“Called to Connect in the Midst of Change”
THEME DESCRIPTION
It is easy to lose your way in the chaos of personal or cultural change. During such a time it is natural that we would seek to strengthen our connection to others in order to stabilize our relationships and our grounding. To help us in that endeavor, the conference planning team is pleased to announce the theme of our spring conference: “Called to Connect in the Midst of Change”
Our theme will be presented by Karen Hering, author of the book, Trusting Change: Finding Our Way through Personal and Global Transformation. Karen is our colleague and an author. She led a literary ministry for 15 years and has also served as a congregational minister, a chaplain and a threshold guide to people and communities on the cusp of change. She is the author of Writing to Wake the Soul: Opening the Sacred Conversation Within, and both of her books have been honored by the Silver Nautilus Award. She is the creator of Threshold Times, a community on Substack found at karenhering.substack.com.
Our conference opens Monday, April 21, 2025, and concludes Wednesday afternoon. She will present our theme at the fourth session on Tuesday morning. No advance reading or preparation needed, but UURMaPA members who wish to purchase Karen Hering’s book, Trusting Change, will enjoy a discount when using the code HERING. Go to inSpirit, [uuabookstore.org] to buy the book.
Karen is looking forward to joining us and she encourages us to embrace change by making good connections. She said, “Whether in personal transitions or on the shifting terrain of our shared world, we are all called to participate in change by connecting more deeply—to one another, to our bodies and the wisdom they carry, and to the world around us. With poetry and powerful questions, personal reflection, embodied practices and conversation, in this year’s theme session, we’ll consider the dynamics of change and how it becomes more trustworthy when we engage it more fully.”
We will also have a concert with Melanie DeMore (see more about Melanie HERE) and a service of remembrance honoring those we’ve lost.
See lots more about this event’s WORSHIP SERVICES HERE.
AGENDA
ODYSSEYS
The UURMaPA spring conference features two odysseys, one with Phyllis Morales and one with Scotty McLennan. The conference begins Monday, April 21 and the odysseys are scheduled on the first day and the last day (Wednesday, April 23).
Phyllis calls her odyssey, “The U-Haul Chronicles: An Illustrated Odyssey.” Married to the Rev. Peter Morales for 58 years, her odyssey recounts in photographs, 79 years, 2 children, 4 careers, 28 moves through 4 countries and 7 states. Fasten your seatbelt! She began her odyssey as a special education teacher, then moved into journalism and desktop publishing. She taught herself Spanish in her 40s and founded a scholarship program for Mayan youth in Guatemala. Her connection to Guatemala is strong, as she sheltered a Guatemalan family for 10 years. She is a leader in Community Search and Rescue.
Scotty McLennan wonders how to age gracefully in a way that might be helpful to all of us as retired UU ministers and partners. He was raised on Chicago’s north shore as a conservative Presbyterian Republican, but rebelled as a teenager and became a liberal UU Democrat. He graduated from Harvard divinity and law schools to become an inner-city minister-at-law for 10 years with the UU Urban Ministry in Boston. He turned to academia, where he spent 30 years as the university chaplain at Tufts and Stanford. He now teaches ethics part-time at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He married Ellen 44 years ago and has two children and three grandchildren. He loves traveling, spending time in California’s wine country, and asking existential questions like “Why are we here?” He wonders how a conservative Protestant Republican from the Midwest became Garry Trudeau’s “Rev. Scot Sloan” in Doonesbury – “the fighting young priest who can talk to the young.”
MINISTORY
Debuting in this conference will be a special feature— “Ministory”—a project in development by Wayne Walder, in which he presents personal stories from retired colleagues. He believes our stories deserve a degree of reverence and that they can teach us about our selves and our ministries.
“Ministory” is a project in development by Wayne Walder. After a single session this spring, Wayne has plans for a larger presentation in the fall.
Wayne has long been fascinated by the power of stories, especially those stories that we know from our time in ministry. He believes our stories deserve a degree of reverence and that they can teach us about our selves and our ministries.
Strangely, though, Wayne found it difficult to coax us into telling our stories. He said, “I was surprised to notice some reluctance among us for telling our personal stories. I think I understand. We have been servants, and servants don’t tell stories. We don’t tell them because serving others, by its very definition, is not about us. We keep stories about our ministry to ourselves.”
But Wayne believes we are no longer servants, “Remembering our ministry and its stories, can help us remember the goodness of our lives, the goodness of our work, the love we shared, the confusion we experienced, the insight we felt and the pain we grieved.”
Wayne found a few of us who were willing to share their story, so he recorded Jake Morrill, Jan Carlsson-Bull, Colleen McDonald and Jane Rzepka, and will present a segment on April 22nd, the second day of our conference.
He said, “We hunger for stories, even the telling of our own. They comfort us, remind us of our work, and they hold up the life we shared. Our work was, is, bigger than we remember.”