Hey everyone I'm Reverend Alia, my pronouns are they them and I'm here with some of my colleagues on the Central East Region team to chat about safety, risk and faith in these times. As we work with congregations, we know some of what's been on your minds these days has been about how to engage in what we might call faithful risk-taking. In these challenging times, the tensions between safety, security and public ministry and risk are real in this time. And in this time we desperately need public moral voices in opposition to the relentless targeting of our beloveds in community witness and action grounded in UU values is essential. So I'm now going to pass over to my colleagues on the team to share a few thoughts and resources that, on these topics as well. 
Hi my name is Beth Casebolt and I am the Operations Manager for the Central East Region and serve as one of the two regional representatives to the Congregational Life Safety Team. I want to remind you about two resources. We have a congregation incident report form that you can find on the safer congregations page at uua.org/safe. This form is for reporting any incidents that occur at your congregation, be they threatening phone calls or mail, vandalism, odd visitors and the like. We would like you to report these incidents for two reasons. One is that allows us to track them and follow trends. We are often asked if vandalism of signs or stealing of flags is trending up and we can't answer those questions without data. We also can connect you with your congregation's primary contact to make sure that you have the resources you need in this time. My second resource is the Safer Congregation's web pages. These pages have a number of resources on policies and procedures your congregation may want to consider to make it a safer space, which you can use in consultation with your primary contact to create your own policies. And don't forget the safety courses on UU Institute:  Threats from Without, Care from Within and Fostering Safer Congregations. And now I'm going to pass it off to one of my other colleagues.
Hi everyone I'm Lenore Bajare-Dukes, my pronouns are she and her, and I am another member of the Central East Region Congregational Life Team. And you know in times like these I've been thinking about the temptation that I have to feel like I can be in control of what's going to happen next if I just do this, this, this, and this. And unfortunately in times of a lot of high stress and chaos and deliberate onslaughts on our values, there isn't a promise that we can be in control of what's going to happen next no matter what we do. And yet, there are things that we can do to affect the outcome, not only for ourselves but for the the community around us and those that we care about. And I've also been thinking about how proclaiming our values is so important and working on making them happen both in our congregations and in our neighborhoods and our communities. That's also really, really important. So I'm thinking about, you know, maybe you have a pride flag, maybe that's generating controversy, that's good to think about. It's good to keep flying it. It's good to think about how to protect it and protect the people who are gathering underneath it. And also how are you greeting the trans and non-binary people who are coming into your doors, who are in your congregations? How are you creating spaces of greater safety interpersonally with folks? Are you respecting pronouns? Are you asking how folks are doing? I'm also thinking about knowing more about specific risks and this can get to being hyperlocal, you know, beyond your own congregation's risk. Are you understanding your community's safety and risk landscape? It's a good idea maybe to pay special attention to showing up in your coalitions locally to share information with each other. If you are lucky enough to have local news, to pay close attention to what's going on there and don't assume that everything that's affecting people who are targeted is getting shared right away or shared with you. So you might want to add this as an agenda item. Information sharing to a team that includes people who are plugged in more locally. Moving from control to relationship can take so many different forms and I guess I invite us to live out our values as we practice that together right now.

Hi everyone my name is Sana Saeed, I'm with the UUA Central East Region Congregational Life Staff team. I use she her pronouns and I live in the Philadelphia area right now. Many of our communities are living through a time of deep uncertainty. And structures we once counted on unraveling from civil rights protections to democratic norms. We're seeing more and more congregations grappling with the same core questions. What does safety really mean now? How do we lead when trust is low and fear is high? How do we care for one another when so many of us are holding so much? Underneath these questions is this truth we are living through trauma, the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice, CTI, reminds us that we're what we're experiencing now isn't just individual, it's collective, cultural and historical trauma. Collective trauma sociologist Kai Ericson describes happens when a deep blow disrupts the fabric of community life, it doesn't always look like one dramatic event. Sometimes it builds slowly until we wake up and realize we no longer feel like we, when unresolved, this trauma damages our ability to relate to one another. We begin to be distant, fragmented and alone. On the other hand, cultural trauma takes root when something sacred to a group like dignity, safety, justice, is violated or raised these wounds become collective memories marked by grief, shame, or even disgust. And they're often politicized, used to divide us further to entrench power and to exploit fear. Historical trauma lives in the body across generations and you might know it as generational trauma, especially in communities who have endured displacement and systemic oppression. It carries unresolved grief passed from ancestors to descendants and it continues to shape how we relate, resist and remember. These layers of trauma are playing out right now in our congregations and in ourselves. We're seeing things like disconnection, maybe forgetfulness, heightened conflict and longing for the way things used to be.

But these these are not failures, these are signs of a people in pain and their invitations for us to lead with care. That's why trauma informed approaches are not optional in 2025, they are essential to community safety. And I want to be clear, safety does, doesn't only come from policies or security plans though those have their place say safety comes from how we show up for each other, it's built through relationship, through care, through our capacity to respond with gentleness, when people bring their fear and grief into the room. The UUA's Pacific Western lead, Reverend Sunshine reminds us that when someone is navigating trauma, their brain may literally struggle to process information. That means your community will need more repetition, more patience, more ways of hearing and seeing and remembering. You may have to say something five or 10 times before it lands and that's not a problem, that's part of the work. Real safety also means centering those who are most vulnerable. Right now, especially our BIPOC members or trans members and others navigating heightened risk just to be present when we shape our communities with the well-being of those most impacted at the center and include them in conversations around safety, we create more safety for everyone. It's also why Community Care is part of our safety strategy. People aren't just looking for perfection they're looking to feel held and heard, to be seen, to be reminded that they are not alone in this. So here's what I want you to know, you don't have to fix it all. You don't have to get it perfect, but you do have to show up and you can lead with care. The UUA and Central East Region team are here to support you. There are resources available to help you, help your team navigate trauma informed worship, pastoral care, communication and leadership on our UU Institute website. We'll link to some below. In this time of rupture, we have a chance to become communities of repair. We're living through the unraveling of our systems and in that certainly the question of safety becomes more than logistical, it becomes deeply personal. So if we can meet this moment with some honesty, care, and collective responsibility, we can begin to build safety in new ways through how we listen, how we lead, how we hold each other in community. It also means we need to think about risk differently in this moment. Safety and risk are not abstract ideas. They live in people's bodies and histories. Our discernment must reflect that. Again, we're in this with you. You're not alone, and reach out if you have questions. I'm going to pass it over to one of my colleagues on the team now.

We want to remind you that anxiety can be contagiou,s especially in these anxious times. But courage is contagious too. We invite you to choose courage together as you navigate these tensions between faith and risk, grounded in informed consent and with an awareness of what resourcing is available through the UUA. In these times, remember to check out the resources on the UUA Community Resilience Hub as a starting place for some of your conversations around what resilience and faithful risk-taking we are called to in these times. Check out also the new Grounded. Resilient and Responsible Toolkit from our colleagues at Side with Love. There are great tools for your community's discernment about what actions to take and not take in your unique circumstances and how to be guided in your decision-making to work toward a world rooted in love and liberation. As you discern your own faithful risk-taking and tend to safety and ministry in and beyond your communities. I want to share with you words from poet and author Kai Cheng Thom. She writes, our greatest power to resist depression and death comes from our connections with one another, our ability to create community structures through which we can give and receive care, make art, share pleasure, and raise our collective voices. So when we are alone and we feel the rush of fear or the creep of despair, I suspect that deepening into community is the answer.