Greetings A2U2 community,

I hope you had a fabulous long weekend and enjoyed the summer weather!

I’ve been in a reflective space these past days as we head toward June. In church life, it’s a season of looking back, taking stock, and looking ahead. I’ve been reflecting on our year together through my own self evaluation, our Developmental Ministry evaluation, ministry reviews with our staff, annual reports and prep for annual meeting, and wrapping up with our current Board and other committees. Please take a look at my annual report before our June 8th Annual Meeting – I hope in reading it you will be as proud of the work we have done this year as I am!

Though I get a little weary of report and evaluation writing this time of year, I cherish the structured opportunity for reflection. Life moves so fast that it’s hard to carve out time to really look around and see how things are going, how they’ve changed, and how we feel about it. And we can learn so much from our attentiveness to process.

As much as we reflect on the past and plan for the future, of course there are times in life where things change for the better or worse outside of our control. Sometimes, we get unexpected news. Something happens. Things change. And we can’t turn around and go back to the way they were before or continue on our charted path, we can only carry on with the reality of life now. We’ll focus on these moments of life this Sunday in worship.

Our service, entitled No Going Back, will explore the moments when words are spoken aloud that change everything: “He’s gone”… “we found a mass”… “I want a divorce”… “you’re pregnant”… “I’m gay”… “we won!”… “you have Alzheimer’s.” What some call no-going-back-moments. Most, if not all of us, have at least one of these moments in our lives. Moments where there is no going back, only carrying on. So we’ll delve into the impact of these moments on our lives and the role of Unitarian Universalist communities and our faith in the journey of accepting and living life as it is.

It is a gift to gather and talk about the real stuff of life with likehearted folks. I hope to see you on Sunday either in person or on Zoom to do just that. Until then, take good care of yourself and those you love. We need one another.

In faith,

Rev. Tara