 Okay, I'd say let's go ahead and dive in because we may not get quorum and that's that's something that we may need to revisit at the board level what quorum is. Fortunately, we have only two fairly non consequential votes today of approving meeting minutes from the last two parish meetings so not too worried about not having quorum. So I will go ahead and share my screen and then let me make sure that's working the way I want it to. Do people see just the slide saying spring parish meeting? Yeah, all right. That is great. Well, welcome to our spring parish meeting. I'm happy to see everybody and as I was saying before everyone jumped on we have yet to dive into having a hybrid parish meeting might be something in our future for now. Zoom meetings are a little bit easier to manage as far as voting and things like that than having it in multiple places. So here's where we are today. Hopefully some people are enjoying our outside listening to the meeting too. That's one one advantage there. All right, so we're going to start out with just some opening words. Thank you. So these are the words from Alicia Ford. When we pause to remember who we are, companions on this grand experiment called life. When we take a moment to shed the ways we have been carefully taught to lead from fear to punish the poor to persecute those who don't look like we do to deny rights to those who love to believe that we are separate that some are superior. When we take a moment to shed all of that and hear our stories here and see each other into existence into community. When we take a moment to embrace to practice a different way of being when we answer the call of love, then we are living into the promise of building the world we dream about. It is beautiful to dream to cast a vision to stretch our minds into the future and imagine what may be if we were to build a new way of being, not someday, but beginning today, beginning again every day that we have breath, taking courage with these hands and hearts to make real the dream of a more equitable world. To journey together, seeking to be transformed, even as we transform. Becoming explorers and learners in this world around us, humbled by what we do not yet know, fulfilling the promise of healing a fragmented world, laboring not just in hope, but also in love. In this spirit we commit. In this spirit, we gather. In this spirit, we pray. Right. Well, let's dive into reviewing our agenda here. So we just heard our opening words. We, as I said, are going to approve minutes from the last two parish meetings that did not have quorum. And we have a couple of announcements, things to look forward to that we want to dive into a little bit deeper. We've also recently developed a task force to explore our mission. So introducing them and what their work will be about. And then many people have probably read about our vision of ministry and our strategic priorities. And we have now compiled some goals throughout both the board and the staff. And we want to share how we'll be living into that with you as well. One thing that I wanted to just bring up before before we dive in is that I know that top of a lot of people's minds right now is the issues that the board has brought up in the two communications recently about our relationship with with Michael Shuler. This was a super complex, emotional, tense situation. But because of those things that we found has been a lot easier to navigate in small group discussion sessions. We have been conducting a number of listening sessions that are intended to be a discussion between the board, the healthy congregations team, the ministers, and congregants. Many people have found them to be very helpful. And so I'd encourage people to sign up for one of those. If you'd like to discuss that further at the beginning of the conversation, if one of the board members actually could chat in the link to that sign up, that would be great. And the board's absolutely committed to continue discussions there as well. So feel free to always reach out to us at fusprous at gmail.com. The healthy congregations team is also here for support, processing the situation. If that's more of what you need versus kind of questions or feedback for the board. And of course, both Kelly's are always here for pastoral care related to any issue. But this issue as well. So and I also wanted to mention that any chats during this meeting, there's a few people you can choose there, but please send them to Creole. She's going to be collecting any questions or comments for this meeting. So if you have chats, you can send them to Creole's hearing. All right. So everyone should have handouts for the meeting. And if someone, there we go, just got that chatted in. So you have the agenda, our minutes from last two meetings, and also our relational covenant, which we always want to keep at the front of all of our conversations together. All right. So as folks are used to on these zoom meetings, so we'll have have pretty similar rules of procedure here as we have in the past. We will obviously everyone's on zoom. As I said, quorum has not been established. I think right, Kelly, can I check in with you again? This quorum been established? It has not. I've got 64. Okay. So then we're going to actually not need the rules of procedure because we can't vote. So we'll we'll again move the voting on the the minutes back to the next one. As I said, review quorum again, we may be able to circle back if we establish quorum throughout the meeting as people join later on in the meeting. All right. So we will skip our approval and dive into a couple exciting things coming up. So I will first hand it over to the Kelly's to give you a few more