Knowing the Whole Story
By Connie Goodbread

We are a story telling species. Humans have always sat around the flickering light and shared stories of good and evil, stories that help us make meaning. Stories move us, delight us, and make us laugh and cry. Stories teach us lessons. Stories help us keep our ancestors alive. Stories shared help us to understand one another and that which is greater than ourselves. What are our Unitarian Universalist stories? How and when do we share them? Do we tell the whole story or do we leave out the parts we don’t like? The bad parts.
 
George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I was standing with someone from another faith tradition as a group of Unitarian Universalist Religious Educators did skits about the deepest meaning of our faith. Each group that came up made fun of  themselves, the faith, the faiths of others and many other things. My friend said, “These are the people who teach your faith. If they don’t take it seriously who does?” Hmmmm… “Well,” I said, “one of the issues in our wider world is that people take themselves too seriously. There is not enough humor in the world. Anxiety is humorless. The more anxiety in a system the less humor.” But he made me think, who does take Unitarian Universalism seriously? I came to our story. What is our story? Do we tell it with pride? Do we own up to all the mistakes and missteps that we have made along the way, both as a larger faith and in our congregations? Do we deeply understand that our Saints were only human? Do we forgive them for being mere people of their times, without forgetting their mistakes lest we be doomed to repeat them? Do we embrace the whole narrative, keeping it close and safe and yes, taking it seriously?
 
We know the shadow side of Thomas Jefferson but how about Susan B Anthony? Do we know and own her mistakes? Do we remember that neither were actually Unitarian, yet we claim them as ancestors?  Both of these people made great strides for human rights while treading on the rights of other humans.  They were people of their times. They did good things and they did bad things.
 
I really like to remember that we come into the middle of a story. We did not write the beginning and we will not write the end. We can only write or envision a brighter future if we truly understand our past. It is our foundation. Things were put into motion long before we came on the scene. We bump into these things and don’t understand what we have run into. Some of our foundation is strong and healthy, made of values that we want to uphold. Some of the foundation is sad, hurtful pitted and mistaken. But all together the story makes meaning. Without the bad, the good does not exist. If we can remember that we are the children of the Puritans, when we run into our strong mistrust of power and authority we can put some perspective on it. If we can remember that we are congregations of mostly comer inners not lifelong Unitarian Universalists, we then begin to understand that we don’t know our story. After this realization we can learn as much as possible and then, with humor, begin to take our story seriously. Having this deeper understanding of who we were helps us to know who we are. We can be better stewards for our portion of the story, the here and now.

Joan Lund
San Antonio, Texas, January 13 – 17, 2010

The Unitarian Universalist Board of Trustees (BOT) journeyed to Texas for our regularly scheduled January meeting. As we have committed to Policy Governance we hope to meet at least once a year in a location other than Boston in order to link with, and focus on congregations in their role as Sources. The BOT initiated traveling to another site by being in San Antonio (SA), a symbol of our commitment to linkage and diversity. SA is the 9th largest city in the U.S., with 61% Latino/Latina or Hispanic inhabitants. This was a conscious choice and we spent about a day and a half diving deeper into Hispanic and SA culture, and the complex issues of undocumented immigrants.

Although the weather was cold and rainy we experienced an excellent meeting and were warmly received by many Texas congregations, some as far as 200 miles away. As always if you have questions or comments in general, please email/telephone me at jlund@uua.org or 813-931-9727. The January Board of Trustees (BOT) Packet was posted before the meeting and can be found at www.uua.org through the BOT link.

My October BOT report was the first in trying to both relate my impressions and shorten the message to fit with the changes in BOT operation. The entire UUA Governance Manual can be found at http://uua.org/aboutus/governance/policy/index.shtml. During the time between October and January we received monitoring reports which dealt with the Association’s benefits and insurance plans and asset protection.

BOT business meetings were held on Wednesday 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Saturday 8:30 to 11:45 a.m., and Sunday 9:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. During these meetings among the business items included the BOT received reports, listened to, and discussed the November conversation with the District Presidents Association (DPA) and the November conversation with the UUSC.

President, Rev. Peter Morales
President Morales and Rev. Don Southworth, Acting Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) jointly reported on the significant work being done in beginning a review of ministry, the focus will be on what is needed in ministry over the next twenty years: training models, certification, placement, and programmatic priorities. Rev. Morales indicated that public witness will continue at a strong pace, carrying forth the strategic polices of his predecessor, Rev. Bill Sinkford.
According to Rev. Morales our faith growth potential continues to be excellent. He wants to again bring together our fastest growing churches to collaborate in providing organization for promoting growth. He cited Wal-Mart having had 5% of their stores providing 50% of their growth revenue and asked the question, “What can our best congregations do to help the rest of us grow?”

