My name is Wren, I serve the New England 
Region. I'm here in Western Massachusetts. I use  

she her pronouns. I know we're putting a lot of 
words out into the cybersphere here uh and I do  

want to mention that we are recording this, so 
you will be getting a follow-up email, you'll  

be able to come back to it and as Evin said, 
come back to any of us anytime after uh after  

you share this information with other folks in 
your congregation. So I'm going to share a few um  

a few ideas about content. When we do get 
back to the in-person part of hybrid planning.  

But first I want to say a couple of 
things about trauma for us to keep in mind  

as we're beginning to plan this, as you're 
beginning to plan this for your communities.  

So living through this pandemic year has been a 
shared traumatic event for all of us. Traumatic  

events are things that disrupt our lives, 
that pose a threat to ourselves or to others,  

and that leave us feeling fearful or helpless.  

So that seems to fit living with COVID 19, right? 
Our lives have been significantly disrupted,  

we learned to wear masks because 
there's a deadly virus out there,  

and yeah we've all felt helpless and fearful at 
some point in the past 12, 13, 14 months now. And  

while we have all been in this same storm together 
in this country, we are not all in the same boats,  

so it's important to remember that some of our 
family and friends and colleagues and members  

are used to living with trauma more than some 
of the others of us. Folks who have lived  

their lives with with racialized trauma, with 
gender-based trauma, our queer and trans and other  

folks with marginalized identities, are feeling 
multiple levels of trauma and so as we return,  

it would be helpful for us to understand just 
a little bit about how trauma works. Many of  

you have probably already had some some good 
education on this, but just for the purposes  

of our conversation tonight, I'll name a couple 
of trauma responses that are fairly typical,  

just so we can notice them as we're planning 
for returning in our hybrid platforms  

when the time is right. So trauma is something we 
experience in our bodies but we process it with  

our brains, so this might be sometimes why you 
could hear someone say, oh why do I feel so tired  

and then the next minute think, what day is it 
today? anyway right. And by somebody I mean me  

because that has been me more times than I care 
to admit during this pandemic. I am exhausted  

and I can't keep track of it whether it's blurs 
day or or Wednesday and maybe it's happened to you  

too, but these these experiences, the fatigue, 
the fuzzy brain, the slippery nature of time,  

all of that is fairly typical response to low 
level trauma. So what that means is it takes us  

more energy and time to do things that are normal 
regular things that we do in our daily lives.  

We may have to read the same email three or 
four times before it finally sinks in what the  

information is that it's trying to convey. I might 
need to hear the same set of instructions multiple  

times before I understand what my next step is. So 
this is all going to be true for our people too,  

so for our volunteers, our board members, our 
religious professionals, nobody's exempt. So  

bear that in mind and as as Patricia said 
bring some grace to the conversations as  

you're planning for uh for the hybrid 
reopening time, when that time is right.  

Now our kids are also living in this through this 
traumatic event and we have kind of a mythology  

of the resilient child in our in our 
cultural context here. So yes it is true,  

children can be resilient and teenagers can 
be resilient, but that does not mean that they  

are resistant to the effects of living through 
trauma as well so keep that in mind. They don't  

have a lot of control in how the decisions are 
made about their returning to public schools,  

however we can give them some voice in how they 
return to our congregations. When the only message  

that our families and kids hear is that kids are 
resilient, don't worry about the kids, kids are  

resilient it almost can feel like gaslighting for 
them when they are actually having a hard time.  

So remember these um these kind of trauma informed 
thoughts as you think about going back in person  

eventually. We have a colleague who serves in 
central east with uh with Evin and Patricia  

named Reverend Sunshine Wolfe and and 
they have a terrific analogy for this.  

So imagine you're sound asleep and it's a 
super super sunny day and you start to wake up.  

Imagine somebody comes into your bedroom and flips 
the window open it's so bright, it's like it's too  

much, it's almost painful it's too much all at 
once. So Sunshine says imagine just taking that  

screen and and just lift it a little bit, just 
lift it a little, let a little bit of light in,  

let your eyes get used to it and then you know 
when you're ready open it a little bit more.  

This is what our process of returning to in-face 
community is going to be like, we're going to  

start with just a little bit we're going to adjust 
to it and we're going to add a little bit more and  

we're going to prioritize safety for everybody 
all right. And it goes back to what Annie said  

that holy slowly, we're going to take it slowly. 
We're not going to flip the shades up on everybody  

all at once, all right? So hybrid, dual platform 
future for religious education, faith formation.  

