Snapshot V.4
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames (UUFA) is a diverse congregation of just over 300 members and 170 youth, and we employ a full-time minister, a full-time director of youth and children’s ministries, and part-time office administrator (25-hour) and music coordinator (10-hour). We occupy a modern steel building near the campus of Iowa State University (ISU), with large plate glass windows along parts of the east and west arcs of the round, multi-use worship area, known as the Fellowship Hall. On Sundays the chairs are often set up to face the west window, which looks out upon a hillside of grasses, flowers and trees, a vivid reminder of our connectedness to the Earth.
The UUFA’s History with the Seventh Principle
The Fellowship’s philosophy of shared ministry means that its spiritual life is dependent upon the creativity, commitment, caring, vision, discernment and institutional knowledge of its members, working together. The scientific inquiry that takes place at ISU feeds into the Fellowship. Members include activists, educators and researchers who focus professionally and personally on improving land and energy use and water quality in Ames and beyond. Many have connections to this land’s awesome productivity, either as growers or as former farm kids. The active engagement of such gifts in our community life has drawn the UUFA toward a fuller commitment to and expression of the Seventh Principle.
Interest in becoming Green Sanctuary dates to October, 2002, when a presentation was made about the process. Since then, a “Green Corner” column has run in our monthly newsletter. In the summer of 2007, the Fellowship held a four-week series of Sunday morning programs on environmental sustainability, a combination of minister-led and lay-led services that produced wide-ranging conversations about what we could do as a congregation. About the same time, a Fellowship Meals group convened that was committed to reviving Sunday “soup lunches” in a way that celebrated local foods and sustainable farming.
Finally, early in 2009, Erv Klaas, a leader of our Green Sanctuary effort, obtained approval for a Green Sanctuary application from the UUFA Board. Klaas addressed a meeting of the UUFA Council of Committees and encouraged each committee representative to imagine out loud about how their work could become “greener.” The committees themselves embraced the assignment, and began to develop plans and projects. And, in the spirited, decentralized manner in which shared ministry occurs, these groups have gone ahead and begun to be execute their plans—before they could be codified into a Green Sanctuary Action Plan. The UUFA is not standing still in its quest for deeper enactment of the Seventh Principle, and if this snapshot appears somewhat blurry, it is only because the target is moving.
Worship and Celebration
This area is a strength in our Fellowship’s existing enactment of environment principles. A survey of the last three years’ services found that 23% focused on awareness of natural rhythms, the interrelationships among human and biotic communities, our species’ purpose in sustaining the planet, and the considerable challenges we face in doing so. In the fall of 2008 our minister, Rev. Dr. Brian Eslinger, taught a graduate class at ISU on Religion and the Environment, and developed several sermons from it. Green issues are also paramount for several of our talented lay presenters, who come to these issues from very different sensibilities.
Several seasonal rituals serve as the pillars for our celebration of nature. Like many UU congregations, we have a Flower Communion in the spring, and we celebrate a Salsa Communion in late summer and an Apple Communion in the fall. As our annual early fall ingathering, members bring water from their summer travels or experiences. The Sunday services closest to the equinoxes usually focus on the turning of the seasons, and Earth Day is always celebrated. Finally, one member family hosts a fellowship-wide bonfire at their farm every winter and summer solstice; at one recent celebration, they held a dedication ceremony for their newly erected 2.3 kw windmill.
Incidental services also focus on environmental issues. Recent topics have included global warming, land as community vs. land as commodity, and a youth-powered food revolution. Two musicians who celebrate the earth, Jim Scott and Peter Mayer, have both graced our Fellowship Hall in the past year.
The celebration of nature extends to the Fireside Room, our lounge area adjacent to the kitchen, where monthly soup lunches (planned potlucks) are held at noon during fall, winter, and spring. It has become part of UUFA culture not only to label ingredients, but to boast of their local provenance on these labels. Tables are set with homemade tablecloths and cloth napkins, canned sweet pickles or pickled beets, and butter from a local creamery, and the Fellowship Meals coordinators place “conversation starters” regarding environmental topics on the tables.
The UUFA is home to the Gallery in the Round. The Art Committee, which oversees the gallery, has invited several artists who reflect upon Seventh Principle themes to display their work. In the past year, such exhibitions have included drawings and outdoor installations by John Siblik, an environmental artist who works with willow and other natural materials; eggshell and pastel paintings by artist Ingrid Lilligren, who reflected in her Artist’s Statement on the environmental dilemma of her profession of “object making”; and a series of photographs by the Paddlers, celebrating canoeing and kayaking on the rivers and streams of Iowa.
