Catherine Buckler is the Volunteer of the Month for February. Catherine attended the UU Congregation of Rockville as a young child. From then on she considered herself a UU but did not have a church. When her daughter Sophia was born, she and husband Bob Geiger had heard good things about UUCSS and it was nearby, so they came to visit while church-shopping. Catherine felt UUCSS had a good spirit about it, so there was not much more shopping. Catherine jumped right in by attending the congregational meeting to write a member-to-member covenant and then joined the covenant writing team. Since then, Catherine has been involved in many things—she chaired the ABD for a year, served as Program Council co-vice-president for a year, sings in the choir, and, with Brian Livelsberger she developed the current Coming-of-Age curriculum and co-led the Coming-of-Age classes for seven years, until it was her daughter’s turn to join Coming of Age. But the work that draws Catherine most deeply is exploring how we as members of UUCSS relate to one another. To that end, she served on the Right Relations team and was on the group leading the development of the first and second strategic plan, one year chairing the group. She served on the Diversity Team and co-taught the Building the World We Dream About class. She has attended the Revolutionary Love Conference twice. Currently she is a member of the Racial Justice Taskforce and frequently represents the Taskforce at Program Council meetings.
Catherine is compelled by her own deep values to work on exploring and deepening the member-to-member connection. She feels that volunteering for this work allows her to help people become spiritually grounded. At UUCSS she has been most able to be the most fully herself. She finds there are not many places where you can openly express your spiritual self and have all parts of yourself be present. Catherine hopes that we can offer this possibility to the people who come to UUCSS in search of a spiritual home.