Desert Notes November 27, 2025
This month we welcomed a new Faith Formation Director, Wilbliss Kim (they/them). Wilbliss describes themselves as “grounded by values for spiritual reclamation of ancestral heritage through collective liberation for all beings. My life’s work includes extensive experience in administrative responsibilities and developing spiritual and empowering healing arts for children, youth, and oppressed people with love as the purpose. I am a collaborative team worker with initiative to lead.”
Wilbliss brings with them the experiences and perspectives of someone who has lived and led from an intersection of identities that have been marginalized/oppressed in our society. I want to invite you all to join me in reflecting on how we can best welcome Wilbliss and and learn from and with them, while taking responsibility for our own growing edges as a community and as individuals. Some of you have more in common with Wilbliss than others; some of us may need to stretch more to understand how welcoming them will require awareness of our own patterns and assumptions and a willingness to interrupt them.
For example, learning to use they/them pronouns asks us to notice our assumptions about gender presentation and making room for others to tell us who they are and how they want to be identified. For this reason, we will begin putting pronouns on our nametags so we can help each other. In addition, we can make assumptions about someone’s racial and ethnic identity when it appears different from our own and these are often experienced as painful and othering. Learning to notice, interrupt, redirect, and make amends around these assumptions is the personal work of anti-racism and anti oppression. I am still looking for adults who would like to facilitate the MOSAIC curriculum for small groups to engage together in this learning.
Last week we held a Transgender Day of Remembrance in our sanctuary. We created a life saving safe space for members of our community that night as we observed the loss of life and impact of transphobia overlaid with racism and misogyny. I am grateful for a community that is willing to grow, learn and transform so that we can truly be a community of liberation, welcome, and inclusion.
I want to offer again some readings I have found helpful to my own growth as a congregational leader. I hope some of you will check at least one of these out:
- “Centering Navigating: Race, Authenticity, and Power In Ministry” Edited by Mitra Rahnema and the Committee for Antiracism, Anti-oppression, and Multiculturalism of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. Copyright 2017
- “Seeds of A New Way: Nurturing Authentic and Diverse Religious Leadership” Edited by Manish Mishra Marzetti and Nancy Macdonald Ladd, editors.
- “Beyond Welcome: Building Communities of Love” edited by Linnea Nelson. Widening the Circle of Concern.
From Our Partners at Azcend: Thanks to the City of Chandler for producing this video to raise awareness for local food banks like ours!
—Rev. Sarah