That means we'll be still online and returning 
to our buildings in person at some point,  

so we're going to try and meet our folks 
where they are in all of those places. We're  

going to bring an attitude of experi-learning 
where and Janet Bush I think is on this call,  

and I think Janet is yeah, I think you and 
CB Beale are the ones who who introduced me  

to the concept of experi-learning. It 
means we're going to try new things,  

we're going to be willing to learn from them and 
not get the results we thought we might get but  

explore with curiosity what happens, and work from 
there and take the faithful next step after that.  

We've had some practice with this 
right? We when we um turned to online  

church last year it pivoted like that. Now 
we have some time where we can plan for it.  

So one of the things I want to say to you about 
when we get back in person is not to worry about  

the curriculum. Don't worry about finding 
your teachers and staffing your classrooms  

and dusting off the Tapestry of Faith books 
right away, there will be time for curriculum.  

What we need to focus on when we are back 
in person is going to be community again.  

All of us are going to have to learn, 
relearn what it means to be in community  

and especially our youngest kids who might not 
have especially strong memories of the habit  

of church and our community there, it's going to 
take them time to build that habit back up again.  

So center community and center connection. Find 
ways to tell your families and youth and kids that  

you still belong to us. Maybe when you do give 
back to uh in-person person worship at one point,  

just set aside time for all the 
adults in the congregation to say,  

look how much you've grown, all at the same time 
which will save your kids from having to hear  

it from 25 different people at another point in 
the morning, but it also sends the message that  

we see you, we remember you, we 
claim you, we belong to each other.

When we do uh start talking with kids about 
curriculum related stuff it will be good  

to start with the basics for all of us of all 
ages. You know when we were kids in school uh  

you usually had to repeat fraction fractions 
when you got into fifth grade in September  

because who could remember what we did in fourth 
grade in June, right? So we've had a year away  

so let's get back to the basics. Focus on 
the seven principles, focus on the meaning  

of the chalice, focus on practicing covenant. 
Because in addition to curriculum you are also  

doing faith formation when you engage community 
development, when you engage covenant practice,  

and when you engage answering the call that our 
faith gives us to practice justice. So when you  

do any of those things together, you are doing 
faith formation. People might have expectations  

that we're not doing religious education 
if we're not in Sunday school. I want you  

to have that information so you can say to them 
yes we are. We are building community together.  

For the sustainable future time, as many of my 
colleagues have already mentioned we don't really  

know what it's going to look like, we knew that it 
was changing before the pandemic hit. Everything  

is up in the air. We're going to co-create what 
the future of faith formation looks like together.  

One thing you can do in the interim time 
is to focus on your congregation's gifts.  

When people are already tired and stressed 
out it's going to be really hard to  

find volunteers for a traditional Sunday 
school classroom or to staff committees,  

I don't think that has fed a lot of people 
spiritually over time. So think about the  

gifts your congregation has to offer, what is 
it that you do particularly well. And think  

about the gifts that your members have to offer 
invite people to share those gifts with people  

of all ages. That's something that will give 
joy to the person who is delivering their gift,  

it will give joy to the community to receive 
that gift, and it will not tire or stress anybody  

out. Start conversations with your stakeholders 
now about what a vision of the future faith  

formation ministry might look like. We don't 
have to go back to Sunday school but if it's  

working in your congregation you might, so you'll 
have to start planning how to do that how to do  

that in a slow holy slowly way to keep everybody 
safe. But if it doesn't serve your folks anymore  

think about what it might look like. We know 
from the past that most kids don't go to church  

every Sunday anymore, so at most they get 20 
hours of religious education a year. Which is  

not a lot and there are other ways that we can 
deliver both curriculum, community identity,  

covenant, and answering the call to justice 
in in new ways. So start those conversations  

and start them let them be big and dream like 
conversations and then work back to what your next  

right step is going to be. Try to focus on the 
next one or two steps and not too far into the  

future because we're going to be co-creating 
the future all together by staying connected  

to each other, listening and learning from 
each other as well. So be trauma conscious  

in identifying and planning for the next faithful 
step, invite imagination for the long-term future,  

and for now center your community and connection 
and care and moving at the pace of holy slowly.