Perspectives for June 2025

When I began as your minister in August, I had one overarching goal for the year – to build trust. Trust is the foundation of any relationship that nurtures growth, courage, love, and possibility. The writer, organizer, and facilitator adrienne maree brown, speaks of “moving at the speed of trust.” This is a recognition that without trust in a relationship or in a community, it is difficult to go far or fast. And in fact, if you try to move fast or far or deep without trust, your efforts will usually wither, and relationships may get broken in the process. This is because it is so easy to misunderstand each other, to misunderstand someone’s motives or to fail to understand another’s hesitation. Going slow, asking questions, being curious, sharing honestly, moving through conflict with care and attention (including listening) is important to building trust. But in a relationship, when you have a foundation of trust – so many more things are possible. A foundation of trust allows depth to grow in a relationship, deeper sharing, more honesty and vulnerability. It also allows risks to be taken together and change and growth to be nurtured. With trust, you can begin to imagine what you hope to create together, and maybe most importantly, you can weather loss and grief and disappointment –not always easily, as this is never easy – but hopefully with care and resilience.

Throughout this month of June, we will reflect on the role that trust plays in our lives, in our relationships, in our ministry and in our faith. As I look back at this year, I think we have done a good job of taking the time to get to know one another, to learn about each other, and to bring curiosity to our relationship of shared ministry. This, of course, is not a one and done thing. Trust must be continually nurtured through honesty, transparency, and attention – and showing up for and with one another. We’ve got a lot more trust and a lot more knowledge of each other to continue to nurture in the years ahead, but I think we’ve done a good job of building a foundation for the ministry that we will be called to now and in the years to come.

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, Lead Minister

revsfg@uubloomington.org

Summer Religious Education

Summer is here! Sunday programming for children continues throughout the summer, with some changes as we shift back to a 1-service schedule and families and teachers alike take time away. Most programs for adults are on hold till fall, but some take advantage of the longer days and nice weather. Join us for a trip to Prophetstown!

Parents, it’s time to register your children for the 2025-26 church year. It’s extremely helpful to do this now, so that we know how many kids to expect at each service time and can plan accordingly.

Summer Programming for Children

Spirit Play will continue throughout the summer for our 4-6 year olds, in Room 105. On nice days the teachers may opt to take the children outside for part of the class, but will return to the classroom for pick-up at 11:45.

Children and youth ages 7 & up will meet in Room 208 for Summer RE in June and July. Each week there will be a special activity, often led by guest teachers from the congregation who have a special interest to share. Activities may include outdoor play.

On August 3, children ages 7 & up will attend the worship service which will feature special participatory music, then the remainder of the month will be August Intersession! During these four weeks, children in grades 2-5 may choose among three rooms: Imaginative Play, Arts & Crafts, and Games. Families may sign up in advance, or just come on Sunday and choose any room that is not yet full. Watch for descriptions of the options and the link to sign up in the summer Friday Updates and August Perspectives newsletter.

Youth Programming

Special events are planned for our High School Youth and Middle School Youth throughout June and July. To be notified of upcoming youth events, please register your youth here.

Middle School Youth Group (6th-8th grades) will begin regular meetings on Sunday, August 10 during the service (10:45 - 11:45am), in Room 210. When we resume a 2-service schedule in September, this group will meet during the second service (11:45am - 12:45pm).

High School Youth Group (9th-12th grades) will begin regular meetings on Sunday, August 10 after the service (12:00pm - 1:30pm), in Room 210. When we resume a 2-service schedule in September, this group will meet after the second service (1:00pm - 2:30pm).

Regular Fall Religious Education for children age 4 through grade 5 begins on September 14, when we return to a 2-service schedule. Watch for details in the August edition of Perspectives!

Volunteers are still needed for summer and for next fall. Please contact Stephanie Kimball (kimball@uubloomington.org) for more information.

Dr. Stephanie Kimball, Director of Lifespan Religious Education

kimball@uubloomington.org

Regular Thursday night choir rehearsals are over for the summer, except for a special rehearsal on June 19 to prepare for Mary Goetze’s memorial (Sunday afternoon June 22).

