Loving Community

Melissa Niedermeyer, 2019 Volunteer of the Year

Board Updates, Loving Community / /

Northwest looks back fondly on Perry E. Johnson. Perry was a passionate and committed member of Northwest, which he and his wife Helene joined in 1977. Perry was diagnosed with advanced stage lung cancer in October 2004. On the last Sunday of his life, Perry announced that he wanted to go to church and while he was there, he spoke about how much it had meant to him to be a part of the Northwest community. The Perry E. Johnson award was created to recognize an outstanding volunteer each year in Perry’s name. Perry was often a volunteer behind the scenes and he encouraged others to become more fully engaged in Northwest. In the 15 ensuing years, we have honored volunteers who, like Perry, often work behind the scenes to keep Northwest running smoothly.

This year’s award was given to another one of NW’s unsung heroes who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes, Melissa Niedermeyer. She has made a difference in the lives of many of NW’s children and families and, by doing that, has made a major contribution to the success of our congregation. She is someone who, although she spends her days teaching high school students, has dedicated herself week after week, year after year, to the children and youth of NW.

Some of the comments about Melissa’s tireless service are:

“When I think of all my years at Northwest, I think of Miss Melissa.” — member of the Youth program

  • As an RE teacher – She worked on a year-long project with Eileen Taylor and a group of 5th/6th graders studying the origins of the Golden Rule and creating art work which became the wall hanging that’s now in our sanctuary.  
  • As a Youth adviser
    • She started teaching the core group in 5th or 6th grade and moved up with them to the Youth Group, becoming the Youth Adviser for them and others who came to NW during these 6+ years. 
    • Melissa served, often alone or with minimal help, during these years—designing & organizing curriculum, planning social justice activities, and fund raisers.
    • She planned a summer trip for the group yearly, chaperoned and drove them.
      • Some examples are: Tybee Island where they learned about sea turtle conservation, Plains GA where they visited historical sites, this summer’s trip to Alabama to visit various civil rights historical sites and museums. 
    • She caught up several senior youth who had missed out on Coming of Age so they would have that experience prior to bridging. Much of this was done over a weekend retreat/workshop in Ellijay. 
    • She helped plan & execute several bridging banquets and services as various Youth graduated and moved on from RE.
  • She has served on the RE committee for so long we’ve lost count — more than 6 or 8 years.
    • For all these years she has made phone calls and emails to DREs and teachers along with a million odds and ends that go with the committee.
  • She has taught other RE classes throughout the years when needed
  • She has organized and lead the RE pancake breakfast forever. 
  • She was instrumental in starting Pi Day in 2012 (now an annual tradition at NW) and has continued to organize and lead it every year since. 
  • She has co-directed the annual children’s holiday pageant since 2011, organizing props and costumes, attending all practices, working on script and assigning roles.
  • She has helped organize and plan family nights for RE, including one memorable camp out in Ellijay.
  • She is currently co-leading this year’s Coming of Age Program, planning lessons, team building trips, and a winter retreat
  • She served as a member of the OWL teaching team for middle school owl.

And, she has done all of this while working 2 jobs and, along with Bruce, running a house and raising 2 kids! 

Melissa Niedermeyer, 2019 Volunteer of the Year Read More »

Closing the Gap

Loving Community, Reflections / /

By David Stewart

Good Morning. David Morgen shared with you this morning our Mission and Vision for Northwest. I wanted to add to that and talk about how we can continue to evolve Northwest and ourselves with that larger Mission and Vision as our grounding statement.

I am taking on the role of president of our Board of Trustees this year. My wife was asking me the other night if I was excited about this job for the next year. I am actually not – I didn’t take this job for personal glory or to cap off a happy story of service to the congregation or denomination. I have a lot going on – and taking on this role was not an easy choice. I run a business, I chase my 3 boys around and I try to keep up with my wife (though she usually runs circles around me as some of you may know). Needless to say, I am not hurting for things to spend time on. I took this on because I feel like I can help make a difference and help build up our congregation as a spiritual home for my children, for all of our children and their parents, for young adults searching for something meaningful, for empty nesters seeking out some new place of truth, for retirees who have time to give to a great cause, and for all the people who need each other right here in our community. I took the job because I feel like our country and our congregation is at a crossroads and I am very passionate about setting us on the best road for a bright future. It really matters to me — but I know it isn’t just me — it really matters to all of us.