details about how service is going to happen. Do you want me to start? You want to start? No, go ahead. So we do we are very excited about things that are coming up. So a few and before I dive into that, Mike, may I see that your hands up? And I just want to make sure was just looking at the bylaws. It says 70 members or 20% of the average weekend attendance. Do we know if our average weekend attendance is anywhere near whatever that would take to need 70 members? Yeah, Monica and I conferred about this a little bit in advance. And I guess it depends a little bit on how you want to read the bylaws. If we count our views on YouTube as part of the weekend attendance, then, which I think we should be doing because our premise is that that is that is attendance and participation is to watch the service via the YouTube way. Then we don't our attendance is too high to save on the 20% of that of all the combined numbers would be over seven. Thank you. That was my question. I was just wondering. Thanks. Thanks for asking, Mike. There's an old nuance of in the digital world, I guess for absolutely, absolutely. So for upcoming services, things were really excited about. So May 14th and 15th coming of age services. Those kiddos have been away on their wilderness retreat this weekend, the one where they spend the six hours in the woods. I am super excited to get home and hear about it. My Sam was on that wilderness retreat. So Sam will be giving his belief statement in the Saturday service. And oddly enough, he doesn't want to talk to his mother about it at all. I I can't fathom that I feel like he's missing out. So coming of age, also that weekend, you're going to hear more about it in a little bit is our installation. So Kelly and I being installed as your co senior ministers. We've been having so much fun pulling that together. We feel like we've asked our colleagues that we love and adore to take part. And so we're super excited. And we hope that many of you can be here with us in person. It'll also of course be on YouTube. And then Flower Communion. And here's the thing I just realized the other day, putting together the May newsletter. And I know I saw Pete, Pete and Margie are here there. I see you on my screen Pete. Pete, I think this is the 30th anniversary of our partnership. 1992. So Flower Communion. Am I right, Margie? Yes. Yes. So I think so. I think so. Yeah, I'm vague on the 90s, especially the early 90s. I'm vague on the early 90s. Oh yeah. I know I had really big hair. That's what I was in the 70s. So Flower Communion, the that following weekend, the 21st and the 22nd, and we will be somehow figuring out to celebrate in a special way, 30 years of partnership with Nagyota. Yeah. So that is going to be a beautiful weekend as well. Then the weekend after that, when we switch to our one summer service, every Sunday at 10am, we're going to try something different this year. Instead of having worship in the auditorium and the kids going off to summer fun, we're going to have all ages worship every Sunday. So kids and adults, everybody, we're going to be together for that service. And then we're going to create some kind of activities after service for all ages during coffee hour that folks can do together. So we're we're going to be having some fun this summer whole community, everybody together Sundays at 10am. Am I forgetting anything, Kelly? If you are, then I've also forgotten. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. Is there anything special happening for Mother's Day? There will be a service on Mother's Day, and I'm sure that the mamas in the house will be acknowledged and celebrated. I don't think we have any specific special pro. Oh, I should mention is Roz Woodward on the line, because I know that the Peace Polls thing that she organizes, that's usually the vicinity of Mother's Day. And I know that she is doing it this year. She was taking down some names about it when she was here for the Easter services. So that event, which I think people who have experienced it before know more about than I do, I just know it's Roz's thing. And I'm happy that she's doing it. That will be happening that weekend. We do also have a parish meeting in June, early June. On June 5th. Yeah, okay. And that that Sunday, June 5th in the morning at 10am will be our blessing of the animal service. So if you have an animal in your life that you'd want to bring in and Kelly and I can bless it, we'd really appreciate it. June 5th, I don't know, isn't that some national holiday? It is. Somebody's birthday. I love when my birthday is on a parish meeting. It happens every few years. Such a treat. Yeah, someone said to me the other day, what are you doing for your birthday this year? I said, I'm blessing animals and doing a parish meeting like it doesn't get any better than that. And happy birthday, Dorit Bergen, whose birthday was yesterday. Yes, happy birthday Dorit. Awesome. Thank you, Kelly and Kelly. We appreciate it. Some good stuff to look forward to. Oh, right. Can you all see my screen again? Awesome. I'm going to hand it over to Lorna then and Anne, I think, to talk a little bit about our youth advisors some more. Some years ago, I don't remember how long ago it was 10 or 12. We changed the bylaws to include youth members. The youth members have to have completed the coming of age class and signed the membership book. And for the last two years, I've had the pleasure of being the board mentor to one or both of our interns. And I just can't say enough for how much interns I said, youth are youth members. I just can't say enough about how much they add out. They surprise me every time that they take a different look at things that the adults