“Blessings and Challenges: Faithfully Navigating Change”
THEME DESCRIPTION
As we UURMaPAns retire and face advancing age, we encounter both blessings and challenges in our personal relationships, our faith communities, and the wider world in which we live. How do we navigate all these changes while being true to our deepest convictions, living our lives as responsible elders, creative beings, bringers of joy and peace and justice?
No matter our differences, we are all in this same boat. How good it is to come together to find our collective wisdom, encourage one another, and move forward with our faith renewed. The experiences in the virtual Land of Zoom these past three years are very much at the heart of the fall conference theme.
PLANNING TEAM WELCOME
Watch a 6-minute video message from our Planning Team Convener Barbro Hansson.
Roberta Finkelstein was your Fall 2023 Conference Planning Team’s Theme Panel Coordinator. Enjoy her 2.5 minute video introduction to this aspect of our gathering.
Small Groups again provided us with meaningful moments of interaction around our lives and the theme. Watch a two-minute video about this aspect from Small Group Coordinator, Sonya Sukalski.
AGENDA
ODYSSEYS
Of course, our conferences usually feature two Odysseys, one from a minister, and one from a partner. And at this conference, we featured two Odysseys, one with Rev. Olav Nieuwejaar and another with Eleanor Richardson.
Odysseys have always been a popular feature of UU ministerial culture. The sharing of experiences and insights gleaned through experience is an excellent resource for younger ministers and a source of connection for colleagues.
Rev. Olav Nieuwejaar served the UU Congregation in Milford NH from 1976 to 2000. Olav and his wife Rev. Jeanne Nieuwejaar served as Co-Interim Ministers in Cambridge, England, and at the UU Congregation at Shelter Rock on Long Island
NY. They also served as Co-District Executives for the New Hampshire-Vermont
District of the UUA. Ordained in 1968, Reverend Olav Nieuwejaar served the UU
Congregation in Milford (NH) for 24 years. He has served the Northern New
England District in many capacities over the years, and, from 2002 to 2006, was CoDistrict Executive with Jeanne. After retirement in 2006, he served as the District’s Ministerial Settlement Representative for 8 years. Olav is a lifelong Universalist. He grew up next door to a small New England village Universalist church, where he first met Jeanne Harrison, his future wife, the minister’s daughter. He and Jeanne have two adult children, Nils and Khoren.
Eleanor Motley Richarson has resided in Rockland ME, with her husband, The Rev. Peter Tufts Richardson, since 2002. She is a retired organ builder, and the author of five books of local history: Hurricane Island, North Haven Summers,
Andover: A Century of Change, Mechanic Street: Uncovering the History of a Maine Neighborhood, and a history of the Motley family. For 10 years she and her husband Peter transcribed and edited 80 years of family diaries, written by his ancestors, father and son Joseph and Henry Ingraham, on Ingraham’s Point in Rockland’s south end. The Ingraham Diaries, 1795–1875, was published in 2018.
Eleanor currently serves as UURMaPA Obituary Editor, responsible for partner obituaries and she led a Fall 2022 UURMaPA Conference Interest Group on “Writing
Your Own Obituary.”