If you would like to be added to the choir contact list for next year, please email Music Director Susan Swaney at music@uubloomington.org

Family Choir! Come sing with the All-Ages Rock Band on June 15. Just show up for the 9:45 rehearsal. We'll sing Bruno Mars's Count on Me with word sheets.

Susan Swaney, Director of Music

music@uubloomington.org

As many of you may know, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington switched databases a few years ago. The database we now use, known as Planning Center, has a front facing center for congregants and members called Church Center. Church Center is useful to our congregation because it contains relevant information relating to the happenings of UUCB. Within Church Center, you can find this information: the Calendar, Signups, Groups, Give, the Directory, and your personal profile.

• Calendar - View all upcoming events, their times, and location!
• Signups - Where you can go to register for chalice lighting, classes, volunteer opportunities, and so much more!
• Groups - This is a feature that allows you to join groups that interest you, such as community building groups like Fellowship Dinners, justice centered work like the various Social Justice Task Forces, or volunteer groups that range from helping make meals for people in our congregation to greeting on Sundays.
• Give - This feature allows you to view your pledge or make a donation to funds such as the Sunday Plate, your pledge, and Social Justice.
• Directory - Our directory is limited to members and pledging friends and allows you to look up contact information for other members and pledging friends who have shared their contact information on the platform.
• Contact Information - This is where you can update your contact information and modify its visibility in the directory, or if you aren’t in the directory but wish to stay in contact, this allows the church administrators to be in touch with you easily.

Church Center is a tool to be used by you! It is a great way to learn what is going on, stay in touch with folks, and become more involved. While it can be accessed through a desktop, there is also an app for Church Center! This can be downloaded through the App Store or Google Play (links to be directed there are available here: https://uucb.churchcenter.com/home). Using this app on your phone or tablet makes getting connected more convenient.

If you have questions or need help setting up the app on your phone, please reach out to me: office@uubloomington.org or 812-531-1262.

Jo Bowman, Communications Coordinator

office@uubloomington.org

Before leaning into this month’s theme, I want to take a moment to celebrate our successful pledge drive campaign. We made it to the aspirational goal we set for ourselves and beyond! Wow! We are overwhelmed by the generosity this congregation has shown. Many thanks to the members of the Pledge Drive Committee (Corrin Clarkson, Chair; Joan Caulton, JaneAnn Gifford, Beth Henkel, Pat Slabach, Judy Witt) who coordinated the campaign. And many thanks to all who pledged! Your pledges will help us move into this next year in a strong financial position, ready to address current challenges and plan for our collective future.

Finances are one pillar of strength for our future growth. Another pillar is trust, which is the theme for the month of June.

Cultivating trust is central to the work of the Board. One section of the Board Covenant, which establishes our shared expectations around the ways we will relate to each other and to the congregation, addresses trust directly:

Uphold the trust of the Congregation by:

• Being available to the Congregation and to each other;
• Listening deeply to the joys and concerns of congregants;
• Ensuring that Board decisions and actions take into account diverse opinions and perspectives of congregants;
• Exploring creative solutions to congregational challenges;
• Acting reliably and in a trustworthy manner;
• Embracing conflict and critique as a path toward deeper understanding and more complete problem-solving; 
• Engaging in thoughtful and deliberate decision-making; and then:
• Speaking as one voice.

(You can find the rest of the Covenant on the UUCB website.)

We will spend next year as a congregation discussing our collective future: our hopes, dreams, concerns, goals. Why are we here? What are we, as a community, called to do? How can we best serve each other, our local community, and the larger world? A central component of these discussions will be the development of a new congregational covenant, which will establish the expectations we share for our relationships with each other and with the broader UUCB community. Creating and adopting a new covenant is one way in which we will cultivate and nurture trust in our beloved community.

We look forward to learning more about where you see us headed as a community, and how we can grow and change together!

Jane McLeod, President

pres@uubloomington.org

The Racial Justice Task Force works to dismantle racism in ourselves and our institutions through education and action. We invite you to join us on this journey, either as members of the task force or by participating in our learning/doing opportunities.

Reflecting on trust, our theme for June, consider these words from two contemporary Black women leaders:

Rev. Leah Gunning Francis invites us to ACT in her IU 2025 Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Breakfast keynote address [timestamp 31:25]:

• Accept that the way things are is not the way things have to be. Human hands constructed this; human hands can reconstruct this.
• Correct false narratives. Tell the truth. Be willing to speak up when truth is not being told
• Trust that our actions will make a difference.

