PWR April 2025 Newsletter - Archived

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Pacific Western Region
 
April 2025 
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Content
Emergent Strategy as Emergency Preparedness 
Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
News: Pacific Western Region
PWR Board – Save the Dates! Budget Town Hall & Business Meeting
Responding to Now: A Pacific Western Region Series
Chalice Lighters – Spring 2025!
News: Unitarian Universalist Association
UUA General Assembly 2025
Green Sanctuary 2030 Orientation
Green Sanctuary 35th Anniversary Call for Renewal with President Sofia Betancourt
Learning with Love at the Center – Minns Lectures
UUA Faith Development Co-Lab’s Spring RE Meet-Ups
OWL in Congregations
Congregational Study/Action Issues Feedback Sessions
Side With Love
Now What: The Gathering
UPLIFT Transgender/Nonbinary+ Monthly Gathering
UPLIFT Trans/Nonbinary+ Pastoral Care Small Group
What’s next after the Revival? Revival Community of Practice
Transforming Hearts Collective – Two New Resources
Scholarships and Awards 
Thomas Scholarship for Those in Seminary
Bennett Award for Congregational Action on Human Justice and Social Action
Skinner Sermon Award
Important Resources 
Congregational Incident Form
Community Resilience Hub
Disaster Relief Fund
UU Mental Health Network
UUA Communications Office
Publications 
March Publications
Pacific Western Region Board
President, Keith Strohmaier
Treasurer, Mary Nordhagen
Secretary, Libby Fitzgerald
At-Large, Bob Miess, Rev. Roger Jones, David Sheh, Rev. Sunshine Wolfe
Learn more about the PWR Board.
Pacific Western Region Staff
PWR Lead
Rev. Sunshine Wolfe
PWR Program Staff
Rev. Summer Albayati
Dr. Melissa James
Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh
Rev. Tania Y Márquez
Sam K. Pearl
PWR Administrator and Bookkeeper
Hara Madera
Melanie Buck
Blogpost 
Emergent Strategy as Emergency Preparedness
“This is a FIVE-ALARM FIRE!” We’ve seen those words written into articles, said on the news, and shared on social media too many times to count since January 20th. The urgency, and emergency, of this moment is very real. But unfortunately, there is no single way to put out the metaphorical fire that is threatening our safety and our lives, our dearly held values, our health, our economy, our environment, our educational institutions, our US Constitution, and our very human rights. (Not to mention the safety and survival of our entire world.)
What has prepared us for this national-global emergency? What can help us get more prepared for where we are at now, and what might be ahead? An answer lies not in exactly what we do, but in how we do it. Last month my colleagues Rev. Sunshine Wolfe and Rev. Tania Márquez led a “Responding to Now” webinar about adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy as a way to move through these times.
Brown explains emergence this way: “‘Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions’ … There are examples of emergence everywhere.” Look at a flock of starlings (YouTube), and how they come together like a cloud. Ant colonies, human cities, and hurricanes are just a few examples of the emergence principle at work. Emergence makes us flexible, resilient, creative, responsive. We cannot plan for every possible emergency. But when we strategize for emergence, we are stronger.
So how do we prepare for emergence, strategically, right now in our religious communities? Emergence arises from simple organizing principles. Interpreting brown’s principles freshly today, with some of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny mixed in, here’s what I’ve come up with for a UU emergent emergency response:
  1. Relationship, relationship, relationship. The power of autocrats is rooted in our disconnection and disaffection from our fellow humans. In our congregations we are called not just to double down on loving our neighbors as ourselves, but also to get to know them, so that we can support them and they can support us. Brown talks about how oak trees are safer from storms because their roots reach for each other underground, and get intertwined. Let’s “get proximate” and root in with our vulnerable neighbors and help us all find our strength.
  2. Location, location, location. The five-alarm fire is national, but many of the impacts, and the opportunities for resistance, are local. Connecting with local efforts, especially those that are accountable to the communities most impacted, is key. What gifts does your location give you that you can amplify and share? What opportunities does your location give you that you can seize?
  3. Be a learning community. Sometimes, when so much is at stake, we can become so fearful about failure that we fail to try new things and learn. Brown reminds us “change is constant” and that what we try is “never a failure, always a lesson.” There is so much we are learning about how to live with integrity in a social-political environment like this one, and so much we are learning about how to claim our own power for collective liberation.
  4. Nurture what is life-giving while battling what is death-dealing. This means making space for joy and beauty and celebration even as we march and witness and rage and rise up. I’ve heard many people in targeted groups say “we will not let them steal our joy.” We won’t. In our small congregations series last month, Jennica Davis-Hockett shared a model of Deeper Joy we can all resist with.
  5. Practice trauma-informed community care. In an environment where authoritarians manipulate us with fear and shock, the caring component of our religious communities becomes just as important as the prophetic component. We have so many ways to tend one another’s hearts, spirits, and souls in community. Being trauma-informed makes us stronger.
  6. Show courage and integrity in your work and faith life. Tim Snyder reminds us to never obey in advance (YouTube) and to remember professional ethics (YouTube). This is a time when Unitarian Universalists are called to live out into the commitments of our faith like never before. Whether it’s our newly-articulated

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