A space for grace. That’s what I said last week that UUFH is. Helen and Susan had invited me to lunch to explore how they might best use their time and talents to help the congregation. We were trying to catch up and see where their current interests and concerns and abilities met with congregational needs and opportunities.
Spring means new life. It brings people out. Now that Helen is recovered and they are feeling up to it again, Helen and Susan were ready to get out and engage the world. And to do it through their commitment and participation. They wanted to help this fellowship be that something more that is needed and that creates opportunities for others to do the same. When Helen heard me say the phrase, “a space for grace,” she quickly said she liked it and took note of it as a summary line for this congregation.
The notion of grace is important to me. I don’t use the word much, but when I do I like the feel of it. It reminds me of something real and unusually powerful; seemingly beyond myself, but very much the result of the choices and commitments I make. UU theologian Sharon Welch defines grace as “a power or an intensity of relationship that is more than we can predict or produce solely by our own volition.” “Grace is a power that lifts us to a larger self and deeper joy.” It is “the gift of being loved that enables work for justice.” More than justice, we create the opportunity for graceful moments as we “participate in the capacity for “right relations” with others, with nature, and with ourselves.” If you want to live gracefully that is a good guiding sentence.
This year it is more important than ever that this congregation—your congregation—live that sentence real. Each of us feels the need for our lives to be a meaningful part of something more. We want to feel the difference that is us and that we live with our time. And life needs each of us. Life and love need us to create the opportunities, the space for grace to happen.
That’s what this Fellowship is and does. And we’ve been creating more such life enlarging opportunities in programs and worship, outreach and action, community and belonging, meaning and hope. We are able to do this good work and be in this good space because of your support and the way we all come together to create “this relationship that is more than we can predict” or make happen by ourselves. But to do this, we first need to meet our budget so it can then recede again into the working background that makes opportunities possible. And right now, it looks like when the pledge drive is completed we will be 10% short of what we need to simply meet our bills at last year’s levels. If projections hold, we will only raise $180,000 of our $200,000 goal. That says nothing negative about who we are and what we do. We are a good space, and we are in a good place. We are growing with many welcome new members, while saying sad goodbyes to several beloved older ones at the same time. Being short of our pledge goal simply means that, at this point, we need $20,000. And it has to come from us. (We can’t do more fundraisers or just borrow from reserves.) Each of us. All of us. Somehow, we have to continue to hold and strengthen this embrace that is UU, UUFH, right here, right now in Hendersonville, NC. We are a powerful, important, space for grace. Grace happens. And it happens here.
Make that be so. For others, for nature, for the world, and for ourselves.
Rev. Jim McKinley, Minister