Hey everyone, welcome. It's me, Megan Foley and the Central East Region crew here tonight for what looks like a very intimate meeting, so that will be nice. Thank you for coming tonight. It's our last of our Skill Up Series for the 23-24 church year and here you'll see our folks scattered around the zoom room. We're excited that you're here with us and looking forward to spending the night with you. Not the whole night, just the beginning of the night. You know it's normal. Beth is going to share a story and I'm going to light a chalice to celebrate this particular time of year, so busy and so full of promise and the hope of rest, so all the things. Beth: Thank you. At our September Skill Up Gathering, I told a story about my family's pollinator garden. Wach year our garden blooms with different combinations of plants than the year before, and each year that unique combination of flowers results in a new collection of butterflies, birds and bees showing up. And what this experience has taught my entire family is that we need to be open to the unexpected and that the unexpected can sometimes be very joyful, a very joyful surprise. Last summer's unexpected surprise was was our first hummingbirds. Our pollinator garden is just now starting to grow and we've yet to see what will come up this year, but no doubt, there will be a new flower, some new butterflies, and hopefully some more hummingbirds this summer. So I hope in the nine months since our last, since that September story, you found an unexpected joyful surprise this year in your congregation, Megan. Megan: I'm going to invite the Central East Region Staff to just introduce themselves in the chat and turn it over to Lenore, who's gonna walk us through our skill tonight. Take it away, Lenore. Lenore: All right. Hey everybody. It is good to be together and to spend some time in this busy month of May. I don't know about you but for me it seems like a season matching the springtime with, lots has been growing and now it's there's sort of this riot of color and things popping up and unexpected things happening and, and all the things. So echoing that appreciation from Megan about your presence here tonight and in these busy times. At this time of year it can be tempting to kind of accomplish what needs to be done and head out. I know our folks sometimes get a little, little summer wanting, and I I've also been thinking about how that this time of year, such an important work of leaders often includes inviting the community into those moments of looking back on the year, reflecting. So we can really celebrate and learn from what we have done. So Beth could we see some of those slides? Thank you. So tonight we're going to think about a couple practices for ongoing reflection and assessment, what we might call building a culture of collective learning together. And you know it's middle of May, why are we spending time thinking about this? Well this whole series has been about offering responsive leadership to Changing Times and ongoing reflection and assessment is one of those tools that can help us take a hard look at our assumptions about what works and what doesn't, which we can sometimes layer onto our stories about what happened in the year and instead be really present with what is. Like Beth was saying, present with what has grown, so we can also accomplish a lot of our goals for welcoming and inclusion by having practices of curiosity and reflection and assessment. It makes it possible to welcome in new persepctives to, you know, check our assumptions about how well something went when we deliberately create spaces for multiple voices to come in and tell the story of what we've done over the past year. We can, that's one way of welcoming the perspectives of newcomers, folks who don't always have a voice in leadership conversations to join in. It's a way of encouraging innovation, which we'll talk about in a little while and having a celebratory approach to ongoing reflection and assessment, much like this photo from 2013 General Assembly helps us build community, which is always a good outcome and particularly in these changing times when we're hoping to help people feel connected to each other and to their faith communities. Can we see the next slide? But put together a bit of a recipe for cultivating a culture of ongoing learning. So sometimes we hear the word assessment or learning and we think about curricula, or we might think about the end the year staff evaluations or we might think about or some other things that are associated with the word assessment in your mind. Can you put something in the chat? maybe things that are associated with the word assessment or learning? Oh that silence, I think you can hear the birds in my background which is probably good for our springtime theme. Assessment, like the idea of testing, like did I do well enough on the test, right? The idea of figuring out the best way, review, reflection, yeah. So a lot of different. We may come with a lot of different assumptions or associations with this idea of assessment, some of them might feel positive, like this idea of curiosity, some of them might feel slightly anxiety provoking, like this idea of testing. So zooming out and thinking about how to cultivate a culture of learning can include some the following permission to experiment. We also sometimes call this experi-learning, that comes from Full Week Faith by our colleague Wren Bellevance Grace. adrienne marie brown says never a failure always a lesson, and that's easy to say but quite difficult to practice, so when we have times where we can come together and and share what we've learned over the year without judgment and making explicit