Chairs! Tables! White boards! Couches! Trashcans! My, oh my, oh my, I never thought these mundane items would make me so excited! Last week I had a meeting to discuss what kind of furniture we will need inside our NEW classrooms, which will be inside our NEW Religious Education building, which is being built RIGHT NOW! Holy moly, how exciting is this? I’ll tell ya: VERY EXCITING!
At last Sunday's orientation for our Spring Relgious Education teachers I realized that that group of folks will be the last group of folks to teach RE for children and youth in our old building: the small dome. For those of you who might not be familiar, the "small dome" is a geodesic dome and the original UU Tampa church building on Morris Bridge Road. It has one open space, one working bathroom and two cozy hobbit hole like rooms. When the UUCT congregation outgrew the small dome they built the "large dome" - the main church building that consists of the sanctuary, nursery, offices, and kitchen. At the time the new building was built the children and youth did not have a proper RE space so the small dome was a welcome change. What a joy it must have been to have a permanant space to hold RE! A space for teachers and children to call their own - a space with cabinets for supplies and chairs for sitting and chalk boards for writing. And now, it is time once again, for us to move forward and have a space to call our own, a space to accomodate our growing faith development program. In our new buiding we will continue to grow - minds, hearts, and spirtits.
We will be in the new building when the fall semester begins this September! I am already thinking about recruitment and the special folks I am going to invite to teach the INAUGURAL classes of RE in our new building. What a treat it will be to facilitate religious exploration in a brand spanking new classroom! Or to be a youth advisor with a LOUNGE full of UU teens kicked back on sofas, chatting, being silly, being UU youth! I, for one, am thrilled beyond words that I am blessed to be a part of this huge step forward in the life of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tampa.
What a great and exciting time for the UUCT and for the future of liberal religion in Tampa!
