Dear TOLUUC Community,

Thank you for your patience as our update comes out later than usual this week. We don’t have much more to report due to the holiday.

As you may know, we have several special services coming up this month. The service this Sunday ties together joy and rebellion. December 12th will bring us our yearly children’s pageant focused on a debate between Mother Earth and Father Christmas. December 19th will be our regular choir service. On Tuesday, December 21st, we will hold a Blue Christmas Service at 7pm. This service makes space for grief of many kinds in the midst of a holiday focused on joy. December 24th will be our Christmas Eve Service. If you are interested in participating, please reach out to Rev. Jenn! The final Sunday of this month will bring us a service focused on gratitude with a homily by Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray President of the Unitarian Universalist Association. We hope to see you at many of these services this month.

Some of the members of the Safe Gathering Task Force gathered at the sanctuary this week to explore the effect of opening doors and windows on the air exchange rate. The recommended rate of air exchange for reducing virus transmission is 4-6 times per hour. With the varied rate of wind flow, we know that the air exchange rate in the sanctuary would be about 1-2 times per hour. We are pursuing some other possibilities that congregations have used to increase that rate and will keep you informed of our progress.

We are seeing some congregations scaling back or temporarily ending in-person services in response to the higher rates of Covid in the area. The board and the Covid Team are paying attention to what is going on. The Covid Team hasn’t had a chance to get together and update their recommendations, but that is something they are looking at doing very soon now that the Thanksgiving holiday is behind us.

Rev Jenn has returned from Kansas and is available for pastoral care or other needs. If you sent a message while she was gone and the issue is urgent, please reach out again (as she is still working through her emails).

Take good care,

Leah Mikkelson (Board President) and Rev. Jenn Gracen (Interim Minister)