Minister’s Letter — March 2007

Dear Friends,

By the time you receive this Newsletter, you will know that our gala 50th anniversary celebration and auction will be only a couple of days away on March 3. As of this writing, it looks like it will be a great time together. On Sunday morning, March 4, we will continue the celebration by honoring those who were some of our founding members or who were members shortly after the founding years. Though they are now few in number, we will look forward to their memories and recollections of those early days. I hope you can be with us that Sunday.

As I often say in my opening words on Sunday mornings, we are a human community. But we are not just any ordinary human community. Ours is based on high ideals of how we want to be and live in the world. That community was started 50 years ago by 12 brave and committed individuals, persons who believed in a particular world view based on universal principles of compassion and justice. They believed others in the Croton area also shared that view and so our founders took risks and created a place where those others could join them. And so they have. They are us.

And now, our task is to look into the future as our founders did and determine the kind of promise and future we want to create and offer to those who are searching for us and will join us and take the lead. It is a serious challenge and I consider it a blessed opportunity. Ours is an opportunity to extend the living human tradition we are presently so fortunate to be a part of - a tradition filled with social and human rights activists, free thinkers, spiritual seekers and religious innovators. Our calling is to extend that tradition to those who will follow us, seeking what we are seeking: truth and meaning.

Victor Frankl wrote that there are three sources of human meaning:
1) the intrinsic worth of human experiences of love and beauty
2) the capacity to endure suffering; and
3) participation in serving a cause that is greater than the self.

I find all three sources within our Fellowship:

* The intrinsic worth of human experiences of love and beauty is what we celebrate during worship each Sunday and what we share in our common endeavors and camaraderie.

* Through sharing and mutual support, our capacity to endure and become wise through the disappointments, losses and tragedies of life is enhanced.

* Through our collective commitment to our UU principles to live compassionately with one another as we work to heal a fractured world, we are able to transcend the self.

That is a tradition well worth keeping and nurturing and passing on, don’t you think? I feel truly blessed to be a part of it. The experience connects me with life at its best. See you at the Fellowship.

Jim Covington