that, hey we are here to learn from what we've done. If there were fewer numbers than we expected, we're not going to toss that in the trash and and call it a failure, we're going to learn from why that might be and kind of unpack what we, what we did learn from that time. We might have permission to try it again and again and again and then learn from that, so having a culture of permission to experiment where the stakes don't feel quite so high with somebody saying, you know Lenore, that didn't go well but instead saying, well what what did we notice? What did we learn? Another thing to help build a culture of learning rather than feeling like we're doing tests or that kind of like strict evaluation is building a culture of story sharing and that's something we're going to practice tonight. Gathering together and sharing our stories is one of the most sacred practices that humans have and that's also a way that we've been learning from each other for millennia now and we aren't, we aren't any different as Unitarian Universalists. So building cultures where we regularly gather together look back on what we've done, share the stories of what that's been, you weren't there, I wasn't there, let's let's talk about it. Story sharing during coffee hour, story sharing during worship services, story sharing during rituals, we'll get more into that a little bit later. Welcoming surprise, ooh welcoming surprise, that feels sacred to me, Marian. I feel like that's a posture of openness, helps us welcome surprise and that gets back to, you know in these weird times where a lot is changing, stopping our assumptions about what works and what doesn't work. You know, well we did, we tried that 10 years ago, I'm not going to listen to how it went now, because I know that it doesn't go well. I might be surprised by how it went this time. Cultivating an ability to hold varying viewpoints side by side so that you know somebody might have come to an event and another person might have come to event, listening to to those views side by side. We've already talked about dedicating time to appreciation and celebration, but I feel like this needs a little bit more cheerleading. So I have a background in monitoring and evaluation of peace building programs and of other types of programs and we talk about cultivating celebration. It counts to celebrate, it counts as learning. Learning especially if we do it in a particular kind of way and as adrienne maree brown writes in an emergent strategy, what you pay attention to grows. And so it is worth turning our time and attention and energy to the things that are worthy of celebrating even at the end of a busy year, even with a lot of things to do still on the horizon, even with staff who may feel feel burned out or lay leaders who may feel like they are just done with the year. Slowing down and giving ourselves encouragement and permission to celebrate. Sunshine writes celebration is learning. I think that's right. Sunshine: I'm just quoting you, you just said that. Lenore: I didn't hear myself say that but I think, I think it can be, I think it can be. Let's go to the next slide and see how it can be. So I invite to take a moment and think what collective practices in your congregation or in another community that you're part of, perhaps in a small group ministry, in your worship services, in social gatherings. What group practices of celebration or reflecting or sharing stories about what we've done do you already have in place. And I put potluck because I know that's a collective practice of celebration that many of our congregations have, so it doesn't have to be with a test kind of a learning. It doesn't even have to be a celebration where we are explicitly talking about what we've done, just put in, go ahead and put in the chat what are some traditions of celebration and reflection do you already have in your context. Ooh a talent show, an annual meeting. So an annual meeting where we might gather together and sort of give reports and reflect back on on what how the how the how the year has gone, a teacher appreciation Sunday. After service question time, is that with the minister Jeffrey? After service questions? Jeffrey: Uh no it's not, it's usually with me. I, something usually strikes me as as a significant thing and uh I get real excited about it and I want to talk about it and I want to share that with maybe one other person maybe. Lenore: So that's a very informal, that's your informal way of of saying hey I'm not done. Like I want to, I want to cultivate this practice of reflection I love. Jeffrey: yeah yeah. Lenore: What else do we have? Joys and Sorrows rituals, right, so many of our congregations, that's a collective practice of celebration and also sometimes grieving and just noticing right slowing down, noticing what's going on on here. I mentioned potlucks. I know there are also sometimes auction events that congregations have where that feels joyful. RE Sunday, what are some other ones that we might have? Newsletters, way of sort of saying hey look we have this thing that we did, here's a picture in our newsletter, we're going to communicate about it, if you weren't there we're going to invite you in. Oh a board that Sunshine worked with in the region would fill out thank you cards and somebody then would send them out the next day, yeah. What about water communion and flower communion or the water ceremony and the flower ceremony? Those are some unique UU rituals where sometimes, sometimes the the reflection, sometimes people name what something means and sometimes it's a private moment of reflection, that sort of that thing, of each person bringing something and then coming together