Notes from the Minister March 11, 2020
GNUUC friends:
You should be so proud of your leadership!
As the coronavirus has continued to expand in the United States, schools, businesses, and houses of worship have shut down. Even though CV-19 is only showing up in a handful of persons, in Tennessee, wisdom and experience (as well as common sense) tell us that the outbreak here is just weeks away.
The GNUUC Board along with the Healthy Congregations Team (HCT) held a Zoom meeting and discussed the epidemic and our response to it in detail. I mostly listened, because it’s my policy to empower leadership, and they were doing a great job without my two cents! Not only should you be proud of their decision-making process, you should be impressed by the care and concern for each of you, along with the respectful and thoughtful way they interact with one another. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a Board with such an enlightened process. With an MD, several tech people, and people who “get” data and information, they made hopeful but realistic decisions for the immediate future and set the stage for future emergencies. I feel honored to be working hand-in-hand with them.
Speaking of hands: I know many UU ministers who are saying they’d rather err on the side of caution than act too late or do too little, and I also have confidence that our members are intelligent, rational, and compassionate people who can and will make good decisions. I trust you all to do this. Keep calm and wash your hands! (with soap)
I made a few points with our Board, and I wish to share them with you:
We are not a school where control is very challenging. We are not a business where it is near impossible. We are a community, a chosen family, and a chosen faith. Remember I said last week that “faith” can be seen as triadic. It is a felt sense of relation between 1) oneself and 2) the “other” as conditioned by 3) loyalty to a center of power and value.
1) We can have faith in humanity’s basic goodness, in cycles of life and death and renewal, in ourselves and our fellow congregants to function as they always have.
2) Let us temper our fear with love. Love and respect for the “other”. Caution tempered by the reality that even in Nashville, and so much more so throughout the world, the ability to self-quarantine is a privilege that most do not have. We know that having their homes flattened and losing all their possessions annihilates the anxiety about potential spread of CV-19 for hundreds if not thousands in our own city.
3) We are a church. Our job is to be there for one another, and to reach out to the wider community. As anxious as we may well be or become, and even if you decide to avoid public meetings or services, you can do many things to help the tornado victims, to write and call legislators, to educate yourself and to keep tabs on our vulnerable GNUUC members. Vulnerable means not just the aged but those who are chronically ill, who have no choice but to work, who are economically marginalized, and who are beset by fear and/or anxiety. Because not everyone can “Keep Calm” just because we tell them to!
However this plays out in our city, your leaders and your minister (aged though I apparently am!) will be available to listen, to help where possible, and to extend love.
With hope and faith,
Cynthia