A Cup of Joe, June 30, 2023
WHY A SUMMER OF SONG?
This past Memorial Day weekend was the tenth anniversary of my ordination into the Unitarian Universalist ministry. Reaching this milestone, I’ve been reflecting on what drew me to UU ministry.
You might know that before I was a minister, I was very involved in folk music. With lots of help, I had started a nonprofit group to support bringing folk and acoustic music to Syracuse. Somewhere along the line, I started attending services at May Memorial UU Society and started learning about Unitarian Universalism.
One of the things that I started noticing more was how much spiritual inspiration I found in the songs that contemporary songwriters were singing at the concerts I was promoting. I love the intertwining of thought and feeling that happens in song. We tend to consider thinking and feeling as separate, but I’ve always found them to be so intimately related, that you can’t quite tell where one leaves off and the other begins. This is enacted perhaps most clearly in songs. There are words which engage heart and mind, and they are sung with melody and rhythm and harmony which, in addition to being intellectually interesting, speaks so clearly to the heart.
When I was being introduced to Unitarian Universalism, I had been finding so much spiritual nurturing and inspiration in songs that don’t present themselves as religious. And Unitarian Universalism said to me, of course! We look for inspiration everywhere! and these songs are indeed a means of encountering the sacred.
This welcome and openness to spiritual inspiration is one of the big reasons I felt called to developing a UU faith. This welcome and openness that characterizes UU as a faith inspires me still.
In celebration of that, with the indulgence of the Worship team, most of our Sunday services in July and August will focus on exploring the inspiration, succor, and spiritual insight that can be found in songs that don’t present themselves as “religious.” Most (if not all) of the services will explore a single song in some depth and how that song might help us to further open our minds and hearts.
General Assembly Notes
In Person in Pittsburgh
I was in Pittsburgh June 19 through the 25th for General Assembly. This was the first time I had attended GA in person since 2018, and it was wonderful to be there. I really appreciate how much attention has been given to making GA accessible online, and I’ve enjoyed being able to attend GA virtually. Attending virtually has been a rewarding experience, but there is nothing like being in a room with twenty-three hundred other UU’s singing and praying and celebrating together.
I was especially glad that one of our congregation’s delegates to GA was also able to attend in person: Lucy Manning was part of the volunteer team at GA and it was exciting not to be the only UU Saratogian in the house!
The other UU Saratoga delegates this year were (and are) Sue Ward and Tari Lee Sykes. Your three delegates and I aren’t quite done with GA. There are a number of ‘on-demand’ pre-recorded sessions that we have access to until September. We will be picking a few that seem especially relevant to UU Saratoga or just potentially inspiring and we will invite other UU Saratoga members to join us to view and discuss these sessions together. Watch for future announcements about that!
GA Highlights
Attending GA is always a little like drinking from a fire hose, but there are at least a few things that I want to be sure you know about.
Goodbye Message from Out-going UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
This GA marked the conclusion of the 6-year term of Rev. Susan Frederick Gray as President of the Unitarian Universalist Association. She was elected in 2017 and served us so well during incredibly trying and unprecedented times. (Take a look at a Religion News Service article on her presidency here.)
Please take the time to watch a farewell message from Rev. Susan HERE.
You can watch the final President’s Report she delivered at General Assembly HERE.
A New President: Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt
The Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt was elected UUA President with 95.5% of the vote. She has a real gift for pastoral ministry and is one of our most savvy and articulate UU public theologians. I think that in many ways she is just the leader we need now. And perhaps many others think that, too. It was the job of the UUA Presidential search committee to find and encourage people to run for UUA President. When folks found out that Rev. Betancourt was running, they thought that the best candidate had already been found and no one else entered the race as a candidate. Find a report from Religion News Service about Rev. Sofia HERE.
New Principles? A New Article II? Not Quite Yet
Delegates at this year’s GA voted to give preliminary approval to a revision of Article II of the UUA’s bylaws. This is where the language for what has come to be known as the Seven Principles comes from, so revising this bit of our bylaws is a big deal.
For the last three years, a commission charged by the UUA Board has been working on a re-visioning of our UU Principles. They were charged not to just tweak the language here and there. They were charged to come up with something new. Last November, I shared with the congregation a preliminary draft that they had put together, and you all seemed very appreciative of what the Commission had put together. After some more revision, the Commission submitted a report to be presented at GA this year.
At GA this year, this proposal faced the first of what will be two votes. Congregations’ delegates to GA voted to give the changes preliminary approval. At next year’s GA, the proposal faces another vote before it is formally adopted.
There was a lot of material for delegates to consider and the GA created an online platform for discussion of the proposed new draft as well as for submission and discussion of amendments to the draft. Delegates proposed more than 80 amendments (!) to the proposed language and eventually several of those amendments were approved.
Unitarian Universalism is a forward-looking and progressive faith, and I appreciate that UU’s have promised to one another to keep ourselves current and nimble. As UU’s we do not center ourselves on beliefs carved in stone. Instead, we join together as religious people who share certain values. And it is necessarily the case that how we understand our values changes over time.
The principles have been in place (with only minor changes) since 1985. One delegate spoke during debate of the proposal and shared that she had been UU since before 1985. But she’s not the same person now as she was in 1985. How she understands her values has changed, and how she understands what our world needs has changed a lot since 1985. And she appreciated this effort to let our statement of our principles and values change.
I am very excited and inspired by the new language about values and covenant in the new draft, and by the way it acknowledges that love is at the center of a UU faith. So I was very pleased that the proposed draft (with amendments) was passed with 86.3% of the vote. At next year’s GA, to become official, the draft needs more than a two-thirds majority, so this year’s vote feels very hopeful to me.
With this preliminary approval in hand, the Article II Study Commission goes back to work to incorporate the amendments that were passed. And with this preliminary approval in hand, UU professionals and congregations are at work on ways that congregations can engage in a year of study and bring this new articulation of UU values to life in our selves and in our congregations.
As UU Saratoga continues on its path toward a new building, engaging with this re-visioning of Unitarian Universalism can help us to articulate our own mission as a congregation. I believe this new statement of UU values and the commitments we strive to uphold can help us to articulate what our congregation is about and share our enthusiasm within and beyond our walls.
Wrap-Up
It’s a lot to take in, and I thank you for reading this far! You will find a concise wrap-up of GA 2023 HERE with links to recordings of the main worship services and all of the meeting sessions.
love!
Rev Joe