In thinking about the past year, we have been through an intense amount of change with a lot of stresses and strains that come with change. I think we all owe Hannah Cowart a deep debt of gratitude for the spiritual wisdom she brought to bear this last year.

In the coming year, I am hopeful that the pace of change will slow a bit. We will still have change going on all around us in the world – new policies, laws and tariffs, new social norms, and an ascendant white supremacy.

We also have a lot of change in rebuilding the foundation of our congregation after a time of transition – a new minister, a new director of religious education, a building expansion project, and new administrative processes for how we operate. As is more normal, we have a new budget, new board members and ministry team leaders, the potential for a new day care and if we are able to be fully welcoming, new members. Through all of this, it is really important that we stick together to harness the wonderful and positive side of this change and together turn ourselves to the right road for Northwest. In thinking about this reflection – I wanted to share this quote about our country which also really applies to our uniquely democratic religion –
“Democracy in America is an act of faith. Not faith in the divine, but in the people with whom we hold the fate of this fragile experiment. That’s always been true: we Americans have little to hold us together, really, but some words on parchment and a collective uncoordinated habit of investing those words with meaning.” –author Eric Liu, from his book Become America.

When I really stop and think about it – what holds us together at Northwest is also pretty fragile. We aren’t held by guilt or fear as with some religions. We aren’t held by law or by monetary payment. We aren’t held by faith in the divine. We are held by faith in each other, our shared covenants, by faith in the people who are part of this beloved community. With every positive action, every kind word, every changed heart for the better, and every role taken on in service to the greater – we are held together.

As we think about how to grow – and make no mistake, we must grow to continue as a community. We move, change, ebb and flow, and we must think about how to allow in voices and thoughts and opinions that are not always like our own to continue our community into the future. To hold together this fragile union, we have to listen and try to internalize our new voices and new members, allowing them to lead in our community.

This next quote grounds me in the spiritual growth that we UUs are so capable of:

“I know that people can be better than they are. We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.”

― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

This is my challenge to all of us – both new and longtime community members – we all have to come to this place and think about how to be better than we are to have the beautiful and positive impact we know we can in this city, this country, this world. Our burdens might include new skills learned, new coalitions built, relationships we can improve, and what goals we can achieve to improve our reality.

One thing that has been very difficult for us at this congregation is to figure out how to truly be welcoming to those who are not like us culturally. We need to build our multicultural competencies if we are to welcome in a new generation to continue the next chapter of Northwest. I have been increasingly aware over the course of the past year of wounds we have inflicted on our own Beloved Community – wounds that are unnecessary, and are hurtful to our efforts to keep ourselves functioning well.

We have been here before in our movement; the UUA has had an opportunity to be a united diverse movement before. I want to take a few minutes and talk about what I mean by this.
In 1961 the Unitarians and Universalists merged – merging largely affluent white congregations (Unitarians) with white working class congregations (Universalists) together into one movement. This combined denomination of headish Unitarians and heartish Universalists went on to be a very positive force for change during the Civil Rights movement in the mid 1960s, arguably giving Civil Rights legislation its final push with the martyrdom of UU Rev. James Reeb.

Subsequently, a Black Empowerment movement blossomed within the denomination, challenging the way things had been done for many years. Unfortunately for us all, the Black Empowerment movement splintered and fell apart in part because they were not armed with the tools we have today. Specifically, we have a covenant of right relation that keeps us properly engaged and focused on our shared goals while properly maintaining our interpersonal relationships. By keeping us at the shared table of Beloved Community, this covenant doesn’t allow us to take our ball and go home, or question the motivation or integrity of our fellow congregants, all of which plagued the Black Empowerment movement. If we had been able to share our covenant with them, they may have been able to stay united and might have remained in the UUA.

Our religion today stands much as we were after the Black Empowerment Controversies ended 1971. The UUA wasn’t able to take advantage of the appeal of our democratic strengths because we had no tools to integrate a different culture within our denomination back then. And we still struggle to this day, though we now have a multi-cultural toolset that can allow us to integrate other cultures and people into the melting pot of our denomination. Our movement calls to us to try again to build our Beloved and diverse Community, closing the gap between what we say we want and how we act in order to accomplish our desire. I will take the liberty of paraphrasing our Statue of Liberty: Give me your spiritually hungry and impoverished, your huddled masses yearning to worship freely, the wretched refuse thrown out of and unwelcomed in their tired, rigid religious communities. Send these, the religiously homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the seven principles and our multi-cultural practices!

