Sunday Morning Service at 10:30am

Honoring the History of UUFoM

Ministerial Search Committee

• Known and respected by others in the congregation.
• More strongly committed to the congregation as a whole than to any subgroup.
• Well informed about the demands and time requirements of search committee membership. (During some stages of the search, the committee may meet weekly.  In 2019 there will be times when the committee will meet with a candidate from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon.)
• Members should promise to attend every meeting, and expect to give about 250-400 hours over the coming year and a half. 
• Balanced by sex, age, interests, and tenure of membership to reflect the diversity of the congregation.
• Major areas of church life such as religious education, social action, property management, finance, and music should be represented by participants, not partisans
• Balanced by attributes:  organizational ability, broad theological awareness, computer skills.
• Not paid members of the church staff,
• Pledged to conduct a search that is fair and nondiscriminatory with respect to race, color, disability, sex, sexual orientation, age, and national origin.
• Committed to maintain confidentiality and to seek consensus.
• Capable of both self-assertion and compromise.
• Not prone to extreme reactions to ministers. The previous ministers’ strongest supporters or opponents are rarely the best choice.
• Well suited to teamwork:  a search committee is no place for Lone Rangers!

• members of the previous search committee – Jon Cleland-Host, Judith Hill, Michaele Malecki
• paid staff – Sandy Hay, Heather Cleland-Host, Andrew Schulz
• 2018 board members – Sara Clavez, Jill Haver Crissman, Sara Schulz, Andy Salogar, Barb Rajewski, Kevin King
• Transition Team members – Pete Carlson,  Linda Rector, Dan Sealey

Pastoral Care Volunteer List

We are compiling an updated volunteer list where you can identify ways to help a fellowship member in need.

If you have not yet filled out a form they are still available on the table in the foyer or you can fill one out online. 

Please click here to fill out the Pastoral Care Volunteer Form online.  

Pasty Fundraiser

A Chosen Faith Discussion Group

Covenant Group Facilitators Wanted

Ancient Shores Covenant of UU Pagans (CUUPS)

Women's Group

Pine Warbler

In mid-September, at the local chemical plant where I clean, I saw a small bird huddled against a cold, bare, concrete wall outside one of my buildings.  She had nothing to shield her except the wall and some scraggly weeds that had grown up through the cracks in the pavement.  She appeared to be a fledgling and I know you're not supposed to touch them.  I stepped quite close to her and she puffed up her light yellow feathers, huddling closer to her only meager source of protection.  I left her and went inside to continue my job, all the while trying to think of what I could do to help her.  A chemical plant is no place for a baby bird to learn how to be an adult.  Unable to think of another way to help, I took the cap off of my water bottle, filled it with water, and set it close beside her.  Shortly thereafter, I left for the day.

I was hopeful the next day when I saw no sign of her next to the wall.  As I rounded the corner of the building, I spotted her, hiding behind a large brave scraggly weed in a chemical plant that produces herbicides. She was dead and probably had been for several hours. I took some paper towels and gently wrapped her up, putting her in my car and drove her to a place I find peaceful and sacred.  I didn't know if I was doing the right thing, but couldn't bear for her body to decompose there, so far away from where she should have lived.  Following my soul’s guidance, I carried her into the small section of woods behind our Fellowship.  I wandered aimlessly, until I found the right spot to lay her down with Mother Earth. There lay a bedraggled seagull feather, aged and half buried by undergrowth.  As I laid her to rest on the pine cones, I said to her, “You were not born where you should have been.  You suffered from the desolation that man has wrought.  I don't know if I'm doing something that the spirits would approve of, but I feel you should not go to your rest  on the dark cold pavement. So I'm bringing you back here, to rest as close as I can put you, in a place you should have had a life.”  To our Mother Earth, I said, “I am sorry for what has befallen your little one.  I hope what I have done, will make her spirit happy.  That generations of her kind to come, will find the world more suitable to their happiness."  I placed the seagull feather I had found, upright in the Earth, as a marker.

I silently walked back to my car, barefoot.  I could feel the grass and the pine pitch sticking to my feet.  When I climbed into my car, the radio was playing Native American flute music, which was a rarity on that station.  I find this to be one of the most sacred and spiritually moving forms of music.  At the end, the radio announcer called the song, Dance of the Children.  I found this fitting and a sign from the Spirit that I had done the right thing.  I looked up the tiny soul's species and found her to be a Pine Warbler.  I had chosen to lay her at the foot of a pine, just inside the edge of the little patch of woods at the back of the parking lot.  Sometimes there are just too many coincidences shown by the Spirit, to be happenstance.  When something rings true in your soul, you can take comfort in knowing you have done well.

Jessie Parham