“When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear–against alienation and separation.  The choice to love is a choice to connect–to find ourselves in the other.”

     bell hooks 

Community Ministry Update

Thanks to everyone who participated in our September 29th congregational conversation about Community Ministry (CM) at CVUUS and in Addison County.  As we discussed back in our initial conversation in May, our faith calls on us to respond to the increasing impoverishment and disenfranchisement in our community of communities through…

• Increasing Unitarian Universalist representation in justice- and equity-focused collaborations and partnerships, which will in turn increase opportunities for congregational members to directly engage,
• Providing direct pastoral ministry and integrated services to our neighbors suffering the effects of poverty, systemic oppression, housing and food insecurity, and a loss of hope, and
• Accelerating the evolution of CVUUS from a dominant white culture / “family systems model” society into a multicultural community of communities that reflects our values and demonstrates our openness to growing more connected in our interdependent world.

Here are the slides for the conversation.  Please reach out to Tom if you’d like to learn more.

Supporting Foster Kids and Their Families

America’s foster system is in crisis, and Vermont is no different.  And the kids are the ones that pay the highest price with family and human service systems struggle.  Our community ministry is partnering with the Vermont Department of Children & Families to explore ways members of CVUUS can help.  For example, we are both planning a worship service for December 1st that will center the foster experience, and we are exploring the concept of partnering with local organizations and agencies to host “Foster Family Circles,” a space where guardians can be welcomed to connect and exchange perspectives with other foster families.  We will design a separate supportive program for foster youth participating in the Circle. This past summer, CVUUS partnered with DCF to get the school year started off right for area foster kids and their families by throwing a pizza party and backpack gifting event at the Middlebury Teen Center Pavilion.

Action: If you would like to participate or learn more, please contact Tom.

Readers Are Leaders

As we witness the effects of poverty in our own communities, please join our CVUUS’s community reading group this autumn as we discuss Matthew Desmond’s best-seller, Poverty By America.  Desmond masterfully discusses why people living in the richest country on earth continue to suffer from poverty and outlines how to become poverty abolitionists.  We had a great kick-off on Monday, Oct 28th, 7:00-8:30 p.m. in CVUUS’s Ann Ross Fellowship Hall and via Zoom.   We will continue at the same time on the next three Monday evenings (November 4, November 11, and November 18).  Here are some discussion questions we’ll consider:

• Desmond defines poverty as “a tight knot of social problems,” breaking with conventional definitions that focus only on low incomes. What are the implications of this view? How would you define poverty?
• “To understand the causes of poverty, we must look beyond the poor,” notes Desmond from the outset, “which makes this a book about poverty that is not just about the poor. Instead, it’s a book about how the other half lives, about how some lives are made small so that others may grow.”
• Poverty is often invisible, but it can also be very public. When you see a tent encampment or homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk, what goes through your mind? What questions do you ask yourself?
• Desmond found that “every year, the richest American families receive almost 40 percent more in government subsidies than the poorest American families.”? Can you think of ways that you or your family benefit from government assistance that you’ve never thought of as “welfare”? Do you think differently about it now?

Action: Please contact Mike Greenwood, Ellen Flight, or Tom for more information.

CVUUS Provides Safe Space for LGBTQIA+ Addiction Recovery Group

In collaboration with one of our core partners, Turning Point of Addison County, we launched “Queerly Beloved,” an addiction recovery group centered on the needs of our community’s LGBTQIA+ members this past summer.  It meets in the Ann Ross Fellowship Hall every Thursday at 6p.  TPAC has expressed out grateful they are that CVUUS is providing such a safe, welcoming space for connection among queer community members who do not feel safe in mixed-gender meetings.

Action: If you are interested in serving as a “welcoming host” (opening and closing the building, etc.) for the group), please reach out to Tom.

Quilting for Justice

The Milk and Honey Quilters Guild has a strong commitment to community service.  It is currently holding monthly sit-and-sews, dedicating four of them to community service projects.  It has made quilts for Shard Villa, baby blankets for Parent Child Center, blankets for Project Linus, pillowcases for Porter and many other places, chemo hats for Porter, adult clothing protectors and shoe bags for Project Independence, walker bags for the senior living centers, quilts for Maui after the devastating fire there, coordinated with Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Center to make and finish quilts for children in foster care and area immigrants, and more.  The Guild co-sponsored the documentary The Quilters in the MNFF (which won best documentary short) and sent fabric and thread to the high-security prison in Licking, MO, where they make quilts for the birthdays of foster children.  There is much joy and healing to be found in creating and sharing.  To learn more or be involved, please reach out to Dorothy Mammen.