as a collective. Congregational groups like The Pagan group, or the LGBTQ group leading services and bulletin boards with notices of events. Right. So you get the chance to kind of lift up, I've been, I've been, we've we, our group has been working on something for months or perhaps for the whole year, we're going to gather together and we're going to lift that up to you all, and you all have the chance to share in that learning. Yeah, work days, people gathering together with work days, right. It can be joyful, work parties, work days. Okay so there might be some more things that you already do to gather and celebrate and I want to encourage you to let those traditions that you already have count as part of your practices of reflection and learning. And there are things that we can do with these things that are already in existence to help make them deepen your reflective practice even more and make it stronger. So we can invite opportunities to share stories during a particular event, we can welcome people into those practices by having table cards at the potluck rather than just orally giving the invitation to turn to a neighbor and share a story. We can make sure to, if there is a celebration that's happening and there is a time when you're going to be reflecting, we can be mindful to invite multiple voices to contribute to that full picture so this image is of three different ,well one person at three different angles of view and how different that square or cube like object looks from different. And this is a this is a visual metaphor but you could also think about an audio profile of having different angles, of putting together information. So we can remember that one person's memories of the year is an anecdote and anecdotes are not data. They're meaningful. They're interesting. But it's when we start to really invite newcomers and long timers, people of multiple racial and ethnic and class and other backgrounds into the picture, people with children, people without children, people who are elders and, people who are youth. You know, inviting many voices to contribute to that picture, or in a case of a celebration, or a story sharing event, you know, inviting multiple people to voice their things and then to have listening from multiple perspectives. That's where we can get to some collective assessment. So moving from anecdotes towards assessment and collective learning. And I feel like that's especially important these days, where many of the things that are growing might be with in the hands of new people who might not be as highly connected to the core of the leaders who are doing many of the things at the church. Things that are growing might be with, like a communities who are a little bit less visible on Sunday morning worship when the whole group gathers, because maybe there's an Innovative Wednesday evening potluck. One of our congregations was telling me about where some folks just show up to the potluck on Wednesday evening and they get nourished. They can't make it on Sundays. Maybe there's a children's music program on on Thursday afternoons that nobody in the congregation sees unless you happen to be in the building or if you read the newsletter, on Thursday afternoons. So inviting that multiple voices and taking time to tell each other the stories of what you want to celebrate this year is also a way of making visible or audible the experiences that might otherwise exist more on the margins of a congregational experience and a way of making those things count. So I want to think about, let's let's put into the chat, thinking about this year, let's practice a little bit of collective reflection. And we're going to be practicing a lot of Celebration because of that principle of what you pay attention to grows and also simply because gathering back in these times, it's important to celebrate, but you know celebration is hard. Sometimes when, we don't also acknowledge the things that aren't happening, so if we can, if you can put in the chat something that, first something that you had hoped to accomplish this year as a leader but you weren't able to do it i,t could be a very small thing, for example this year I had hoped to accomplish a blog post about cultures of celebration and learning and I wasn't able to accomplish that this year. How about you? Now I can take a moment and think this is part of inviting curiosity. How about something that you had not even thought about accomplishing but your congregation or you did accomplish it. I'm going to close my window to get that noise out. Can keep thinking about this this is sort of a useful thought exercise and sharing both of those because you might want to invite, you know, board members, committee leaders in a committee that you might be working with, a youth group, to think in this way. The first question giving permission like everybody's wanted to do something that they weren't able to do, can get that out in the open, diminishing some of the embarrassment about doing this stuff and changing times and also maybe even naming, hey you know what, that was a priority and it no longer is because this the circumstances changed, or like we had in this example that that's a perennial priority, it doesn't get done and I really want to put that up top for next year. And then that inviting surprise for the thing that you didn't even think about accomplishing, but still you did all right. We're going to invite you now into a breakout room to continue some of this thinking through your past year and practicing these skills of noticing and engaging. So with this principle of what we pay attention to grows, adrienne maree brown, as well as some other folks in your