Hello good people of the Central East Region of congregations in Ohio and Pennsylvania and West Virginia too. My name is Cassandra Montenegro and I am delighted to be serving as your new primary contact for your congregations and

communities. I say the word delighted because it's a word that brought me to this faith. I delight in and have delighted in the principles and the sources and the practices. And one of the practices that brought me and brings me so much delight is UU's love of poetry. There are quite a few poets among us and around us in our lineage and inspired by our lineage. And as a means of an initial offering and form of introduction to a spiritual practice I love, I'd love to read the work of Happiness. It's a poem by May Sarton, who had a some would say, a metanoia, a theological changing or shifting not far from where I currently am right now, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. but I'll be with you all quite soon. So this is the work of Happiness.

Happiness. I thought of happiness, how it is woven out of the silence in the empty house each day, and how it is not sudden, and it is not given, but is creation itself like the growth of a tree. No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark another circle is growing in the expanding ring. No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark, but the tree is lifted by this inward work and its plumes shine and its leaves are

glittering. So happiness is woven out of the peace of ours and strikes its roots deep in the house alone, the old chest in the corner, cool wax floors, white curtains softly and continually blown as the free air moves quietly about the room. A shelf of books, a table and the whitewashed wall. These are the dear familiar gods of home and here the work of faith can best be done. The growing tree is green and

musical. I look forward to time together in the coming months, to hearing poetry and poetic language and other language, non language that sparks delight in you. From my home to yours.