In September of 1988: Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing taxpayers $1.3 billion.Backed by $2 billion in Federal aid, the Robert M. Bass Group signed off on a deal to acquire the nation's largest bankrupt thrift, American Savings and Loan Association.The result was at that time the most expensive bailout ever for a single Savings and Loan institution.
In September of 1988:Hurricane Gilbert, the eighth tropical storm and third hurricane of the 1988 Atlantic hurricane season, wreaked havoc in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico for nearly nine days. In total, it killed 341 people and caused about $5.5 billion in damages.
In September of 1988:The African American UU Ministries was founded.The Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines, was admitted as a member congregation of the UUA.TheGeneral Assembly would not be held in Arizona because the Martin Luther King holiday was not reenacted into law by the Arizona legislature.
In September of 1988:
According to Bob Moore’s book, The View From The Summit, the first planning group meeting to start a new UU fellowship in San DiegoCounty was held, and a 4-month lease on the Masonic Lodge in LaMesa was signed.As Bob writes, “That would give us nearly four months to find something better.As it turned out, on Nov. 1 we extended the lease until June, and 18 years later, we still had not found that ‘something better.’”
It was quite a year, 1988!20 years ago!Just think of what you were doing 20 years ago when Summit UU Fellowship was being birthed.Today we celebrate that founding, those who dedicated themselves to the conception and nurturance of this congregation in its developing years.And we look to our future.
I invited all of our past board presidents to be with us today and to share a highlight of their tenure as president of Summit.Several are here to do just that.
1989-1990 first Summit president Geoff Levin, now living in Illinois
1991 Gary Baldwin **
1992-1993Barbara Wilson
The highlight of my tenure was:I had the joy of working with Reverend Ned during his first year with Summit.
(Story of Ned letting a homeless man sit in on choir rehearsal)
1994 Jo Carey (Lindstrom) **
1995-1996 John Wilson, living in Prescott, AZ
1997 Esther Cardall, in Pasadena, CA
1998-1999 Bob Moore **
Congregation leaders are called on to do a variety of jobs.Board Presidents are asked to handle some awkward situations and all kinds of interesting things.At one Sunday morning service, in of the very big Unitarian congregations in Boston, a man was making a ruckus in the back pew. After every sentence the minister spoke, he would shout, "Amen! Halleluia!"
One of the ushers approached the man and tried to get him to be quiet, but it was to no avail.The man continued to shout “Amen!Halleluia!”.The usher tapped the board president on the shoulder and whispered that some help was needed with the situation.The board president went to the man and spoke to him discreetly. "Sir, uh, we just don't do things like that here."
"But I got religion!"The board president shot back, “Well, you certainly didn't get it here."
2000 Jamie Cleland **
2001 Jim Lindstrom **
2002-2003 Sandy Bernstein
My highlight: Helping to get people working together after a difficult period in which we decided we were not yet ready to move to our own facility.
The Rev. Tom Owen-Towle, who served this congregation for 2 years as the Interim minister, says, “Beloved Community means holding on to the difficult.”
What this means to me is that to practice community is not for the faint of heart. It requires a commitment to be in relationship with people we may not like, with whom we don’t always agree, whose theology and politics may be different from our own.It asks of us to be present to needs in others that make us aware of our own needs and limitations. It also asks others to accept us in our own uniqueness and imperfection.
Beloved community is not a tidy package of ready-made perfection. Rather it is a container that houses a messy, dynamic, changing organism, a laboratory where among the rubble of true human being we can discover in rich abundance hidden wells of creativity and compassion and connection and grace. We don’t get to this place by abandoning the difficult.We get to this place by holding on.
03-04 & 04-05 Harriet Wright **
05-06 Jeff Garvey **
Leaders have made the difference.Leaders usually do!Consider the enlightened teachers in world religions and the leaders that were inspired by them.The leaders who guided and sometimes prodded their communities to stand on the side of love, to work for justice, and to care for one another.The leaders have made a difference.And not just board presidents and members of the board of directors.Leaders like RE teachers and committee chairs, growth and solar task forces; covenant group facilitators; all leaders.
