Generations Together

Me, my little sister, Gramma & Grampa

For a few years when I was maybe 10 and my sister was maybe 5, my grandparents and uncle moved from their home in North Dakota into a house near us in Pennsylvania. Almost every Friday night we went over to their house to visit. When we arrived “Lawrence welk” would be on the TV, but at 8:00 “the girls” would watch Dukes of Hazard with my Uncle Don, who made the best popcorn -- soaked in butter. My parents and grandparents stayed in the kitchen playing Whist. Finally, at 9:00 it was time for Dallas, and we all gathered in their cozy living room to watch together.

Truth be told, there were times when I found that adult time boring, if adult conversation or card playing exceeded my limited patience. As I became a teenager I found my grandparents, who came from another generation and a different part of the country, hard to know, and I believe they found our ways inscrutable as well- having lived through the depression and married during WW2, the lives of suburban kids in the affluent cold war1980s seemed spoiled. But I know I learned from them values of honesty, integrity, frugality, and the importance of family.

Gramma Grampa and Uncle Don moved back to North Dakota, where the rest of our extended family lived, just as I was heading off to college, and It was hard to know them over that distance. We had no extended family nearby. But I had always gone to church, and so every week I was around people from 5 different generations, I remember how cool I thought the high school youth group was when I was a little kid, and when I was in High school, I remember the toddlers I befriended at our church camp weekend. I remember the boomer youth group advisors who made that formative experience possible for us, the minister who introduced my CoA group to theology, and seemed like a bit of a rock star to me. Even though I never thought too much about it then, I had dozens of wonderful role models of how to be an elder. I knew lots of friendly adults who knew me and my family and witnessed my growing up. I would not be who I am today without those intergenerational church experiences.

Consider the generation raising young children right now, who cared for them during the pandemic when they were cut off from their village. We ask “why are they not at church?” and the answer is “because they can’t even!” Those families are juggling work and school and are drowning in all the work of parenting. They are still overwhelmed and exhausted. We aunties, uncles and aunkles and Grandparents might have to bring church to them for a while -- a form of modern missionary work. Think of the beautiful ministry of that Gramma in today’s children’s story. What a hard lesson for that child to learn- about precious things that break, about forgiveness. That Gramma taught a more important lesson than any Sunday school class.

Rev. Evin Carville Zimmer encourages us to notice such moments of ministry as they happen in our congregations. They write:

Multi-Generational fun at the church picnic

“A few weeks ago in the little congregation I attend, toward the end of a multigenerational service, two five year-olds noticed the play room at the back of the sanctuary had three wasps. They came to me with the emergency. We found a board member who listened carefully to the kids and asked them to show him what they noticed. A little later another member found a ladder, and someone else volunteered to hold it, and two adults and three children trooped around the outside of the building to solve the mystery of how the wasps were getting in. The kids also found a dead snake which they showed everyone and we talked about. These children were taken seriously, were treated as part of the community including having responsibility for the safety of that community, and had one of those mysterious encounters with life and death. Faith formation right there, no planning needed. And then they all played a wild tag game with their new friends that none of them wanted to end.”

That is what intergenerational ministry looks like now, in these strange times- both ordinary and precious.

Now sometimes we get the impression that intergenerational means kids and adults together, but even here, today, where I don’t see a lot of kids, we have Millennials, and Gen X and Boomers, and folks from the silent generation.

Recently, I’ve watched the tensions between generations on social media. It’s the updated version of “Don’t trust anyone over 30” and “Kid’s today!” but now it’s “Millennials and their avocado toast” and “okay boomer” And my generation, Generation X grumbling about being “the forgotten middle child.”

