Sunday, June 21, 2009

UUA--GA Arrival Day

I am here in lovely Salt Lake City. I cannot remember the last time I had such a short flight, it went up, leveled out and before I knew it we were bumping down through some weather for a landing.

This would not have been my very first choice, to run the first Sunday of summer and then tear off for the a big huge week long meeting. Nope, I'd have chosen to have a nice quiet morning with my family enjoying scones while a team of lovely, well paid servants cleaned my house and packed my neatly pressed clothes and well filed paperwork. Ha! Well, we can have our little fantasies.

It was a lovely morning at church. I'll admit it here, but please, don't tell anyone; I forgot to plan the yearly Solstice at the Beach service. We've had them for the past four years! Oh no, I just completely forgot about it, and by the time I remembered we were too far into this plan to get out. Oh well! I did get to spend some nice time with some of our little ones who are not quite ready for family style programming, and I got to chat with teens after church. All good stuff. Maybe we'll make it up with a winter solstice at the beach....for the sunset at 3:15 or whatever the heck it is. Noon. 8am. Early. I'll think about that one later. Ish.

I've seen almost nothing of the city. The Valley Shuttle has a deal for UUA folks for $7 so I got on my shuttle, discovered Susan Archer, past LREDA president, had a lovely chat, checked in and unpacked. Now I'm drinking tea and ready to curl up in a ball and rest, OK honestly I'm ready to dissolve into the sleep of the "far too busy for the last three weeks".

I did get some reading done while on the plane. I'd skimmed both the Mosaic Project Report, back when Happy Cindy charged us all to read it "like there was gonna be a quiz" and I'd read the Youth Ministry Working Group report, well, because my son was on the YMWG and you know, just because we should. But this time I read it like I have some chance to implement the things that I read. I read it like we all have a chance to create something amazing here. Maybe it's the fact that I'm about to really be with my people, maybe it's the second read? Maybe it's the high altitude? But it's good.

We'll talk about these reports at the LREDA board meeting these and two whole days worth of things. But I promise, they won't get lost in the rush. We have a long, long way to go to create inclusive, "expecting" congregations, but as we sing "we are going, heaven knows where we are going, but we know the way...."

And.....because my dear husband travels all the gosh darn time he has some fancy elite status so......I got a free upgrade to the Executive Floor. I have no idea what it means, but the view is darn pretty. Best part? The wireless is free!

3 comments:

Lilylou said...

Have a great time for me too, Kari! I am missing GA again this year, since I have no professional expenses to fall back on. I think SLC is a beautiful city and would love to see all my UU friends there once again.

Kari said...

We'll miss you here, Kit!

Paul Oakley said...

I'm leaving southern Illinois for SLC and GA tomorrow. Perhaps I'll see you there. But I'm taking the cheap route of staying at the University of Utah (UU - how appropriate is that?) and depending on public transportation to get back and forth.