The Special Meeting of the Congregation on Sunday, February 16, 2020 could not have taken place without the active and willing assistance of many people. It literally takes a village to make it all happen and we all worked together in the way a community is supposed to work. As President of the Board, I asked people for help, and they asked other people for help, and the helping spread like wildfire through the community to the point where people showed up doing things that I had thought might ought to be done but had never gotten around to arranging. And there were many others, I know, who were invisible to me but whose role was vital to the success of the community endeavor. Congratulations to all of us and thank you. If I fail to put down your name, it is only because I didn’t know you were there, or because I have forgotten or lost track, not because you didn’t show up when needed.

So, to start, a special thank you to the discernment team, whose work gave the Board a basis from which to evaluate the correct course of action. Manny De Aquino, Zoe Laidlaw, Jim Meckel, Joe Martone, Linden Crouch, Kate Cleland-Sipfle, Roy Kindell.  Thank you.

Central to the planning and advocacy were two groups of RVUUFians; you have begun to hear about how it is our intent that these two groups would work more closely together, and you will hear more in the future about how that is going. One group is the Committee on Fellowship Ministry, which we affectionately call the CFM. I offer my heartfelt thanks to Mary Rexford, Suzanne Andersen, Manny De Aquino and Jill Limerick.

The other group is your Board. I extend my gratitude to Diane Werich, John Limb, Claire Clement, Phil Westergaard, Alex Lukacs, Vida Taylor.

As it happens in life, we have many strings attached to our hearts, and sometimes we are more pulled by some, sometimes by others. The participation among members of these groups in any one activity is very uneven but support for every activity of the group is always solid.

Many of the tasks to be done around the Fellowship are done by teams – groups with the characteristic that they form informally to accomplish a task, incorporate the work of those who are willing, able and available in the moment, then may vanish again. Much of the work of preparing for the Congregational Meeting was done by such teams.

There was the telephone team, which set out to be sure everyone knew about the meeting and the importance of attending and found themselves involved in clarifying membership status for many people they called. This group included Dawn Nightshade, Alex Lukacs, Krynn Lukacs, Suzanne Andersen, Jackie Rosen and probably others I don’t know about.

A special shout out to Krynn Lukacs, who made the posters and rosters.

Special thanks to Dawn Nightshade, Allison Duren Southerland and Shanique Scott, who got address labels printed and applied to envelopes, ballots printed and stuffed into the envelopes, and passed that on to Diane Werich, who was the keeper of the envelopes. Many of you helped in the process of identifying those who were going to need absentee ballots. I think we managed to get a ballot to everyone who needed one.

Some of you volunteered to provide rides for anyone who wanted to come and had transportation problems. I probably don’t even know about all of you, but I am aware that Manny De Aquino, John Limb, Ross Gillanders, Zoe Laidlaw, Blaine & Laura Ross, Annette Lewis, Andrew Spencer, Jane Manning and Delores Nims all volunteered for this effort, which was largely coordinated by Alex Lukacs.

On the day of the meeting, I received the usual, very quiet and totally necessary support of Walter Ensign, without whom our audio system would not operate so smoothly.

I also needed a stage crew to add tables, chairs, signs and so forth to the pandemonium at the front of the great hall as we moved from our Sunday Service into our meeting. Special thanks to Morty Smith, Dave Morse, Bill Montfort and Voz (Paul Vozdic) for their work to make that all happen.

The process of distributing ballots, checking you in, collecting ballots and counting them involved another small multitude, including; Carola Lacy, Katy Fox, Suzanne Andersen, Jill Limerick, John Limb, Alex Lukacs and Diane Werich.

Many of you noticed and enjoyed, as I did, the piano music provided by another one of those volunteers who materialized, much to my total amazement. It’s hard for me to express the depth of my gratitude to Kenny Andersen for his role as resident musician last Sunday.

There was a moment I totally recall, about three weeks before the special meeting, when a little voice spoke to me saying, “will you want to have a lunch or something on that day?” That was the little voice of Lois Pettinger. I am not aware what magic she uses or where it comes from (Lois says I should thank the Fun Committee), but somehow Lois moved from that small voice to producing, or causing to be produced, the plethora of food we had available to sustain us last Sunday. To everyone who had any role in producing, bringing, arranging or serving food for our meeting, I say “thank you,” though even Lois says she doesn’t know exactly who contributed. You were wonderful!

And finally, let me say that the most important thing of all was something you all did. You showed up! I have never seen so many people in the Great Hall at any moment in the ten years I’ve been a member of this congregation. You are amazing! We asked you to come in community to do the work of the community and look what you did! Virtually every member of this congregation participated in the vote, either by being here or by absentee ballot. That level of participation, that level of commitment, should speak loudly to each of you and to our world – WE CAN DO IT – and we did. We called Rev. Sean Parker Dennison to be our Settled Minister, and you chanted him into the room to accept our call.

We were all amazing; we were all enough; none of us had to do it all alone!

Thank you!

President Roger Howe, on behalf of the Board