Our denomination can contain multitudes. Just as the United States is a land that aspires to the rule of law, so should we aspire to using our principles and covenants to bring in seekers of truth to our congregation.

I believe our path for Northwest and Unitarian Universalism overall is to have a second chance at this path to truly build a diverse religious family in our community. To do this, we will have to embrace the fact that our lives, class and wealth have been improved because of the mere color our skin. Those of us who are white have more in every study I have ever seen than those of who are people of color. We need to use our privilege to remove the persistent problems and gaps in our beloved community and beyond. Just as America is an experiment that we are still improving, Northwest and the UUA are experiments that are still growing and improving. We aren’t in the same UUA as we were in the 60s and 70s, with their sky high achievements and rock bottom failures. We have a new chance to do our part in today’s tribal and increasingly violent America – hopefully to pass the tests internal to our congregation and denomination so we can proceed to improve our America by word and deed.

However, as long as there is white privilege, nascent racism, subconscious discrimination, ethnic profiling, gilded zip codes, persistent hiring, wage, and wealth gaps, and huge differences in the justice system, we can’t rest and we must work hard for change. This work is emotionally and spiritually challenging – most of all because of how difficult it is to listen and be still with the discomfort that often comes with hearing our privilege illuminated. We must do more than we think we should have to in order to make sure that new members and different voices really do have an equal opportunity in the UU and Northwest families.

I must do this work to build our congregation and I look forward to working closely with all of you whom I love so much in this room and this congregation to make that happen. I am here to help build the path to our best-beloved community.

Amen

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Farewell to Rev. Jonathan Rogers

Joy and Spiritual Growth, Loving Community / /

Rev. Jonathan Rogers will be completing his tenure at NWUUC on July 31st, having served as interim minister since February of 2018.

His major change was proposing a partnership between Northwest and the Launchpad organization, which provides logistical support for UU communities. The Northwest Board approved this partnership in July of 2018, and it formally took effect in October of that year. Launchpad is a project operating out of the Oak Ridge UU Congregation, in Oak Ridge, TN. In addition to creating a new relationship with another UU organization and congregation, NWUUC’s partnership with Launchpad has offered significant opportunities to both parties for learning from each other and streamlining processes such as rentals, vendor contracts, congregational database management, and office communications. While work remains to be done, NWUUC is smoother in terms of behind-the-scenes operations.

Throughout his time at Northwest, Rev. Jonathan served and led the Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression, Multiculturalism (ARAOMC) Committee. ARAOMC topics were frequent subjects of his sermons. Those sermons included reflections on slavery reparations, the complicated racial history of the UU movement, and how allies can best contribute to movements for justice. Rev. Jonathan took part in a direct action for immigration justice in February of 2019. In an act of civil disobedience, he and other clergy in solidarity with local undocumented students were arrested for speaking out against anti-immigrant Georgia Board of Regents policies during a Board of Regents meeting. Rev. Jonathan will be pursuing additional ways to contribute to immigration and racial justice in his post-NWUUC endeavors.

Rev. Jonathan preached his final sermon from the Northwest pulpit June 16th at our outgathering service. Along with Fathers’ Day and Juneteenth, the theme of the day was socks in honor of Jonathan’s infamous Sunday footwear. Many in the congregation chose to wear ‘crazy socks’ and the RE team presented Jonathan with a gift of official UUA socks. After the service, everyone was invited to write their memories and well wishes for Jonathan on slips of paper to fill a garland of socks. There was even a special cookie cake at the potluck decorated with a cricket wearing colorful socks, an homage to Jonathan’s sermon on entomophagy.

At the conclusion of the service, Rev. Jonathan presented the congregation with a custom community word cloud generated from the Sharing Our Stores Worship Cafe on April 7th.

Rev. Jonathan will be remembered as a beloved interim minister with a keen sense of humor, a devotion to social justice issues, his weekly whimsical socks and his warm, disarming smile.  We wish him well in his next chapter of ministry.

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