“The path of awakening is not about becoming who you are. Rather it is about unbecoming who you are not.” – Albert Schweitzer

We are past the cooler months, past the Vernal Equinox and looking towards the greening, blooming promise of Spring.  What will it bring? What will grow in our gardens this year? What new hatchlings and buds of creativity, action and purpose will shape and fill our time, our attention, our community?  What will we become?  As any caterpillar knows, becoming something new means shedding something old, taking a risk and growing beyond what they once were.

Our Soul Matters theme for the month of April is “Becoming”.  What does it mean to be a people of BECOMING?  This is what our worship services and programs will explore in the coming weeks. Indeed, it is a question we have been engaging in for quite some time, as we work our way through the process of ministerial transition.  The Board, Ministerial Transition Team, myself as Interim Minister, and you, the congregation, we have all been working hard to review and evaluate the way things have been. We are making decisions about what to keep and what to leave behind as we try on new ways of being, new roles for staff and leadership, new ways of carrying out the mission of UCV, envisioning a bright and promising future. This is what it means to be a people of becoming: improving our capacity to meet the vision and demands of change. It matters, though, whether we consider becoming an individual task or the task of communities in covenant, having a commitment to one another. The task of becoming requires that we connect with the values beneath the choices and actions. we can’t predict the path. But if, along with the question of where we are going, we ask the question, “Who are we becoming as we go?”, the answers may prove illuminating.

The world that is and the world that we want it to be remain profoundly connected. The multiple platforms, online, in-person, small group, on their way to find us, been here for decades, all remain deeply intertwined. And this, as white poet e.e. cummings would say, is the root of the root and the bud of the bud, or the very source of our divine life and thriving.

Things are changing; they will be changing for a while yet. Don’t let the feelings of uncertainty convince you that you’re missing more than you are. You are a wonderful gift and all the gifts that you bring will help UCV grow and develop into its potential. You can help with the questions of where we’re going and who we are becoming. It is a destination on the other side of a pandemic that we have yet to explore. This month we are asking UCV asking members and friends for financial pledges to support this remarkable journey.

It seems that we too must go through such a time, where life as we have known it is over – when being a caterpillar feels somehow false and yet we don’t know who we are supposed to become. All we know is that something bigger is calling us to change.  – Elizabeth Lesser