Sep 25, 2025 | Featured, Weekly Message
On behalf of your board of trustees, welcome to the new church year! This year’s board officers and members are:
Mara Sprain, president (serving through June 2026); Will Jernigan, vice president (2028); Monica Youngman, clerk (2026); Jim Gamble (2026); Susan Andrew (2027); Ben Fleming (2027); Melissa Himelein (2027); Ken Brame (2028); and Marty Friedman (2028).
There is brief biographical information in Sandburg Hall and online about each of us. And our nametags are green for quick identification on Sunday mornings—please say hello and reach out with any questions. There is also a board email address, board@uuasheville.org, monitored by the president, Mara Sprain, which can be used to contact the board.
Our broad priorities for 2025-26 are Board Effectiveness, Financial Sustainability, and Mission & Ministry.
We’ve already held our annual planning retreat, and we will be finalizing the details on our list of priorities in a special meeting later this month. (Last year’s retreat was cancelled in the aftermath of Helene.) New board members have been introduced to our policy governance system, and all members have a better understanding of what we’re doing and why. We plan to increase our communications with you, the members, throughout the year.
A primary focus for Financial Sustainability is to maintain the momentum from our hugely successful Annual Budget Drive last spring (including the donor matching fund) and special fundraising events coordinated by the FUNraising team. Thank you to all who signed pledges to support our community. As we’re a quarter of the way through the church year, if you’re donating in installments, please be sure your pledge contributions are up to date. (Log in to Realm to see your pledge donation status. Contact Lauren in the church office to make corrections and/or adjustments.)
With regard to our Mission and Ministry work, we’ll be looking at ways to more fully incorporate the UUA Article II values (JETPIG: justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence, and generosity) with Love at the center in our congregational life. We are also actively participating in the churchwide Collective Liberation program coordinated by Revs. Audette and Claudia, with the goal to, in the words of Rev. Audette, “help us make our 8th Principle vote not merely a passive stance, but a lived experience of our faith here at UU Avl.”
We’re excited and look forward to working on your behalf!
Mara Sprain
Board President
Sep 18, 2025 | Featured, Weekly Message
During the first weeks of my freshman year of college, there was 
the student organization fair. Do any of you remember those? Every student group had a table out to try to recruit new members. My college had the usual array of a cappella troupes, political organizations, intramural sports, and the like. However, the religious student groups were not at that fair. They were across campus at their own event in the chapel. Maybe it was deemed too “religious” for the more secular school to have spirituality alongside improv comedy. Maybe there just wasn’t enough room in the student center. Either way, it always felt like a form of othering to me (who unsurprisingly worked for the Chaplain’s Office and attended more than one of those religious groups). One of my hopes for this community at UU Asheville is that folks find the kind of belonging that allows them to be their full selves, without needing to split half of their identity across campus.
We are coming up on our own “Fair” at the end of the month, after services on the 28th of the month, an opportunity fair where the groups that have formed within our large congregation shall engage in a similar ritual. There will be tables in Sandburg Hall, and we’ll all mingle around them, finding belonging in our joined work here together. Or at least that’s what I assume will happen because I haven’t seen one take place yet. We were scheduled to have our Opportunity Fair around the same time last year, scheduled for Sunday, September 29th. As we come up on the anniversary of Helene, my hope is that we can lean into community again, like we did last year. I hope we find ourselves “Building Belonging” as Rev. Claudia talked about last week, and that we do so in a way that helps us all feel more whole, more liberated, more held in our vulnerable moments.
Building a beloved community alongside you,
Rev. Trevor Johnson
Connections Coordinator
Sep 11, 2025 | Weekly Message
Beloveds, as we continue to witness the assault on our rights and values in a country that has been trying, however imperfectly, to live into what it means to be a democracy, I invite you to take a few deep breaths. Close your eyes or lower your gaze, and think about people, communities, places, foods, music and those things that bring you joy and delight.
Breathe deeply and look at around you at the space you are in.
What do you hear? What do you smell?
Place your hand on your heart and feel it lift and lower as you breathe in and out.
You are here. You matter.
You are not alone in this time of cruelty and immoral leadership.
Your UU Avl community is here for you.
This is a good time to reach out to each other and/or a pastoral visitor to check in.
A time to explore what support looks for you right now.
A time to witness with each other the joys and sorrows we are holding in our hearts.
A time to check in with one another about how we are feeling and share strategies about how we are coping.
Play a favorite tune and dance with abandon or roll with the rhythms of the music or just shake your body and release tension.
Be mindful of how much time is spent consuming news. It is important to be informed and, to create space for things that are uplifting and joyful. It allows us to be more present, resilient and intentional as we engage with one another in the many circles we are part of.
In these times Rebecca Solnit’s words ring true:
“When you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.”
I invite you to consider how you are making space for joy and connection in these times. Know that this community holds you in love and care.
In solidarity,
Rev. Claudia Jiménez
Minister of Faith Formation
Sep 4, 2025 | Weekly Message
September 25th is our wedding anniversary. Last year, Rob and I were ready to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. You might recall, that was the night when the rain began, before the hurricane. We were at the church to take part in one of our social justice postcard writing event with UU the Vote and our community partners. Our son Mars, a senior but not yet driving, was downtown. He was going to need a ride home. After the event, Rob and I made a quick trip back to our house to change, because we had a very special dinner reservation downtown. The rain kept coming, and Rob got in the car to go get Mars. We live in a neighborhood on a high hill, and at the bottom there’s a creek, near the one place you can leave the neighborhood. When he got to the bottom of the hill, the creek had flooded the banks and the road completely, and was still rising – no exit. It was a little hard not to panic. We immediately began working to figure out who could pick up Mars and keep him. Fortunately, his best friend’s parents happened to be downtown, and they swung by to get him. He would end up there for almost five days. We were separated as the hurricane soon followed our rainy anniversary night.
Everyone around here has their own stories of what happened last year, and as the anniversary of this profoundly disrupting time returns by calendar (and with a bit of rain), we need to be especially tender with one
another. WNC has so many things to be proud of – the way we came together, the hard work done, the mutual aid offered, the resiliency and strength we showed…. But we also lost people we loved, suffered devastation and had to deal (and are still having to deal) with frustration and loss and the overturning of whole communities, which will simply never be the same, some never to return at all. At times like these, our emotional bodies remember even when our minds do not; the body keeps the score, as van der Kolk and others have taught. And that can cause us to act in unexpected ways; to be quick to anger and frustration, or feel sad or anxious, without being sure just why. It’s why we have to be extra tender with ourselves and each other.
Rob and I never did really celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary; but now we’re coming up on 21 and I hope we’ll figure something lovely out. What matters more is that Mars was safe, our community held, and Rob and I can figure out what to do, together. That’s what love, commitment, and community allow. That’s what UU Asheville is about. We re-opened our doors after only missing one Sunday together due to Helene. We gathered, without water or electricity, to hold each other. We created a massive phone tree, we reached out to everyone we had any information in our system about. We loved each other through, because that’s what we do. We do it in the hardest times, we do it in the in-between times and we do it in good times.
This is our 75th year as a congregation. So here’s my invitation to you: come on home, and help us keep loving each other into the future we are building, together. And don’t forget: be tender, with yourselves and each other.
See you in church!
With love,
Rev. Audette
We return to two services on Sunday, Sept. 14th – next Sunday.
9:15 am Contemplative Service
10:00 – Coffee Hour and Special Programs
11:15 am – Traditional Service and Faith Formation
12:15 pm – Social time
