November 12, 2025
Friends,
This week, I am at The Mountain (a UU retreat center) in Highlands, NC, at a gathering of colleagues from around the Southeast. These 3.5-day retreats happen twice a year, and I try to prioritize making the trip at least once a year. To have time to learn, converse, and just generally hang out with colleagues is for all of us an important part of our continuing professional development, and often, our continued personal growth and health. Because I am honoring these days as days of retreat, this is a brief note!
Because this is our month of nurturing gratitude, I want you to know that I am grateful to you, dear ones, for supporting me with a professional expense budget for ongoing training and development and also supporting me in using it well (for things like General Assembly, UU Ministers Association programming, and–perhaps my favorite expense–books.) Being a minister is wonderful, challenging, and sometimes bewildering work; being generously supported in this and many other ways makes a big difference, so I remain…
Yours in growth and gratitude,
Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org
P.S. Thanks to those who brought Second Harvest donations last Sunday. Reminder: besides our Share the Plate collections, we are gathering pasta & sauce; other congregations are collecting other items from Second Harvest’s list of most needed foods. Keep the donations coming: we have three more Sundays in the month of November!