are looking at. And saying, Well, have you thought of it this way? Have you thought of it that way? And so it was just a stroke of genius to include youth members. And I just really love chatting with them and helping them sort of figure out how they can fit in. I think Anne has a particular thing to say about one of our youth also. Yes, I do. I had the deep pleasure of working with Ava Rochester on establishing and writing the relational covenant. And I'll tell you the reason we have a relational covenant that is as pulled together as it is is due to Ava and her lightning skills on Google Docs. She really made it go in a couple hours instead of several days if I had been doing it. And also just her razor sharp understanding of the principles and the use of language. So a special shout out to Ava. Thank you, Ava. All right, I lost my control somewhere on my screen. Thank you, Lorna and Anne. And we are, since Ava has served her two terms, we're excited to have Finn back on the board for a second term this coming church year. And since Ava has now served two terms, we're also looking for another youth advisory member for the board. So something to think about if you have children that have gone through the coming of age program, or if there's youth on right now who could potentially be candidates for that, feel free to reach out to us. All right. And lastly, of course, we heard about the the installation, but want to dive a little deeper into that. And hear a little bit from our planning committee. So I will hand it over to Dorit, I believe. Is that right? Yep. Awesome. Thanks Dorit. Hi, everyone. Some of this is a bit of a repeat, but this is so important that it bears repeating. On May 15th, a very important and joyful event in the history of our congregation will take place. We will witness and affirm the installation of our co senior ministers, Reverend Kelly Crocker, and Reverend Kelly Aspruth Jackson. We will have the wonderful opportunity to extend hospitality to our minister's colleagues from near and far, and to our minister's families from near and far. The service of installation will take place at 3pm. And then we will have a reception here on our lovely campus. You will have received an email invitation to this very special event. We hope you have already marked it on your calendar and that you have or will RSVP. The email also included a link to a sign up genius page to participate as a volunteer to share your time to help set up or serve or clear to share your talent, such as maybe cooking or flower arranging, or to share your treasure and in the form of a small donation. The RSVP and the sign up genius links will also be in the red floors for the next several weeks. And we are very much hoping that we will all come together to throw our ministers and ourselves on heck of a party. Thank you so much, Dorit. Very much looking forward to it and huge thanks to Dorit and Jean and Emily for helping clear the event. Okay, great. So now I'd like to talk a little bit about the mission task force that's been recently created. Diving into some people are more familiar with mission work than others. But what we're looking at is trying to determine our congregations purpose. So who who are we? What are what? Who are we called to be in the world or in the context that we live in? What should we be doing? We know our principles. We have a lot to pull from our movement, but our specific congregation. What is our mission? So if you're thinking about mission, something that the change is very little over time. I believe has not been revisited at us. That's about 2003. And so as you can imagine, as a new ministry is established with Kelly AJ and Kelly C now is a great time to look at it again and see what still feels relevant to us, what might maybe needs to be added or changed. One exciting thing about this is this is the first time that we'll be developing a mission with congregational involvement, which I think is is a neat aspect to bring into view that sense of shared ministry. So this is about the congregation as a whole. I pulled this quote because I really appreciate it as far as for those of us who like a little bit more of a visual image of what mission is and something a little more metaphorical. And I'll I know it's in front of you here, but I'll just read it. If a religious community is like a large boat traveling across the sea, its mission is like a map of where it wants to go on the journey. Without a mission, the boat is merely a drift susceptible to the whims of wind and surf, or it is commandeered by whoever is the most opinionated and determined to seize control of its steering wheel. Having a clear mission helps us to know that we are on in route toward our goals. And I want to, even though they they have yet to start their work, they've just come together. I want to give a huge thank you to those that will be involved in this work. You can see their names here. A great group of folks, I think. And what one thing that I want to point out here is that as we were talking about this work as a board, we were thinking about kind of what that content of this, you know, what what kinds of activities this group might be involved with, and thinking, oh, you know, we will want to talk to the congregation, hear their thoughts about, you know, what what our mission could be. And kind of stopped in our tracks and said, we just did a lot of that as part of the ministerial search, doing a lot of small group listening sessions to hear how people view our congregation, what's important to them in our congregation. And so a lot of this work is going to involve going back through some of those some of those documents and notes and and understanding