Religious Education
The number of children in our religious education program has grown rapidly in recent years. Children attend RE classes at 9 or 11am on Sundays, during the adult services. Every other week, the children start the hour in the Fellowship Hall before being dismissed to their upstairs classrooms. They are especially included in portions of the seasonal “communion” or ritual celebrations. Middle-school and high-school students meet at 11am only, and the high-school students also have a well-attended Wednesday-night youth group.
Our upstairs classrooms (PS/K–6th grade) are well situated to encourage appreciation of nature, with a sliding glass door leading to a patio, a woodsy outdoor play area, and even a hiking path up the hill. During the summers, the transition between outdoors and indoors is practically seamless. At this year’s children’s summer camp, kids spent about 2 hours a day outdoors. Opportunities to observe the changes of the seasons are woven into lessons throughout the year. Further, we share classroom space with a Waldorf preschool, so the space is filled with many objects made of wood, wool, silk, and other natural materials to see, touch, and appreciate.
Our previous director of religious education was firmly rooted in earth-based spirituality. Our present director of youth and children’s ministries, Lori Allen, is appreciative of the Seventh Principle as well, and wrote and implemented an elementary curriculum last year, “Stories of our World Family,” which included activities such as seeing what conditions hinder and help plant growth, lessons on George Washington Carver and Rachel Carson, and stories that showed other cultures’ spiritual connections to nature (e.g., the importance of the Ganges River to Hindus). This year, heeding the call for “green” programming, Lori wrote a 9-month curriculum organized by the four elements (water, fire, air, and earth), which combines environmental learning with a sense of the mystery inherent in the natural world. In addition to the class curriculum, each element will be celebrated by a multi-age outdoor event. Water, for example, was celebrated by a creek walk with a professional naturalist for children and parents.
Preschoolers, middle-schooler, and teens also participate in the UUFA’s culture of nature awareness. Last year, preschoolers had a 10-week unit on the natural world; middle-school students volunteered to help with recycling and outdoor clean-up; and teens chose to go on two camping trips. The youth’s biennial Boston Heritage trip always includes a trip to Walden Pond.
Adult religious education at the UUFA is largely self-organized. Various groups, such as the Skadberg Science Circle and Women’s Spirituality, meet biweekly or monthly to read books about and discuss shared interests, including environmental topics. A young adult group, Prairie Fire, meets regularly and also focuses on earth-centered practices. A Yahoo discussion listserv, UUFAgardening, was formed in 2009 to exchange information among novice and experienced Fellowship gardeners and to set up educational activities such as tomato canning; an information-, seed-, and produce-sharing table on gardening and slow food is present practically every Sunday in the Fireside Room between services.
The Fellowship also offers slightly more formal, Wednesday night courses, some led by staff and some by lay leaders. In 2007, one eight (?)-week Wednesday-night course was based on the Northwest Earth Institute’s “Choices for Sustainable Living” curriculum and was attended by 8–10 people. In 2008, the NEI curriculum “Global Warming: Changing CO2ourse” attracted about half as many.
Environmental Justice
The UUFA donates half of its monthly undesignated offering to local or national social justice organizations. Most of these focus on the immediate (i.e., non-environmental) needs of local homeless people, battered women, disadvantaged youth, and those who face food insecurity or need help with electric bills, as well as those focusing on GLBT and freedom-of-religion advocacy. In an early response to the Green Sanctuary Certification process, the newly formed Social Justice committee designated April as the month to financially support an environmental organization; in April 2009, we sent more than $600 to the local Squaw Creek Watershed Coalition, and the September 2009 funds went to the international organization Water For People.
In addition to donating half of our undesignated offerings, the UUFA gives 1% of its annual budget as membership dues to A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy (AMOS), a congregation-based community organization serving Ames and Des Moines that advocates for social change. The environment is one of AMOS’s four focus areas; in the past AMOS in Ames lobbied city government and ISU for greater consideration of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, X percent of our members are members of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which has Environmental Justice as one of its four focus areas.
Fellowship members who have traveled to visit our sister congregation in Tordatfalva, Romania, have reported receiving an education in sustainable living. The villagers live off the land with very few inputs. Our work there has included fixing up an empty pastor’s residence for use as a guest house and low-impact tourism destination point; the larger picture is to help this shrinking rural village retain at least some of the younger generation.
