Minister’s Column:  “Old Man's Cave”

2025-2026 Annual Report   

Mt. Pleasant Pride Festival June 20

Minister’s Column:  “Michigan LGBTQ+ Capitol Day”

Our UUFCM Banner Is Flying Downtown! 

The banner painted by our UUFCM youth and adults is now flying on Broadway Street (across from Art Reach and Jimmy John’s) with the other Festival of Banners contributions.

2025-2026 Annual Report   

Tabling at Farmer's Market - Volunteers Needed

Mt. Pleasant Pride Festival June 20

Minister’s Column:  “No More Stolen Sisters”

Two Sundays ago, I marched with the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in their event to raise awareness for missing and murdered indigenous people. Joining with several others from UUFCM, we walked through Island Park and downtown Mount Pleasant, wearing T-shirts with the message “No More Stolen Sisters.”
 
Gathering at the pavilion on Island Park before the march, a group of drummers sang an honor song; elders smudged the marchers with sage; and tribal leaders as well as law enforcement officers spoke. They named some of the history of violence and abduction--against Native women especially—that have prompted this event. According to the National Indigenous Resource Center, “The alarming rates of abduction and murder of Native women represent one of the most devastating issues facing Tribal communities. On some reservations, Native women face murder rates more than ten times the national average. These disappearances and murders are often directly linked to domestic violence, dating, trafficking, and longstanding harms impacting Indigenous communities.”
 
Along the route of the march were signs proclaiming the facts behind this ongoing tragedy, as well as red dresses displayed everywhere—the symbol of this event.
 
I felt many things attending this event, including wonder, sadness, anger, gratitude, and joy. My sense of wonder is that I’m still amazed that I live in a place where the local Indian tribe is so visible. This wasn’t true in my home state of Massachusetts or the state I lived in recently, Ohio. I felt sad and angry hearing the disturbing facts about how many of my Native cousins are harmed and killed…and I felt gratitude and joy to be part of the event. The organizers did an amazing job with every part of the planning and implementation of the march, and it was joyful to be together in common purpose.
 
Coming up is another important event on the local calendar, similarly highlighting a tragic part of the Native American story: the commemoration of the closing of the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School. This history is acknowledged every year on June 6, the anniversary of the school’s closing. I think that every Mount Pleasant resident should witness this event and acknowledge this disturbing piece of our history.
 
PRAYER:
Great Spirit, we are here on this land living together, Native and non-Native. All of us mourn when any of us are abducted or harmed. All of us together say, “No more.”
 
Grant power and wisdom, courage and strength to the law enforcement units investigating these crimes; grant peace and strength to the families whose loved ones have gone missing.
 
Aho. Ashe. May it be so.
 
Rev. Drew Frantz
May 12, 2026

Game Night - Monday, May 18 at 7:00pm

We Are Hiring!
Tech Assistant starting June 1

Mt. Pleasant Pride Festival June 20

Minister’s Column:  "Mother's Day"
 
On Mother’s Day I honor and celebrate all the mothers in my life, beginning with my immediate family. It’s also a day of great personal significance for me because my first child was born on Mother’s Day 1996. And, the way we think of and celebrate this holiday today is far from its original intention. When Julia Ward Howe proposed this holiday, it was a Women’s Peace Day dedicated to the eradication of war. These are her words, written in 1870:
 
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
 
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
 
Julia Ward Howe was a Unitarian, and thus we claim her as an ancestor. Her words are in our hymnal. I find this particularly appropriate today, as once again our nation is at war. And all the political and military leaders I can see are men. A general congress of women promoting the great and general interests of peace seems like a good idea today, as it did in 1870.
 
PRAYER:
Spirit of Life and Love, may this Mother’s Day bring joy to families across this nation. May those who are mothers be honored and appreciated. May all of us celebrate mothers, aunts, mentors—anyone who has played a nurturing and supportive and loving role in our lives.
May this be the moment when we agree, across all nations, that we will not send our sons to injure and kill one another over oil, land, or ideology.
May peace and love prevail on Mother’s Day and every day.
Amen.
 
Rev. Drew Frantz
May 5, 2026

Mt. Pleasant Pride Festival June 20