what we can pull from those. And I think that and I think that the the work could involve maybe broader conversations, but they want will want to see what we can get from what's already been established and created before diving into kind of what could be repetitive work from what we have done in the last couple of years as part of the interim process. I'm very excited about that mission work. And that leads us right into our vision of ministry as well. And so for 2020 and 2023, we have three elements of this vision of ministry that I think will look familiar to you. We want to dive in a little bit more concretely, though, to where what where this is going to take us, what what's the board doing to try to achieve this vision of ministry, what our staff doing, and where all of it can fit in. So our first vision, our first vision of ministry, our first element here is about our relationships with each other. So consistent with our relational covenant, create an atmosphere of trust and respect that encourages dialogue and healthy relationships. And so I have a few folks here to help me share what's what's going on with that. So I'm going to start with Becky Burns, if you'd like to talk a little bit about the healthy congregation team. Absolutely. Thanks, Alyssa. So the healthy congregation team formed in October of 2021. So we're still within our first year. We wanted to let you know, kind of review what the healthy congregation team is, and tell you a little bit about the work we've been doing thus far. So the initial four members of the team are Barb Avery, Rob Savage, Roz Woodward, and me, with Anne Schaffer serving as our board liaison and Kelly Crocker as our team minister. You may have read this, we wrote it up for a newsletter back in January, I'm just taking a small paragraph out of that. The healthy congregation team is committed to helping the congregation remain a healthy community that's grounded and direct, honest and caring communication in an atmosphere of openness, trust and respect. We believe conflict can be addressed and resolved constructively in keeping with our UU principles. We're committed to the safety and well being of all of our members and friends. And with the relational covenant as our guide, the healthy congregation team provides a consistent and supportive option when conflict does arrive. So some of our activities thus far, since we were created again since last October, we've created a step by step process to address conflict that includes self reflection, dialogue, facilitation, and as necessary mediation. We started to support members of our congregation so that they can voice their concerns and reach resolution with other members of our congregation. We are receiving training currently that Anne's about to talk about in a moment, so I'll not steal her thunder. And we've had a presence at all of the recent listening sessions, and have established an email account for all members of FUS to use, if you'd like to reach us at any time. Our upcoming activities include as a team to develop a presence on the FUS website, and begin to offer some monthly opportunities for some open dialogue among members of FUS. So that's kind of the update from the healthy congregations team. Thank you, Becky. And thank you so much to you and all of the other healthy congregation team members for for doing this work. I really appreciate it. As Becky mentioned, Anne is going to share a little bit about our training. Anne? Well, yes, we've been able to take advantage of our wonderful community resource, Kathy German, who has been doing all kinds of relational training for many years in the Madison community. We decided to have a training because we wanted to operationalize the relational covenant. So we we meaning that healthy congregation team, the Board of Trustees, Kelly, AJ, Kelly, Crocker, and Monica, all have participated in. I think at this point, we've had most of our training 12 hours, and we have a few hours left for a final session that's in a couple of weeks. Kathy has been really fantastic in terms of outlining where people get stuck in conflict resolution, ways to communicate ways to examine our own assumptions where we're coming from, and ways to ground ourselves so that we can approach conflict from a point of centering, as opposed to reacting. We're hoping, we're hoping that these role plays that we've done, these models that we've seen will be useful to the whole congregation in the ripple kind of effect that having the people that have had the training will be able to have in the congregation. Thank you. Thank you, Anne. And Kelly Crocker, can you talk a little bit about the relational covenant and staff covenant being introduced in programming? Absolutely. And before I get into that, a couple of folks have asked about how to contact the Healthy Congregation Team. That email is healthycongregation at FUSMadison.org. And I will put that in the chat as well. But it's pretty easy, Healthy Congregation at FUSMadison.org. So this first one for staff, what I love is that almost all the staff areas talked about introducing and revisiting the relational covenant at the first meeting of adult education programs, offerings, journey circles, of course, at ministry team meetings. One of the things I really love in the realm of children's religious exploration is bringing the relational covenant into all of the teacher training so that there's an awareness among all of our volunteer teachers about the relational covenant. And one I'm really excited about that Leslie has in here is to share the relational covenant with our older kiddos. So seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, grounding the work that