The UUFA is part of the Alternative Gift Market program for the holiday season. The gifts purchased through it—e.g., tree plantings, domesticated animals for third-world families, donations to grassroots groups—are frequently in keeping with environmental justice. Finally, the Social Justice committee planted and tended a vegetable garden at the Boys and Girls Club of Ames this summer to provide inspiration for children who might not otherwise have access to that experience.
Sustainable Living
Almost all of the UUFA’s sustainable living measures are best described as practices rather than policies. Nonetheless, over the past several years, a great deal of effort has been focused on greening the UUFA physical plant.
One policy, however, is explicit: all UUFA events and classes are directed to use the Fellowship’s dinnerware, cups and silverware rather than disposable products. This policy extends to renters of the building. Three years ago, cloth napkins were sewn to replace paper napkins at Fellowship Meals. The recycling of our cans, plastic bottles, and paper is done weekly by a volunteer on her bicycle and trailer.
Paper Products / Plastic Recycling
Paper conservation began in earnest several years ago. Postcard meeting reminders were replaced with emails. Two-thirds of those on the general mailing list receive the monthly newsletter (usually 12 pages) in digital form. The paper purchased for the office is generally post-consumer recycled paper. The newsletter—which is printed off-site—is not post-consumer recycled. A paper recycling bin is placed near the exit of Fellowship Hall, so that attendees of the 11am service can conveniently drop their programs in it as they leave (people who attend the 9am service are encouraged to leave programs on their seats). Programs are generally kept to one double-sided 8 ½ x 11 sheet.
Energy Use
With the introduction of programmable thermostats, the Fellowship’s utility bills were $2000 under budget last year. The thermostats can program as many as four different temperatures per day; each week, the Building and Grounds Manager studies the upcoming schedule of events and programs the thermostats accordingly. Last year, gaskets were replaced on the Fellowship’s metal doors to keep out drafts.
Our 200-W incandescent bulbs are being gradually replaced by 40-W fluorescent bulbs. Halogen lights are used for spot-lighting in the Gallery in the Round. Curtains on the plate glass windows of Fellowship Hall are opened to let in natural light. There is also a large skylight in the room.
Chemical Products.
A couple years ago, we switched to non-toxic cleaning products. Vinegar and water is used for glass; Dr. Bronner’s in different dilutions is used for cleaning other surfaces. Unfortunately, the dishwasher does use toxic, corrosive chemicals. The wood “dance” floor in Fellowship Hall is sealed with a non-VOC (volatile organic chemical) coating. No chemicals are used in the landscape upkeep. Sodium chloride (mild freeze) and calcium chloride (deep freeze) are used on the sidewalks.
Parking and Landscaping
Parking is a critical issue at the UUFA, restricting our growth. On most Sundays, our two small parking lots are quickly filled, and others must park on a residential street 300 yards up a steep hill. Some people must walk as much as a third of a mile from their car to the Fellowship. In 2008, we bought the adjacent lot and voted to use it to enlarge the parking lot. This meant removal of a large cottonwood tree and a house and garage. We were able to move the house rather than destroy it. We investigated permeable pavement for the new parking area, but the high water table precluded this option. To offset the removal of the cottonwood, a Fellowship youth led volunteers in planting six evergreens on the west hillside.
Landscaping has been planned carefully in relation to the site. Ginkgo trees, which handle air pollution, line the east Hyland Ave. edge. Ground cover holds the soil on the south hill, with a small lawn on the east. The west hill behind the Fellowship is landscaped naturally, with unmown grasses, native prairie flowers, and trees lining the perimeter. Paths and the play area in the back are paved with woodchips. At least one gutter drain is equipped with a chain, which slows the fall of water so that the soils beneath it are not eroded. This year a symbolic vegetable garden with sunflowers, tomatoes, and beans was planted along a main entrance to the building.
Building addition.
A new wing of the building was added in 2003. At that time, many green designs were imagined but had to be abandoned due to cost, including ground source heating and a green roof. However, a recent bequest provides funds specifically for roof solar panels; however, we must first replace the roof. The capital campaign for the parking lot and roof is partially completed.
Other
The UUFA has no policy regarding the social or environmental responsibility of the funds or companies in which it invests its endowment—now valued at $_____. Although there is no Fellowship-wide carpooling effort, one member has offered small green beads, to put on a safety pin, for every trip to the Fellowship a member makes by foot, by bike, or by carpool. A highly functional user-based website was created this year to allow virtual conversations among members of the UUFA’s various committees, and we hope that this new communication venue may decrease the frequency of meetings, and hence, our environmental footprint.