Minister’s Column
In gardens, lawns, and parks at this time of year, flowers are blooming everywhere. The days lengthen with early dawns and late sunsets. I love the season of Beltane.
In the flow of the Fellowship’s year, this is a time for reflection and planning. The Board of Trustees leads the way in this process by organizing the annual meeting, held last Sunday. The written annual report, for anyone who wishes to read it, contains summaries from the many committees and groups of the Fellowship. And it contains the budget.
Two Sundays ago, I was present for the Board meeting when we confronted the fact that pledged donations for the coming year (beginning July 1) were short of the proposed budget by about $12,000. The Board went to work, cutting about $4,300 from the budget—still leaving about $7,700 to be made up by increasing revenue. The Board and the Stewardship Team are brainstorming about this now. During the budget-cutting session, I said out loud to the Board: This is stressful. Yes, and we can figure out a way forward.
Also, it is the time to reflect on other aspects of the Fellowship year: what went well this year, what can be improved…how we can grow into our mission to create a loving community of liberal religion here in central Michigan. Approaching the end of my fifth year serving this congregation, I sit alongside the Board of Trustees holding those questions. Like the Board, I am striving to be a good leader of the congregation and to nudge us toward being an even better version of ourselves. Perhaps a pair of guiding questions for May and June, the end of the Fellowship year, would be: What is UUFCM doing well that shouldn’t be changed at all? Where can UUFCM improve and grow?
Those two questions mirror the questions that I asked at my men’s group meeting last week—in that case, it was about my own personal growth. In that men’s circle and elsewhere, my guiding questions toward self-growth are often centered around problems or challenges in my life--what is problematic in my life that is within my power to change? And I remind myself to balance that approach with also asking: what is great about who I am and how I am showing up in the world—that I should not change at all?
May each of us who loves the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Michigan and believes in its life-saving mission find ways to keep supporting it with our ideas and our energy and our commitment. May we hold onto the good while improving the imperfect. Likewise, may each of us look in the mirror and see what is beautiful there that doesn’t need to change—while courageously working on doing better and being better day by day.
PRAYER:
May the flowers of May remind us of the gentle goodness of life. Long summer days are ahead. Mother Nature has gifts for us at every turn.
May we find the rest that we need. May we find the energy that we need to fulfill our life’s mission. Like a refreshing rain shower, may contentment and love bless our hearts and minds.
May it be so, for all living beings. Amen.
Rev. Drew Frantz
May 21, 2024