This is not new. This generational conflict has always been a part of church life, as long as I’ve been part of it. Whether it’s arguments about what music we play, how we use technology, or what time meetings should be. Some of the most challenging areas of conflict are around our anti oppressive work. For example, long time activists who marched with Martin Luther King are shocked when we separate into caucuses by race. Younger generations feel this is a chance for white people to do their work without burdening POC with having to listen to it, and BIPOC people might want a safe space to say their truth to folks who are most likely to understand. To older activists, this is just segregation, and didn’t we work hard to end that? How sad it is when people who all long for an end to oppression let arguments about language and strategy divide them.

I think about the Gen Z teens and young adults I know. They are so earnest, and have a precocious calling to work for justice. Think of those teens leading the protests after the Parkland shootings. Thing of Greta, and Malala. Starting your adult life during a pandemic is just one reason that Gen Z are realists. We need their energy, along with the optimistic and collaborative Millennial generation, and their calls for change.

I know for myself, a middle aged Generation X, that it’s so easy to get “in the weeds” with the way the world works. Greta says “we need to stop producing fossil fuels now!” and I can’t help but think of all the slow paced bureaucracies I have worked with over the years, and wonder “how is that possible?” But young adults have this clear-eyed vision that we older adults need. As they articulate a vision of the future they want to live in, we middle aged folks can do what we do best, coordinate the carpools to the rallies, think strategically, write checks.

From where I sit in midlife, sandwiched between the older and younger generations, I can see there is a real pain point in the argument between emerging adults and older adults. On the one hand, real change needs to happen in our world, we all agree about this. But when younger adults say “let’s just throw all this out and start over” I’m now old enough to feel that as a blow- “You mean these things I just spent the last 25 years building? The ones I worked on day after day because I thought they would make a better world?”

I myself had many formative moments in my UU Sunday school, and then after seminary I spent 9 years as a religious educator, running programs for our chidrne and youth. But I need to hold that loosely to make room for the new ministry that is emerging to meet the needs of families with children right now in this new moment. It’s sad but okay if we can’t run Sunday school classes right now, but that ministry of passing on wisdom to our children must continue- though the forms may change the ministry is still crucial.

Anthropologist Michael Meade explains that elders have a powerful role to play in times of upheaval:

“The traditional role of elders included remembering what was most important about life and how to hold ends and beginnings together when times become hard. Elders were the guardians of the mysteries of and keepers of the stories who helped people make sense of life’s inevitable struggles. Having survived the troubles of their own lives and having grown deeper and wiser they know both how to survive and how to find genuine vision where others could on see disaster. Being “old enough to know better’ they would know that life renews itself in surprising ways and that the greatest dilemmas can serve to awaken the deepest resources of the human soul.”[Why the World Doesn’t End p. 25]

Like the gramma in The Memory Cupboard who had lived through the breaking of precious treasures, and had learned to make meaning from those ruptures. She helped her granddaughter make sense of what had happened, and restore her to the web of right relationship.

This wisdom is the real heirloom. I remember talking to my Dad, who was part of the silent generation that grew up during the depression, and asking “what was it like to live through the 1960s?” which I assumed must have been amazing. He said “we thought it was the end of the world.” In these days, which often feel like the end of the world, I think about what he said, and remember that we got through that, that we got through even world war 2, and the great depression. Perhaps this is no the first time we thought the world was ending. Perhaps we can get through this.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupery Writes: 

“In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,”

This sounds easy, but anyone who’s sat around the holiday table with relatives from other generations knows it’s a dance that must be negotiated. If the elders insist that things must always continue as they have been, without allowing younger generations the support and freedom they need to create the world to come, likewise if the younger generations do not respect the hard learned wisdom of their elders, or make time to listen, valuable knowledge and perspective will be lost.

I received an email this week form the UUA transitions office, which helps ministers and congregations find each other. They wrote:

“the Next Normal is not the pre-pandemic normal… Congregations trapped in the past are likely to shrink. ... This will be a time to redefine why people need Unitarian Universalism, where generational differences are going to have to learn to live together, and where new people coming into our congregations will be looking for communities of like-minded people, multi-theological exploration, and the desire to make a difference in the world (and likely not in the ways it’s always been done).”

