Reflections from Our Lead Minister, Rev. Adam Lawrence DyerGreetings First Parish Family!As we return to regular worship, regular social justice meetings, regular volunteering, regular RE classes and all of the various and new activities we will engage this church year, the staff is continuing our efforts to bring strong and consistent messages to you on Sundays and in all of our work. This comes directly from coming together this summer and reflecting deeply on what we have learned from the congregation about what is important in our world. The result is four clear themes that we hope to reflect in most of our Sunday worship and Religious Education. For the fall, we will

explore the theme of “Travelers”, exploring and celebrating migrants, religious journeys and also challenging ourselves to understand the traveling that some people have made or make from different perspectives. December will call us into relationship with what we mean by “Home and Family” understanding that both of these words present many different concepts for us all. We hope to engage our community partners and immediate neighbors as well as inviting our personal and intimate families of all kinds into our experience. In the early part of the new year we will explore our relationship with what “Covenanting” means for us. What are our obligations to each other and our community; how do we give of ourselves and how do we receive the gifts given. Finally, we will close out the spring with deepening our understanding of what “Fulfillment” means. How do we know when we have done enough? Are we actually making progress…are we satisfied with our efforts and our results in all areas? This is an exciting and challenging framework for the staff, but one that we believe will inspire us all in how we engage the community this year.As we continued to craft the themes, the staff was convinced that there is also another significant level on which the community seeks to grow. Inspired by our many different conversations and interactions with the congregation, we realized that cultivating a deepened sense of Abundance, Gratitude and Generosity over this year and years to come would be one of the most important investments we could make in our shared experience together. We will regularly return to ask publicly, in our committee meetings and individually, “how are we serving the goal of abundance, gratitude and generosity?” We invite the whole community to do the same. Even more so than the separate themes, we feel that the commitment to abundance, gratitude and generosity helps secure our foundation as the dedicated, spirit-filled, and joyous congregation we hope to be.

I am greatly looking forward to this second year serving as your minister. I have been inspired and humbled by the enthusiasm of the staff and I have been held and encouraged by each of you in the congregation. Through all we experienced together last year, I know that this year we will continue to make something great in the world. Thank you for the privilege to help guide us on this incredible journey together.Peace,Rev. Adam

THE MEETINGHOUSE NEWSFirst Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist

September 2018

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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION CORNERWonder and Travelers

Wonder is one of our primary spiritual tasks – and one that children can often help adults access more easily! This fall as we explore the theme of Travelers, we can be open to new sights that inspire wonder in us.

We are all travelers through life. Our travels may not take us from place to place but rather through time – and I am highly aware with the changing of the seasons that there are new, wonderful sights that we only see in early fall. Many of our children return to school after a summer off, with new folders and pencils, freshly polished hallways, and seeking the faces of friends they have missed. Crabapples and mushrooms are growing after the heat and rain of the last few weeks. And like it or not, pumpkin spice is back on the shelves!

First Parish in Cambridge is particularly full of travelers, whether university students or visiting professors, new immigrants, Boston tourists, or new families excited to join a likeminded community. While some might see this as a challenge of “high turnover” for our community, we can also frame it as an opportunity to embrace fresh energy and ideas – the ideal quality to support us in our mission of building multicultural, inclusive community. We don’t have to recreate and reproduce the same programs or volunteer tasks year after year – we can grow with our new and returning travelers, every time with a larger awareness of what can make our community more inclusive and help our children and youth experience more wonder.

This fall as we explore Travelers in religious education, we’ll be using movement much more often. This helps us experience the fall theme in our bodies, minds and spirits. It reminds those of us in school programs that this community is a different place, one where we can explore in ways beyond reading. Ways that inspire, help us integrate learning, and allow us to wonder.