they're doing in compass points and mind, body and soul and coming of age in our relational covenant. I love that one a lot. And yeah, that is one of my, my favorites. Continuing with this idea of this atmosphere of trust and respect. So going beyond the relational covenant on paper, staff are really looking at how do they bring this to life? How do they keep this as a living document in the work that we do? And one of the things they're looking at is asking the Healthy Congregation team to work with them as staff in taking the work that we're learning, board and team and leadership team, taking the work that we're learning with Kathy Gurman and, you know, being in situations where we may be dealing with conflict. How do we take that work and bring it into staff so that staff then have those tools and that awareness as they're working with all of their teams? Thank you, Kelly. I want to back up for one second because I've gotten a couple of chats that have come in and have corrected something I said earlier. And so I appreciate the accountability here. So I had mentioned that it would be the first time that the congregation would be involved in developing a mission. And thank you to those that have chatted in saying that there was some congregational work with the mission in the 90s and perhaps the Vision 2000 that came about during while Vicki Jones was president of the board. So I appreciate that backup. Always let me know if there's something that I've said that doesn't bring true for you. Thanks, everyone. So I'm going to move us on to our next our next element of our vision of ministry here. So as individuals and a congregation recognize our accountability for and commitment to dismantling racism and other forms of systemic oppression. And so I am going to turn it over to Creole to talk about one of our board goals in this category. Yeah, thanks, Melissa. I'm just going to pull up my document. So we I think our primary goal in this is to just continue to instill and encourage as well as financially support board members involvement with a variety of resources and sources that are out there that help us to, you know, commit to this this category. So there's some examples, including UUA itself has a program called Beloved Conversations, which I'm sure a lot of you participated in. When it when it happened last year, maybe the year before, there's also another program called Nehemiah Black History for a New Day. And so we as a board have just committed to encouraging each board member and new ones specifically as they come on who may have not taken a program like this to participate in this in a program like this, and also specifically to help support any financial obligations that a program like that might entail. I'm going to pass it back. Creole. Appreciate it. We're excited about participating in some of those activities and expanding, expanding our knowledge there. And then the I'll pass it over to Kelly AJ to talk a little bit about some of the work going on within the UU movement regarding this call. So I'm going to need to share my screen here. Okay, everyone see the slide. So this is going to require a little bit of background. I'm going to try and take you through this quickly, but also in relatively deep level of detail because I think it's important information for everyone to have. So I'm starting here with here are the current version of the seven principles need to change versatility. Likely, this document is familiar to you at some level. I find that almost all in terrain universalists have some familiarity with the first and maybe the seventh principle. And smaller groups than that have some kinds of the fact that there are seven of them and a smaller group than that can probably name three or four of them and a smaller group than that can can rattle off all of them. That's a relatively small group. It may or may not be known to you that this is a living document. It is not etched in stone. It's not established for all time. Immutably, it is rather something that as a religious movement, we have chosen to revise in the past and could revise again, the last revision of this document was in 1987. I know that we have a wide variety of different relationships to the year 1987 on this call. But for me, it was passed in June. That would mean that I was finishing kindergarten. So it has been this way for almost all of my life. And I grew up reciting the this version of the principles and the reason why I am highlighting this, making sure we're all on the same page about we have seven principles as an association. And these are they is that we are entering a period where they may be about to change again, at least to some degree. And I want to explain to you how and why and give you the information you need in order to participate in that process if you want to. So and I just want to highlight one more thing before changing this slide, which is note what it says near the top of the page. The seven principles are actually part of a essentially a run on sentence connected by semi colons that begins with we the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association coveted to affirm and promote. So I want to highlight to you that the principles are a statement made collectively by all of our congregations in the association together. And so certainly has a bearing on each individual congregation because each congregation is a party to that. But note that it's not a statement of individuals. And so I also want to underline Unitarian Universalists have a really wide variety of opinions and relationships to the principles themselves. I mean, I said, I already owned, I've been reciting these my whole life. They're pretty important