And you know what? I think both our Athens and Cortland congregations are good at this. I have always been impressed by the way you are open to new ideas, new ways of doing things, new members, different generations. You give new leaders space to try things and follow their own wisdom. I bet that’s part of why we are still here, why this tradition continues to be handed on from generation to generation. And I know that sometimes when we look out at our congregation and see more olders and fewer youngers, it makes us nervous, and sometimes sad, But I believe in what we are doing, and I think if we are committed to making a difference in the world, in each other’s lives -- if we are committed to remembering and sharing that love that holds us all, and supporting growth wherever it is happening today and in the future we still have a vital role to play in guiding our rapidly changing world towards love and justice.

In Spiritual Direction we practice from a foundational belief that each of us has the capacity to discern what is true, what is holy, where the spirit is leading. We must have that faith in one another, across generations, and support each other in listening to and developing our own inner wisdom. When Nancy Pelosi announced this week that she would not seek re-election as party leader in the house, she said:

"With great confidence in our caucus, I will not seek reelection to Democratic leadership in the next Congress. For me the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect,…I'm grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility."

Reporters added that she would continue to serve in the House, and support the work of the new generation of leaders. I have such respect for that- to stay and take her place as the supportive wise elder, while expressing confidence for and amplifying the voices of those stepping into the challenge of leadership.

I think about my UUMA chapter, which has always provided roll models for ministry, both older and younger than myself. Retired ministers continuing to attend and be part of community long after they are done serving in churches. Dick Gilbert, Frances Manly. I remember Martha Munson, one time when I was trying to lead an unruly group of colleagues in a business meeting, calling out above the fray “ignore them Darcey, you’re doing great”

So here’s what we need to hold this multigenerational community together, (which often falls to the older generations to do). We need our elders to keep growing in wisdom, to keep making meaning from their own lives, and keep hope for the future so we can support younger generations developing their own wisdom, can give them perspective when they flounder. We don’t have the abundant energy of youth, but we have foresight and skill and we can choose to do the things that most need doing.

We need the insights and points of view of the young as well; each generation grows up in a totally different world. Teens and young adults are just starting on their journey and with the energy of youth have their own mountains to climb. We need them to be full of new ideas and energy to solve new problems and to bring a fresh view to the old entrenched problems we olders have not been able to solve. I love the story Evin told- it holds all of this. The kids full of curiosity, out scrambling and exploring and finding the wasps and the snake, their concern for the safety of their community. The older adults who had the skill and experience to know what to do, and the wisdom to be present with death, and the generosity of spirit to listen to the kids and their concerns. And then a fun game among intergenerational friends.

Family Chapel 2007 at UUCPA

Our generational diversity is important to who we are, and in this time when generations sling barbs from their entrenched positions in social media, our congregation can be a place of healing -- a place where we listen deeply to one another.

And so for this holiday season, I invite each of you to participate in this spiritual practice of intergenerational community. Whenever generations are gathered to celebrate, we might intentionally listen to the perspectives of the other generations that are present. Start with common ground, as we know is helpful to do when there are conflicts. Listen to what others are curious about, listen to their fears, listen to what gives them hope. We need the perspective and experience of every generation to build the world we dream, and to make our own lives meaningful and whole.

Navigating Change

My friend was starting a new ministry, which is always an exciting and challenging time. New ministers and their congregations look forward to their fresh start, the possibilities of new things they can accomplish together. But that fresh start is also challenging- every congregation is totally unique, just as every minister is totally unique. It’s not actually possible for the new minister to pick up right where the old minister left off, nor is it possible for your new congregation to become like the congregation you left behind.

So my friend was in that challenging first year, navigating with his new congregation how they would sail the seas of this new shared ministry together. Towards the end of the first year one volunteer, who had been so generous of time and energy, listened some proposed changes the minister had planned for worship, became still and silent, and then said “No More Changes!”

