Hi, Friends,

I’m so proud of the atmosphere we created for last week’s Rummage Sale. The photo of me was taken by Martha Holman on a day during set-up. There is always something more to move around during Rummage Sale week! In addition to our fundraising goal, the Rummage Sale has four goals, which I am pleased to say we lived into well this year:

· Reduce environmental impact by encouraging reuse. Our volunteers spent a lot of time figuring out where to donate unsold items so they did not end up in a landfill.

· Build UCE’s community by participating in structed opportunities for connection. UCE members, friends, and visitors who volunteered met new people, learned about our congregation, and had fun.

· Build connections with and serve the broader community. Folks from our neighborhood and from other faith communities volunteered with us and shoppers enjoyed their experience, including a few who told volunteers they would check us out on a Sunday morning. Plus, connections were made with the organizations we collaborated with to make sure unsold items found homes.

· Support UCE’s mission to nurture the human spirit for a world made whole. From lunching together and encouraging each other to take a walk to offering free whistles and Black Lives Matter buttons in baskets in the lobby, we did a good job of embodying both our care for each other and our care for the world.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s Rummage Sale!

I will be taking a long vacation from May 18 – June 2 to travel with high school friends through Portugal and the United Kingdom. One of those friends texted me last week about the Banksy statue which appeared overnight in Waterloo Place in London. NPR described the statue as depicting “a man in a suit hoisting a large flag. The flag’s cloth covers the man’s face, however, and his proud march appears to be courting disaster, as he steps off the plinth with no ground beneath him.” Art, in all its mediums, has the power to remind us to be present and encourage us to be engaged for a better future.

Before I leave on vacation, we will be having our Annual Meeting on Sunday, May 17. We will be voting on whether or not to change our name from the “Unitarian Church of Evanston” to the “Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Evanston.” If you are a voting member, you were sent an email with the meeting materials on April 17. We have 433 voting members and we need a quorum of 20% in order to proceed with the meeting. I hope you are planning to attend.

This past month I have been thinking about what it means to be present, to intentionally give focused attention to what is before me. There is so much happening, that it is easy to be somewhere physically and have my mind attuned to something else. This past month I have been

practicing having my spiritual, emotional, and mental attention be wherever I am physically. It has been challenging some days, and other days I have been able to be fully present. Present to what is happening in our country. On April 21, I attended the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU-IL) annual luncheon. I sat with UUs from the Chicagoland area and met UUs from Geneva, IL. I listened to the speakers make clear the abuses happening in the federal executive and judicial branches. I felt the camaraderie of 1500 people in one room with similar values, knowing we would be going back to many communities throughout Illinois to continue our resistance to authoritarianism.

Present to the needs of our congregation. I want to lift up how our Rummage Sale leaders collaborated with our Catalyst for Democracy Team leaders to think through what it meant to hold the sale on May 1, when there was a nation-wide May Day Strong call to action, which was an opportunity to reduce one’s contribution to the growing wealth of corporations and billionaires. We thought through how the Rummage Sale actually contributes to these goals by reusing and repurposing resources and building new economic streams. The team leaders proceeded with messaging for the sale that was clear that UCE supported the May Day Strong actions. There is no one way to be involved in the many efforts to address authoritarianism. What is needed is the willingness to be present and engaged, to contemplate our words and live into them with our actions. I felt that presence and engagement throughout our Rummage Sale.

Present to the stirring of the spirit in my life. On May 3, I participated in a Beltane ritual in which we placed evergreen boughs into the fire. The thick white smoke that rose was met by the strong winds that we have been experiencing this spring. The wind kept the smoke together and danced it around the firepit. It was beautiful, and as the ball of smoke hovered around me, I felt at one with the natural world.

I invite you to practice being present wherever you are to whatever is happening in your life, and then I invite you to share it with others. For it is in this sharing that we build relationships upon which we build community upon which we build a future that is inclusive and just.

Yours in shaping our future,

Rev. Susan