My International Convocation of Unitarian*Universalist Women experience was similar to my participation in fifteen UUA General Assemblies (GA). I even got my photo in the “UU World”, voting at a Ft. Lauderdale GA plenary session. Gini Courter, as our UUA Moderator, was handling that plenary process. The women’s Convocation had a small group decision making process that Gini, also, handled. Like GA, the Convocation honored the enabling, feminist work of a Right Relations Committee, there to help us all correct insensitive mistakes in our behavior at the podium and, personally, toward one another.

My same GA exhaustion happened because I couldn’t miss the valuable speakers and activities that were so well planned for us. I was in Patricia Montley’s play reading of her “Persephone’s Journey: A Rite of Spring.” The only free time we could rehearse was from 10 PM to midnight! I’m an up-with-dawn early bird! The whole Convocation was well worth my extra effort. How could I help not doing so? The activities and presentations tied together, so well, in supporting the Convocation theme for building a strong network of partnerships around the world. The presenters consciously built on the thinking in presentations that went before. The remarkable clarity and intelligence (including the emotional and intuitive intelligences) of the speakers, questioners and small group participants continually brought me new insights to which I could connect new ideas.

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HOUSTON - The first-ever international gathering of Unitarian Universalist women took place Feb. 26 through March 1, 2009 at the Hilton of the Americas in Houston, Texas, USA.

National Public Radio personality Margot Adler and Francis Moore Lappé, author of the popular book Diet for a Small Planet, participated as keynote speakers. Other speakers included: Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Third Wave Feminists and authors of Manifesta; Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, theologian; Carolyn McDade, songwriter; Gini Courter, Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Dr. Caren Grown, Professor at American University; emma’s revolution, award-winning peace activist musicians; Rev. Meg Riley, Director, UUA Advocacy and Witness; Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, First UU Church of Dallas and Candidate for President of the UUA; Rev. Dr. Ann Peart, Unitarian College, Manchester, England; Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, Fourth Universalist Church, New York, NY; Dr. Kalpana Kannabiran, sociologist, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India; Dr. Diana Strassmann, Rice University, editor International Journal of Feminist Economics; Rebecca Adamson, CEO of First Peoples Worldwide; and Dr. Sharon Welch, Provost, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Chicago. (Pictured are Convo organizers Barbara Beach and Laura Nagel.)

600 women from 17 countries and 38 states attended. They gained knowledge and friendships across the great social divides of our time -- geographic, socio-economic, age, gender, race, expertise etc.

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Helen Popenoe surveyed 23 presenters and keynote speakers from the Convocation as to their impressions afterward.

She asked for responses to three prompts:

1. What energized you the most about being at the ICUUW Convocation?
2. Do you feel you might have “opened a door” for your audience that could lead in a certain direction of further consciousness-raising and/or a particular action plan?
3. Please, give an example of one such “door.”

Not all have responded yet, and several have asked for more time, so look forward to more impressions in the next season’s issue.

Helen wrote in an email to me some great impressions of her own. Her thoughts in this article paint a more colorful multi-dimensional picture of the atmosphere of this amazing gathering:
http://www.uuwr.org/index.php/womuunweb-news/102-my-experience

What energized you the most about being at the ICUUW Convocation?

Caren Grown
Economist-In-Residence, Department of Economics. College of Arts and Sciences American University.
At ICCUW was Theme Speaker on Tackling The Issue Worldwide Of Women in Poverty.
"Meeting exciting, talented, and energized women who want to make the world a better place and sharing information about all that they are already doing in the US and with congregations in other countries."

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The bubble is a special form in nature. A living cell can be contemplated as a bubble-like structure, enclosing protectively the important contents of its variously functioning parts. And yet the cell has an external structure through which energy and matter can pass both ways. New life is created inside the cell, which ultimately splits in two not to die but to continue living, and proving that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and that all is connected. And over time, new life evolves and becomes different life. The Global Sisters Groups were like living cells, spiritual bubbles of life creating more spiritual life, allowing ideas and energy to pass back and forth within and beyond each.

The Global Sisters Groups were an indispensable part of the Convocation. To have designed the structure of the Convocation to include time for such interaction is brilliant. I’d like to give kudos to the powerful thinking and understanding of policy making and organizational management that went into this design. The Global Sisters process for the Convocation was based on the Community Capacity-Building process developed by the UU Partner Church Council.

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