Weekly Message from Rev. T. J. – A Summer of Adventure and Sabbath

A Summer of Adventure and Sabbath

As many of you now know, my time of ministry with this community is coming to an end. I know this is sad in many respects, and it is both an honor and a great gift that people are sharing the concerns and sadness they feel at my departure. Thank you so much for this. It’s deeply felt and deeply treasured. Mahalo.

For the past few years, I’d been planning to be away on sabbatical for June, July, and August of this year. For June, Dr. Michele Townsend-Grove, our amazing Consulting Director of Religious Education will be with us on site to help lead worship and work on transitions in our ministry to the world. Her decades of experience in Unitarian Universalist communities is a valuable resource for all of us to draw from in these times of transition.

We are now also very excited to announce officially the minister who will be with us for July and August, the Reverend Mykal Slack. Here is some information about Rev. Slack:

Rev. Mykal O’Neal Slack is the Community Minister for Worship and Spiritual Care for Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism, an organization and spiritual community committed to supporting Black folx in our UU faith, and a co-founder of the Transforming Hearts Collective, a ministry that both supports spaces for LGBTQ people to access resilience, healing, and spirituality and resources faith communities and other groups for the work of radical welcome and culture shift. He is a Black, Queer, and Trans Southerner, committed to healing and truth-telling, as well as community accountability and care. He has been engaged in congregational ministry for the last 20 years.

Rev. Slack will be on a half-time schedule for July and August, and his primary concerns will be pastoral care and worship leadership. It will be a marvelous summer, I am sure.

The Spiritual Themes for July and August are Adventure and Sabbath respectively. I encourage us all to reflect on what new ideas and new paths might mean for us all while also embracing the very real and very necessary discipline of sabbath, of taking a time for rest and nourishment this summer. The transformative and powerful ministry Rev. Slack offers will be a profound gift for our community. I know welcoming this ministry in the midst of our community will be a great blessing!

And may it ever be so,
Rev. T. J.