Can I tell you lately, as we face change after change after change, I hear that voice in my head “No More Changes!”

As one of my colleagues who is about to celebrate 50 years in ministry said those first months of the pandemic “we’re all first year ministers now.”

Change is always part of life, seasonal changes, the changes of body and mind as we grow up and age, changes in technology and culture -- all growth is change. But when the changes come so quickly, one after the other, it’s hard on us humans, body mind and spirit.

This is because we build ourselves -- we build muscle, we build synapses, we make hormones and the other chemicals that run our body systems in response to our environment. Like a tree who reaches out a branch, slowly over the weeks and months and years, to capture a bit of sun on its leaves, like the tree on a windy cliff who grows slantwise, we build ourself based on what we experience, on the demands of our world. That’s why the daylight savings shift is so challenging; we have harmonized all our bodies systems to a particular schedule, and our bodies are built to keep doing what they’ve been doing.

Recently I’ve been doing PT to try to stabilize my back. I got a simple exercise to strengthen my mid back because apparently the hour after hour sitting hunched over my keyboard and phone have changed my muscles and not for the better. The PT showed me an exercise and showed me the muscles I was to use. I practiced dutifully for a week, but the more I tried the less confident I felt. Finally I went back and it turns out I was using the wrong muscles. It turns out that before I could strengthen those muscles the first thing I had to do was learn to feel where they were. It’s maddening to ask your mind to feel something you can’t feel -- you are literally building new connections.

How weird it feels to be in the middle of a transition- unsettled, you can't just relax and rest. Just as our bodies growing new muscle, brains growing new synapses, our ecosystem is adapting as quickly as it can to climate change, our culture is changing, our world is changing. Things have changed and they are not done changing. You know this, you know this in your bones, muscles, brain, gut. You feel it when you come back to church and it’s not like it was before.

Fortunately, one of the things we know how to do is change, is adapt. After a week of trying to locate my rhomboids, I found them! We know how to use zoom, if not perfectly, better than we did in 2019. Grocery stores learned how to deliver food. We learned how to wear masks. We learned how to provide better support those of us who have immune challenges. We learned that the gender binary is a construct that erases those of us who are nonbinary, or gender queer. We changed the way we use pronouns (turns out it wasn't even that hard). Those of us who are white learned to see systematic oppression and privilege in places we didn’t see it before.

So many things are in flux now, it feels sometimes like when you are standing or sitting on the sand by the ocean, feeling the warm sand under you. The waves come splashing in, and when the tide goes out it liquifies the sand and takes with it the ground that was literally under your feet. It can be very disconcerting, even if you know what’s happening.

Like the big creature our story this morning, whose world was turned upside down by the new visitor to his island, many of the discovering changes we are experiencing now were mostly externally initiated, not changes we chose. None of us chose covid or climate change, or these troubles with the economy, and when change disrupts our daily life, it reminds us how little we are in control of the universe. Like the creature in the story, it feels good when things are reliable, and we can choose a comfortable routine. I tell you I love my morning routine- and on days when it is interrupted, even if that’s because we have a dear out of town guest, I get a little out of sorts. When I start the coffee and let the dogs out, I feel like I live in an understandable world, I know my part in co-creating it, even if that’s just for me and Eric and the dogs, and you all here at church. But when I can no longer do the things that make up my ordinary days, I begin to feel uncertain about my role in the world wonder whether what we do really makes a difference. Change is happening, big changes little changes, too many changes!

This week the UUA is having feedback sessions about possible changes to Article 2, which includes our principles- the ones we just hung up on these beautiful banners last week. Our bylaws suggest we revisit Article 2 every 15 years, and last time the article 2 commission proposed its suggestions there was a giant collective yawn and nothing changed. Well, it’s time again, but this time people are riled up. Folks who attended the national gatherings tell me there are a surprising number of strong feelings. We are co-hosting a discussion with our local UU congregations, and in this week’s discussion it was clear we had touched a nerve. What would make draft bylaw revisions stir up such strong feelings? One minister suggested that it’s just so much change- change fatigue she called it. No More Change!