breakout rooms, you'll be introducing yourselves and around you can say your name, pronouns if you wish, your congregation, your Role, don't resist the urge to get right into sharing the thing right away, we'll go around the full round that way and then you'll have some quiet to think about stories, if you wanted to tell a story about the topic, what story would you tell. You're not going to tell the whole story, you're just going to say, if I were to tell a story about this topic this is a story that I would tell. This practice comes from Interplay. So the topic is something very very very small from your past year in the congregation or you know in UU settings that you would like to celebrate. Something very small. Sunshine: Lenore, should you and I model it? Just because I think the first time it's a little? Lenore: Yeah be great, Sunshine. So I'll go first. So if I were to tell a story about something very small I'd like to celebrate, I could tell about the moment when I walked into a class I was leading, children's and family class I was leading and the one of the parents had brought a lasagna for a family that had just had a new baby and I was so happy. It's fabulous. How about you, Sunshine? Sunshine: A small thing I'd like to celebrate is I can tell about a time with a congregation that knew that they weren't understanding their challenges over the course of history. A couple of folks said I finally understand, why we did this and so we decided to do this thing instead and just how proud they were of themselves. It was lovely just to see that that little bit of cultural change for a moment. So that's it, nothing too complicated, not the whole story. Lenore: And then you keep on going until the breakout room is over, which is five minutes. All right? I'm going to say good night to my child while we go into breakout rooms and we'll come back after five minutes? Okay Beth: Okay folks I'm going to send you all off. Lenore: Let's report back a little bit, what was that like to share something very small, raise your hand if you do want to share. I had a thought that that brought up Jeffrey which is you know the importance of that individual reflective practice and and particularly for leaders to be able to slow down and think like where do I want to think myself, what what small ways do I want to celebrate what I just did, and then also that collective cultures of appreciation, something that we can celebrate together so both of those are so important, I think it's some of the most important work we can do, actually, slowing down and and being present with what we've, what we've been able to accomplish so far. Not shunting away criticism or critique, not refusing to think you know critically or deconstructing, you know, what what we've done but just slowing down enough to be present with it and to get curious, yeah. I think Sunshine is going to lead us into another practice for practicing this. Sunshine: Absolutely. So a lot of our folks are very story minded, but I'm also very aware some of our folks like a rubric, a metric, a thing that they can apply and use. And you know who that is, if that's you, awesome and if it's somebody in your community, awesome. So we want to give you as many kinds of tools that are simple and yet clear. So the I can tell a time about is a great way to get a collection of stories and kind of get that bigger picture. I'm going to share an appreciative inquiry tool that also does that. How many of you have studied or know about appreciative inquiry at some point in their work or life? Uh huh, I'm noticing, yeah the UUA staff of course, all raise their hand. So one of the things that I think is really important about feedback is that it isn't focused on kind of the what we did in school, particularly, if you went to like a kind of standardized school where there was a right answer and you raised your hand and you got credit and you got an 80 or a 90 or 100% or those kinds of things, which is kind of how we in early years maybe have been taught to think about assessment, that it's a grade you can get that there's a thing with that. And there certainly can be a degree of that, but we're dealing with, in churches with volunteers who are imperfect, not always having their best days and aren't there like they are in school to like learn a thing, so using some of those same kinds of styles of assessments aren't great. And so I appreciate Lenore's helping us think about what allows us to celebrate, what allows us to treat each thing not as a thing to be fixed but as a learning opportunity. And so with appreciative inquiry, the idea is to focus on not just how do we practically fix this thing, but how do we focus on how people operate and how they learn and how they grow. I often hear congregations say well that didn't work so we're never going to do that again and that can be fine, but it also can take away from, but what did work, because it's likely that something happened and some things did work, just not everything you were expecting or hoping for. And so if you just say we failed at that and cut off the conversation, you learn, you lose the opportunity to further develop the skills or opportunities that did work and you may fail to engage with things that were actually opportunities for learning, rather than opportunities for perfection, right? So I'm going to share my screen, but we're also going to have in the chat a link to this. This is totally free for you to use, so you can pick whether you follow on the screen in a document all on your own. Okay now you all disappeared which is no good because I respond to things by watching people's faces and if you're an introvert, don't be too intimidated by