to me. But they don't necessarily have to be what speaks to you about Unitarian Universalists. I have colleagues, in fact, other ministers who think, yeah, the principles I don't really I don't I don't really like them very much. I don't find them very useful. I don't think they're a good summary of who we are and what we're actually about. So I don't really use them in the course of my work. So you're allowed to have your relationship to them. I don't want you to think that this is the be all and end all of what it means to be Unitarian Universalists. That's a much larger and more varied discussion. But it is a document that we share as an association of congregations. So this is the current version of it. And there is a proposal. There's always one or two proposals out there living for some kind of change in the wording of the principles. But there's a pretty active proposal right now, which has been gathering some steam for the last it started about nine years ago, been more active for the last five, to add an eighth principle, an eighth principle which in the proposed wording would read, remember again that this is completing the sentence, we have for we come into affirm and promote, journeying towards spiritual wholeness by working to build the diverse multicultural beloved community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions. This may be, this is probably news to many of you. Some of you may already be familiar with it. If you read the U.E. World magazine on a regular basis or if you're connected with other Unitarian Universalists, other congregations, you might well have encountered this before. My understanding is that it's not been something that we've been discussing much at FUS over the last several years. Understandable reasons, times of ministerial transition often are times when the congregations are less tuned in to the going on a lighter movement, and also there's been a pandemic. So, you know, don't, you're no way to be faulted if you haven't heard about this before, but I want you to hear about it now. So, you're again allowed to have your own opinion about this potential eighth principle and its potential wording. Because my thinking on the subject has changed over time. I just want to share one data point with you. It's not because I think you need to agree with it, but because as I said, I've evolved here and I want to share how. When I first read this proposed wording, which was about five-ish years ago, I thought, well, I certainly support what it's calling for, disbanding racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions, amen, I'm bored with that. But that seems to me to be implied by several of the other principles. The first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, to me demands the dismantling of racism and other oppressions in ourselves and other institutions. The second principle, justice, equity, compassion, human relations, to me demands dismantling racism and other oppression. And I could say that about certainly principle six, principle seven, even principle five. I'd be happy to make the argument all imply what I see in principle eight. And as someone who's, you know, lived most of my life with the seven principles, I have lots of things that I like about the arrangement of the seven of them, the way that numbers one and seven form a foundation with similar parallelism between second, between two and six and some parallelism between three and five with sort of four as the natural pinnacle of kind of a pyramidal structure. I mean, I've taught classes about the seven principles before and there's certain poetic elegance to them. So the idea of adding an eighth that I thought, okay, it seems like it's kind of repeating things that I think are already true in the existing document, I was initially reticent about. I want to be honest about that. And then I was in a meeting several years ago, which there was another person there, a speaker, have to be a woman of color, about my age, also grew up unitarian universalist. And she said something kind of similar to this, right, that having grown up unitarian universalist, having been deeply connected with the principles for entire life, she thought that what is said here in the eighth principle is directly implied by several, it's not all of the other principles. And despite that, despite this being our text since 1987, we still have so much more work to do, to dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and in our institutions. And for that reason, she was in favor of adding the eighth principle to help foster a positive change in the force and direction that we move together as a faith community. And that was the argument that made it click for me. Again, you don't have to. I want it, I'm just trying to share with you a dialogue that is happening in the larger movement and that you can participate in if you want to and that this congregation may very well want to involve itself in. Because a number of unitarian universalist congregations is part of an effort to basically a sort of grassroots movement to get this eighth principle added to the current wording of the principles and purposes have specifically endorsed that move. We're up to 140 U.S. congregations endorsing the principle as of April 10th of this year. That's the last time I have a report on that. Because we are roughly 1,000 member congregations, the association is just slightly less actually, but close to. 140 translates I think easily into about 14 percent which is obviously not a majority that's, you know, a thing to lift up, but also a huge amount of our congregations to all get to do one thing together. We don't, you know, we're a diverse group, so