What difference does First Unitarian make in your life?

Being UU is a way of life.  I continuously seek to align my actions to our shared UU principles.  Laura Kirshenbaum

A friend recently asked me, “What is a Unitarian Universalist?” Obviously, we are well beyond small talk with a question like that!  As I often do, I stumbled through a pitiful attempt at an explanation.  I can easily tell anyone who wants to know, what UU is not. However, I find it a constant challenge to articulate what it is and more importantly what difference First U makes in the world and more importantly in my life.

To be UU goes beyond words.  After all, the principles “are not dogma or doctrine, but rather a guide for those of us who choose to join and participate in Unitarian Universalist religious communities,” says Rev. Barbara Wells ten Hove.  In my life, it is not something that I say, it is more what I aspire to do and be.  It is how I try to make my way through life.

Being UU is a way of life.  I continuously seek to align my actions to our shared UU principles.  Sometimes I find the alignment easy, other times it is a challenge.  It is in the later where my First U community comes in to the picture.  After all, as Frank Clark says, “we find comfort among those who agree with us and growth among those who don’t.”  

In First U, I find comfort.  Here, I find friends living life, making choices and grappling with the same challenges to our beliefs, values and principles.  It is in these challenges, that I find us all sharing our fears, learning from one another and becoming inspired to a life more in alignment with our shared values and principles.  My UU friends remind me that I am not alone in my challenges.  They help me find comfort in a world that can (at many times) be very uncomfortable.