that. Okay, there you all are. Okay, are folks able to see that to some degree? Lenore: Yeah could you zoom in a little bit? Sunshine: I can try, I thought I already had it pretty big, does that make any kind of difference? Yeah. And of course I put the link in the chat so if you find it easier to follow along there you can. So this general handout gives you a very very brief overview. There are literally books and websites and every kind of resource and appreciative inquiry you can imagine. You can go as, you know, special interest into it, as you want or not. The basic thing about appreciative is that focuses us on our strengths, what do we do well and kind of leaning on those, so that we can achieve our goals that we can focus on transformation work, which is really ultimately in a lot of ways what church is about right um and it gets us away from thinking of people and groups as problems to solve, which almost never works, right? Instead moving into how can we make meaning together in ways that are more and more meaningful as time goes on, Ao for example if we get just just get enough money then we can accomplish our goals. I hear a lot of congregations say well if we can get our numbers up to such and such we can just accomplish our goals, which is understandable and it takes away from and yet look at how much we've accomplished with the people we have here now, look at what we can create with the people we have here now, like kind of focusing on the resource of who you are rather than the deficit of what you want to be, right? So appreciative inquiry invites us to appreciate what we have and what is possible with the resources and vision we have on hand. So in other words what's our capacity and what's our resource to create what we want to create. So in a problem solving model we figure out what is the need or the problem to be fixed, we figure out any causes that made something not go well or not, we analyze possible solutions, we come up with an action plan, And the basic assumption is that an organization is a problem to be solved and there are times when that can be useful, like I really want my neuroscientist, my neurosurgeon to be very analytical and practical about how they're going to approach doing surgery on my brain. I do not need my church to be that kind of analytical about how we do worship, because those are completely different understandings, right? Appreciative inquiry said approach appreciate focuses on appreciating and valuing the best of what is. Who are you now and how can that build you towards envisioning what you might be right knowing that what you might be is probably beyond your imagining even now as a community. At least I hope so, that's part of the joy of communities. We create new and awesome things, sometimes awkwardly, but we do it. Please ignore the misspelling there. We go dialoging what should be. So talking about well okay we could do this and this and this. What should be and the basic assumption is an organization is a mystery to be embraced, right? In other words we don't know everything about each other or what we're capable of until we try it. I like the language of Tim Mention who's a Australian comedian. He talks about being micro ambitious and what he means by that is if you set a goal five, 10 years out and you're like I'm going to do such and such, you may miss something shiny or meaningful or important that's really just around the corner because you're so far forward focusing that you don't notice the little gifts that are right in front of you. Appreciative inquiry helps you kind of celebrate what's happening now, what are the little gifts that we're getting in this moment. I'm not going to go too long into the 4Ds, this is something you can look at, but just to give you some things to think about. The idea is that everything is cyclical, that we're always kind of returning again and again and so this practice is done best if you do it routinely. So for example when I was in seminary, every single week on Thursday morning we would use this process to evaluate the worship service that happened on Tuesday. And we did that over and over and over again. And what you find as you do this process repeatedly for various things is patterns that you didn't notice before or ways that you're thinking about things that you didn't catch. So it's all cyclical. So first is Discovery or appreciating, that's bringing the whole system together, everybody who are stakeholders. And the important thing with any kind of feedback that you do is that folks should have direct experience. Folks don't get to offer feedback on worship if they haven't been at worship for a year. Folks don't get to offer feedback on pastoral care if they've never received pastoral care. Folks don't get to have feedback on safety stuff if they're not aware of what the safety team is already doing. And those kind of things, right? Like folks need to be involved in the system in order to be able to provide real life story experience. And so the idea is that you're getting all the people who kind of know or in the know involved in the story, identifying the best of what has been and what is. And then you dream or envision what you want to have happen, what is the world calling us to become. How do we meet the needs of the people who are seeking us out as a community, what are the needs of our community today. And then you design, you create possibility, propositions of the ideal organization. Articulating an organization design that people feel they are capable of drawing upon, so you look at what you've been and what you've done and from that you start to imagine what can be. And then finally destiny or sustaining, you