This Sunday, we’re offering the opportunity to participate in worship via a virtual environment this week. This plan is our best wisdom at this time, given public health recommendations for Pierce County, Breck Lebegue (who has been encouraging our safer habits), guidance from the Pacific Western UUA Region, and our care for the well-being of all in our beloved community. This Sunday will be a full service including music by Ansamblu and guest musician Damon Kirk, a sermon by our intern, Erien Babcock, along with the rest of our usual service. We will be offering our Religious Exploration program for children and youth, although some modifications may be made based on the availability of volunteers. Depending on how COVID-19 continues to develop, we may move to holding worship fully online.

This week will give us a chance to see how this works. We invite you to make a little space and grace as we learn together, doing the best we can with the tools we have at this moment.

Some of you have used an online communication program for meetings already, called Zoom. We have decided to try this program for Sunday, and we will send you all the details about how to join us on Zoom, in an email message tomorrow. [If you do not currently subscribe to our emailing list, you can join by visiting our website homepage and scroll to the bottom of the page to add your information and subscribe.]

With the Zoom application, we will not be sharing anyone’s screen and all participants will be automatically muted. So in some ways, this experience will be similar to sitting in the pews and in some ways, a bit different. Through the coming week(s), we will be inviting you to move to Zoom for many of our planned meetings and activities, and you will be able to communicate with each other in smaller groups formats.

We are moving in this direction with concern for all of our health and safety. Without any way to know who has been exposed, and recognizing that there are many in our community at higher risk (which includes all of us who are over 60!), we want to err on the side of caution. We urge you to continue the common sense precautions that we’ve been recommending over the last month:

• If you don’t feel well, stay home.
• Wash your hands frequently for at least 20 seconds each time.
• Use sanitizer too.
• Wipe down high use surfaces, including your phone.
• Keep up healthy living practices, including staying hydrated, eating well, and getting enough sleep.

We’ll keep you updated as we get more information!

Linda