Rev. Megan Foley 0:04 Welcome, everyone. I'm Reverend Megan Foley, I'm the regional lead for the Central East Region. And this, our event today is brought to you by our fabulous staff team, especially Renee and Evin and of course, Amy and Beth behind the scenes always. And some fabulous newly minted deputized facilitators to help us with our day. We're so excited, you're here to talk about these these, I don't know, the culmination of a lot of hopes and wishes of possibly being able to think about reopening our churches soon, especially today, because today, tomorrow is the one year anniversary of when most of our churches closed. So what a time to be able to, to kind of think about unwinding some of that stuff. We, this was a brainchild, mostly Evin Carvill-Ziemer, just a few weeks ago, and we Central East Staff and actually UUA staff have in one second gone from fairly appealing and popular events to extraordinarily popular events that are, that are somewhat outside of our scrambly skill set. So what you're going to see today as I was trying to wrangle a situation, either in front of you or behind the scenes to have an experience that we're hoping will lead to some information for you and some connection. And because we have to do it through the screen here we are doing it. So we're also hoping to model that we can have connection and learning even in imperfect systems. And we know that that's the case in your congregations too. So I'm gonna start with a chalice lighting for us. And this Chalice lighting was written by Celia Thurston How about you take a deep breath, a deep, Sunny breath. It's called I Light this Chalice for You. I light this Chalice for all the times you have lit this Chalice, for every time you've struck the match, or flicked that zapper thing, or empowered a nervous parishioner to do the same. I light this Chalice for all that you've done, for all that you've fostered and cultivated and nudged, for all you've suggested and directed and maneuvered. I light this Chalice for the intensity of your reactions in responding to grace and rejecting mediocrity within the tender balance between tradition and choice. I light this Chalice for your being here now. Out of calling, out of commitment, out of love. I light this Chalice for the time you have spent preaching and hurting and feeling. I light this Chalice for you. Alright, and since I've only really lit and lit the chalice of our hearts and not an actual candle, I'm going to invite you to stay there for one second because I really do want to want to light this chalice for you. Hold on. What kind of zoom minister would I be if I didn't have right off screen 800 million replacement candles. Now we're ready. So we're gonna start with about 30 minutes of kind of teaching time. And we're going to share that amongst the staff. We're hoping that that will give you some ideas, you know, no need to really like write every word down. But just some things to take away. Before we start talking to take with you in the next few weeks to come. I'm going to start. And I want to start with a quote from this new book that I read, called "We Shall Be Changed: Questions for the Post Pandemic Church" by this guy Mark Eddington, edited by him. It's a collection of essays. I'll put that in the chat in a minute. So so you'll have it if you want to look at it. It's Christian focused. But it's about what we've been going through. And I think a great, a great essay by Sarah Sarah Birmingham Drummond says, "The Great rethink that COVID-19 is requiring of us is going to change the church forever, for bells are ringing that cannot be unrung. One of those bells is the realization on the part of faith communities, that they have a much bigger toolbox than they realize, than they realized for carrying out the it that is church." So I wanted, we were talking today about that toolbox and even expanding our understanding of our toolboxes so that we can do The best possible job that we can in serving the people that were called to serve. So I want to talk about just three qualities of church that maybe aren't front of mind today. But I'm really hoping that you'll take with you, as you think about this next phase of your congregation as we get past the emergency shutdown period of time and into rethinking how we want to be together. Three qualities. So the three qualities are attention to mission, nimbleness, and inclusion, attention to mission, nimbleness, and inclusion. So inclusion of course, is two things, it's a theological statement that we Unitarian Universalist make about the importance of every human being, but then we don't always enact particularly well, because we create these structures where we're, you know, our longtime leaders, our staff get a lot of room, a lot of voice at the table. And of course, that is unmatched in a structure where dominant voices always get a place at the table, right. And so the theological work for us to do is to figure out ways to undo that dynamic so that everyone can bring their whole selves to our communities, and everyone potentially has a voice, either in decision making or a voice, but more importantly, a voice in saying, what the community is, what it's for, and what it can do. That's a theological statement that we are bound to, that's a theological purpose that we're about to to use. But