 You are tuned in to the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm Autumn Lab A Renault and today is Tuesday, July 7th. We are sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. The show airs live Tuesdays at noon and repeats at 5pm and also on Sundays and you can listen online anytime at kdrt.org. My guest today is Reverend Beth Banks, who is the senior minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis. We'll be taking a look at the pandemic's effects on one local faith community and we'll get to that interview shortly. COVID-19 by the numbers. On July 5th, California reported 5,699 new cases of COVID-19. The state now has a total of 271,684 positive cases and I want to say when I last reported these numbers it was about a week ago, maybe two, that number was about 100,000 less. There have been a total of 6,337 deaths in the state. Vox published a piece over the weekend that examines why California, which seemed an early success story back when New York's numbers were so bad a few months ago, now seems to be spiraling out of control. Our total coronavirus cases are at more than 90% over the past two weeks and the test positivity rate and indicator of how widespread infection is is also increasing. Rates of infection are highest among adults aged 18 to 34 and among migrant farm workers who are deemed essential employees. Hospitalizations have also jumped by 50% with Los Angeles warning its near capacity. And if you think in terms of the economies of Southern and Northern California, it's easy to understand the wide divide in these case numbers. In hardest hit Imperial County, which is in the Southland and has been placed under shelter in place orders again, agricultural workers by and large constitute the workforce. And in Northern California, with its tech sectors, many more people have been able to work from home, thereby remaining more isolated. That has a lot to do with it. The long and short of it, public health officials say simply we let down our guard. The numbers looked good and we relaxed too much, possibly opening too quickly. People flouted the guidelines to reconnect with family and friends as summer kicked off. And at the same time, we've seen major outbreaks in nursing homes, prisons and among migrant farm workers. And prior to the 4th of July weekend, the state shut down various indoor activities and venues, including restaurants, bars, movie theaters and museums. And Yolo County preemptively followed suit. And yet California's numbers of infection right now are not as bad as the massive outbreaks currently happening in Arizona, Florida and Texas. And that health officials attribute to California's slower reopening and to having a leader who models mask wearing and the importance of social distancing. Enough said on that. Here in Yolo County, we're at 705 cases and 26 deaths. And although our numbers are low relative to other counties nearby and across the state, they have been increasing steadily in recent weeks. Over the weekend, three skilled nursing facilities in Yolo County let it be known they're dealing with coronavirus outbreaks. And this is according to the county's online COVID-19 dashboard. And for that and all other county level information, I will continue to point you to YoloCounty.org. Given the ability of the virus to spread easily and close congregate settings, as well as the risk of infections among older adults, this is no surprise. In addition to Courtyard Healthcare Center in Davis, which has reported six cases over the last three weeks, facilities in Woodland and West Sacramento also now have confirmed outbreaks. And that is at the Alderson Convalescent Hospital in Woodland and the River Bend Nursing Center in West Sacramento. We're going to take a moment for music and we'll be back with our interview. All righty, the Reverend Elizabeth, or as she goes by Beth Banks, is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist originally from Massachusetts. She taught English to political refugees in Washington State and her work with cultural studies took her to South Korea, where she taught college level English conversation. She served as interim minister for religious education and then parish minister at the first Universalist Church in Rochester and then a campus chaplain at the Eastman School of Music. And Reverend Banks has been with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis since August 2000, where she serves as the senior minister. Welcome to you, Reverend Banks. Hi, Autumn. I'm glad to be with you today. It's good to hear your voice. So I want to be transparent moving forward. I am a member of the UU Church of Davis and Reverend Banks is my minister and weaving together a narrative about the impacts of the pandemic across Yolo County. I've really wanted to include a minister's perspective and it made sense to start close to home. So, Beth, for those unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalism, please tell us a bit about the UU faith and what the Davis Church offers in normal times. Yeah, I think it's easiest to say that Unitarian Universalism is a non-cretal faith, which is confusing for some people. Not having a creed that people would have to ascribe to to belong to the church. We are what is known as a covenantal church. So there are some beliefs that are commonly shared among us. However, the most important thing for us is a covenant that is created for how we will be together and how we will live those beliefs. And that is not a new thing for us. It goes way back into 1649 in our own country. So we're a covenantal faith. Right. And the church's website, Banner, reads, UUCD Covenant, creating and living within a spiritual community with actions based on respectful conversation, receptive listening, and open-hearted presence. Exactly right. Yeah. So that's foundational for everything we're going to talk about today. Right, right. So within that community, just to say there are people with many different belief systems and who identify even sometimes let's say Muslim may come from a Catholic background, Protestant background that could have been raised in the Unitarian Universalist. There's a wide diversity of faith traditions within the same congregation. Right. Also including humanists. Absolutely. And atheists. And atheists, yep. Yeah. And Christians. We are an interesting mix. True. So churches are more than just buildings. They are faith communities where people come together to meet all sorts of needs and objectives. I'm going to ask you to think back, if you would, to when you first learned that you'd have to shut down the church campus. I know it was an extraordinarily difficult moment. What kinds of things went through your mind? Who was involved? And how did the church manage the transition? Well, my goodness, it was a moment that was quite shocking because we were planning a big fundraiser actually for the pledges for a full year's budget. And that was coming up in just about a week or 10 days. And we were at the height of our planning. And to realize that we really should