Rev. Morales preached at the First UU Church of SA Sunday service and provided a partial answer to “remembering the Alamo” and why the U.S. seized Mexican land. In the early 1800s, Texas was a fine place for growing cotton, which was labor intensive; the cheapest labor was to use slaves. Americans, at that time, followed “manifest destiny” by moving west and into Texas; in reality they were illegal immigrants in Mexico. They brought slaves with them which were problematic because Mexico prohibited slavery. Whether this was the only reason for the Mexican-American War, it probably was a major cause because Americans are notoriously known for our economic self-interest.

Linkage with Texas congregations
Saturday afternoon and evening the BOT and congregations from as far as 200 miles away engaged in a process that hopefully will hopefully bring us closer together in relationship one of our sources: congregations. After some initial discussion and questions about the process we broke into small groups of 4 – 6 persons, plus two BOT folks for an hour of questions and discussion. All participants were from different Texas congregations; in most cases the persons in the small groups did not “know” one another. The Trustees initially asked questions about a time when their congregation “made a difference” either within or outside the congregations; from this beginning inquiry the Trustees moved through questions, answers, and discussions about who “speaks” for the congregation, the qualities of healthy relationships nurturing among and between persons in the congregation. The BOT is committed to developing healthy relationships between our member congregations and us so the remaining time was devoted to questions, answers, and discussion about how we can keep this commitment. We asked for some of the important differences UUism should/could make in the world; and what might our UUA might be in five years if we could attain some of these differences.
Saturday night the First UU Church of SA sponsored a very lively and entertaining “fiesta” for the congregations who had attended the afternoon session, members and friends of First UU SA, and the BOT. What a time we had! You can view the Florida Trustee dancing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOy2n99OEqE.  

Linkage with Florida UUA member congregations
Something similar to the linkage the BOT experienced in San Antonio will happen with congregations throughout our UUA. All Trustees will be telephoning four or five pre-selected individual congregations in our Districts for a conversation with leadership. The congregations have been randomly selected within specific congregational membership as submitted in the February 1st deadline. The questions will vary in form but not content from our process in SA.

Fifth Principle Task Force (FPTF)
According to our UUA Bylaws, General Assembly (GA) is first and foremost an event to serve the governance of our Association. Article IV Section C-4 specifically states this, and also dictates that GA’s shall make overall policy for carrying out the purposes of the Association. Accredited delegates, largely from certified member congregations, are the voters at GA’s and are authorized to conduct the Association’s business. Between GA’s the BOT is authorized to act for our Association, conduct business, and carry out policies and directives. For some time it has been the BOT’s concern that GA has evolved over the years in ways contrary to excellence in governance and the democratic process as determined by our Fifth Principle. The work of the FPTF has focused on governance because it is the primary purpose of GA and is “dramatically” broken as stated in their report to the BOT: 1) GA is not really democratic in that delegates are neither representative of their congregations, other than being members, nor are they accountable to them; 2) without subsidization of delegates, GA is economically discriminatory, and therefore generationally discriminatory; 3) as long as GA continues as an annual event, its cost is a heavy burden to the Association and member congregations; and 4) the GA process is not in alignment with the BOT’s embrace and adoption of policy governance. As you, the reader knows, GA’s have assumed many more purposes than the conduct of Association business. Although no hard data exists on congregational practices in selecting, preparing, and authorizing delegates, anecdotal evidence indicates that probably most delegates are self-selected and self-funded. They participate in GA business with little or no guidance from or sense of accountability, or relationship/communication to their home congregation or district Trustee. The only exception seems to be with the Commission on Social Witness (CSW).

The FPTF’s recommendations are reserved solely for the governance of GA toward more accountable and disciplined practices of governance at all levels from congregational boards to boards of districts and our UUA. GA needs to be configured to promote meaningful, effective linkage and accountability, and engage delegates in substantive Associational business. Among the recommendations made by the FPTF include: moving FA to every other year (there are no specific suggestions for the other activities normally associated with other events/activities associated with GA; subsidizing delegate expense in whole or in part; allowing delegate status for one settled minister per congregation; and removing the automatic delegate status from UUA Board members. The entire report begins on page 46 of the January Board packet. The BOT will be meeting by conference call soon, and again in April to determine/recommend actions/motion(s) to occur during the June 2010 GA plenary session(s).

Additional Information of Interest (hopefully)
• Sources of Authority and Accountability (owners): member congregations, current and future generations of UUs, the heritage, traditions, and ideals of UUism, the vision of beloved community, and the spirit of life, love, and the holy.
• The UUA Office of Electronic Communications has been hard at work preparing for the launch of a revitalized website. On February 1st, look for the new, more welcoming and informative UUA.org.
• UUA revenue for 2010 is down about $2M. Money for operations is not sustainable; there will be significant changes involving prioritized cutting. Staff has been asked to envision their work with a 25% budget cut, although the percentage of scaling back may not reach that level.

In the months to come, I plan to write Trustee Tidbits columns about BOT linkage with our member congregations and the conversations I will be having with Florida district member congregations. Stay tuned.