We’ll also be looking more deeply at the ways that old patterns we have used might center a typically white, middle class perspective – and how to loosen up patterns of perfectionism and giving more authority to the written word than to our emotional or spiritual lives. You might look together as a family at the work of Emergence artist collective - https://emergencemedia.org/pages/about-us. They share, “The name “Emergence” grew from a conversation with mentor Grace Lee Boggs, when Grace mentioned that one of the main lessons she took from the women's movement was that ‘we should not be waiting for singular charismatic leaders to tell us what direction to go, but instead be like midwives, supporting the birth of movements that are already emerging.’ This led to exploring the scientific concept of Emergence.”

Another way to experience and support wonder at home this fall is through close observation of nature:

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Follow the travels of a small creature or insect in your neighborhood by observing closely.  What are its habits? Can you find it more than one day in a row? Does it do anything differently as the weather gets colder? Sketch a little picture of it or take a photo on your or your caregiver’s phone.

Can you find a fractal in nature, a pattern that repeats itself at small and large scales, like a fern leaf? Can you find a piece of art about fractals from the Emergence collective?

For more urban nature explorations, see Cambridge artist Clare Walker Leslie’s book for children, The Nature Connection.I hope you enjoy your fall exploring Travelers and experiencing wonder with us at First Parish – I can’t wait to see you all!Mandy

NEW BANNERS IN THE SANCTUARYAs we start the new church year with a plan for themed ministry throughout the year, we have asked artists within our congregation to help bring our themes to life through art. For the fall, two paintings have been placed on either side of the pulpit. These paintings were created by artist, Suzi Grossman.

The flying robin in the left panel relates to the Fall theme of Travelers and theright panel relates to the December themeof Home/Family. Suzi is a lifelong UU,has been attending First Parish since2010, is the leader of the Young AdultGroup, and draws Churchdrawingsduring the service every week. She alsoteaches photography and does freelanceillustration, so please reach out to herwith any photography and illustrationneeds at Suzi@SuziGrossman.com! Youcan follow Suzi's current creative work,including her Churchdrawings onInstagram @dr_suzz and see more of herwork at www.SuziGrossman.com

TRAVELERS ON CHURCH STREETBy Mike Mennonno, Church Street Ministry Coordinator

One of my favorite things to do when I was a young teacher in a little village in Eastern Hungary in the mid-’90s was to take the train 25 miles east to the Provincial Capital, Debrecen, near the Romanian border. It was a beautiful city, to be sure, but it was that hour traveling by train across the plains of Pannonia, the great Hungarian Puszta, that

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was the real attraction for me. The landscape, “flat as an ocean,” in the poet Sándor Petőfi’s words, reminded me of my Indiana home, and being a stranger among strangers on the old no-frills Soviet-era intercity train was oddly calming. Whenever I was homesick I could ride my janky old bicycle (provided at no cost by the local gimnázium) to the station, hop on a train, and I suddenly felt right at home amongst the rabble.

It’s good to be at home among strangers, and despite growing up in suburbia, where the appearance of a stranger is often cause for suspicion if not outright alarm, I think it’s in my blood. I recently became mildly obsessed with ancestry.com, and what struck me after doing a little research was the staggering scope of global displacement over the last several generations. Take my great-grandparents, who, like so many of their compatriots fleeing the grinding rural poverty of their Southern Italian home, arrived in New York around 1900 in what’s known as The Great Arrival. But while “L’America” was a land of opportunity, the story my genealogy tells of the century that followed was one of even greater fragmentation and displacement, with two World Wars and the Great Depression, and a relentless push West that saw relatives scattered from New York and Pennsylvania to Indiana, Texas and California. Growing up I hardly knew my relatives on my father’s side at all. I met my grandfather once. We’ve been in this country for 120 years.

