of Ignite is published, Christmas will be behind us and New Year celebrations rapidly approaching. Some of you may not be surprised that I’m the annoying friend at the party who wants to know everyone’s New Year’s Resolutions. New Year’s Resolutions have always inspired me. In previous years I have succeeded in making my resolutions a reality, especially in 2020 when I met my own standards for being in shape and improved my athletic performance.

Many of us will probably be making New Year’s Resolutions, most of which will be disregarded by March at the latest. We look to the new year and want to evolve as people. Our resolutions reflect real ambition.

A lot of people balk at resolutions, citing the cultural norm for resolutions to go unfulfilled. One exception happened in 2020, when I managed to keep my resolutions and make my dreams a reality. Not only did I make my dreams a reality in 2020, but I achieved both of my goals in October of that year, easily making the December 31st deadline.

On New Year’s Eve 2020 I made two resolutions that were related to each other. The first was to get in shape, the second to lose 30 lbs. I realized that “get in shape” was an ambiguous goal with a moving goal post, so I set standards. I wanted to run a mile in 9 minutes, shave 30 seconds off my pool lap, and increase my weights in the weight room.

These resolutions were familiar ones, I’d made them before. The difference was that this time I made my goals more doable and devised a plan for how to achieve them. I booked a consultation with a personal trainer, who evaluated my fitness levels and worked with me to develop a plan that I would execute to reach my resolution goals.

I also went back to the nutritionist, something that I had had success with years prior in lowering my cholesterol. It is weird to me that I have to worry at all about my cholesterol, being that I’m 100% vegan, however that’s genetics. Already being a subscriber to the app MyFitnessPal, I started logging my foods and planning meals. My nutritionist gave me my optimal breakdown of macronutrients, which I plugged into the app and used to guide my food choices.

What made me successful in 2020 was a combination of early planning and continued dedication. I didn’t start off all at once in a spurt, I gradually increased my activity level. I figured out which exercises I liked that would stay in my rotation and which ones I could live without.

I’m still inspired by resolutions, especially now that I have the success from 2020 behind me and can build on it. I’m debating what my resolutions for 2022 will be. I try to make my resolutions both practical and a fun challenge I will be ready to meet with planning, dedication, and ingenuity. I think that one will be to volunteer at least once a month in something not related to my internship.

I’m inspired by your resolutions too, and I’d love to know how you plan to manifest your dreams in 2022. The theme for January is about living with intention. Resolutions can be very intentional and can help us start the year with fireworks of enthusiasm for our goals. On Sunday when we see each other, if you have resolutions, I’d love to hear them so I can cheer for you as you succeed in the new year. Brightest Blessings to you and your nearest and dearest in the new year!

Jefferson County to Build Two Housing Navigation Centers

Margie Robinson, JUC CAN

Homelessness has been a longstanding and steadily worsening issue in Jefferson County due to many factors, including the exorbitant increase in rents relative to salaries. Currently the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Jeffco is $1,603 per month. The hourly wage necessary to afford this rent is about $32/hour or over $66,000 /year. About a third of the households in Jeffco are renters, and about 47% of those are spending more than 30% of their gross income on rent.

Jeffco has no year-round shelter for people, leaving unhoused people to sleep outside or in their vehicles, solicit enough money to stay in a motel, or in extreme winter conditions, they may be lucky enough to get a motel voucher through the Severe Weather Shelter Network. On a positive note, Jefferson County and several cities have recently hired ten Homeless Navigators, who work alongside first responders and other service providers to deliver immediate assistance to unhoused people as well as to work on long-term solutions.

Learn more about homelessness in Jeffco here.

With Congress passing the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Jefferson County and our cities have new dollars to address housing issues. The county and our cities have agreed to use some of these funds to create two Housing Navigation Centers, one in north and one in central Jeffco. This effort is being led by Heading Home, a Jefferson County organization to prevent and end homelessness whenever possible. Blue Line Developers has been chosen to lead this project. Between now and March 2022, sites will be identified, service providers and general contractors will be selected, a community engagement framework will be established, and funding sources will be identified. The county expects the Navigation Centers to be opened in 2024. These centers will each serve about 100 people/day – with 50 beds for short-term shelter, and 50 beds for bridge housing. Seventy-five units of permanent affordable housing units are also planned if the county can get Low Income Housing Tax Credits from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA).

Although the Housing Navigation Centers go a long way to address the critical issue of homelessness in our county, homelessness is only one part of the housing continuum. The affordable housing continuum also includes affordable rental housing, middle-income rental housing, and first-time and long-term homeownership. There are gaps and challenges that need to be addressed along the entire affordable housing continuum in Jeffco.

JUC CAN has been meeting with County Commissioners, county staff, and city mayors to advocate for a long-term county-wide plan to address affordable housing, both rental and homeownership. If you would like to advocate for affordable housing, please contact your County Commissioners and city councils.

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

SAVE THE DATE: The annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Homeless Count is scheduled for January 24, 2022. Join our email list to receive information about the Call for Volunteers to assist with this effort.