Important message from the KUUF Board of Trustees
Dear Beloved KUUF Community,
In compliance with Governor Inslee’s directive, and the CDC’s and our Parish Nurse Jennifer Ingalls’ recommendation, KUUF’s Board has voted (unanimously) to suspend services at KUUF until further notice. The building is closed. Our employees are working from home, and we are paying them for the duration.
We hold all of you in our hearts, and hope that you are finding ways to connect electronically, whether it be through our online services (so many thanks to the Worship Committee and Reverend Jessica for creating meaningful worship during this hard time,) your Chalice Circle or Circle of Care, and through simple phone calls to people you care about.
At this time, it is highly likely that we will hold our Annual Congregational Meeting (April 26) via Zoom. I am hoping that most of you are getting acquainted and comfortable with Zoom meetings, and will take part. Our bylaws require 20% of our membership take part in order to establish a quorum. The items we need to vote on are these:
· Our budget for 2020-2021
· Electing two members to the Board of Directors
· Selection of our Charitable Giving recipients for the coming year
· Use of money from the Endowment Committee’s earnings to pay for our new Audio/Visual system.
In order to share information about each of these items, the Board will hold digital Conversations with the Board zoom meetings, beginning on Wednesday, April 1 at 6:00 pm and continuing each Wednesday through April 22. Please join us with your questions and comments, and just to be together in community. The zoom link will be emailed to attendees.
Our votes will likely be held using Survey Monkey. Individuals who request paper ballots for voting may receive them through the mail.
You will be receiving copies of the proposed budget, a nomination form for Charitable Giving, and a history of past recipients as soon as these become available. You will also receive the links to Conversations with the Board.
Isolation is challenging, but I hope you are not finding it intolerable. May you be finding ways to appreciate it—perhaps through quiet meditation, walks outside, hearing birdsongs, creating beauty, reading books you have long wanted to read, talking remotely to friends and family. I firmly believe that love, and reaching out to others, is what will carry us through this. We can emerge from the other side as better people, more thankful for what we have, more convinced of the interconnected web that unites us.
A dear friend, Reba Renner, shared this poem with me, which I pass on to you:
Bugs in a Bowl
Han Shan, that great and crazy, wonder-filled Chinese poet of a thousand years ago, said:
We're just like bugs in a bowl. All day going around never leaving their bowl.
I say, That's right! Every day climbing up
the steep sides, sliding back.
Over and over again. Around and around.
Up and back down.
Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands,
cry, moan, feel sorry for yourself.
Or. Look around. See your fellow bugs.
Walk around.
Say, Hey, how you doin'?
Say, Nice Bowl!
--David Budbill
May we all see the beauty of the bowl.
With love,
Lisa Johnson, for the KUUF Board