From the Minister, Fri Aug 3

In Baltimore, "Thread" has organized about 1,000 volunteers into "extended families" for 415 academically underperforming youth. "Thread" creates elaborate systems of relationships -- social networks instead of social media -- that benefit the volunteers as much as the kids. All parties understand they are entering a 10-year relationship -- until the kids are in their 20s. Founder Sarah Hemminger explains, “Unconditional love is so rare in life that it is identity-changing when somebody keeps showing up even when you reject them. It is also identity-changing to be the one rejected.” The volunteers understand they aren't there to change society or the world, but to be changed. An app keeps track of every contact between a volunteer and a student, and Thread also "cultivates an ethos of utter vulnerability," "an atmosphere of intense intimacy and outspoken love," and encouragement to “show all the way up.”

In Somerset, England, in the village of Frome, the Compassionate Frome project was launched in 2013 with a new approach to improving healthcare outcomes in the town. The project investigated where there were gaps in the services of agencies and community groups, and, to fill those gaps, created new groups for people with particular conditions. "Health connectors" helped people plan their care and -- here's the key -- trained volunteers to help people find the support they need.

Whether the issue is education or healthcare, isolation is deadly and connection is the cure. By combating isolation, Frome now has a "buzz of sociability" and common purpose that helps everyone feel better. The provisional data from Frome suggests "that when isolated people who have health problems are supported by community groups and volunteers, the number of emergency admissions to hospital falls spectacularly. While across the whole of Somerset emergency hospital admissions rose by 29% during the three years of the study, in Frome they fell by 17%."

A healthcare system that treats patients "as if they were a cluster of symptoms rather than a human being who happened to have health problems" makes for staff who are stressed and sad by their silo working and patients who are "defeated by the medicalization of their lives." Illness tends to reduce ability to socialize, which leads to loneliness, which worsens the illness.

I learned about Thread from the op-ed column HERE, and about the Compassionate Frome project from the Guardian article HERE. Please click through and give these articles a read.

A few UUs are skilled at lobbying legislators or organizing protests. What all of us know how to do -- by virtue of being UUs who gather week after to week to do it -- is make community. It turns out that the thing we have been practicing and getting good at is the very thing that the world most desperately needs.

White Plains needs its own version of Thread for struggling students, our own Compassionate Westchester Project for our sick. Can CUUC make it happen? We'll need to team up with other groups, but through our Refugee Resettlement team, we've lately been getting practice at that, too.

What do you say?

Yours in the faith we share,
Meredith

The Liberal Pulpit.
Index of past sermons: HERE.
Index of other reflections: HERE.
Videos of sermons are on the Liberal Pulpit Youtube Channel: HERE.

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