strengthen and affirm the capability of the whole system, enabling it to build hope and sustain momentum for ongoing positive change and high performance. And the idea here is that's the ultimate Learning Community. I love Unitarian Universalist and we love learning by and large, maybe not all of us. Certainly I've had years where I've not ,when I graduated from my M.Div. I was done with learning for a minute because I just needed a break. But by and large we love learning, right? And so the idea is rather than saying we failed at something or it wasn't exactly the way we wanted it to be, we say how did we learn from this experience, what did we learn from this experience, and what do we want to do next. So keeps us in that kind of learning mind, the beginner's mind. So some appreciative review questions that are often very helpful and again, this is the very simple format that I was talking about, is to ask a set of three categories of questions. The first category is to focus on what worked well, what do we want to keep doing or do, what what do we want to carry forward into the next project, even the things that you're like wow nobody showed up to this thing, but we really loved how we got creative in the beginning process with the brainstorming, we want to keep that, right? So even if the event wasn't what you hope, for even the process, what do you want to hang on to. And then the second thing is what can be done differently. How can we fine-tune what is working? And so the advantage to appreciative inquiry is if you're doing something already really well you can say, okay, well how then how do we up our game a little bit, right? So you can kind of keep improving or keep doing something. And then if it didn't go the way you wanted to, what would have changed it? What would have made a difference between this being successful or not successful, or being meaningful or not meaningful, or supporting people or not. And then the final thing is what practical needs do we need to accomplish our goal? What creative responses, so for example, frequently in doing this with worship would be like, you know, microphone 2 just keeps cutting out, this has been happening for 3 months, we just need to replace microphone 2. That doesn't really go in the the what would we do differently column, that goes into the practical. We just need to fix it problem, that's a practical fix it. And so there's a section for that. So I'm going to stop talking for a second, see if there's any questions and I'm going to share a worksheet you can use to do this in your own communities. One of the things that we've really encouraged congregations to think about is like, what are the needs of the people who are incoming, like the folks who are showing up, because it isn't always the needs of the people who are there, right? And that means that letting the newcomers be the stakeholders, for example, in that situation, right, they're the ones you want the input from, right? You know the folks who were involved in creating the auction, you need their input, you also need the attendees input, right? Like who are the folks who are actually engaged. Absolutely. This is a countercultural thing. Lenore wrote this in the chat. This is a countercultural thing to practice, which is why congregations, it's important to feel exciting, joyful, meaning, sacred, something real. Absolutely. And one of the things I love about appreciative inquiry is it actually invites us into that gratitude practice, right? I don't know how many congregations I've worked with where they just kind of get stuck on the well this didn't work and this didn't work and this didn't work and I get that that tendency, it's like how do we disrupt that within ourselves. Snd gratitude practice is a way to do that, so it's a way in which we kind of really live our values in a deep way. Jeffrey: Yeah but can, is it is it possible to get into a a mode where you are being so appreciative that you overlook the problems completely? Sunshine: Absolutely, which is why there's two columns, right? Like you can't just focus on this is what worked well. And I say two columns because if you click the link to the worksheet I just placed and let me just screen share one more time. So folks can see what I'm talking about. So this is a practice this is what you're going to use in your small groups, your small group here in a minute. But the idea is the left column is to write down what worked well, what are the things that worked well and really identify those. But you don't want to stay there you also want to say and if we were to do this again what we we do differently, right? That's where you focus on the what didn't work, you know, or I wish we had tried this instead. And then the bottom, the green section is what resources, capacity and practical fixes needed. So for example, we have a lot of churches that would love to do three social justice actions a year but with 50 people they can do one. And so like down here under capacity, we have capacity to do one, we can't keep trying to do three every year, right? So that might be a practical thing that they need to work on. So you always focus on what worked well, if you could do it again what would you do differently, and what are the resources and capacity that you have to make the things you have wanted to happen. Yeah. Other comments thoughts or questions? Lenore: Just that to Jeffrey's point, I think about, you know, not getting stuck in appreciative only, I think that's also why it's so important to have a diverse range of voices who are shaping the viewpoint. So that you're not only appreciating the things that you think go well without without realizing, oh my gosh