I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my gardens. My daughter Morgaine and I have been planning our family garden for years. The addition of raised beds, renewed soil in the herb garden out front, mounds for our vine vegetables, and a trellis for the lone grape plant have immerged from our drawings. Morgaine is adept at planning where various plants will thrive in relationship to others, and has a knack for the placement of potted flowers to accentuate the atmosphere, progress that is as much a vision of her mother as it is hers. All in all, that planning takes time, creativity, and forethought. We budget accordingly and my daughter and wife scour websites and advertisements for best places to purchase our leafy products. Then the fun begins as we get down and dirty, literally. Each year I have to remind myself that water and soil make mud. Moreover, I have to remind our help-mate, Sophie, our collie of this fact. And still by the end of the day we are all hosing each other off before we reenter the house.
I thought about that memory of hosing off the first time I witnessed members of the UUCW Garden On Team out planting in the midst of a rain-storm. While the rest of us were standing in the doorway of the Fellowship Hall, warm and dry, a hand full of the heartiest members of our community were gleefully digging holes and transferring plants they had nurtured in the gardens around the parking lot. Theirs has been a vision that sees rain as an opportunity not a challenge. The challenge for them is to continue to reflect a different kind of ethic and consciousness about how we can participate in repairing our environment and reflecting a co-creative spirit that will enable life in all its forms to flourish here. It is a message not just for the members and friends of this congregation but for the community as a whole. The Garden On Team has a missionary spirit that embodies a desire to minister to the world through energizing people to see their relationship to the environments they inhabit differently. In many ways, they reflect the mission of this congregation in its many ministries and forms. Aren’t we all, on some level, committed to helping our community realize and reflect a different ethic and different values concerning our relationship to each other and the environments that sustain us? Might we all catch a bit of this spirit in looking ahead to the next fiscal year and our future in general? What shall we say and do to inspire ourselves and others to reflect a different way of being in the world which makes for more love, hope and justice? What challenges shall we address that move us more toward the vision of beloved community?
Planning gardens is a bit like the process this congregation takes up each spring as we strive to plan for the coming fiscal year. Our various ministry teams, committees, task forces, and groups envision what the next season will be. What programs, projects, celebrations and opportunities for fellowship and fundraising will look like. Those plans then are sized up to the prediction of how many resources we can count on to make such things happen. Which is way, each year, our Stewardship Team, invites members and friends of the congregation to share their prediction of how much financial support each is able to commit to our community. This “pledge” is made with the understanding that we can not know all there is to know about the coming year and that circumstances may change. But it is the best we can do at this predictive process.
All in all, this fiscal year, income from pledges make up almost 58% of our projected income with the next highest source coming from our invested funds (25.5%). The reality is that we’ve been relying on our investments to provide far more yearly support then is prudent in the long-term and we have faced a very difficult year economically as investments are concerned. So it is imperative that we take the opportunity this year to pledge until it helps. To see the full range of income categories and expenses CLICK HERE (details on the second page).
We look forward to the coming year. There are plans afoot to engage a different themed-based ministry program, Soul Matters. We continue to be committed to providing worship and other gatherings in a multi-platform mode. We look forward to returning to a regular pattern of in-person program with our Religious Exploration Program as well as ongoing efforts through our Side with Love Task Force, Loaves & Fishes Food Pantry, Refugee Ministry, Get Out The Vote Team, Garden On Team, Book Group, Women’s Social Circle, Men’s Group and the return to Ferry Beach this summer. Additionally we have plans to expand our Adult Faith Development programming and a variety of social events.
This is a time of tremendous change in our community as well as our world. Our commitment is to continue to be and evolve as a community of love, hope and justice inspiring people to take on the challenges of a changing world.
Please help us make the coming year a stellar experience for all. CLICK HERE to submit your FY2023 pledge.
Blessings,
Aaron