Happy Friday, UUCUC! If you haven’t already, please sign up for one of the remaining cottage meetings (https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0A4CA4AB2BA0FD0-cottage), small group sessions where we will try to flesh out some of the congregation’s needs as expressed in the recent survey. This is the last week that we will be hosting them, so get in while you can. Your voice is important!
Last Sunday after church your Search Team headed out for a retreat to reinforce the groundwork we’ve already laid in our process for bringing our next settled minister. We started with a very thoughtful session down the street from the church at the Green Yoga Spa where Mary Wolters led us in a guided meditation, then dove with us into a discussion of non-violent communication (https://www.cnvc.org/), helping us to remain mindful of how the ways in which we choose to communicate affect others.
After that we decamped for the wilds of rural Indiana, where we spent the evening together making a truly massive (and delicious) dinner, after which we relaxed in the cool evening air on the back porch engaging in sometimes silly, sometimes profound conversation, illuminated by an almost full moon and the strangely beautiful blinking red lights of the nearby wind farm. The following morning some of us went to a nearby nature preserve to commune with the geese and the muskrats while others stayed behind to make a wonderful breakfast, featuring a muffin recipe from a book many of us have read recently (yes, *that* book). After some more thoughtful discussion, we hopped in our cars and returned to Champaign-Urbana more committed to each other and to the task of finding our minister than ever before.
As always, if you have any questions please email us at search@uucuc.org, or grab us in person at church (we’re the ones with the extra purple badges on our lanyards). We’re also all in the church directory if you’d like to reach out to us individually.
In loving service,
Janet Revell Barrett
Wendy Graves
*Chris Hannauer
*Tanja Hodges
Pat McClard
Dave Sharpe
*Angela Urban
*****BONUS SEARCH TEAM CONTENT*****
Nobody guessed the author of last week’s autobiographical poem. If you have been following this extra content feature from the start, this posting contains a not-so-subtle hint to help you figure it out. Winner gets a shout-out in next week’s column!