But then we remember, there are some changes we want. Some changes we have been working for and hoping for. We are all longing for a world where we celebrate only the gifts and resilience of Transgender persons on TDoR, and have no names to remember of those who died before their time. Aren’t we all longing for a world where systemic racism has been eradicated, a world where we “study war no more” where no child is hungry, and every person is able to develop to their full potential, where the eco systems have time to repair themselves? We do want change, and those are pretty big changes. And we certainly want our congregations, our UU denomination to be a community where historically marginalized voices are heard, where black lives matter, and sadly we are not there yet. Change is hard, change is uncomfortable, especially big change.

I think again of standing on the sandy shore of the ocean, now the big waves are coming in, maybe the waves before or after a storm, pulling the sand out from under my feet. Imagine now your own feet in the quickly disappearing sand of a shoreline. As the water rushes that sand away, your own feet are revealed. Whatever the waters of change wash away are not who you are right now. It’s not you that’s being washed away, and obvious as that may sound, it’s not always obvious in the moment. It helps to just remember who you are, alive in this moment right now. There’s very little we can do about the sand or the storm, but we can stand in the truth of who we are, now in this moment. As activist musician Bob Marley advised “Never forget who you are, and where you stand in the struggle.”

We often start a time of meditation by noticing the feet we stand on, or the part of us touching the chair that supports us. We do this because it can be exhausting and overwhelming to try to comprehend all the things around us, the water and the sand, the wind and waves. So many factors to consider and so little it in our control. We might get the impression we are like the sand that will be whisked away, but we are stronger and more cohesive than that. By our very standing we change the pattern of the water, and of the sand. Like the rock that splits the river. Ground yourself in yourself, whenever the sand is shifting beneath you.

That is the strongest, best place from which to navigate from. Then let hope be like the stars to navigate by. Times of great change are also times of great possibility. Keep your eyes on that vision of your heart’s deepest desire. Navigate by those stars.

Sometimes even the strongest rock comes loose in the changing tides. If change lifts you off your feet, and you feel adrift. when the flux is too much, remember love. Love is not landlocked; it is with us even in the churn. Love is in the wildest waves, in the strongest winds. Wherever this change is taking us, let love be our guide.

What is Our Legacy?

My first full time settlement was at the UU church of Palo Alto, where I served for 7 years. It was a very busy church with tons of programs, in a very busy ambitious community- home of Stanford and Facebook. I was called there as their first settled Minister of Religious Education, and to fill a new model of ministry they’d never had before- the Parish and RE ministers would be co-equals, to help create balance and connection between the families with kids and the congregants not actively parenting. When I left to move to Ithaca with my family it was a confusing time of transition. I was not sure what, if anything, of that ministry would have a lasting impact.

In 2019, when I was on the west coast for Labyrinth Summer School, I visited my old friend Amy Zucker Morgenstern who began her settlement at UUCPA while I was there, and is still the Parish Minister of UUCPA. She invited me to come into church with her on Sunday. I did this with some trepidation, as it brought up some old feelings.

While Amy prepared to lead worship, I immediately started to see friendly faces from my days as the MRE, folks who remembered me greeted me warmly. While Amy set up I gave myself a tour of campus. I went first to the site where the youth group had built a stone and sand labyrinth on the front lawn led in a day long retreat led by Amy and myself. There the old labyrinth had been replaced by a beautiful new paved one made of bricks, with a formal interpretive sign. It sat in the heart of the native plant garden, now expanded and matured with professional landscaping since that first workshop I had organized about native plants so many years ago. And there was the Madrone tree the church arborist had planted at my request in a big intergenerational ceremony. I walked the new labyrinth and my heart warmed to see how everything had grown and flourished.

