EUU Coordinating Committee Winter Meeting, 25-26 January 2020, Strasbourg, France

By Terri Michos

The members of the EUU Coordinating Committee gathered in lovely Strasbourg, France, for its winter meeting. We meet three times a year in person: at the spring and fall retreats and, for a more extended working session, at a location relatively centrally located.

The purpose of these meetings is to address any urgent business and to discuss in greater depth and act upon issues affecting our UUs in Europe community, under the leadership of our president, Tony Zamparutti. In accordance with UU democratic principles, each board member and EUU Fellowship Representative and At-Large Representative gets to vote on any motions.

One priority at this meeting was to ensure that we have a location and theme speaker for retreats at least two years in advance! We also discussed how to make retreats inclusive to people with special accessibility, food and financial considerations. Inclusion guidelines are being finalized, and policy guidelines have been updated to affirm our commitment to inclusion *. Other topics we addressed included membership, our name EUU or UUE **,  finances and pledging. Look for your pledge form in March or April.

A major role of the EUU is to support the needs of established and emerging fellowships, and each Fellowship Representative had the opportunity to discuss the challenges they are facing and share successes they’ve had. This is our opportunity to help one another, and this meeting was a rich exchange of divergent ideas with a common purpose: the continual improvement of EUU, to the benefit of our members and communities.

We did take time to eat, this time at a local Lebanese restaurant, giving ourselves the opportunity to continue the day’s discussions and commune over good food and drink.

On Sunday morning, Carolyn and Ray provided us with a beautiful and thought-provoking service, accompanied by music by the Zinks and a touching moment singing, “Lean on Me”.

And then it was back to a little more business to discuss fellowship growth and ending with a resounding, “Meet you online and see you in Prague.”

*”EUU affirms its commitment to inclusion of all its members in all of its diversity”

** Officially in the bylaws, we are “EUU” with a subline “UUs in Europe.”