Dear Sunnyhill members and friends:
I am so deeply grateful and excited to have been called as your settled minister! My family and I are eager to get to Pittsburgh and start our new life with you, but we still have a good bit of work to do here in North Carolina before we can be on our way.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be wrapping up my 20-year career at the University of North Carolina while my wife Marta prepares to close her therapeutic massage practice in Chapel Hill and our daughter Ella begins a busy season of summer camps. And all three of us will soon be packing everything we own into boxes and preparing to move in mid-August.
At the same time that the congregation is preparing to welcome me as your minister, you have also gone through the process of saying goodbye to Rev. Jay Abernathy, your interim minister for the past four years. I am a big admirer of Jay and the outstanding work that he has done. In fact, if it weren’t for his good work, I would not be coming to join you. So I extend my heartfelt thanks to Jay and hope that you will do so too.
During this time of transition, I’d like everyone to take a few deep breaths and get some rest because I expect that we’ll hit the ground running when September rolls around. But for now I suggest that you enjoy the summer in whatever way you can.
Feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook (if you’re a Facebook person); you can also follow me on Twitter (@jimmagaw), although I haven’t been tweeting much lately. I do plan to do some posting on my blog this summer: www.religioustransformation.blogspot.com.
This fall at Sunnyhill, one of the things we’re going to talk about is what it means to be part of a covenantal community. Community can be both positive and negative—there are, after all, healthy communities and not-so-healthy communities. Being part of a community based in covenant means that there are implicit and explicit promises that we make to one another—ways of living our way into our highest aspirations—that are more important to us than any individual beliefs or creeds.
We’ll also discuss how to live these promises not just in our congregation and in our families, but in the world beyond our walls. What are the implications of a “covenant of being” and how does it relate to our UU principles (which are, themselves, part of a covenant) that extol the inherent dignity of each individual as well as the interdependent web of which we are all a part? These questions are central to our mission, which is the driving force of any institution that strives to transform itself, its members and the world into something that is better for all.
As I look forward to our new beginning together, I am again aware of how each ending is the beginning of something else, just as each beginning starts at an ending of one sort or another. May we begin and end in peace, in joy and in love!
Jim
I am so deeply grateful and excited to have been called as your settled minister! My family and I are eager to get to Pittsburgh and start our new life with you, but we still have a good bit of work to do here in North Carolina before we can be on our way.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be wrapping up my 20-year career at the University of North Carolina while my wife Marta prepares to close her therapeutic massage practice in Chapel Hill and our daughter Ella begins a busy season of summer camps. And all three of us will soon be packing everything we own into boxes and preparing to move in mid-August.
At the same time that the congregation is preparing to welcome me as your minister, you have also gone through the process of saying goodbye to Rev. Jay Abernathy, your interim minister for the past four years. I am a big admirer of Jay and the outstanding work that he has done. In fact, if it weren’t for his good work, I would not be coming to join you. So I extend my heartfelt thanks to Jay and hope that you will do so too.
During this time of transition, I’d like everyone to take a few deep breaths and get some rest because I expect that we’ll hit the ground running when September rolls around. But for now I suggest that you enjoy the summer in whatever way you can.
Feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook (if you’re a Facebook person); you can also follow me on Twitter (@jimmagaw), although I haven’t been tweeting much lately. I do plan to do some posting on my blog this summer: www.religioustransformation.blogspot.com.
This fall at Sunnyhill, one of the things we’re going to talk about is what it means to be part of a covenantal community. Community can be both positive and negative—there are, after all, healthy communities and not-so-healthy communities. Being part of a community based in covenant means that there are implicit and explicit promises that we make to one another—ways of living our way into our highest aspirations—that are more important to us than any individual beliefs or creeds.
We’ll also discuss how to live these promises not just in our congregation and in our families, but in the world beyond our walls. What are the implications of a “covenant of being” and how does it relate to our UU principles (which are, themselves, part of a covenant) that extol the inherent dignity of each individual as well as the interdependent web of which we are all a part? These questions are central to our mission, which is the driving force of any institution that strives to transform itself, its members and the world into something that is better for all.
As I look forward to our new beginning together, I am again aware of how each ending is the beginning of something else, just as each beginning starts at an ending of one sort or another. May we begin and end in peace, in joy and in love!
Jim