Who Are UU?

by Noreen Kimball

If you are a Unitarian Universalist, then you and your family probably believe lots of the same things that other UU people believe. For example, you think people should be free to do whatever they need to do to have a good life, no matter what they look like, or what religion they are, or where they come from.

But just because we sometimes think the same way about many things doesn’t mean that every UU is a UU in exactly the same way:

Shana lives in oh, let’s say Arizona. She has one sister and one brother and, with their parents, they go to the UU Society in their town almost every Sunday. Shana’s older sister is in the Youth Group and Shana and her younger brother go to Sunday School where they learn about Unitarian Universalism and lots of other religions. On Monday nights after supper, Shana’s parents go to a Buddhist Sangha to meditate. They sit on pillows and are very, very quiet. Shana doesn’t go but sometimes she tries to meditate; she doesn’t usually do it for too long.

In the summer, for two weeks, Shana’s family travels to Colorado to go to a Buddhist retreat. Their parents meditate but the kids just mostly play with other Buddhist children and, like the other kids, they call each other “Dharma brats.” It’s a kind of Buddhist joke name. Some of the other Buddhist kids are also Unitarian Universalists like Shana, and some aren’t.

Then, there are lots of UUs like Kevin Wolff. Kevin goes to the same Unitarian Universalist Fellowship that his dad went to when he was a boy. Kevin’s mom went to a UU church too but far away. Kevin is an only child but he has a lot of friends in his neighborhood. Not too many of them go to his church thoughÑthey go to some of the other churches in their town. That means Kevin has a whole different set of friends for church than the ones in his neighborhood.

Kevin likes his church for a lot of reasons. He has visited other churches with his friends but he likes his own church because there the adults often ask him what he thinks. Kevin is used to making up his own mind so a UU church seems just right to him. Kevin has a poster in his room that says what UUs believe and he has a chalice there too that his mom lets him light sometimes. He made it in his R.E. class out of flower pots that he painted.

Or, you might be the kind of UU that Matthew Hopps is. Matthew and his family live in New York and they go to a UU congregation very near their house. Matthew’s mom doesn’t come to church with them very often but his dad teaches in the Sunday School where Matthew goes to religious education classes. Matthew and his family light a chalice every Sunday before dinner and they say a short prayer for peace in the world. On Friday nights, his mom lights two Shabbas candles before dinner and says a prayer that her mother and her mother’s mother always said too. Matthew’s mom is Jewish.

Matthew’s older brother Aaron is going to be in the UU church’s coming-of-age program next year but he’s also going to go to Hebrew school. Then he will be bar mitzvah at the temple across town. Matthew hasn’t decided yet whether he will be bar mitzvah too but his mother hopes he will be.

Then, you might actually be more like the kind of UUs that Ellen and Tracy MacEwan-Dodd are. They live in North Dakota where there are only a very few Unitarian Universalist congregations, and none is near them. Ellen and Tracy’s family belongs to the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) and they don’t go to church on Sunday at all—except when they visit their grandparents in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ellen and Tracy have two moms for parents instead of a mom and dad, and their family has lots of conversations about what they believe. They get the UU kids’ magazine, uu&me!, and they always read the stories about Raychel and Tony. On Sunday mornings, the MacEwan-Dodds light a chalice and then read a story, or do a puzzle or activity from the religious education materials they get in the mail from CLF. Both Ellen and Tracy hope that this year their family can go to The Mountain, a retreat center in North Carolina where they can meet other UUs who belong to CLF. They’re pretty sure they’ll have a great time meeting other UU families.