As the 2009 General Assembly approaches there are two pressing issues on the minds of CUUPS Board Trustees and most of the members we talk to: The UUA Presidential Election, and the vote on 1st year approval for the revision of the UUA Principles and Purposes.

The UUA Presidential Election: The CUUPS Board has decided not to make a recommendation in this race. However, it is not because of our disinterest. Both Rev. Laurel Hallman and Rev. Peter Morales have passionate supporters inside and out of the Earth-centered UU community. First, CUUPS has never made an endorsement in a UUA Presidential race. Some other former IA's have. The UU Womens Federation came out in favor of Rev. Peter Morales. The UU Women in Religion has endorsed Rev. Laurel Hallman. Rev. Morales's church is home to one of the largest and most successful CUUPS Chapters in the country. Some of the chapter members are actively involved in his campaign at high levels. On the otherhand, one of the most outspoken and eloquent advocates for Rev. Hallman's campaign is the Rev. Shirely Ranck - the author of "Cake for the Queen of Heaven" without whom, CUUPS may very well may never have come about. While there is no "slam dunk" answer here - information to reach that answer is easily accessible. Go to uua.org and follow the links to the Presidential Election webpages. There are recordings of several of the candidate forums that have been held across the country. Reach your own considred decision and make sure that your congregation votes all its ballots - they can be mailed in when your UU church sends few people than they have votes at General Assembly.

The Principles and Purposes Revision: No one on our board is pleased with the Sources section of the revised Principles and Purposes that will go before the delegates this year. If it were a simple up or down vote - the choice would be clear.
However, the process for amending the UUA Bylaws (and the Principles & Purposes are part of those bylaws) is a complicated multi-phase process. This holds the possibility that the proposed revision could be amended next year into some that is as good, or even better than the status quo. It also holds the possibility that any mention of Earth-centered spirituality could be removed.
Unless the unexpected happens and this revision fails to receive even 50% support from the assembled delegates, one of the things we will try to do at General Assembly is work with our allies in the other former Independent Affiliates to craft an amendment to the Source revision for introduction at the 2010 GA. If you are at General Assmebly, you are welcome to help us in this. We will have information about this at our booth (#528) - which we are sharing again this year with UUs for Jewish Awareness.

So, whose fault is this, anyway? While griping about UU leadership may be one of the few pasttimes that everyone can afford these days; our gods and goddesses, or high selves, generally expect better of us. Anyway, there's more than enough blame to go around. For those of you who have been following the discussions on the CUUPSters yahoogroup, you've seen folks discussing how much difficulty CUUPS national has in responding to its members. And some of this has been over what should be really simple things, like membership and chapter applications. For those of you who have been with us from the early days - this is NOT a new subject. This is a topic that CUUPS has had problems with from nearly the very beginning. When the treasurer is in North Carolina, the membership coordinator is in New England and the Secretary is in California and everyone is sending paper documents via USPS, nothing gets done quickly. So anyway, later this summer we'll be moving forward and joining the 1990's by moving the entire member renewal process to the Internet. While that's not an exciting Pagan revelation - but it should make your life a little easier, or at least it will ours.
But back to the blame thing, we, on the CUUPS Board, are taking a look at what we do well, and what we don't. In cases, where we don't do stuff well - we're going to try to find people who can ... for free. (Why Free? Check out the Treasurer's report in the left column.) So, we're going to be asking for some people with specific skills. If the description is for someone just like you, we *really* need your help!

Welcome to the ninth issue of the CUUPS Bulletin where Aisling shares a Summer Solstice fable, we look at our plans for General Assembly, and our evolving positions on a couple of the hotter issues. Then we ask for your help on a couple of things that we think you can do better than we can.
 

To send something to the CUUPS Bulletin, just email bulletin@cuups.org

 

For the next issue, we will let you know what happened at GA.  Any ideas for articles that could accompany the GA happenings should go to the Bulletin email address listed above.