we left out a whole group of people. We created a worship service for the end of the year that left out children. Folks of color didn't have a voice in shaping the auction and we missed a major, a major oops right? So they, it's yeah yeah the the range of voices. Sunshine: Absolutely. And thank you for that because I think one of the things with the range of voices is so or experiences, I want to be careful about ability, but every time I did this, because like I said I did this once a week for like three years, you start to notice that for some folks the what worked well is the what would be done differently for someone else, right? So one person will be like, I absolutely love this song, I thought they did such a great job, and another person will put in the do differently column, this is the fifth week we've had piano music and I'm really sick of hearing piano music, they they played wonderfully but I would just like to see some different kinds of music, right? So it's like you can end up with the the bigger picture is yeah, the piano music was great and after 5 weeks maybe we should try something else, right? Like both of those things can be true at the same time. It's not like there's competing things, right? Which is exactly what Lenore was talking about a bit earlier, that multiple stories can be true. And so the nice thing about this is that you'll see things on both columns and that helps you think about, okay this is reaching this person but not reaching this person. And like you don't have to have every event meet every member of your congregation. In fact, we're UUs, you're not going to. We're just too darn diverse in our desires and our interests and our needs and we celebrate that difference, unlike some other religious communities we aware of. So being attuned to you like you want to meet multiple needs and knowing that what works for one person won't work for another and that's okay. Jeffrey: Just out of curiosity how do we go about, I mean we we say, you have a board that you know is pretty focused on well let's solve the problem let's get on with the business and that kind of stuff. But I mean what you're talking about is a real change in a in individual attitudes and individual perspectives. And that doesn't come about by my telling them, well we need to be more appreciative of what we're doing here. You know we need a new new energy, we need a, you know, whatever. I mean are there, I don't know maybe you get to this, are there techniques for changing the culture, being less organizational to more appreciative, affirmative, spiritual. Sunshine: I think one thing to know is culture doesn't change quickly, you have to do something over and over and over again. One of my guidelines for any community is we're going to try an experiment for three months. Most folks are willing to experiment and if they hear a timeline they know they're not committing to it forever. 3 months is long enough for folks to have their resistance feelings, which we often have to the "first mention" as Brene Brown calls it, so the first time you mention a thing it's like, oh no, that's different, I don't want it. I have that reaction a lot. Like no, I don't want to do this, you know, and then three months later, I'm like, okay, fine, I like it, you know. But it's you give people time to experience it and then you give them a feedback period. And it could be no this didn't work, but with culture it takes time and you have to give people time to experience it, and go through an emotional process with it before you do that. The final thing I'll say is while the system is called appreciative inquiry, I don't want to be like it's solely focused on appreciation 24, 100% of the time. That's not the purpose. So it can be called a lot of things. In Dynamic Governance, or Sociocracy model, board meetings always end with a feedback piece, that's a part of the system, and this is one tool that can be used in that feedback at the end of a board meeting, right? So the nice thing about it is it's also pretty quick you can do this in five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever you give to it. So it doesn't have to take a lot of time. So all right, we could talk about this for a long time, I'm happy to answer questions. Marian you haven't had a chance. Marian: Yeah and you're talking about culture, I was thinking about the fact that size makes a big difference in culture. And I have always, when I was old enough to be able to make the choice, wanted to be in small, a small congregation, whatever because it is more family and community and the bigger you get the more institutional you get and the harder it is. Sunshine: Yeah I think to to change culture, it certainly can be. I've seen small like 10 to 15 minute member congregations stuck in their ways and they're not going to change and those ones, quite frankly they die off, right? They don't stick around. The ones that are more open to trying to bring new people in, I have one congregation they have been 17 to 20 members for a long time, they're not going to change, but they're not going to die either because they keep bringing new people in. Marian: Yeah, I guess when I say small I'm thinking of my congregation which would be around a 100. Sunshine: oh fair, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Marian: My churches range from 10 to 600 members so I'm like yeah that could mean a lot of things. But in any, you know, in any case, a lot has to do with the community. So what I would like you to do is have chance to practice this. There's a link to a worksheet, if you can just ask one person to be the scribe and what you do is you go around the circle I just want you to think