First Parish Cambridge has been here much longer, of course. Many of its current congregants can no doubt trace their lineage back 400 years as well. One thing I’ve learned in my own short time in New England: folks take enormous pride in being of a place. I do it, too. Each September when the next freshman class floods in from parts unknown, despite only having lived here a mere 15 years, I’m suddenly a native. We often draw the arbitrary line of belonging to a place from the moment we arrived, whether it’s the queue for our morning coffee or Plymouth Rock. We take great, sometimes comical umbrage at strangers and newcomers, puffing our chests as if to say: “we were here first!” And when it comes to the line at Starbucks: yeah, ok, fair enough. But when we telescope out a bit, things get a little more complicated. Here isn’t always here. Take First Parish. In our first 200 years the Congregation moved five times (not to mention the much greater trek from Calvinism to Unitarian Universalism that accompanied all those moves.)

We are a people on the move, a species of travelers from the beginning, for whom “home” is a fairly recent adaptation. The first shelters may have been built as long ago as 400,000 years, but the first proto-houses did not appear until just 15,000 years ago, give or take. We would do well to keep that in mind when we think about homelessness. Like “displacement,” “homelessness” is a word that hides its privilege in plain sight. We rarely dig too deeply into the root — “home,” “place,” even less so “placement” — when we think of those who are homeless or displaced. We sometimes lament that they (and they are always a “they”) have had to leave their homes, but we invariably conceive of “home” as the place they are from, not the place they are in. It is a way of reinforcing that they are “out of place” here and now. The fact that many have had to leave the place they are from doesn’t mean that they need to feel or be treated as out of place where they are. We sometimes assume that those we encounter on our streets have nowhere to be without considering how it is that we have found our place here, on the same street where they are. They are here, we sometimes seem to be saying, in the place where we belong!

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But home is not just an ephemeral and transient idea for them, as much as our own good fortune in having found a place for the moment might suggest to us. I say this as a renter in Boston who has been forced to move eight times in the past 13 years. And that’s stable compared to friends earning the minimum wage. In Cambridge today they’d have to work 145 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom rent. If we zoom out to the even bigger picture, we are in the middle of an epoch of global displacement, fueled by radical income inequality and unstoppable climate change. A recent study from the Union of Concerned Scientists warns that rising sea levels will, by the end of the century, cause a third of the homes in Cambridge to face flooding every other week.  A third of Cambridge underwater. (It seems likely this will only exacerbate the housing crunch.)

We have one home, not many. That much is obvious. It can be hard to remember that in moments of encounter with those who seem out of place to us in the here and now. When I forget, myself, I like to hop on the train. It doesn’t really matter where to. It’s just good to be at home among my fellow travelers.

Fall Potluck Guest Sign-up Deadline Extended to Sunday, September 9!You can still sign up to be a potluck guest – though spaces are limited – with our extended deadline of Sunday, September 9. Members and newcomers are all welcome to join one of fall potluck suppers held in members’ homes. We have one location that provides capacity for those with accessibility concerns. Sign up with date preferences for the following potluck events (all suppers will be held from 5:30-7:30 pm): Sunday, September 23 or Sunday, September 30 or Saturday, October 6: 

https://goo.gl/forms/vwIr0ZA6NPic499l1

These informal evenings are a fun way to get connected with the First Parish community, enjoy fabulous food, and make some new friends! Don’t worry if you can’t make one of these fall dates. We will let you know about spring potluck dates in early 2019.  For more information about the potluck suppers, please contact Sylvia Wheeler of the Potluck Team, sjwheeler1@comcast.net.

Shared Offering for SeptemberEach month, First Parish donates one half of our otherwise undesignated Sunday morning offering to local non-profit, social justice or service organizations with whom we have a partnership or with whom we seek to develop a new relationship. The Shared Offering recipient for September is Action for Community and Environment (ACE).

ACE builds the power of communities of color and low-income communities in Massachusetts to eradicate environmental racism and classism, create healthy, sustainable communities, and achieve environmental justice.

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Systemic change means moving beyond solving problems one by one to eliminating the root causes of environmental injustice. ACE is anchoring a movement of people who have been excluded from decision-making to confront power directly and demand fundamental changes in the rules of the game, so together we can achieve our right to a healthy environment.

ACE is lead by the constituents it serves in Roxbury, Greater Boston and Massachusetts. It’s youth empowerment program has become a model for nurturing youth leadership in the environmental justice movement.

