Greetings, !

As we approach the close of a somewhat challenging year for many of us, let's take this opportunity to reflect on what we've learned and how we've grown as a community. This year we grew to 13 organizational members throughout the US and abroad. We formed an alliance with the International Association for Free Religion, giving our members free access to their online workshops, as well as their recordings of past events. We conducted our second annual Summit, this time exclusively online using the Zoom Events platform, with over 125 registrations. 

We regret that three of our board members resigned this year, most recently Marga Hanna, who had also served on the International Alliance. Marga tragically lost her husband (Wayne Hanna) this year while on their 60th anniversary vacation. Wayne had worked closely with the NAUA board, helping to formulate a draft strategic plan. We are deeply saddened by these losses.

Two trustees have been added to the board to replace those who left, and a third is under consideration. To ensure collegiality and respectful dialogue among trustees going forward, the NAUA board adopted a new Code of Conduct that all trustees have affirmed. 

In recent months, several NAUA members have joined committees or moved into leadership roles. While we don't have a large budget, we've received continuous financial support from members and have used donations to maintain our website, send out regular communications to members, host monthly worship services, sustain international connections, and offer regular workshops, book clubs, CIRCLE gatherings and other member events.

Thank you all for your volunteer and financial support throughout 2025, for your participation in online events and for many members' willingness to occasionally host or lead events. In the coming year, the NAUA board plans to strengthen relationships with organizational members and work to provide them needed services, reorganize and revive our ministerial support group and the Liberal Beacon, form a task force to gather ideas and aspirations for a set of principles that NAUA might embrace, and strengthen our connections and presence within North America, as well as internationally.

We remain grateful for the opportunity to support one another, learn together and strive to better carry out our vision for liberal religion. Thank you for openly sharing your feedback with the board and for giving us the opportunity to reflect on ways to better serve the NAUA community. The board, and NAUA as a whole, exists to serve our members and advance and expand liberal religion. Your thoughts on these issues are always welcome and can be emailed to info@naunitarians.org.

Blessings to you and your family during the holidays and throughout the New Year. This season offers us a chance to pause, breathe, and appreciate the warmth and connection we share as a community committed to freedom, reason, and tolerance.

No matter how you celebrate, this is a time to honor the light we bring to one another’s lives—through kindness, thoughtful conversation, mutual support, and our shared dedication to building a more open, compassionate world.

As the year turns, may you find moments of joy, calm, and renewal. May the warmth of community sustain you. And may the coming year bring fresh opportunities to live our values with courage and clarity.

With warm holiday wishes,
Your North American Unitarian Association Board of Trustees

Note: If you'd like to share a personal poem, work of art, photograph or short message with other NAUA members, please consider emailing it to jmkrettek@gmail.com for inclusion in this newsletter or posting to our social media accounts. We will try to include holiday-related messages in the mid-December Compass.

In response, NAUA is establishing a working group tasked with gathering ideas and aspirations from members and distilling them into a set of principles to be voted on at our next annual Summit. Member input can be gathered in any number of ways, including surveys, focus groups, listening sessions and more, as determined by the group. If you are interested in serving as a member of this group and hosting a series of conversations with members, please email your interest to info@naunitarians.org. By doing so, you will play a key role in defining who we are as religious liberals and the ideals we choose to live by.

Two Unitarian congregations are each seeking a full-time minister willing to relocate to either Flint, MI or Tampa, FL. If you are a minister who aligns with traditional liberal values (or know someone who fits this description) and are interested in these openings, please email your resume and statement of interest to info@naunitarians.org. Your information will get passed along to the designated congregation's ministerial search committee. 

The Thursday Connection CIRCLE is accepting new participants. We meet the 1st and 3rd Thursday each month from 9:00 - 10:00 am Pacific Time. If you’d be interested in joining this CIRCLE, please email circles@naunitarians.org

Trustees present at the special December 17th board meeting affirmed adherence to these ideals and pledged to hold themselves and each other accountable. Members are encouraged to read these guidelines and adopt them in their own internal communications, in order to model our respect for the inherent dignity of all individuals and all peoples. These guidelines also reflect the importance we place on our values of freedom, reason and tolerance.

The board pledges to review the Code of Conduct annually and update as necessary. Future trustees will be asked to affirm the code upon joining the board.

New NAUA Mailing Address:

North American Unitarian Association
P.O. Box # 12886
Mill Creek, WA 98082

The NAUA Board of Trustees expressed its appreciation for Sunil Wijeyesekera's and Lorraine Day's work on reviving and revitalizing the NAUA Membership Committee. As stated by Interim President Roy Dickerson: "In a short period, you have charted a path and moved us in the right direction. What is needed more than anything is engagement with our members, fellowships, and congregations. Reaching out to our membership for ideas, hopes, and needs defines your efforts. We thank you for your vision, leadership, and effort as we move the NAUA forward."

In January, Lorraine and Sunil will be presenting their committee vision to the board for consideration and then recruiting members to the team. Sunil has already been involved in initiating discussions with our organizational members, and Lorraine is personally reaching out to new members as they join. If you have suggestions or ideas for attracting, welcoming and serving NAUA members, or would like to assist Sunil and Lorraine in their efforts, please email info@naunitarians.org. All messages will be forwarded to the Membership Team.

Thank you for the extremely generous donations received from members during these last months of 2025. Your generosity is much appreciated and will be used to fund the ambitious programs we are planning for next year.

Find us online!

If you are interested in joining or observing a board meeting, please read the board meeting participation policy on our website before emailing our board secretary for the Zoom link: secretary@naunitarians.org.

Note: Past board meeting minutes can be found on our website.

From the book cover: "For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike―either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or by taming our baser instincts. In their major New York Timesbestseller, The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow fundamentally challenge these assumptions and recast our understanding of human history. We will never again see the past in the same way.

Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, Graeber and Wengrow reveal how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual blinders and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing during all that time? If agriculture and cities did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organizations did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more open to playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

Destined to be a classic, The Dawn of Everything signals a paradigm shift, profoundly transforming our understanding of the human past and making space to imagine new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual and political range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and hopefulness..."

If you are interested in attending, please email Ed Hudak at bookclub@naunitarians.org.