it's also the way to make your organization the most effective it can be. Because we all know that the more diversity, true diversity you have at a table, when you have the ability to manage that diversity and learn from it, then you create the best possible organization. And so I really hope that you'll think about that concept of inclusion. And then as a foundation in the next few months, nimbleness. And nimbleness is that thing you had to learn this year that you wish you didn't, right? So but and so you may be in the back of your head thinking I cannot wait until we don't have to be nimble anymore, until we know what's what, we can go back to the way we know things ought to be. And we can forget about all this rapid change and responsiveness to context. But I really want to tell you that nimbleness is the most important quality you could possibly bring with you to your next chapter of church. It's the thing that is going to make all of your future efforts relevant and useful, no matter what happens and your ability to be nimble prepares you for any sort of future, whether that's a great and calm and steady future, which I wish for all of us, or more likely a future that does have a few bumps in the roads, whether those are pandemic bumps or others. So, nimbleness please, you have all learned it and we know you've learned it, we're not going to forget you have all learned it, that is a quality you now have. Don't forget about it will serve you better than almost anything else. And then mission. So lots of congregations try to like make a mission statement and you feel like there's going to be a long meeting, it's like called mission, kind of makes you feel like ugh, but when I talk about mission, I'm just talking about why do you exist. This is no longer the time for you to exist simply so you can exist again tomorrow. I think you've probably gotten out of the habit of that a little bit in this time. But the more you can do now, to think about why your congregation exists in the world, whether that reason is big or small, and really be able to make the and focus on that, the easier it will be to make decisions that serve that purpose in the world. And it doesn't have to be a statement. It doesn't have to be written in stone, it can be written in pencil, in your mind, and adjusted as needed. But the point is, is that you've understand why, but you're for, why you're there. Because when you understand why you're there, everything else falls into place. So those are, that's my five minutes, three things to remember, mission, nimbleness and inclusion. And I pass it along to Pat for your next little lesson. Thanks, Pat. Patricia Infante 9:10 Thank you, Megan. I wanted to just spend a few minutes reminding leaders to pay attention to healthy leadership practices. It's, it's a time when those things can really kind of give us a little bit of a dare I say a vaccination against some of that anxiety and some of the uncertainty and some of the resistance that's, that, that is inevitable in our systems. So leaders need to remember what their role is. Part of your role is that nimbleness, modeling flexibility and adaptability and inclusivity. Part of the leader's role is to communicate clearly and honestly, as honestly as you can. People who don't have information that increase, can increase anxiety. And sometimes people will seek information in ways that are not healthy. So if whatever we can tell people is important, leaders have responsibility to create the structure to create policies to issue some guidance. Some, some communities might use a tool like RACE. So there's a tool called RACE, where you, you figure out who's Responsible, who's Accountable, who needs to be Consulted, who needs to be conformed, Informed. And it just kind of helps to kind of figure out what people's lanes are, so that folks can can really focus on what is needed in the moment from them. If you're on a board, if you're a board leader, if you're staff, you don't have to do everything, try to remember you don't have to do everything. Part of your work is to create and uphold the structures that allow others to do their work joyfully. And efficiently. Excuse me, the communication piece, healthy communication is really important in a time like this. Communicating with clarity, timeliness, and compassion, about the changes that are coming, how you're making decisions, create a strategy around communication, and make sure that all of your message, all of your messaging is this sort of reinforcing the overall message. Don't confuse people if you can, if you can help it. And leaders have to be willing to own a certain amount of uncertainty in this time. It's it's okay to say, we don't know how, we don't know when, we don't know who. But this is what we do know, this is what we can tell you now. And these are the things that we're working on, the things that we're working towards. Leaders should kind of relearn some of those skills. If you haven't had an opportunity to look at our LeaderLab, there are some great, some great board training resources for you. But how do you, how do you help reduce the anxiety in the overall congregation, don't take that anxiety on, it's really important as leaders to kind of resist the calls for, there will be calls for urgency, people will be anxious to move forward. And I know Reverend Sunshine is gonna talk a little bit more about urgency in this time. Resist that, that we want to do things the way we did before. Let's not normalize that in this time. And then finally, it's just a really important time to think about your own self care. And think about, you know, what are the spiritual touchstones for you, for you, as an individual, for you as a board, for you as a community, and return to those touchdowns as often as you can. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Reverend Evin. Rev. Evin Carvill-Ziemer 13:18 Thank thanks. I want to talk a little bit about discernment. Every congregation is facing a lot of choices in discernment. And in our conversations with congregations, we're hearing really different ideas. And that is great, because you are different congregations with different circumstances. So I just want to talk about that a little bit here. One important conversation to have is where are the greatest needs right now in your community, that includes your membership, but also includes your surrounding community? Where are the greatest needs? Who has the greatest needs? That's going to look different. And really asking the question is, are those needs going to be addressed by putting our energy into something in person in the near future, if those needs aren't going to be addressed by by putting energy into in person, it's possible that putting your energy into the in person is going to take the energy away, you need to serve the greatest needs right now. There also could be that the greatest needs are met by in person experience. It isn't what other congregations are doing. Your neighbors might be trying to figure out hybrid worship, but you might be able to be meet your greatest needs in some other kind of way. I also want you to invite you don't think about who's making which decision and this is breaking down in my mind. This is just my head thinking this. If somebody's deciding when. Many of you have a team that's been looking at metrics and safety, you've got a doctor and nurses on there, you've got people looking at science. If you if you don't have that team, I did include in the pre work a link to the page or collecting guidance from other congregations who do have teams and you could ask your primary contact for that as well. So some team is deciding when, okay, it's safe enough for this kind of thing to happen. And here's, here's the standards we need. When you also need somebody to be deciding what, what is the first thing you want to be doing, what's going to meet those needs. This might be your board, it might be your staff. And then a third the how, this is I think, where the technology comes in. If we want to be doing something in person and include people online, we know that's going to include a technology question. So the how are we going to do that, that's where you need your technically competent people who are thinking about what we could do to make that work. There's, there's a dynamic between these groups, obviously, if the people say, the what people are like, let's do this thing, and the tech people say, That's not gonna work, but you know, you could do this thing. So there's some communication back and forth, right. But I'd like you all, just to take a moment to think about if, if you are primarily in the when we can do something safely, or the What should we do with a How should we do it group. It's possible you're in more than one. But I think it can be helpful to be know what our hat is at this table. In the third area of discernment, so needs the the what, what, how, and the third, I want to point out was culture, a little discernment about your congregations culture, a couple of things here. Different congregations have different relationships to technology, some of you hopped right into zoom worship, and that was great, it was easy for most of you, you had the tech folks who could help the people who need to help. Some congregations took a few weeks to really get into zoom, and it was harder. So now, we're gonna have some congregations who are early adopters, they want to experiment, it might not go well, they might need to try something else. They've got enthusiasm, and volunteers ready to do that. And a congregation that will roll with it. Other congregations have kind of figured out what you're doing, you're going to wait for the people to experiment first, it will be, you'll be in the middle of a pack. And then there's some congregations, you may be doing outdoor, small groups, Well, before you anything that involves any new technology, you're going to wait for somebody to write the manual, someone will write a manual for their volunteers we'll help you get it, it's no no problem and be the late adopter on this kind of technology shift. So in assessing your culture, What's your relationship to technology. Also, think about your relationship to change. If there's any way you can use this moment to nurture your cultural relationship to change, as Megan talked about, to get more nimble. And in any case, thinking about how can you increase your people's patience with tech glitches, and thinking about these big groups of things, we've been running, tech glitches happen, and accepting and expectin inperfection and rolling with that, I think is a good spiritual practice in general, it's