May 7, 2025

“Love is your trade, your mission, your job.
Why do you busy yourself with so many other tasks?
—Rumi

Beloveds,

As we gradually approach the end of our church year (officially, it ends on June 30), congregational leaders are busy with budgets and elections for our 2025-26 year. This is a month of looking back and making plans. Our annual congregational meeting will be on Sunday, May 18, immediately following the worship service. I hope you will join us! 

In the meantime, I’m reflecting on this year: what we have planned to do, how we have aspired to do it, and how it has actually gone and is continuing right now. Because our vision of ministry this year was centered around building community and because our UU values have been recently rearticulated as being centered on love, the above newly translated bit of Rumi jumped out at me recently. It’s prompted me to consider how I balance my personal trade/mission/job of love with all the tasks that keep me busy. And I’m beginning to consider how we as a congregation attend to the same balance. 

It’s tricky, no? Center love, but don’t forget the important meeting! Ignoring the tasks entirely does not create more love and community in the world, even if the tasks can sometimes distract us from the mission.

Looking over the last several months, I find many examples of us acting together to be welcoming and caring with each other and with our wider communities, to build community and celebrate the giftedness of every person, as we were charged to do in our 2024-25 Vision of Ministry. I hope you’ll join us this Sunday for my (now almost traditional) “annual report” to the congregation, in which we will review this year's vision of ministry and consider how it has served us, and how well we have pursued it.

Yours in living our mission amidst all the tasks, 

Rev. Denise
RevDenise@gnuuc.org