all doing the same thing is pretty unusual move. Interestingly, the Canadians, so you may or may not know, the Canadian congregations used to be part of the Unitarian Universalist Association. They broke off and formed their own organization in the early 2000s. The Canadian Unitarian Council has already adopted an eighth principle. They did that November of last year and their eighth principle wording isn't the same, but it's obviously similar. Individual and so again to affirm and promote individual and communal action that accountably dismantles racism and systemic barriers to full inclusion in ourselves and our institutions. So our Canadian cousins have already made a change in this direction. And so here is what is happening and what is going to happen in the wider movement around the possibility of an eighth principle. Because of the grassroots congregational support for this potential change, we don't change, we can change the principles and purposes, but if we don't do so casually in our movement specifically, an intentionally complicated and long-term process. So the first step was that the commission, the Article II Study Commission, was appointed by the Unitarian Universalist Association's Board of Trustees. They began their work in the fall of 2020. They have conducted and are still conducting worship workshops, surveys, interviews, open office hours to collect input on the existing wording of the principles and purposes. I'm going to say a little bit more about what that is in a second. And what potential changes people might be interested in seeing. We're not interested in seeing things that people felt like you need to protect this or this part needs to not change. So they are still collecting data on that and I'm going to share some links of the chat once I finish this part for that will give you some opportunities to participate if you're interested in being part of any of those conversations. So they're going to submit a report to the UUA Board by January of 2023. They're committed to doing that. From that report, it is possible that the Board will then submit a potential revision to our principles for consideration at the General Assembly, which happens in June of 2023. So that's the first time that this will come up for any vote at the level of the General Assembly. Remember the General Assembly is our annual governance meeting attended by delegates theoretically hopefully from each congregation and the association. You get a certain number of delegates in rough proportion to your adult membership. Ministers and credential religious educators are also automatic delegates to that body. So there will be if there will be a report. That's the only thing that I can say will happen definitely. If the Board finds in that report recommendations it wants to pass to the General Assembly to actually consider, they may not, but I think it's likely that they will. It'll be voted on first General Assembly 2023. It can be amended after any assembly. But it may not be. So the amendment process is its own ball of wax and so there may or may not be an amendment to whatever recommended change is being considered. It must pass by a simple majority. If it doesn't pass by a simple majority in 2023, it's just done. There won't be any further discussion about it. It's dead. And in fact the bylaws say that you can't even consider the same or a similar change to the principles and purposes if it failed once. You can't consider it again for another year. So there's like a cooling down period. You have to not try and get a second bite at the apple. But if it does pass, it does get at least a simple majority vote in 2023. It will then be put on the agenda for 2024. So just passing one vote at General Assembly will not change the principles. In 2024 it can be, it will be discussed again if it passed in 2023. If it was amended in 2024, it can be amended, sorry it was amended in 2023. It can be amended again in 2024 but with a much more arduous and difficult process. If it wasn't amended in 2023, it can't be amended in 2024. And the only option will be to vote on it up or down. In order to finally become a real change in the principles, there will need to be a majority vote of at least two thirds. That second vote in 2024 and that's the thing that will add it or change it or make whatever revision is proposed to the principles and purposes. And so here I want to show you, I know this text is small, but this is the entirety of the section in the Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws, which is where this stuff lives. The entirety of the Article II section. You will see that it includes the principles, all seven of them here in the upper left corner, but then also the text that's usually described as the sources. There are six sources, some of you know I'm particularly attached to the sources document. I think it's meaningful piece of writing. But then beyond that, there's the concluding paragraph to that section about pluralism and our mutual trust and support that we owe to each other as congregations. There is another entire section called the purposes of the association, which basically outlines what the association exists to do right now. That's mainly to support our member congregations, to organize new congregations, and to forward our values in the public square. The statement on inclusion, which I think interestingly, the statement on inclusion, has a lot of things to say that are very analogous to the wording in the proposed eighth principle. So, you know, that's another potential area that might be revised. And finally, what's usually called the freedom clause, section C24, which actually comes to us from the Universalist side