Candidating “fortnight”
Continues this week
Rev. Lissa Gundlach is our candidate
Preaching May 3
Town Hall, Saturday, May 2nd 10:30am-12pm 

Voting
Congregational meeting Sunday at 11:30 on Zoom 
Info is posted on the church calendar (uuclb.org)

Budget
Finance Committee working on the Budget
Budget hearing on May 9

Announcements came out this morning
Lots of announcements
Make sure to click “view entire message” at the bottom
Announcements from RE, Pastoral Care, Music program
Ways to get involved in the larger community
Information for the last few days of candidating week
Announcement about the Congregational Meeting on May 31.
Notice of the Memorial Service for Jack Graham
Sunday, May 10 at 1pm
An invitation from Laura Scully to prepare something for my farewell party
June 21 (also my anniversary)

Advance coming out later this week

2)  Message

Our first experience of this crisis was adapting
It was chaotic
Stressful
Frightening

Now it’s starting to feel like the new normal (remember the change cycle)
And that’s good
Less stress.
More comfortable
Feeling of, “I got this”
Figuring out things like live/work balance
And technology
And getting groceries delivered

But I also want to resist that “the new normal” feeling
This isn’t normal
And we are missing a lot that is essential and we must have again
This isn’t acceptable
And we need to remember that.

Article in the New York Times about the problems with meeting and socializing on Zoom
Missing non-verbal cues
Can’t actually look someone in the eyes
Freezing and compressing and pixilating

We are social animals and this doesn’t cut it.
Social media doesn’t create community
Facebook friends don’t really sustain friendships
Zoom webinar doesn’t really replace in-person worship
It’s nice that we have it (I’m grateful)
But it isn’t enough.

I was reminded of this yesterday
A friend shared a clip from an old movie on facebook
Yes on facebook
A clip of Ray Bolger singing and dancing
Ray Bolger was the Scarecrow in Wizard of OZ
This was a movie called, “Look for the Silver Lining” from 1949
And the clip was Bolger singing and dancing to a song called, “Who”

So I’m looking at this great dance routine.
Tap dancing
Graceful, athletic, charming
Funny
Even kind of daring in a way
As he’s hosted around the stage
And dances precariously on top of things.

And I’m thinking why don’t we have that kind of movie any more?
I know I sound like an old fuddy-duddy.
And I don’t need to go into all the reasons that we don’t have movies like that any more.

But I’m also thinking
Here was a piece of our culture.
Something that people enjoyed
And cherished.
And that still gets passed around on facebook
As something to enjoy
And admire
So why did we let it go?

And here’s the thing about that movie clip
The scene takes place in a theater
The dance routine is part of a stage show
In one part of the clip the camera turns to show the theater audience
Enjoying the show and clapping and laughing
So in the movie itself the movie references the older culture of live theater.
The culture of live theater that at one time people felt we had lost forever
When people started to go to movies instead.

But instead we have both
Live theater 
And movies
And television
And Netflix
And facebook
And Zoom

So that’s my reminder for us today
We have had to give up so much in the last few weeks
And when we get through this
We are going to have choices to make about how we remake our society.
It’s an opportunity to do things differently
Somethings we will give up
And rightly so.
But something’s we should not let go of
And we must work diligently to bring them back.
Like “In-person” worship
And tap-dancing.

I’ll see you tomorrow 1pm