by Casey Burkhardt

The final EUU Coordinating Council meeting of 2024 took place on December 3rd. This was also Karen Kyker’s farewell meeting as the sitting EUU president. The meeting opened with the traditional lighting of the chalice and sharing of joys & concerns, followed by the treasurer’s report. In this case, it was Jutta Hamm’s final CC meeting in her position as treasurer, as well! Shulamit Levine reported feeling nervous and excited as she transitions into her new role as treasurer. We have every confidence!

There was a discussion about the addition of an EUU Members’ Only page on the europeanuu.org website. This password-protected page would include bylaws and organizational docs. The link to this page will go out in the Unifier at a future date, and the CC Representatives from each Fellowship will have the password. More information to come.

The UUFP Fellowship is planning the Spring 2025 retreat in Saarbrucken, April 11–13. Discussion of this retreat spiraled into a discussion about expectations, specifically about the hybrid element, and the level of sound engineering, and the load on volunteers. Our guiding question for this piece was “What do we need and what have we taken for granted in the past?” Readers who are interested in helping by sharing their talents should reach out to the UUFP. And, if you have strong feelings about what is critical to the success of an EUU Retreat, please share your ideas with your Fellowship’s CC Representative.

Two members of The Cork Unitarian Church were present at this CC meeting as observers; we look forward to future opportunities to become better acquainted with members of this Unitarian Church in Ireland. And a new team is hoping to plan a retreat to follow the April 2025 retreat, though no fixed plans have yet been made. Peter Jarrett has volunteered to make phone calls to several retreat sites to make far-in-the-future reservations, to simplify the retreat planning process for other volunteer retreat planning groups.