ACE also mobilizes legal and scientific resources in support of organizing strategies and has helped neighborhood groups statewide to block ethanol trains, trash transfer stations, dirty diesel exhaust and asphalt plants.

ACE led the advocacy that resulted in the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Executive Order, and has pioneered strategies for environmental justice advocacy that have radically redefined the environmental movement nationwide.

Please give generously.

Cambridge Forum “Grand Canyon for Sale” – Public Land versus Private Interest Stephen Nash, author of award-winning books on science and the environment discusses the precarious future of our national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges with Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. September 19, 7:00 pm, in the Meetinghouse.

MINISTRY TEAMS UPDATES

Auction Kick-OffBy Kathy Watkins

Welcome to the official kick-off for the 2018 First Parish Auction! The Auction Committee has been hard at work planning and organizing, but we need your help to make this event a success for First Parish. The Auction raises critical funds for the operating budget, but more importantly, the Auction furthers our mission of creating community at First Parish through shared planning of dinners and flat-rate events

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and coming together with other members of our community to enjoy amazing food and company. Last year’s auction raised over $19,000!!

WHAT DOES THE AUCTION SUPPORT?The Auction supports the operating budget of First Parish; including Tuesday Meals Program, Religious Education Program and other important initiatives. Typically, no one thinks about or generally cares about maintenance and operating budgets, until something breaks, or programs are impacted due to failed heating systems or leaking roofs. Our beautiful and historic building is a critical foundation for the community we are striving for at First Parish and in need of our continued support.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?DONATIONS: Please consider supporting the Auction by organizing a dinner for 6 to 8 (or more) or an event with friends; donating a week in your vacation home; donating themed gift baskets or gift cards from your favorite local restaurant or store; or donating homemade crafts for the gifts to go table. Be creative, have some fun and meet new people.

PARTICIPATE IN THE AUCTION: Bid on items November 11th and 18th. Join a dinner or flat-rate event to share food and meet new friends within the First Parish community.

KEY DATES FOR 2017 AUCTION:Tables at Social Hour to Accept Donations: September 23rd through October 28th Donations Due: October 28th Auction: November 11th and 18th

CONTACT INFORMATION:Email: auction@firstparishcambridge.orgWebsite: www.firstparishcambridge.org/auctionDonation Forms: www.firstparishcambridge.org/auction

BUILDING TEAMMuch has been happening in the building over the summer. We hope this update gives you some details about things that have been accomplished and are ongoing:

Meetinghouse CeilingWork has finally been completed to repair the plaster in the meetinghouse. This project is now complete although we will need to re-insulated the attic space above the Meetinghouse prior to the winter.

RoofAmerican Steeple has completed work on installing a new snow guard on the Parish House and repairing copper flashing. Some slate roof tiles were also replaced. Additional work on the roof is needed and should happen this fall.

Detailed assessment of the Meetinghouse and Parish House

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This assessment of existing conditions, being overseen by the architectural firm Torrey Architecture has been completed. To date we have received the final written haz-mat report and are awaiting reports from the structural and mechanical engineers. The assessment will also provide us with a complete set of CAD drawings of both buildings as they currently exist, including the renovations to the auditorium. We expect to have a final report by the end of September.

Minister’s Office Ceiling and WindowsRoland is working to complete final work on the ceiling in Rev. Adam’s office following a leak last spring. That work should be complete by September 15. In addition the windows in the office will be replaced beginning September 10 or 11 (weather dependent).

Massachusetts Avenue Entrance and Courtyard AreaWe are working to have the overgrown yews removed from either side of the Mass. Ave. steps early this fall. We hoped to complete it before Homecoming Sunday but the contractor was unavailable. Once the bushes are removed we will work to beautify that area for the fall. We have also been working on updating the sign board in the courtyard and power-washing the front steps. We are looking at options for re-covering the sign on the façade of the building as you climb the steps. We want to re-print the sign to include up-to-date ministerial information. The eventual plan is to replace that sign and the larger sign board when work is done on the entire Mass. Ave façade.