When I came to Summit as your candidate for settled minister, you were in your own building and Rex Graham was in his last year as president.
06-07 Rex Graham**
07-present Debbie Wingard **
Ministry is all that we do together --
Ministry is that quality of being in community that affirms human dignity -- beckons forth hidden possibilities, invites us into deeper, more constant,
reverent relationships, and carries forward our heritage of hope and liberation.
Ministry is what we do together as we celebrate triumphs of our human spirit
Miracles of birth and life.Wonders of devotion and sacrifice.
Ministry is what we do together -- with one another -- in terror and torment -- in grief, in misery and pain, enabling us in the presence of death to say yes to life.
We who minister speak and live the best we know with full knowledge that it is never quite enough.And yet are reassured by lostness found, fragments reunited, wounds healed and joy shared.
Ministry is all that we do -- together.
Gordon McKeeman
Great things are accomplished when we work together.When we are willing to put ego aside and accept the outstretched the hand of a brother and offer a hand to a sister and share in the ministry, we can accomplish anything!
A growing and dedicated religious community like Summit UU Fellowship is not made strong and is not successful in working to make it’s mission a reality by renegades or groups that refuse to work with other groups, or by individuals who look to create or perpetuate divisions between people.
We are made strong and successful by sharing our ministry.By taking up a mantle of leadership that respects the members of the community and that speaks from a place of compassion and service; that listens to new ideas and considers alternatives to “the way we’ve always done it”.
We all are the history makers now.Everytime we engage in the mission of this congregation, everytime we walk through these doors, we are creating history.Visitors and special guests, your presence here creates & shapes a part of our history.
I said it last Sunday, and it bears repeating today:Summit is needed in EastCounty.We are needed in a world where 20 years after our founding, financial bail-outs are again stressing our economy and families are straining under the pressures of home foreclosures and inadequate healthcare and uncertainty about their future; pinning their hopes (and in some cases fears) on an election that no matter the outcome there will be disappointments and failures and the easy fix will not be found.
Hurricanes seem to be more frequently ripping through our towns and taking innocent lives; leaving in their wake devastation in the millions, if not billions.Not to mention wildfires, and tornadoes, and floods.Summit UU Fellowship is needed.
Community that stands strong, even through the difficulities – beloved community that nurtures and comforts and at the same time challenges, inspires and motivates – that is what is needed.That is what young families and senior citizens and empty nesters and young adults in EastCounty are seeking.That’s what Democrats and Republicans and Independents and Libertarians are seeking.That’s what agnostics and Christians and pagans and Buddhists and atheists are seeking.That’s what blue collar and white collar workers are seeking.A beloved community that stands strong: nurturing & comforting, challenging, inspiring, and motivating.
Summit was needed 20 years ago, and Summit is needed today, and Summit will be needed 20 years from now.
We know it will not be easy.It has never been “easy”.But as said by Wayne B. Arnason – Take courage friends, the way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high.
Take courage.For deep down, there is another truth: you are not alone.
We, this beloved community, are being called by our shared vision to be a growing, caring, intergenerational congregation of diverse backgrounds, embracing the free and responsible search for truth and meaning; committed to promoting spiritual and personal growth, social justice, environmental awareness and participation in the greater community.
Let us carry on the work that was started by a handful of courageous and creative women and men 20 years ago.Work that has been continued by strong and dedicated leaders over the past 2 decades.
Let us answer the call with the ‘yes’ of our very beings – the ‘yes’ of our lives.
May it be so.
Call to Worship:Ann Peart
We come together to celebrate who we are, to share the insights that give meaning and hope to our lives, to learn from the wisdom of others, that their truths may contribute to our understanding.We gather, we share, we learn; we celebrate our coming together.
Let us worship.
Offertory: Brandoch Lovely, adapt.
Let there be an offering to sustain and strengthen this place for 20 more years, and beyond.A place which is sacred to so many of us, a community of memory and of hope, for we are now the keepers of the dream.
Benediction:Theodore Parker
Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;
its temple, all space;
its shrine, the good heart;
its creed, all truth;
its ritual, works of love;
its profession of faith, divine living.
