First
of all, thank you to all of you who sent good wishes and prayers to
my family for my father's recovery from a stroke. He is making
progress each day, and can now use a walker to walk. It was good to
be with him and my mom for several days.
As
part of how UU churches support their ministers, our contracts
include a plan for us to take a sabbatical every several years. We
“earn” one month of sabbatical time for each year of service to a
congregation. The Board of Trustees and I have agreed for me to take
a four month sabbatical later this year, from April 15 to August 15,
2015. A sabbatical is an opportunity to be free from the daily and
weekly demands of ministry, in order to delve more deeply into
activities that can refresh and renew one's ministry, and thus be a
benefit to minister and congregation.
My
first hope for this sabbatical is to work on the completion my book,
Finding
Our Way Home: A Spiritual Journey into Earth Community. This
book is an expression of the spiritual side of our work on ecological
sustainability. My goal is to share the book with A2U2 members and
friends, and with the wider world, as part of our witness to the
environment. Some of you have seen earlier portions of the book,
which I used to create the class Spirituality:
For Searchers, Skeptics, Activists, Mystics and All Broken-hearted
Lovers of Earth,
and which I posted in a blog online called Finding
Our Way Home.
My
second hope for the sabbatical is for Margy and I to consider greater
alignment with our ecological values in our own living situation.
This process is not always simple, so by having time to dedicate to
the question, we hope to take some steps closer to our ideals.
Perhaps we might move to a smaller house, or one located nearer to
the church, or find other ways to lower our carbon footprint. This
time will give us the space to take stock in our personal lives of
the values we have been proclaiming here at our spiritual community,
and then to bring back to all of you our experience of that process.
On
a personal note, one more hope for the sabbatical is for Margy and I
to pursue her long-time dream of travel to Ireland.
The
Committee on Ministry will coordinate preparation and support for the
sabbatical time. On the practical side, 2 months of the sabbatical
will take place during the summer season when I am usually on
vacation and study leave. During the other 2 months (April 15-June
21) the Pastoral Care Team, the Worship Committee, and our Intern
Minister will lead our continued church life—we are much more
prepared for this sabbatical because we have strong lay leadership
already in place. On 5 Sundays, a visiting minister will lead
worship. Since I won't be taking vacation or study leave during the
summer, I will take 2 weeks of vacation in the last half of November
and 2 1/2 weeks of study leave during the first half of February this
coming year, and something similar the following year.
To
give you a simplified picture of the year, here are all the months,
divided in half: Yellow= Time I am at church, while Green=
Time I am away on vacation, study leave and sabbatical.
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Sep
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Sep
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Oct
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Oct
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Nov
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Nov
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Dec
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Dec
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Jan
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Jan
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Feb
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Feb
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|
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Mar
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Mar
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Apr
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Apr
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May
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May
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Jun
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Jun
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Jul
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Jul
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Aug
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Aug
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I
am excited to deepen my participation in our environmental focus,
through the work we do this year at church, and through the work I
can do while on sabbatical. If you have any questions, please
contact me, or the chair of the Committee on Ministry, Rick Grover.
