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What difference does First Unitarian make in your life?

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"The faith community at First Unitarian is the wellspring of my hopes for my children and grandchildren, that they inherit a world rooted in UU principles. This is a vision of the future worth working for."   Steve Knox



Your 2014 stewardship team recently held a day long retreat in NH.  Many exciting events and activities will be coming your way, including events related to re-visiting our mission as a faith community.  As part of our pre-work, we asked ourselves the question “What difference does First Unitarian make in my life?”  The author of this blog entry, Steve Knox, offers the following:

My involvement with and deep commitment to First Unitarian has altered and enriched my understanding of who I am.  I came to First Unitarian as a lapsed catholic, and have found my spiritual home in a faith community of mainstream Eastern and Western religious traditions, agnostics and atheists, worshiping together, each according to our conscience and needs, living together in acceptance of one another, and actively encouraging each individual to engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

We are gay, we are straight, we are transgender; we are conservative and liberal, republicans and democrats, members of the green party and the tea party and no party at all.  Our differences do not separate us, but rather they bring us together, for our first principle is to value the worth and dignity of every human being.  Our diversity deepens our relationships, fostering a practice of equity and compassion in all our relations, animating our vision of a free and just world at peace.

We strive to live by the UU principles we espouse, and out of this we have developed that rarest of faith communities: one which holds all religious traditions in respect, where the agnostic and atheist find comfort, where common ground arises out of seeming differences.  We are not unlike the dissonant chords we sometimes sing in the choir:  individual notes which should not fit together yet create a harmony that is surprising and beautiful.

The faith community at First Unitarian is the wellspring of my hopes for my children and grandchildren, that they inherit a world rooted in UU principles.  This is a vision of the future worth working for.

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