Middlebury Considering Off-Limits Areas for Area’s Unhoused After the Supreme Court Implicitly Rules Homelessness a Crime

In a historically shameful decision on June 28th, the Supreme Court ruled that people experiencing homelessness are not included in the Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.  This ruling makes it easier for local governments to destroy encampments used by unhoused members of communities and throw away their belongings.  The decision will add to the suffering of the 250,000+ people who sleep outside each night, as well as millions of Americans who are just one missed paycheck away from homelessness.  As Hilary Melton, Executive Director of Pathways Vermont said,  “Criminalizing people who are trying to survive, sleeping outside when there are no other options, is the actual crime. Every person deserves access to safe, stable housing.”  Learn more about the potential impact of this decision and the way forward here.

As this September Addison Independent article highlights, Middlebury is considering designating some municipal areas as “high sensitivity” spaces where community members, including the unhoused, would not be permitted to camp overnight.  Make your voices heard!  Talk with your neighbors, and if you live in Middlebury, participate in Select Board meetings.

Come Help us Bend the Arc of History Toward Justice Here in Vermont

The Vermont Interfaith Action (VIA) network is Vermont’s only faith-based advocacy organization.  As Addison County’s representative to VIA, CVUUS has a tremendous opportunity to join others, organize, and work with Vermont legislators to shape and implement strategies to systemically address some of our state’s most vexing socio-economic challenges.  We are now organizing in preparation for the new legislative year.

Action: YOU can be part of these efforts as well.  VIA is looking for justice-focused spirits interested in working any of these issues….

• Affordable Housing & Homelessness
• Climate Change
• Racial Justice
• Corrections Reform
• Anti-religious bigotry and Anti-Hate

We would love to have you join us!  Please contact Tom.

Our Towns Declare Inclusivity!

After the murder of George Floyd, Al Wakefield and a small group of community leaders in Rutland County formed a movement through which every municipality in Vermont could publicly declare the message that everyone is welcome here.   Almost 80% of Vermont’s municipalities have adopted the Declaration of Inclusion.  Leicester, Monkton, Ferrisburgh, New Haven, and Addison have not.  On July 1^st, the Waltham select board voted to adopt the Vermont Declaration of Inclusion, condemning racism and welcoming all persons in their community.  Tom and Amaya were on hand to advocate for the declaration and support Norm Cohen, a DOI representative who dialed in from Rutland.  While ~77% of Vermont municipalities have adopted the DOI, some Addison County towns have not.

Action: If you would like to work with us to help these communities project a more welcoming, inclusive presence in Addison County, please contact Tom.

Partnering with FUUSB to Serve Our Unhoused Neighbors

Innovation and inter-congregational collaboration are key to finding solutions to inequity and injustice.  The good people of First UU Society of Burlington are practicing their faith through just such innovation with their “Sunday Morning Breakfast” (SMB) program.  Tom and his family have joined the FUUSB team as they served breakfast, handed out clothing items, and spent time over 100 members of Burlington’s unhoused community.  Recently, Tom was invited to preach at FUUSB on the second anniversary of FUUSB’s SMB program.

Action: If you want to join Tom in future collaborations with FUUSB like the “Sunday Morning Breakfast” program, please contact him.

Vermont Homelessness Increases… Again

For yet another year housing insecurity worsened in Vermont.  Already with the second highest rate of homelessness per capita in the United States, Vermont saw that rate increase again in 2023.  According to the annual “point in time” (PIT) count sponsored by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, at least 3,458 people (5% more than in 2022) were experiencing long-term homelessness on January 24/25, 2024, the day of the PIT count.  Vermont is witnessing an over 300 percent increase in homelessness since 2019.

Here is a VTDigger article that overviews some of the aspects of this increase, and another that debunks myths about our communities’ unhoused members.  But much more data in the actual PIT report bears reading.  Also, this survey, almost by design, undercounts people who are both homeless and housing insecure.  For example, the PIT count does not count children in foster care or adults who are incarcerated.  It does not count single moms and their children who have lost their housing and are either living in their cars or couch-surfing in other people’s homes.  As with so much of a design created by bureaucrats primarily to administer grants and construct statistics, the PIT count is a bureaucratic tool that provides just a glimpse of the suffering of homelessness and housing insecurity.

In terms of equity and justice, it’s critical that we recognize the disproportional effect homelessness is having on people of color.  A close look at a slice of the PIT data illustrates this fact:

• In Addison County, Black people are homeless at a percentage rate twice that of white people.
• In Chittenden County, 2.7% of the Black population are unhoused v. 0.5% of the white population
• In Rutland County, while 1% of the white population is homeless, 5.4% or over five times more of the Black population is unhoused.