Bulletin boardThere is now a bulletin board dedicated to the Building Ministry Team (located on the far wall as you walk toward the chapel). A brief status report will be available for people to know what is going on.

Core Building Team: Elizabeth Kline, Kate Ryan, Cushing Giesey, David Ray, Elizabeth Yoffe, Sylvia Wheeler, Carol Lewis

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE TASK FORCEThis is shaping up to be the hottest summer on record in the Boston area.  We know we have to act with urgency as we watch the devastating impacts of climate change from the forest fires in California to floods and scorching heat in India and other countries in the global south.  We see that those least responsible for climate change at home and around the globe are the ones facing the most hardships.

As the current administration launches unprecedented attacks on our environment, the clean power plan; and the EPA and our own Massachusetts legislature did far less than they were asked; the EJTF is joining one of many events across the globe in advance of the Global Climate Action Summit taking place in San Francisco, a meeting where leaders are taking stock of the world’s progress. On Saturday September 8, 12:00 pm, join members of the Environmental Justice Task Force (EJTF) at the Rise For Climate event in East Boston

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We will be calling for a transition to a new 100% clean and renewable energy future that creates millions of family sustaining jobs, and ensures that racial and economic justice are core to action on climate in every community.

Here is the link for more information and to register for the event.  Please let Grace Hall (gracewhall@msn.com) or Peggy Lynch (mlynch4@icloud.com) know if you would like to meet up with other members of First Parish.

The Environmental Justice Task Force meets the 2nd Wednesday of the month.  Our next meeting is Wednesday, September 12th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 p.m. -- Please join us!

FERRY BEACH RETREAT TEAMWondering about the annual fall retreat? You aren't alone. After a number of conversations among staff and lay leaders, we will not be going to Ferry Beach this October. However, you should look for announcements for in-house retreats this fall and winter! You can also SAVE THE DATE for a Spring retreat to Ferry Beach! We hope to have a weekend of fun Friday evening June 7, 2019 to Sunday morning June 9, 2019.Beth, Susan, and Eileen welcome help for the Spring retreat. Contact Beth at bethmreagan@gmail.com if you would like to be a part of the team.

MEMBERSHIP TEAMGreetings dear congregants! Feeling connected to one another is a large reason many of us are part of First Parish in Cambridge. Over the summer, a few of us met with staff to strategize how to support membership in our community. We have so much to offer.  We have pot-lucks, social justice activities, a spring retreat and more.  How do we get the word out about all the great things happening at here? We are looking at a two-fold strategy.

1.    Engage more of our community into the “nodes” of activity and fellowship that we have at First Parish in Cambridge2.    Share the story of our faith and our mission to more new people, to welcome folks into our community. 

We’ll be working with staff and volunteers to enhance the ways we communicate with the congregation and how we share opportunities for faith formation, community service, and pastoral care with the larger community.  We are particularly looking at connecting with young adults, students (Rev. Adam is a campus chaplain, after all), families with children, and people from marginalized groups.  We want to work in collaboration with other Ministry Teams to engage people to help them

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make connections in the community, make friends and delve deeper into Unitarian Universalism.  We will especially be focusing on providing a warmer sense of hospitality in our social hour.    But all of our program teams can benefit from a plan, a strategic approach, and careful deployment of resources. Let’s synergize! One question for you is: would you be interested in being a Congregational Ambassador? We will be hosting trainings on how to share the story of our congregation and our opportunities. Let us know if you’d be interested in this type of role. Please let us know if you’d like to share your thoughts about membership. We look forward to working with you.

Thank you,Grey Lee, Hannah Stites, Mark Pickering, and the programming team liaisons on the Membership Team

The Eighth Principle Team Many members and friends in First Parish are familiar with the Transformation Team and the many activities we have had over the past decade. One of the first and most important projects was adopting our new mission statement.We have renamed the Transformation Team as the Eighth Principle Team and are planning a number of interesting and educational events over the next few months.What is the Eighth Principle?