a great spiritual practice now. And it's what the spiritual practice, we need to get more nimble. And also to keep undoing the white supremacy culture in our congregations and move into a more multicultural reality where sometimes things aren't what we expected, we better say, Oh, well, it wasn't what I expected. And roll with it. So this is a great opportunity to practice accepting that things aren't going to go the way we expected. Rev. Sunshine Wolfe 18:32 I want to talk a little bit about the, How to be aware of and respond to trauma that will exist in your system. Upon returning and even now, as we're dealing with it, like what will that transition look like? And what are the things that you need to consider as you're moving forward. In fact, many of the things that have been said even up until this point are all ways in which you can effectively be thinking about how to care for your committee, community that has gone through a traumatic experience. And I know we've gone through a traumatic experience because my brain is fuzzy, I don't know how many of you may be familiar with the notion of like you, it's been Friday for three days, that happened to me last week, or you thought it was a month ago, dates are off, you're having a hard time remembering names, all those sorts of things. And that's because trauma can, is experienced by the body, but it is processed through the brain. And I'm not going to get too much into the science of it. But I do want you to know one important thing, which is that when our body experiences trauma, we actually experience a chemical divide between our ability to think and the words that form place called the Broca's area. And so you actually have a hard time describing what happened to you. And so how many of you have a hard time trying to describe what this COVID experience has been like, right? It's not an easy thing to understand or comprehend. And when you're talking about members of our congregation, we have folks who have experienced prior trauma where this is exacerbated what's already been going on in their lives and experiences, and all of that. And so we want to think carefully about what is that going to mean as people come back, because this has been a traumatic experience, trauma is simply a shock to the system. And it can be a mental shock, an emotional shock, a physical one, it can be a spiritual one. And we have lots of survivors of spiritual abuse in our congregations who may be triggered by all that's been going on, there's a lot that happens there. And so the reality is that this has been a tough time, and it has taken more energy to do everything, right. Have you felt that sense of like, it just takes more energy to even do the things that felt simple or basic before, that's going to be true? Well into our time of return into community with each other in a physical sense, right. So as we're coming back to what hopes folk, folks hope, we'll be back to some sort of sense of normalcy, it's not going to be that we can't turn the clock back, as was said earlier. And so it's important to know that your community is going to need you to repeat things a lot. When folks are in a trauma mindset, you have to repeat, you have to be repetitive. And everything that you communicate, we normally say in healthy times to communicate things seven times in seven different ways. And trauma time, you want to at least double that, if not quadruple that. So you're gonna want to repeat things over and over again, in as many places and you'll get sick of hearing it. But it may be the 15th time will be the time that a group of folks finally hear something because it's just too much, particularly in the beginning, It's gonna be a lot of information at once. And they're going to want you to try and do things the way they used to be done. Or they're going to want you to do the perfect multi platform experience that keeps all the new people that came during COVID. And all the folks who you know, are not necessarily able to come to the building and everybody in person, and have it all be perfect and good. And all of that languages, white supremacy, culture language, but it is also language, it's about how we try and keep control. When we're feeling like we're unraveling coming out of this process, your folks are going to feel like they're unraveling a little bit. Because when you start to come out of a traumatic experience, you start to actually have the space to feel and be aware of and process what has happened before. And so folks are going to be irrational, you're probably going to see more conflicts than you used to seeing. Folks may be more angry or quick to tears or even shut down. A simple conversation may lead to somebody disappearing for a couple of months. All these are normal things. And so you want to be able to prepare your community not just for what it means to do the practical of coming back. But what it means to care for your entire community as it is recovering from a traumatic experience. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's not going to be instantly over. And we already know this is going to be a slow process as folks are getting vaccinated, even after everyone's been vaccinated for some of our folks, it still won't be safe for them to come out because of how immune compromised or other things are dealing with, probably won't matter how many people are vaccinated, they still may not be able to leave their homes. And so we're dealing with people in a lot of stages of engagement and where they can be in their world. Folks will start to feel tired, or depressed, more exhausted. And I want to say when I say folks, I mean you not just the people you serve, the you the leaders, your ministers, your religious educators, your board, presidents, your RE teachers, your everybody who's doing any kind of leadership in your church or going through these things, too. And so you want to do the things that help care for people. Allow them to enter slowly and to resist that urgency that may come as a result of wanting to get back to things as normal. It's really common for folks after traumatic experience to not want to talk about anymore. Even a slight mention of COVID might get some folks a little reactive. And that's where ritual helps you with those kinds of things. There's going to be this kind of I like the language, I didn't create this, but somebody put it in the document, trauma residue. There's going to be some residual from this experience for a long time. And so it's important to be able to keep that present. I often work with congregations and they'll say after your well, why do we still have to keep talking about this. And it's because humans don't get over things quickly. It takes us years, particularly communities, can take five to 10 years of intentional effort to help a community do a significant amount of healing. So imagine that you're going to be doing some of this work, not for the next six months or a year but probably the next five to 10 years of helping yourself congregation kind of reassess. That may sound anxiety producing. But here's the other thing, it gives you lots of room to be nimble, to think about inclusion, to focus on your mission, you don't have to solve it all. And when you take away that time pressure, it gives everybody that emotional space to kind of recover and be in community. What I want to close with is talking a little bit about the sense of urgency that can come. There can be this desire to do everything at once or to fix everything. And I think all that's gonna do is land you all exhausted and feeling like you're going nowhere. Because even if your congregation is saying, We want all this to be fixed at once, they're going to be exhausted by it all changing quickly to. Does that make sense? So they may say, we really want to have worship right now. And then they get to worship and like, we want worship in the building with everybody together, and then they get there. And they're overwhelmed by it. Because that's not what we've been doing for a year. And it's too much at once, right? So there's going to be a desire to rush and there's gonna be like, Oh, no, no, no, no. And that's a normal thing. So like, kind of, in trauma recovery work, we talk about having a window that has a shade, and the shade, you can slowly widen the window so you can let more light in. In other words, you open the capacity of a person to deal with the input that's coming at them. And so with your congregations and with you, as leaders, think about how do you not just suddenly open up the blinds, I don't know about you. But first thing in the morning, if somebody suddenly opens up the blinds, I'm screaming, I'm hiding myself under a blanket, I don't want to come out, I don't have enough coffee, you know, that starts to happen, right? You want to slowly open the window, so that folks have time to adjust and get comfortable with each other, again, to process all of these deep emotions that are coming up inside them to, slowly open the window where everybody can kind of have some capacity. And even after you do that, there will be some of your folks, and it may be you, who it takes a long time to really be open, able to enter back in in a way that's helpful and meaningful. So look for lots of opportunities to take this at a slow pace, start with distance things out doors, and keep doing some things online. Think about what works in your congregation so that you're able to have that connection. But folks are not getting overwhelmed by having everybody together at once or trying to get back to something that they may think they want but aren't quite emotionally, or particularly their brain is not quite ready to process yet. Because really, it is between the ears. It's the processing part of our brains that we want this thing but then it's too much. And so you want to pay attention to that, that gap. How are you slowly opening the window, rather than just going back to the sunlight that used to be? Yeah, that's what I have. Rev. Renee Ruchotzke 28:07 So I want to extend a blessing to all of you, as we close. May you feel supported by one another, by the important work, the important life saving work, that you're doing in your communities. I am so grateful for the attention and wisdom and perseverance and the the faithfulness that each one of you have brought to this this beautiful Saturday morning. And we are so grateful for your time that you have shared with us and with one another in service of your congregations and the good work that you're doing for the world. So Amen. Until we meet again, perhaps in person someday. Thank you all. Transcribed by https://otter.ai