not have that. And at that point, we didn't know how long the virus would change our lives. We just knew that it was likely that things were going to be closed down for a month. We thought maybe two months. We didn't really know. But even at that, we knew we could not have this event. So we have a second minister who works with the congregation, Morgan McLean. And so, of course, she was a part of that decision. The board chair was also part of the decision. And we just very quickly made that decision that we would need to close things down. It was not a democratic process because it was for the health of all. Very much against our normal process. We just needed to make the decision. And the point we're thinking about, what will we do for this fundraiser? How will we meet with the needs of all the people in the congregation? How will we do worship? We haven't gone online yet for worship. We talked about doing it, but we hadn't done it yet. So where will we get the equipment? How would we learn the technology? How would we deal with people who were ill or dying if we couldn't visit them? And all these things were revealed over the course of days. So we think we understood what was going to happen. Then we'd realize the severity of the situation. And we'd have to retool and replan. So the first couple of months were very high anxiety because it seemed like the ground was shifting underneath us constantly. And we stripped it more and more restrictive. And back in May, I believe it was, the county said that churches could open. First they said that drive-through religious services could open. And that was the thing that most of us had never heard of. That was new. And then some churches began opening. And the UU Church of Davis decided to remain closed. Why was that? Well, this is also not like our denomination, which usually of congregational policy, which means the congregations make their own decisions, not from some higher body. However, we do have a denominational headquarters. And they said, please, we are giving guidelines. We ask you, please, follow these guidelines to stay closed until May of 2021, the building to stay closed, not the ministry of the church, not the functioning of the church, and find other creative ways to answer the needs of the congregation. And this is so unlike our denomination, but it really helped us because we then knew we could put resources in time and financial resources into planning to be online with the congregation, not have one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake, and always fluctuating between the two. Well, let's talk about Zoom. You and I have personally talked about the joys and challenges of Zoom, but a quick read through the bulletin reminds me that not only are church services, but there are small groups happening on Zoom, there are meetings, there are even social hours. So tell us about some of your challenges and joys working with this technology. Yeah, well, the challenges are just representing one of the things we give up. I mean, worship is different. There's a pastoral element of worship. It's being together, just taking someone's hand if they're in a time of sorrow or just seeing everybody and being in their presence of their joy. The singing, you know, just having voices around us is no other place that we can do that. And in using Zoom, it's a very different process. And so there are all these things that we have needed to give up to be a part of a Zoom worship service. But there are some other things that we are noticing that are really positive in ways we've found to connect people together. And so sometimes, let's say after the worship service, we'll want to have breakout rooms and we call it the coffee hour, quote unquote. And people are mixed up with others they don't necessarily know. Now, if people are really shy, they might find this to be more anxiety producing because they might have already just kind of headed out the door. But those who are brave enough to try it have been really excited because there's like an open-ended focus question and people will meet people they never would have sat down with. They thought they shouldn't, but they just didn't do it so it's that little extra news. Or after the service, there'll be a time, 30-minute discussion to go deeper into this subject and share your experiences. Well, right now we can offer that in a different way. So we're seeing some things that are positive. So I'm trying to hold on to that. It is definitely not the same. But what can we put in to balance what we're losing? And in some ways it's proximity in a different way. It is kind of wild to be there on the Zoom meeting on Sunday and to scroll along. And there's a couple pages you have to scroll through to see everyone who's there. And a lot of people are there on video because they want that interaction with others. And some just have a picture up or just their name because it's a bit much. And that's okay too. So you mentioned... There's a positive thing I want to mention and that is that we didn't realize who we were excluding by not having some kind of live streaming every week. And we have one member, Mel Tilda Brandt, who's 102. And he is there every week. And he doesn't have to leave his home. And there are other people who have joined us that have moved away. And all of a sudden they're celebrating that they feel like they haven't lost the space community. So inadvertently, by not having to some line or some form online, we were excluding people and our seniors have said that they feel as if they are fully included in the community. We never realized that they had not felt that way. That's kind of lovely actually. You mentioned pastoral care, the pastoral care element of a religious service earlier. And there is that. And there's also another level of pastoral care. And that is how we care for each other when we lose a family member or someone close to us. How we celebrate life's transitions like graduations from high schools and new babies. And I am very aware that ministers carry a very heavy load, a pastoral load already. It's the weight of caring for many. And one of the things I'm very worried about right now as I look around the people in my life and the people in my community is the mental health toll that this pandemic is taking on so many. I just think there's a lot of people in pain and pain that's yet to be expressed. And so how does a church community rise to answer that in a time like this? With as much creativity as we can. In part because those who may be suffering, let's say with depression or anxiety, may find it hard to negotiate the technology. And so the best thing we have been able to do is to have people who have the patience of Job, and this is one of the qualifications for folks who can do this, and companion with people who are anxious about technology and help walk them through the steps calmly and repeatedly so that people can access the staff and each other through Zoom primarily is what we're using. So that's one thing. It is not recommended that we even meet