“I hope you don’t feel bad that we changed it” said Dan Harper, who now served as the Religious educator, a role similar yet different from the one I had years ago. “No, I said, “you took something ephemeral and made it durable- it feels amazing to see something I helped plant transformed into a permanent part of the landscape”

I walked by the Green Sanctuary rack, with my name on it, because of the work I did with the tiny Green sanctuary team when it first began, and from there you could see the amazing solar array over the parking lot, providing not only alternative energy but shade for the cars that got so hard in summer. What an amazing project the congregation had manifest together, something I never could have conceived in a million years.

Afterwards there was a picnic, where among the sea of strangers there were families who had been in the program when I was Minister of Religious Education -- parents told me stories of their kids away at college or otherwise launched. One child who was a toddler when I started was finishing college, and remembered our children’s chapel I created and led.

The visit was so healing for me- such a blessing to see that some of the seeds my congregation and I planted together had grown and matured. Especially because, as I approached my 50th birthday and 23 years ministry I confess to you that I was wondering “does anything we do matter?” I think this is a hard but important question. In times like these when so much is changing, so much has been lost, one could be easily seduced into nihilism, into despair, but of course what we do matters. Of course we make a difference to one another. In this interconnected web of life we are because of those who came before.

Consider the legacy we have inherited as a faith community, the legacy that allows us to be here like this with one another. Consider that both the Sheshequin and Cortland buildings were first built by volunteers, consider how year after year people just like you and me made sure the boiler was repaired and the gutters were cleaned. Consider that neither building had electricity when they were built- imagine those board meetings, figuring out the when and how of electrifying a historic building, I can hear someone now asking “Do churches even need electricity? They’d survived for centuries without it…”

We don’t talk much about the financial legacy that our congregations benefit from today- but those have been invaluable in keeping us afloat during hard times. Our savings were built not only by the charitable donations left not only by generous individuals, but by congregations like those in the TPUC or NYSCU who, when they had to close their doors, left their savings as a legacy for enduring the support of those congregations and UU programs who continue.

Buildings are easy to see, but the important parts of churches are less tangible. I believe that these 2 congregations have endured for so long is their legacy of caring, their good hearts. Both are highly ethical groups with good boundaries. Both have taken stands in the community at critical moments in time. I am continuously inspired by the Cortland church’s role in the underground railroad, what a difficult and fearful path they chose. Imagine the difficult board meetings, the conflict or worry as those volunteers made that happen together? What an amazing legacy for our congregation, and for the community of Cortland.

The Athens congregation can remember back to that moment when the congregation took a stand to welcome transgender members decades ago. Sadly this was not without conflict and some members left. Today it seems natural and easy to have a membership that is beyond binary- that is a legacy too.

Some legacies are deeply personal, quiet and small yet profoundly important. So many people over the years have told me how their congregation touched their lives, saved their lives. A legacy of caring, a deeply personal and private legacy. May of these ways we touch lives we never know about, but they are just as real, just as important as the tangible legacies. For every historic marker there are hundreds of other legacies that leave their mark on the world, that build a better world.

Last year I was in a study group with Rev. Rosemarie of the Queens congregation, and so I got to hear some about her journey with the Queens congregation as they decided to close their doors as a congregation. I so admire their intentionality, their bravery for facing those hard questions, and doing so in a way that preserved relationships, and their UU values. I talked to Laura Ventrola of the Queens congregation who told me the ending was devastating but together they came to the realization that this was what needed to happen.

Just this week the Athens congregation received offers for the sale of their historic Sheshequin Meeting house, while the Cortland congregation also looks for new stewards for their Old Cobblestone church. Who will tend these legacies now that we have discerned they are ready to be passed on? Many of us are also in a time of change in our personal lives, considering moving out of our current homes, or wondering what will become of our heirlooms and treasured possessions as we are ready to set them down and move into the next chapter of our lives. This is deeply challenging spiritual work. I believe we need one another as we do this- that our faith community, our UU tradition can help us discern the meaning in these transitions, that living an ethical, spiritual life is not just about building up, but also about letting go, and passing on from one generation to the next.

