At the recent UUFH Board Retreat at Tigg’s Pond Retreat Center in Green River, the Board chose to focus on two major portions of the newly completed Strategic Plan for our Fellowship. This year, we want to focus on visibility and a facilities plan.
Visibility is a many-faceted concept. To be visible in the community involves such things as: signage on and off campus, newspaper ads and articles, the concert series publicity, web page design, social justice activities, showing up at an event with the UUFH t-shirt, getting on the bus to a social justice activity with other groups, a coordinated communications plan, and many other things. Even putting solar panels on our roof speaks out loudly about who we are.
Your Board is forming a Visibility Task Force to establish and execute a plan to help our community recognize us and understand what we are about as Unitarian Universalists. We especially need folks with a marketing background to work with staff, the Board, and task force members to achieve that aim. If you are interested in helping with this effort, do not have a marketing background, but do have the passion to see it through, we hope you will join us. To sign up, please contact me, or Sandy McGlashan in the office.
The second major focus is the creation of a Facilities Plan. Where do we want to be in the next few years with our Fellowship, either on our Kanuga Road campus or relocating to the Brevard Road property? If we choose to stay on Kanuga Road, how do we improve our auxiliary facilities: the log cabin, RE cottage, and office building? And what do we do with the Brevard Road property: sell it to help finance the upgrade, or keep renting it for income? The strong message from the Strategic Plan is that, until we know what we want to do on our current site, we shouldn’t divest ourselves of the Brevard Road property. We are looking for members who are willing to form a task force for the important job of preparing a much-needed Facilities Plan. Again, please let me or another Board member know of your interest.
On another note, a newspaper column by Katherine Parker regarding racial reconciliation following the Mother
Emanuel Church murders, moved me. She referred to a conversation with Susan Glisson of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi. This is more a matter of local rather than national conversations. The institute promotes “The Welcome Table” where up to 25 people of all races sit and talk. The moderators ask participants to speak for a few minutes about “when he or she first noticed the elephant of race in the room.” Tears, laughter, and “nervous stories” fill the room. She quotes Henry Wordsworth Longfellow saying, “My enemy is someone whose stories I don’t know.” Though not necessarily being enemies when you share your story it is hard to think of the stranger as “other.” This speaks to me on many levels, from race relations to just getting comfortable and being able to be empathetic with those around us at work, school, or those who share UUFH. Think about getting to know the story of those around you at UUFH.
“As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.” (Desiderata)
Keith Dalbec, President