of our heritage, and which is like those sort of just to make sure everybody's clear here, we don't engage in creedal tests. Even this document itself is not meant to serve as one, so you can be a Unitarian Universalist without needing to officially subscribe to it. All of that is on the table for potential revision. I don't know what parts are likely to or not likely to receive revision, although I think it's especially unlikely anyone's going to touch the freedom clause. I think that's a third rail. So, that's my little rundown on the conversation that's happening. Again, the work of the Article II Task Force is still ongoing. They've been working for two and a half years now, but it's still ongoing and there's still opportunities to participate. I'm going to put two links in the chat once I close this window and have access to the chat again, which will be, one, they have a survey that they would like all Unitarian Universalists who are interested in any of this to take. That survey has been open for a while now. It's only open for one more week. I recognize that that's not as much time as I would have liked to have given you to do this, but it's also a whole week. So, if you're really energized about this, you want to get your voice in the system, you'll have that opportunity. So, I'll send that link into the chat. And then also they are conducting open office hours, sort of listening sessions by Zoom for anybody who wants to come talk to them about the process, anyone who wants to express their feelings about it. Again, some of those have already happened, but there are two remaining that haven't happened yet, and I will put the link to the page with that information on it into the chat. Thank you, Callie. I appreciate it. That leads very nicely into my screen again here. As you can can see, a lot of our, a lot of our elements in our vision of ministry are very interrelated, and I think that that's a good tie between the, our second one and the third one, which is to show up as authentic partners in collaboration within our local community and a nomination. So, I am going to hand it to Lorna again to talk about an activity that has been discussed a little bit at FUS recently. Thank you. A couple of things. One is that the board, in addition to the things that Crayol mentioned, the board has made a commitment to, for board members to go to the, some of the regional and general assembly meetings that are coming up. The UUA is divided into a number of regions, and we're in the Mid-America region. Dor, as a matter of fact, Dorit Bergen from FUS is on the board of the Mid-America region. What we're going to be doing, so we're going to be going to either virtually or in person to some regional meetings and the general assembly that's coming up so that we have a presence there as we have often in the past. One of the things that's come up, I've personally had some conversations with people, and I think others have as well, about the bringing back into our structure the Denominational Affairs Ministry team. With the way our structure works when there is a movement or an interest on the part of members for particular activity, the members gather together and affiliate with a staff member to form the new ministry team. That's kind of a ritual that we've adopted since our change in the government structure when we did away with all those committees and that sort of thing. So these ministry teams arise in response to particular opportunities or interests, and so this is just an alert that we're going to be looking to the formation of a new ministry team. I didn't clear this with Kelly AJ, but in terms of a members who are interested in being a part of the formation of the Denomination Authorist Ministry team, I think it's safe to say that Kelly AJ would be the staff person who would likely take the lead, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but we will be sending out more information, invitations, and try to come up with some greater clarity on what such a team would do, how it would operate, and how it would pull together with this third element of the vision of ministry in showing up as authentic partners in collaboration with our local community and Denomination. So that's just a heads up of something that's coming down the road, and you can watch for opportunities to engage with that. Thanks, Lorna. All right, and I will, oh I'm not shooting my screen anymore. Great, thank you everyone for walking through those. I know the board and the staff have put a lot of work into thinking through how to engage with these, this vision of ministry, so that it's not just words on paper, but actual actions that we're taking to live out that vision. And with that, I know we are 131, so I will hand it over to Kelly H. A. to close us out with the closing words. Well friends, we didn't plan this, and that should be obvious because we wouldn't have planned it this way, but I literally chose as our closing reading the same reading that Kelly chose for the opening reading. That's okay, that's all right. I found another one, so here to close us out are some words from Bill Singford, former president of the Unitarian Versal Association among other distinctions. Spirit of life and love, dear God of all nations, there is so much work to do. You have only begun to imagine justice and mercy. Help us hold fast to our vision of what can be. That we see the hope in our history and find the courage and the voice to work for that constant rebirth of freedom and justice. That is our dream. Amen. Thank you Kelly, and thank you everyone for coming today. Please go out and enjoy the sunshine. It's nice to see everyone's faces. Thank you, Alyssa. Bye-bye, thanks.