about your church year and answer the question what worked well and you're just going to say one thing, and it goes to the next person, one thing, until you've gone all the way through everybody. You may run out of space, that's okay, this is just a practice, okay? So then everybody goes around and says as many things that they can work well, here's a note every time this happens, they say this worked well but this didn't. Hold on to the but. Write it down, whatever, but you don't, you just focus on what worked well and then after you've got those down, then you do the second column, what would you do differently. And then that's when you put in the but. I would do this right and then you can add if anything comes up what resources, capacity or practical fixes are needed. So like we'd love to be a Green Sanctuary congregation with solar panels and we have the solar panels but a thing we're having a hard time is somebody to install them. That's a practical fix. There's nothing you need to do differently other than find the person. All right, so this is just a practice, don't die on this hill, just enjoy it. We'll see you back here in 20 minutes, so you have a little bit of time. Welcome back beautiful people so just maybe a sentence about your experience of the this particular rubric or way of doing this. All right any other final thoughts before we do our last thing? Okay we want to talk about dandelions and then we'll a chance for you to share in this room and then we will wrap up so who am I passing this to. Lenore: I think our next, our our closing meditation comes from Central East Region staff member Sana Saeed, who's on here now and also sent in an advanced reflection. So we'll be able to settle in, you can have your video off or on and take in, take in this closing meditation. Sana: Hello everyone, my name is Reverend Sana Saeed. Join me now for a moment of meditation. As you are able find a comfortable place to meditate. Relax into your meditation posture, become attuned to what may help you focus as you settle in. Begin by taking some deep breaths in, slowly feel the air in your lungs fill. Breathe out, slowly, as you continue breathing, I invite you to imagine in your mind a seed. It's a tiny seed deep, deep within the earth. Imagine the seed surrounded by soil in the darkness, but is comfortable, is feeling nurtured by the earth and the environment around it. Imagine it so comfortable, a sprout emerges from it slightly curling into the earth, is getting longer. The more the seed feels nurtured. Imagine now some roots emerging and lengthening, all around it the roots begin to expand and grow longer from the seed, anchoring the tiny seed to the earth. Imagine the seed feeling more rooted to the earth, feeling its potential to grow the sprout, begins to uncurl and grow longer in the other direction. Feeling the light of the sun, it begins to reach to the top of the earth and emerges into the garden. The sun is shining, there's a slight breeze in the air. Feeling deeply rooted to the earth this seed now a plant begins to grow longer. Imagine as forming tiny leaves emerge from it sides, they begin to grow, getting bigger. Then from the center of the leaves, imagine a green stem emerging and that also begins to grow longer. It has a bow at is tip as it grows. Imagine in your mind the bow unfolds and from its center emerges a yellow flower. It's a dandelion. Imagine it fully in bloom as the plant expands and grows. Then imagine the flower slowly transforming under the light of the sun from yellow to white, its structure is changing, is becoming fuzzy like a cotton ball. Imagine the seeds emerging at the tip of the stem from the yellow flower. Imagine the seas are delicately connected to the stem, ready to take flight with the wind. It's common place to make a wish on a dandelion and blow the seeds. Imagine now making a wish. I wonder if the wish is for yourself, for your community, or for the world. As you finish making the wish in your mind, imagine you gently blow on the seeds and they take flight on the wind, spreading in all directions to begin the journey of growth and transformation all over again while carrying your wishes with them. As you finish your meditation, I invite you to return to focusing on your breath and slowly returning to the present. May this season of light bring you moments of rest, gentleness, and peace. Lenore: Taking time to experience rest, peace, appreciation. Noticing what is. We're going to close our time together, keeping that image of the dandelion seeds. I invite you in the chat or aloud to co-create a closing ritual I invite you now to imagine that dandelion one more time, and to think about a time in your congregation this year, might be small, might be really big, when something grew, when something put down roots, there was a burst of color where you weren't expecting it. To think about a time in your congregation this year where something grew. Maybe the seeds are already spreading somewhere, or maybe it's still in the bud form. And when you're ready I invite you to come off of mute, preferring hopefully the verbal but in the chat's fine as well, we can read it aloud, to come off of mute and in just a couple of sentences to share something about what you remember from that time when something grew. Lenore: Complaining means caring and caring means hope, and 80-year-olds joyfully enjoying how things have changed around here. Seeds sprouting for our future. We welcome you to enjoyment of the last month, weeks of spring and the weeks of the congregational year. Feel free to reach out to us if you'd like some support in practicing any of these practices that we've done tonight and be well.