Homelessness is a symptom of intersectional and systemic causes.  The divide between the “haves” and “have nots” is spread throughout Vermont and the country.  Untreated mental illness and addictions are increasing.

CVUUS community ministry is taking direct action, engaging with beloveds experiencing homelessness, housing insecurity, hunger, mental health struggles, and addiction.  We go into the intersections and streets, onto the country roads and under the overpasses to make connections and provide a ministry of witness to these inherently and equally worthy humans. Developing rapport is key to building the trust necessary to authentically connect with and help those who have already been churned up and spit out by our white supremacist, colonialist system.  We meet people where they are with compassion, not judgment.

Juvenile Justice

Corrections reform is key to creating generative systemic change to unjust and inequitable human outcomes in Vermont.  The state is considering constructing a high-end, restoration-focused mental health treatment facility in Vergennes to serve justice-involved youth as part of the solution.

Action: Learn more about plans for the Green Mountain Youth Campus here.

Impoverishment in Addison County

United Way of Addison County (UWAC) hosted the annual social service data review earlier this year.  Here is a mix of information that includes services provided by local agencies to key demographic data.  Equity-focused eyes might catch numbers like these:

• Addison Housing Works (our community’s low-income housing trust) has a waitlist of 171 households and receives eight applications for every available unit.
• An unhoused or housing-insecure neighbor, often struggling with trauma, seeking public assistance for housing has to complete one or more applications that are at least 49 pages long.
• Addison Community Action saw an increase of 308 people for hunger/food assistance and 595 people for housing navigation.
• Forty-two percent of Vermont’s children suffer tooth decay.
• About one-third of high schoolers do not feel valued by adults of this community.
• Atria Collective (serving victims of domestic violence) received 8,907 points of contact in 2023.

UWAC has assembled an important data sheet for our awareness.  Absent from this particular source is the disproportionate impact intersectional impoverishment has on our BIPOC neighbors.  Some of that information can be found here.

Collaborative Connection to Resources

In addition to too often lacking healthy connections to other people in community, housing insecure and unhoused neighbors often lack connections to resources to help them navigate to services and support.  That is one reason the “Looking For…” pamphlet of Middlebury community resources and services is so valuable.  Thanks to Laura Asermily, Renee Ursitti from Ilsley Library, and others, those of us who conduct street outreach are able to hand folks in need a tri-fold full of accessible, easy-to-understand information.  We are distributing a limited number of pamphlets to high-traffic locations in Middlebury as well.

Action: Come by the Community Ministry office in Fenn House if you’d like to see one of these excellent examples of collaboration in service to those who need it most.

CVUUS Hosts Part of Middlebury College’s Clifford Symposium on Homelessness

This year’s Middlebury College Clifford symposium was entitled “Home: Housing and Belonging in Middlebury and Beyond” and took place September 19-21.  Events of the symposium are open to the public.  CVUUS was honored to have the opportunity to host a “connection & action” lunch as well as an evening screening of the documentary Just Getting By as part of the symposium.

Intercultural Connections—The Abenaki People

The Vermont Abenaki Artists Association sponsored the annual Abenaki Heritage Weekend June 29-30 at Lake Champlain Maritime Museum on June 29-30 .  It was a vibrant celebration of Abenaki art, culture, and heritage.

Visitors talked with artists and watched crafting in the Native Arts Marketplace of the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association.  VAAA’s Waolowzi Health and Wellness committee partnered with Open Door Clinic and the Vermont Department of Health, which hosted a pop-up clinic on-site all weekend offering check-ups, referrals, and advice.

A new special Abenaki exhibit, Deep Roots, Strong Branches, is now on view in the museum’s Schoolhouse Gallery and will be on view all season.  As Abenaki curator and friend of CVUUS Vera Sheehan said, “Abenaki culture is a complex network of people, places, relationships and ceremonies that link the people with the living land.  The exhibit contains selected artwork and stories by contemporary American Abenaki artists that illustrate the resilience of the region’s Indigenous people.”

More Opportunities

We have several other opportunities! If you would like to join us or discuss opportunities you would like to add to our program list, please do not hesitate to reach out to Tom.  Here’s some background and philosophy of Unitarian Universalist community ministry.  We are grateful for your engaging spirit and faithful demonstration of Unitarian Universalist values.  Together, we make Love visible as we bend the arch of history toward a more just and equitable community.