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Written by: ALUUC

Spring Conference was planned this year [2010] by the women of ALUUC, Springfield, Illinois. Meg at first seemed reluctant to head the planning only because as a senior youth leader at our congregation, she was busy already helping senior youth at ALUUC plan the district youth CON that would take place just a couple of weeks before the Connection's spring conference.

She gave me hope however, with her response to my first e-mail. She thought that it might be a good direction for her volunteering to take now that she has begun to step away from her serious longtime involvement with the RE program. It could actually be planned for women like her. Unconsciously or not, I thought, the program might even help to "fill her own cup."

Now I admire the young people of UU who are graduated from the RE program each year and the leaders who guide them. They seem so ready and able to embrace their lives. They are full of ideas and hope and fun. And they are upstanding, engaged and aware of more than their teen navels.

I trusted Meg when she and her newly enlisted Co-chair, Brenda, another RE veteran, wanted to make small adjustments with the help of Teri Freesmeyer, our keynote, that would make the program planned for high school-aged youth work for women looking for a relaxing, revitalizing, spa-like weekend for women. Actually, I was so completely grateful that they were willing to guide the planning for the 52nd year of the spring conference that I told them it didn't matter that they had never been there. It was a relief to "let go" and allow these busy volunteers to create a weekend that they themselves would love. Never mind that they had never been there to experience the retreat and had no idea of what to expect.

Hadn't councilors tried since the move to Pilgrim Park a few years ago to build a spring conference that would inspire women to be there, provide some coping skills for their daily lives, give a little vacation from the concerns of their lives, become revived and de-stressed. Many women who attended the previous year had promised to come back with a friend in 2010, so we could simply break even financially.

Friday afternoon check in, a browse through the silent auction items and book exchange through pre-dinner rehearsal of the songs and chants we would be singing over the weekend and a preview of the weekend schedule was our beginning. Meg asked that at dinner we sit with someone we don't know and be prepared to introduce that person to the entire group later. After our introductions we sang a welcoming song to each using their name, so they might feel welcome. E.G. "Pat is here, Pat is here, all manner of good things will come to her now."

Now I see that all manner of good things came that weekend, but I want to recognize that what Springfield women created and prepared to share with their sisters at a weekend such as this is about what those preparers need in their lives as well as the rest of us. This is what I have been referring to as "radical hospitality", where closeness of a depth that allows friendships to form and guards to be let down happened. Stories were told and songs were learned and sung, prose and poetry of heart and soul was read. "Speed friending" and our commonality of purpose gave depth to our new and renewed friendships and a trust that allowed us to sing later about vajayjays, dance in ecstatic frenzy, giggle and joke and reveal ourselves fully to one another as friends and sojourners.

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Written by: Pat Goller

It is always so fulfilling and revealing when the Connection Council visits various congregations at quarterly meeting time. It is also one of the lures for me to volunteer with the Connection.

On a weekend visit to the smallish and third congregation in the Madison area I am full of admiration. Madison, bastion of forward thinking, mostly liberal politics supports the largest congregation in the UUA, I am told. That would be First UU Society, the famous Frank Lloyd Wright designed meeting house has close to 2000 members. (Unofficial guess)

We wanted to visit Prairie, though, because an established connection and welcoming attitude. I met Dorothy and took a liking to her at 2009's District Assembly when we both served as volunteers on the media team. (Another edge pusher for me.) Thanks to Dorothy and other members, we had the Prairie experience of genuine hospitality in this little but mighty congregation.

I must say I am so impressed with this little fellowship. Though they have been established for around 50 years their membership stands around 100. They have a consulting minister who with members decide together what worship, programs and facility looks like. The front lawn aptly showed late spring growth of prairie grasses and flowers, the kitchen sported recycle bins and neatly named drawers and cabinet doors, the RE area brightly colored banners, drawings of what it meant to be UU. Age group rooms were oddly familiar as others I had seen but with a special twist only an active, live RE program can express.

Wanting to try the special flavors of Madison with a trip to the Saturday morning farmer's market that circles the Capitol building and demands one way traffic, we opted to meet for business after lunch down town on Saturday. It's okay. We were given a key to the church. Plenty of time for wandering and adventuring: bicycle lanes and respect everywhere...Organic this and that...bakers and makers of every kind of earth mother treat in the market and craft booths on perimeter.

Connection Business meeting completed with preparation for a Margaret Fuller Conversation with the women of Prairie in the evening. We had time to catch the Saturday afternoon service at First Society, a flower communion. Then a quick "look see" at the congregation's new digs. It is a beautiful and green and is so "Wright-looking" in compliment to the Frank Lloyd Wright meeting house design.

Saturday evening had us back at Prairie for a Margaret Fuller conversation salon on the eve of the anniversary of fore mother, Margaret Fuller's, 200th birth. Sunday morning we joined the congregation for service, a special speaker, Margaret Fuller, aka Robin Proud, who compared concerns and joys of both Margaret's time and ours with the use of actual Fuller quotes and some from the UU World about issues still concerning us 200 years later.

Prairie is so blessed with not only theatrical talent, but musical talent as well. A new song, inspired by Margaret Fuller's words, had people in the congregation humming along with the intro, even though they had never heard it before. My mouth dropped as UU hymns were sung out in a place dedicated to its music programs. Congregational hymns were sung in a way that didn't seem to matter if one hit a sour note once in a while. (BTW: I didn't hear one off note!) Discussion after the speaker was full of questions about Margaret Fuller, her life and work, and then came Joys and Concerns. The microphone was handed off to one person after another, with good humored jousting and serious questions and even tears -- a sure sign of loving acceptance, a place where one finds one's friends.

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Written by: Pat Goller

"The pill," as it came to be called, celebrates its 50th anniversary this merry month of May [2010]. It was approved by the Food and Drug administration in 1960 when I was a sophomore in high school. There was barely a buzz about it for me. I was too busy trying to pass Geometry class, make sure my crinolines were starched to leg scratching perfection and buying my ticket to wear "peggers" one Friday a month at school.

I wasn't allowed to think about sex much less indulge. God forbid, we had just emerged from the 50s and it just wasn't done. The best contraceptive advice available for those who did "it" was, "Use aspirin." That is, "hold an aspirin between your knees."

In four years when I was a sophomore in college, things shifted. I finally noticed there was the sexual revolution and the pill was no longer aspirin, but a concoction of hormones that miraculously prevented pregnancy if you were brazen enough to do "it." Still it wasn't available for unmarried women. There were an alarming number of illegal abortions and women disappearing to shame-filled maternity homes or to homes of little known relatives out East.

In 1964, emboldened by a fierce new love, heat of hormones and the freedom of being on my own in New York City, I tried to get a prescription. Wasn't this wise life planning and protecting myself? "Are you sure you are married?" he asked after the exam. I held my ground and insisted that I was, but never used that prescription because two pharmacists refused me. Can they do that?

Now what am I hearing? Many poor women don't have access to contraceptives at this 50th Anniversary. Some groups are working here and even in foreign countries to stir up the same issues about women having control of their reproductive lives. Can women be satisfied with celibacy as a substitute for spacing pregnancies, planning our lives, having careers and family both? How far from the aspirin, as contraceptive, have we moved?

The work of Planned Parenthood is as important in 2010 as it was in the 50s. How can affordable contraception that enables women to have ultimate control of their bodies and lives be guaranteed?