………. We hoped to find a place with sufficient numbers to support more flexible involvement, and an RE program for our youngest son….. We found it here, at USNH. (My husband) joined the choir and had a music home. I found the course "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven" extraordinarily meaningful and supportive. YRUU became a significant and positive part of (our son's) life. ……. …….

In the nineties, my work required a very high proportion of travel away from CT. It was challenging and interesting work, but except for occasional semesters of teaching RE, I had limited opportunity for participation in either the USNH or my town's communal life. I genuinely felt I was doing exciting and rewarding professional work, but I also found that on Sunday morning, every time I came to a service, I would find myself in tears without any identifiable reason. I didn't have any words to articulate it………..

.I am a UU because it is a denomination in which I can be affirmed in my highest aspirations, and be challenged to act on them.

.I am a UU because UU's collectively represent a kind of ….. extended family - that is, one in which each member strives to afford loving support, thoughtful disagreement, authenticity, and generosity of spirit. We can act on our ideals, with good people, because of our shared convictions - without a supernatural rationale or justification.

.We aspire to reflect our belief in the worth and dignity of every individual. AND we resonate to words and music that reflect universal truths about the human condition. Our prosaic lives are a source of amusement when there's a sermon topic like Kathleen's on "Aging".

But those lives can also seem a note in a very great symphony when we recognize ourselves in eloquent readings and poetry. Universal truths assuage the potential loneliness of individual existence, and lead us to act on behalf of others whom we may not know, in actions of social justice. At the 2002 UU General Assembly, one workshop noted: "The collective power of right relationships regenerates within a group." …………

We expect that each of us will live an examined life. We respect and support each person's evolution. I don't know if there's another place where I could I comfortably stand up and be counted as a veteran (a former reservist) in the Society's Veterans' Day Service in November - and kneel down on a sidewalk and go to jail with our minister in a Peace Action in December.

General Assembly speaker Paul Loeb and his book, Soul of a Citizen, were much in my mind when the December Peace Action was planned. He urges us to action despite our inability to ever meet our self-imposed standard of perfect knowledge and understanding of an issue - despite our guilty feeling that what we can do may be limited - a letter, a phone call, standing on a sidewalk - and thus may seem inconsequential. He says "Change is the product of deliberate, incremental action, whereby we join together to try to shape a better world." (p. 37)

I like that statement very much - but when I'm really nervous about a public action, I'm more likely to be mumbling The Lorax's words: "Unless someone like you, …….cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better….. It's not".

So I stay involved with (public school volunteer tutoring) , we bring our grandchildren to USNH events, we cherish our Small Group Ministry experience….and so on - and on. It doesn't seem theological , or profound. Living, so far, seems more to me like the journey described by astronomer Cecelia Payne- Gaposchkin*, as quoted in the Jan-Feb UU World:

"I simply went on plodding, rewarded by the beauty of the scenery, towards an unexpected goal."

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