 A Grateful Space
In this season of Thanksgiving, we have many things to be grateful for. We have food and shelter, family and friends, and we have UUS, our spiritual community. It’s easy to take things for granted, to complain about the traffic or the price of gas, but it’s important to step back everyone once in a while and really look at what we have. I am going to talk about just one thing that we all have in common and that is UUS. Our church is growing. The energy is contagious and visitors are returning and becoming friends and members. We don’t have an over flow crowd every Sunday but our Religious Exploration space has become pretty tight.
In response to our expanding numbers, we began exploring the
possibility of expanding our space. As luck would have it, (or maybe it
was divine intervention!), the tenant next door announced their
intention to move. At our annual meeting last May, we presented a
budget that included expanding into the space next door during this
fiscal year. It was a stretch for us but you all stepped up to the
challenge and we met our pledge goal. I am grateful that we have
members who are able and willing to do so.
I am also excited about our new space! If you’ve driven on the north
side of our building, you’ve seen all the windows in the Capitol Cable
offices. Those will be our windows! Our entry lobby will be bright and
cheerful with windows along the front and side walls. Rev Anya’s office
and the nursery will both be located along that outside wall of
windows, too. If you have children in the nursery, you know what a
difference this will make. And Rev Anya will have lots of natural light
in her new office. Our current office space will be modified for use by
the Religious Exploration program. The walls between the two RE
classrooms and between Rev Anya’s office and the youth room will come
down to make two bigger classrooms. Plus we’ll be installing a drinking
fountain where the kitchen sink is now.
This would be plenty enough to be grateful for, but there’s more! A
mezzanine level covers about half the new floor space. The youth will
have a room up there and the rest of the space will be open with a big
conference table in the center for meetings and classes and desks along
the windows for our administrator, Phaedra Edwards, our RE director,
Linda Weaver, and our music director, Kris Adams.
We expect work to begin in early December and our new space to be
ready for occupancy in mid to late January. News and updates will be
published in this newsletter, by email and verbal announcements, and by
posters in our foyer. And yes, there will be celebrations!
I am grateful for our UUS community and for your support that is making this expansion necessary and possible.
Bonnie Lepoff
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