Here we are in a fairly bleak December, in a month in which we’re exploring the themes of Presence and Hope. It’s not hard to draw connections between those themes and some of the December holidays. Solstice bringing life and light into the cold, inimical winter. Hannukah celebrating the power of humanity to act powerfully…
Our ministry theme for this month of September is Covenant. Covenant used to be a loaded word at Silver Spring. When I first arrived no one was willing to use it. While most UU churches call their small group ministry ‘Covenant Groups’ we called ours Inreach Groups for that reason. One of the early steps recommended was to make a covenant of understanding between the church and myself, but the leadership at UUCSS decided it wasn’t a good idea to do that soon, and so we postponed it for a few years and finally did one jointly between myself and the church and then-DRE Mandy Keithan and the church.