05/02/2018 by Shannon Day

Minister’s Musing Among the Mountains – Week of May 4

“What’s the hardest part of being an interim Minister?” The above question was one of those questions from last summer’s “Stump the Minister” service. I’d planned to respond to the unanswered questions over the course of this church year. Events caught up with us and I had to delay the responses until now. So, what is the hardest part of being an interim minister? The main challenge is moving every year or two (or occasionally 3 years as here). Everything in a temporary home has to be sold, given away, or packed up to move to a new location. Books

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04/18/2018 by Shannon Day

Minister’s Musings Among the Mountains – Week of April 18

“Are We Having a Church Fight?” Someone asked me that question recently. I had to pause for a moment to think about the implications of what they were asking. After all, we all *know* that church fights are bad… I forget what I said exactly in response, but I wouldn’t call any of the conversations at Westside to be in the category of church fight. I’d suggest instead that what’s going on is a spirited conversation. More on that below. The image of a classic church fight is not a pretty one. One cartoon I saw years ago imagined a

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04/11/2018 by Shannon Day

Poetry and Gratitude – Cynthia Westby, Dir. of RE for Children and Youth

What if you woke up each morning to a poem instead of an alarm?  Poet Naomi Shihab Nye, famous for her poem “Kindness” (you can read it here:  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/kindness), woke her son up for years with poetry from poets all over the world.  Always short, sometimes just a stanza of a poem, that morning’s poem would come up, over time, in the family’s conversations as their son brought up the feelings and ideas evoked in him by the poem of the morning. What would grow in us if we took time each day for poetry?  What would grow in our

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04/11/2018 by Shannon Day

Why We Can’t Shy Away from the Term “White Supremacy” – Tracy Burrows, Social Justice Council Chair

At a Social Justice Council meeting earlier this month, we discussed plans for a new Racial Justice initiative at Westside. We’d met with representatives from Eastshore UU’s Beloved Racial Justice group and we’d reached out to nearby UU congregations to see if they were interested in joining with us to offer the UUA curriculum Beloved Conversations: Meditations on Race and Ethnicity. We also discussed Eastshore UU’s advice that we not begin our conversations on racial justice effort with the term “white supremacy.” We heard that the term was too divisive – especially for congregants who are just beginning to understand

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04/04/2018 by Shannon Day

Minister’s Musings Among the Mountains – Week of April 6

“White What….?” Language is powerful. The spoken and written word carries great symbolism and it can be skillful or harmful depending on its use and interpretation. Take the current national conversation about white supremacy in America. When I began to hear the term white supremacy earlier in my life, images of the KKK, police beatings in the ‘60s South, and survivalist groups came to mind. Ok, let’s do some labels. I’m white. I’m in my late 60s. I’m male and heterosexual in my gender and sexual identification. How on earth could I also be a white supremacist?  The very word

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03/28/2018 by Shannon Day

Minister’s Musings Among the Mountains – Glimmers of Light

There’s been a lot of worry and pessimism on Facebook and other social media in the last year or so. People worry about the state of the world, climate change, race relations, and much more. It’s probably tempting to take a break from information and emotion overload. When I was a young child and thought I heard strange noises from under the bed, my solution was to pull the covers over my head. It obviously worked because the noises went away, and I would awaken the next morning ready to face a new day. One of the windows in my

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03/21/2018 by Shannon Day

What is in a Name? Cynthia Westby, Dir. of RE for Children and Youth

What is in a name? Great question! I just read a wonderfully provocative book by Rabbi David A. Cooper’s book “God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism.” His suggestion? That we begin to think of all beings as verbs rather than nouns. So, you would see your child and see “Carol-ing” rather than “Carol,” for instance. This way of naming with verbs captured my imagination and I worked with this as a spiritual practice over the past few weeks. Language and naming are important. They affect how we experience ourselves and other living beings. Consider this

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03/14/2018 by Shannon Day

We’re In This Together: Springing Forward – A message from Patti McCall, Board President

Good grief! It’s that time again. This past weekend we were reminded to Spring Forward – moving our clocks ahead by an hour. I love it that the days are getting longer and the many reminders that spring is just about upon us. But I hate moving my clock ahead and losing that hour. Time is so precious and every year I resent losing those 60 minutes. Yes, I know I should feel like I get it back in the fall, but I don’t. So, what does this have to do with a message from the Westside Board President. What

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