Mission Statement
To be a center of religious expression in our community by:
1) Providing powerful worship services
2) Espousing faith in action
3) Providing a variety of self-improvement, social, development and celebratory programs
4) Encouraging the development of individual talent and gifts
5) Providing teaching and education for children and adults
6) Welcoming diversity
In so doing, making a better world for our children.
From our Minister Emerita Rev. Frances West
People outside our Unitarian Universalist faith have often asked me how I could possibly minister to people from such diverse religious backgrounds and no background. Early in my ministry, I was puzzled by the question, but I always stammered out the same answer: I couldn't be a minister to any less varied groups of people.
Over the years, I have become more assured in my own theology, where I stand and why I believe as I do. That enables me to hear other people as they talk to me about their questions about life and the answers which serve them at the time.
Each of us must answer the four great questions which build faith: Who/What am I? What is Everything/One that isn't I, What is Supreme or not Supreme and What is my relationship to the first three questions.
The first question of Who/What am I involves our search for definiton of our Nature, be it animal, permanent or transient.
The second question of what is everything/everyone that is not I involves our relationship with all other people, animals of all kinds, plants, rocks, etc.
What is Supreme or not Supreme involves our effort to find out whether there is goddess, god, Earth, or none of these we can look to to hold All in place.
And finally, what is my relationship to the first three questions. What am I expected to do or be? Why is life worth living? To What or Whom do I owe my strength and mind and body?
This is a lifelong question and answer struggle in us if we dive into the depths of our own soulful waters, and those who do that are the people who be come Unitarian Universalists. It is not easy to be a UU as it means one is always traveling on a journey. The journey is our individual journey.
Those who choose this path are the ones I serve as a minister and I like listening to people on their journey. In fact, I often think of myself as having fallen in step with them along a winding beautiful road such as the Silver Comet Trail or the trek around Stone Mountain or climbing the Mountain.
The Buddha called his disciples "stream enterers". Any place you set your feet in disciplines which is what being a disciple means, you have entered your journey, on land or on the 'Hooch.
Come join us at UU Congregation of Marietta, 1240 Villa Rica Rd. We welcome you, of whatever religious beginning and whatever lifestyle. As long as you are respectful of others, you are most welcome. Come see us.
Love,
Rev. Frances West
UUCM Minister Emerita
