Sabbatical Handbook Surveys
Greetings! We are in the process of rewriting the UUMA Sabbatical Handbook, and we welcome your help. Please choose one of the options below to complete a survey and tell us about your sabbatical experiences. (We recognize that not everyone has the privilege of a sabbatical, and later this fall we will be inviting folks to tell us more about the barriers they have experienced.) We will use this information to update our handbook and provide you with benchmarks and updated information.
Thank you!
- Survey for religious professionals serving congregations
- Survey for Lay leaders in congregations where any religious professional took a sabbatical
- Survey for community ministers
While we are rewriting this handbook, we offer you this essay by Rev Darcey Laine, who has been supporting colleagues in planning and reflecting on their sabbatical experiences, and helping them make them more successful. Here’s a snippet:
Like the flame which transforms, change needs a container to protect the flame from winds that may blow it out, says Joshua Michael Schrei. There are many strong cultural and collective forces that pull at us, like a leaf drifting in a breeze, and not all those forces support our growth, renewal and deepening.
The container will be different for each religious professional, depending on their hoped-for transformation, and the context of their lives. Some religious professionals travel for their sabbatical, but many stay home for family or financial reasons. It can be hard to maintain a period of transformation when so much of life is the same. Perhaps you have a book that you’ve been longing to write- what kind of container would help you do that? Perhaps a writers’ group and an appealing writing space would help. If you know you have unprocessed grief, who or what can best support you in moving through that process? For a spiritual sabbatical, having a reflection group, or regular meetings with a spiritual director can be extremely helpful. Many areas have local retreat centers and events to give “time apart” even if one cannot travel far. Exploring local resources can be extremely helpful in creating a supportive container for a “stay-batical” as well as helping us bring the gifts of sabbatical back with us after our return to ordinary time.