Hello, Members and Friends of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Westport!
Well, I’ve arrived. As of today, I am honored to serve at the invitation of your Board as your Senior Minister for this next year. At the same time, your Search Team will seek the optimal candidate for your next called Senior Minister.
Some of you might know that I’m an Accredited Interim Minister (AIM) in our larger Unitarian Universalist Association. That means that I’ve served as a transitional minister for a sizable portion of my career, taken seminars to further develop my skills in that regard, and had my qualifications for that distinction reviewed by a panel of my peers. I mention this because in my mind, every ministry is an interim ministry. Those of us who serve as transitional ministers are similar to other ministers in that we bridge the person who served before us with the person who will come after us.
However, each of us lives all our life in the interim, between what was and what is yet to be. Looking back five and a half years ago, I remember the days before Covid swept across the globe, when hardly anyone wore a mask. I remember the early days of social distancing and the locking down of public events, when we didn’t know how quickly the virus would spread, who would survive and who wouldn’t — what precautions would work and which wouldn’t. I remember the days of masking first with any kind of mask, and then with N95 masks as the preferred option. I remember the gradual easing of travel restrictions and the beginnings of things getting “back to normal” — but in truth, there are ways in which our lives are different since early 2020 that we haven’t fully comprehended.
Globally, we are in another kind of interim period. Many of the conventions in institutions we took for granted over many decades have come crashing down as authoritarianism surges across the nation and around the globe. We see increasing climate-related tragedies as the human impact on the planet escalates. Wars, food insecurity, unemployment, social unrest, and political instability all contribute to a sense of collective and individual malaise. These days sting, and each new day seems to bring multiple new causes for grief and anxiety.
However, we still have our lives to live. In spite of the troubles of the world, there are still children to raise, meals to savor, friends to make, and celebrations to be had. Perhaps now more than ever, we need to be intentional about the care we give to ourselves and to the people we encounter every day, whether in our homes, in our workplaces, in our traffic jams, and in congregations like UU Westport.
More to come in future messages, but for now, just know that I’m delighted be among you in this in-between time and looking forward to what we can do together that will support UU Westport, our Unitarian Universalist Association, and our world.
With appreciation,
Carlton
Rev. Carlton E. Smith
Senior Minister
