The job title is tough gristle, with thirteen syllables to chew upon, so please just call me Samuel, or plain Sam. My task here at FUUSN, since joining the staff in early January, is to ensure that every one of you, whether you are a longtime member or an occasional visitor, feels welcomed, respected, and included in the vibrant FUUSN community. I want to hear your thoughts, answer your questions, and serve as a guide to all that FUUSN has to offer. I see my role at FUUSN as one of facilitating an ongoing conversation about what matters to the community. As a newcomer to this conversation, which reaches back as far as the founding of the Society in that tumultuous year of 1848, the Springtime of the Peoples, I naturally have a great deal to learn! I therefore look eagerly forward to sitting down with many of you, in my office or over a steaming coffee somewhere, and listening to your experiences, your commitments, your concerns, and your hopes for the future of the community. What can I do to make you feel more at home in this congregation? If an answer springs to mind while you read this, please get in touch!

A little about my background. A newcomer to Unitarian Universalism, I grew up in London and moved to Boston for graduate school, where I read a lot of poetry and researched the life of an Irish playwright. I have lived in Burundi, the poorest country in the world, where I raised goats and assisted a research project on the regional civil war, and in Philadelphia, where I taught Shakespeare and married a lifelong Unitarian. I am passionate about social justice, intentional communities, the craft of truth-telling in poetry, dog sweaters, and learning how to connect the pieces of a life to make a whole.

You can get in touch with me by email (sam@fusn.org) or by telephone (617-527-3203) or on Facebook, or in my office during the week (Monday – Friday from 10:00-5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 9:00-1:00 p.m.). Please do not hesitate to reach out to me! I hope to meet many of you in the coming weeks. -Sam Foster