Manatee UU Fellowship NEWS

I know it’s a cliche, but it truly feels like time is moving faster and faster. By the time you read this, it will already be 2026, or close to it. I can hardly imagine it!

In Florida, we’ll still have some cold weeks coming up. But it’s already starting to stay light a little longer each evening, the first sign that spring, our most optimistic season, is on its way.

Now normally the start of a new year is a time filled with hope and promise. But it’s been a little different recently, as hope and promise have been besieged by worry and fear — for ourselves, for our families, for our friends, and for all around us. What will happen next in our world? Our country? Our state? Our fellowship?

We don’t know. Nevertheless, we persist.

There’s only so much we can do to make the world a just and better place. But we actively do whatever we can. At our Fellowship, we do so together (even when we don’t agree), with joy (even when we’re fearful over just about everything in the world), and with love at the center (even on our most troubling and troubled days).

While our home, Manatee Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, faces its own unique challenges, I’m seeing that our covenant with one another is in full, happy force.

It’s our covenant that saw us through coming back from a triple-header of hurricanes that devastated the homes of our members, friends, and neighbors. It’s our covenant that helped us grieve together as we’ve lost members to illness. As the year ended it was our covenant that kept us focused as we watched closely over others facing serious challenges.

I continue to be delighted by the way my board colleagues work together to solve every problem that comes along. Just in November, we were faced with a serious plumbing emergency that forced us to cancel the Thanksgiving potluck dinner that Becky Smith works hard to organize each year and that provides a joyful (and delicious) time for everyone, one for which we are truly grateful.

Yet another casualty was a concert that Friday by Jack Williams, intended to be the next in our budding Building Bridges Coffeehouse series organized by Di Morgan. And last but not least, we had to cancel the Sunday service, a disappointment to all.

I remember that week well, with its countless emails, texts, and calls among board members and committee chairs sorting through options, making hard decisions, all with the safety and best interests of our congregation foremost in our minds. Did we make all the right decisions? I’m happy to say we did our best. All decisions were made together, with love at the center.

Soon in this year of 2026 we — not just the board, but the entire congregation — will be charting the course for our Fellowship’s future. With Rev. Fred’s anticipated retirement in 2027, there will be difficult choices ahead for us. The responsibility for those choices rests with each and every one of us, as does providing the means to make the choices we want.

I love when Barb Ehren characterizes membership involvement as including our time, treasure, and talent. As we proceed cautiously but optimistically into 2026, I urge you to pledge to participate just a little bit more in one, two, or three of these ways as best you can. The satisfaction you will get will be immeasurable, and it will be magnified throughout the congregation. This is our spiritual home, and we need to nourish and sustain it.

With love at the center always,
Ted Medrek — board president