in small groups right now, especially because the numbers are rising. We would love to think that we could meet in small groups but not right now. And I have, in one occasion, spent time with someone who was, they said actively dying, was deep into hospice, and I was able to spend time. I had to balance some other things to be able to do that. So I could not go to uprisings and protests to be in contact with many people if I was going to make myself available to situations like the one I just described. Tough decisions, tough decisions for all of us. Every day. Every day. But you know what we can do is to make groups available again on Zoom for drop-ins, for a specific group. So we have one for parents of young children and it's timed after kids go to bed so the parents can get together and tell stories. And we try to do spiritual practice groups. We have what we call deep listening circles so people can gather in groups of let's say eight to ten. Intentionally they know that's there for them. But it isn't all on the ministers because we have to care for each other no matter who is in the community. So we have this pandemic intersecting with a major social uprising in our country as more awareness comes to the Black Lives Matter movement. Our church has, and I was there the day we placed the sign that Black Lives Matter. Underneath the sign at the entrance to the driveway to the church campus. And the Unitarian Universalism denomination as a whole is very focused on things like social justice and climate justice and other issues of the day. So where we have these two major forces coming together, I'm curious about what Unitarian Universalist leadership has to say to its ministers. We've talked a bit about how you juggle all the different forces. But how do you care for yourself so that you can keep caring for others? Is there any direction there? We get regular emails from our denomination from our Department of Ministry asking us to please take care of ourselves to take time out of our formal role as ministers to eat well, to sleep, to increase our spiritual practices fourfold. That is more difficult to do in reality but I'm so glad that they remind us to do that. Everything right now takes so much longer to accomplish. But for us, they also do not give us specific direction about whether we would be in the protest or not. That is a personal choice for us but they ask us to please not make ourselves overly vulnerable because our congregations count on us to be there for them. What they are encouraging us to do and what I've learned from this process is that we need to ask questions of who are we intending to be? Who do we yearn to be? How inclusive can we be? And that for things like the protest, the role I'm interested in taking right now is how many ways can we make it possible for people to have their voice heard to make their presence known to express our values. Yes, we can be on the streets and that is good for some people. These people cannot. Are there other ways that ministers, congregation members, all leaders can express their values and ways that can be equally as valued. And this is where we can go in the future, I hope. There's a group active within the church. I guess it's a chapter of a larger organization called Uniting for Racial Justice. So I know that that work has been going on at the UU Church of Davis for some years. This is not a new development in the wake of recent protests. And so I'm going to... Let's go ahead and give the website for the church where people can of course always get more information. They can also connect to the Zoom services. The link is right on the front page and it's uudavis.org and there's a message there. The services are right on the front page. Anyone can join the Zoom, right? Anyone? Absolutely. Alright. So having done worship with you, I served as your worship associate for a number of years, one of your worship associates. You know, there's always a moment where we say you are welcome if and then we list off a whole list of qualifiers. If you are curious, if you are seeking, if you are full of joy, if you are not wallowing, if you are in despair, you know, and so it goes. So thinking, what would be the message? The message is still the same, right? But in terms of accessing, if you've never come to this church before and you want to check it out by Zoom, what would you say to someone? I would say that you are welcome in the wholeness of who you are, especially to name gender inclusivity, sexual orientation, race and class. Your theological perspective all are welcome to this service. If you come with a curious mind and respectful listening, that's what I would wish for people. All right. I know that you are headed off for some well-earned time off. So I want to thank you for taking a few minutes to come on and talk with us today and share about your profession and your faith and how the pandemic has effected. It's been very good to hear from you. Thank you, Autumn. It's been great to be here. All right. Take good care. Bye-bye. Bye. All right. We have just a couple minutes left. I want to thank, again, that was Reverend Beth Banks from the UU Church of Davis Unitarian Universalist Congregation here. We have just a couple more minutes, so I'll squeeze in a few more announcements. I am staring at a bottle of hand sanitizer. CBS in Boston broke a story over the weekend about the toxicity of nine brands of hand sanitizers, all of which are potentially poisonous because they contain methanol, which can be dangerous when absorbed through the skin. I'm going to direct you to CBSBoston.com. They have a list. They have links there, and you might want to take a look at what you're using. Ethyl alcohol is okay. Methanol is not. And finally, scientists from the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center are conducting an online research survey on how COVID-19 has impacted workers. That kind of feels like the theme of this show. If you've been working during this pandemic, if you're unemployed or are now doing your job remotely, they invite you to participate in this study. By following the link, I'm going to give this out twice. HTTPS, colonns, forward, two forward slashes, is.gd-slash-covid-19-worker-survey. I'm going to suggest that if you can't get the link quickly off the air, you can go to UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center and click on Survey. The purpose of their research is to better understand how this disaster has affected jobs, workplaces, and home life. The Center collaborates with unions, worker centers, agencies, and nonprofits to help identify the health impacts and unmet needs of communities. What they earn will help employers and policy makers implement changes to ensure workplaces are safer. In the survey, averages about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. All right. I want to thank you for tuning in to listening to this radio station, supporting this radio station, and from the KDRT studio. I'm Autumn LaBea Renault, and this has been the COVID-19 Community Report.