An eighth principle was proposed several years ago by Paula Cole Jones who is on staff with the UUA along with others in her district. It reads as follows:“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”Although many UU congregations such as ours want to be anti-racist, anti-oppressive and build a multicultural beloved community, that goal is not included in the current Seven Principles by which we define Unitarian Universalism. This article is too short to go into more about how, when and if an eighth principle might be adopted. This basic information is included here so that the congregation can understand where the name of the Eighth Principle Team comes from. There is no current plan to include any work by the Eighth Principle Team on the adoption of this principle by the UUA. For more information, see www.8thprincipleuu.org/

Upcoming Events

People of Color Caucus Breakfast – Sunday, September 23, 9:00 amIf you identify as a person of color, please join the People of Color Caucus for breakfast in the parlor. Let’s meet and greet! Children are welcome. Food will be provided. For more information, contact Rev. Danielle Di Bona at devminister@firstparishcambridge.org.

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Movie and discussion – “Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity”Sunday, September 23, 12:30 pmPublished by World Trust, this film asks America to talk about the causes and consequences of systemic inequity. Designed for dialogue, the film works to disentangle internal beliefs, attitudes and pre-judgments within, and it builds skills to address the structural drivers of social and economic inequities. Through examples, the video uncovers the internal and external components of racism.

In a safe and supportive environment and guided by our Covenant of Right Relations, we will explore the systemic components of racial inequity that happen on many levels. Using the video, meditation, journaling and discussion, we will work and learn together.  Book discussion groupsFollowing up from the Resisting White Supremacy workshops last spring, we will continue to have a series of relevant book discussions which are open to anyone who wants to further their understanding of white supremacy.

In October we will be discussing two books: White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About

Racism by Robin DiAngelo. Thursdays: October 11 and 25, 2018  6:30-8:30pm (may shift slightly depending on people's availability), location TBD. We'll read part one of the book for Oct 11, and the second part for Oct 25. Please commit to reading the entire book and to attending both sessions.  Interested? Have questions? Email Charlene Galarneau, the discussion facilitator, at charlene.galarneau@gmail.com. If you commit by Wednesday, September 12, First Parish Cambridge will buy copies of the book and you may borrow one for this book group. 

Centering: Navigating Race, Authenticity, and Power in Ministry, edited by MitraRahnema centers the stories, analyses, and insights of a number of Unitarian Universalist religious professionals of color as they explore how racial identity is made both visible and invisible in Unitarian Universalist communities. This is the UUA Common Read for this year. We will read sections at a time and have 3 sessions which we will schedule depending on interest. Contact: Susan Shepherd, sshep352@comcast.net. We have copies of the book available at church.

Beloved Conversations (ten week series)Beloved Conversation is a curriculum written and delivered by the Fahs Collaborative at Meadville-Lombard Seminary. Beloved Conversations is an experiential curriculum that provides an intentional space to reverse the brokenness of racism into new patterns of thought and behavior that usher in social and spiritual healing. New ways of being are learned through the actions of conversation and probing dialogue.

This curriculum includes a weekend retreat followed by eight two-hour sessions. The maximum number of people for this series is 20. The Ministers and the Eighth Principle Team are inviting people to this first round who have demonstrated a deep interest in

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this topic and will provide leadership in this area going forward. There will be more series in the future.

Many UU congregations have done this curriculum multiple times in order to include more people; and ultimately almost all of their congregants have experienced this opportunity. For more information, see www.meadville.edu/fahs-collaborative/fahs-curriculum-catalogue/beloved-conversations or speak with Rev. Danielle Di Bona.

Current members of the Eighth Principle Team are: Julie Duncan, Charlene Galarneau, Julia Gallogly, Marcia Hams, Gloria Korsman, Karin Lin, Chris McElroy, Rashid Shaikh, Susan Shepherd, Marcia Yousik and Rev. Danielle Di Bona.