What is our legacy? This is a big question, an invitation for our consideration. It’s not a question we can answer in a single hour, so I invite you to ponder this with me, in your own musings and in our conversations together. What will our legacy be as a congregation? What have we already contributed to this community, and what more do we want to do? What will your legacy be, as an individual, as you look back over your life, and make plans for this next chapter of your life?

Over the course of this year we will continue to explore this theme of “legacy” together, and to wonder “what will our legacy be?” as a congregation, as individuals. Together we will look back, to see what we want to remember, to be intentional about what needs to be passed on. Together we will look forward, to see what more we want to do for the generations that will follow us.

In our children’s story "The Forever Garden", Honey told us “This garden isn’t really mine, it belongs to everyone.” So it is with our lives and legacies; we tend the garden, we tend the grape vines others planted before us, and we plant new trees for those who follow. What a blessing that we were born into this garden, born into a legacy planted and tended by the thousands of generations that came before. What a blessing to know that that when we need to set down our work, the next generations will tend the garden, and reap the harvest to come.

Blessing of the Banners

We are so excited today to bless our new principles banners.  The banners now hung in the Athens sanctuary come to us from the UU Congregation of Queens in Flushing, NY. They hung for many years in the children’s RE rooms, made by the DRE Paula Rosenberg. But that was not the first place they hung, they came with Paula from her previous congregation. There’s another banner, which I hung upstairs in the children’s classroom, made by Susan Nykolak, their next DRE.

Then about 8 years ago there was a fire in the Queens building. In recovering from the fire everything came down, The congregation worshiped downstairs after the fire, and the banners were hung there to make it more homey. During the pandemic the congregation was worshiping on zoom, as we all were, and during that time they discerned together that something had to change, that it was time for the congregation to close their doors. Rev. RoseMarie hung the banners in sanctuary for last service. So these banners are already full of history, the spirit of children and teachers learning together and UUs of all ages worshiping together, and they were there on that sacred ending, that last worship in June.

 

Here at UUCAS, used to hold a community trivia night for years in our sanctuary, run by Mike and Judy. They wished aloud that we could have something in the sanctuary that would state clearly who we were and what we believed. So when Rosemarie asked her colleagues if they knew of a congregation who would like to inherit these banners, we jumped at the chance. Not only to fulfil Mike and Judy’s vision, but also to honor the legacy of the UU congregation of Queens.

First a thank you to Queens:
We thank you not only for these beautiful banners that were part of your history, part of your Religious Education program, cheering the classrooms of children and teachers. We thank you for all you did as a UU congregation, all the good you did for those many years, “bringing out the best in people”.

I found this written in honor of the 100 year anniversary of the congregation:

“On June 9th, 1908, 33 people signed the charter of the First Unitarian Church of Flushing, Lewis Henry Latimer, a noted scientist and inventor, who was but one generation removed from the slavery his own father knew, demonstrated as one of its founders, that this particular faith tradition offered them the best hope of realizing the fondest dreams of humankind for peace, love and understanding between all people.”[i]

We thank you, for all the lives you touched, and whom your legacy will continue to touch.

Now we bless these banners for this time they will grace our sanctuary:

Spirit of life, let these banners remind us of our principles, of our highest aspirations
May they inspire to live our lives in harmony with these ideals.
May they also remind us that we are not alone, that we gather in a communion of congregations far and wide,
And that we stand in the great river of history that flows from all those who have come before, through us in this present moment, and to those who will follow.

Amen

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[i] UU Congregation of Queens Receives Centennial Recognition from Queens Borough President (uumetrony.org)

Latimer, Lewis Howard (1848-1928) | Harvard Square Library