Caught in the Act of Generosity: Linda Skye

by Christina Socorro Yovovich of the Rad Gen Committee
Sometimes people tease Linda Skye for how much she does around First Unitarian. They say they see her everywhere. Linda says people probably feel this way because they often see her around the office on Wednesdays, and she can be found working as a greeter for services on some Sundays. And there are other ways she is and has been involved as well, but she requested that her profile not contain a list. She says she does things that she enjoys, she serves where she can be most helpful, and she loves getting to know church members and staff—and she hasn’t met us all yet!

Linda joined the church in 2009 when she was asked to serve on the Stewardship Committee. She’d been a friend of the church since she and Geri Knoebel moved to Albuquerque from California in 1992. Geri joined First U immediately. Linda came from an unchurched background and wasn’t sure at first why one would join a congregation. But over the years she found sermon topics interesting, as well as the UU way of being, and she and Geri made some good friends. She started helping here and there, and when she was asked to serve on the Stewardship Committee, she figured it was time to become a member.

The biggest project she ever worked on was to imagine and then make reality the new sanctuary. She served on the 2nd imagining task force for the project and then, to her surprise, was selected as the chair for the Design and Construction Team. The project coincided with her plans to retire, so she “took a deep breath, and said ‘Yes!’”

Linda’s advice to members looking for ways to volunteer with the church is to “find a place that gives you joy.” She says it is important to ask, “How does it make you feel to do this work, with these people, and for this purpose?” Over the years sometimes “the work itself brings … [a] sense of nurturing myself, like with the Memorial Wall Committee, and sometimes the purpose takes center stage like with the new sanctuary. But always, the people I get to work with, struggle with, cry with, and cheer with, are the main reason for … raising my hand. They always make me a better me than I was before I met them.”