Rev. Jennifer Bailey, founder of the Faith Matters Network, tells us: “Social change happens at the speed of relationships. And relationships move at the speed of trust.”

Let us ACT together and be trustworthy as we work for racial justice.

Over the past year our task force distributed children’s books celebrating diverse characters and authors, joined the Bloomington Multi-Faith Alliance and Thriving Connections to offer a Poverty Simulation, supported and attended the NAACP Freedom Fund Awards Dinner, co-sponsored the NAACP forum “70 Years Post-Brown: Looking to the Past, Transforming the Future”, helped fund a UUCB delegate’s attendance at GA, and made donations to support Indiana projects of the Miami Native American Tribes.

In addition, our task force continues to have the honor of serving as the organizational home for Resilience Productions, whose mission is to educate, enlighten and engage the public regarding the many unknown and un-celebrated contributions of African Americans to Indiana’s – and ultimately to our country’s – history. Resilience Productions staged From Truth to Justice: The Price we Paid for the Ballot in October 2024 and More Than Your Honor: An Evening with Judge Viola Taliaferro in March 2025. The productions were held at the Monroe County History Center. In support of Resilience Productions, task force members helped with 5-50 Club fundraising and provided and served refreshments for performances.

Looking ahead, please join us on July 26th for a trip to Indianapolis where we will enjoy a soul food meal at Kountry Kitchen and celebrate the accomplishments of Crispus Attucks High School students and staff with a guided tour of the Crispus Attucks Museum. Crispus Attucks High School was built in the 1920s when Indianapolis’ white residents forced the school board to revert to segregation. The school was built to fail, but the students and staff overcame a system designed to belittle them. As background, the documentary Attucks: The School that Opened A City is highly recommended and can be streamed for free. The task force will cover museum entry fees for up to 50 people and carpooling will be available.

This fall we and other faith communities in the Bloomington Multi-Faith Alliance will read and discuss Cracking the Healer’s Code: A Prescription for Healing Racism & Finding Wholenessby Milagros Phillips. The author will be with us virtually the afternoons of September 7th, 2025 and January 18th, 2026 to ‘bookend’ the local read with a workshop and closing Q&A. Save these dates and join the larger Bloomington community in this learning and growing opportunity.

All the time, be ready to speak up for the truth and to intervene when someone is under attack. Be trustworthy.

The Right to Be organization has good information about why it is important to respond as a bystander to harassment and offers the 5Ds (Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, Direct, Delay, Document) – “different methods that you can use to support someone who is being harassed, emphasize that harassment is not okay, and demonstrate to people in your life that they have the power to make their community safer.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Learning for Justice center has a “Speak Up at School” pocket guide that is applicable beyond school settings as a response to biased language and situations. We will be distributing copies of this guide on June 1st.

We hope these resources will help prepare you to respond when you witness injustice. Trust that our actions will make a difference.

Racial Justice Task Force members will be in Fellowship Hall after the service on June 1st and June 15th to answer questions and to sign people up for the July 26th trip to Crispus Attucks Museum in Indianapolis.

This living document contains additional information about task force events and other resources. Contact task force chairperson, Ruth Aydt, using this contact form for more information or questions.

Green Sanctuary has two events in June

1. Saturday, June 14th, Clothing Swap, 10 to noon in Fellowship Hall

Start gathering what you want to bring, from clothes your children have outgrown to things you haven’t worn in a few years!

Please contact Stephanie Kimball to help before and/or after the swap.

1. Interested in doing indoor food-waste collection to keep it out of the landfill?

Click on this link to learn about Bokashi. Please contact Molly O’Donnell by June 15th to sign up for a brief information session at the church on Sunday June 29th at noon.

If not enough express interest, you could attend a training on either June 19th or July 19th from 2:00-3:30 at the Community Orchard, 2120 S. Highland Ave. To register, email GardenQuest.

~Molly O’Donnell, Green Sanctuary Task Force co-chair

Current Member Number: 473

Attendance for the month of April

4/06/2025: 331

4/13/2025: 371

4/20/2025: 366

4/27/2025: 408

Offertory Total: $3,177.68