Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbus, Indiana

After being invited to visit several times over the years, we finally attended a service. I remember a display of paintings by Gretchen Marks, and a duet sung by artist Bob Pulley and his wife, poet Nancy Pulley. Being very visually oriented, these things in combination with the beautiful building had great appeal for me. We were not unhappy at our previous church, but UUCCI has become a very important part of life for us and our grandsons.

We ended up at UUCCI because of proximity. After driving by the building on Goeller Road whenever we went anywhere, we started asking questions from neighbors who attended here. We were members of another church and were not unhappy there, but this gave us what we were looking for in a church. I stayed and became involved because this church helps me crystallize what is important to me about trying to change things little by little in the world. This was the springboard for me to get involved in a number of non-profit organizations where I now volunteer.

My childhood included substantial influences from the progressive political and labor movements of the great depression. Also my family included several artists who were part of the 30’s bohemian crowd. They were of the agnostic and atheist persuasion.   Our Unitarian lack of dogma or superstition is very compatible with this background. In 1976 I joined the Columbus Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which has always welcomed “free thinkers” of every persuasion including myself. What has really been wonderful over the decades is the joy of making new friendships amongst thinking people of diverse backgrounds. We have every age group and persuasion, businessmen, engineers, teachers, and professionals in our church. I’ve found every member to have an interesting story to tell about their path to Unitarian Universalism and feel like we’re all peers. It’s a great joy to be a member of this congregation.

My future wife Kathleen was raised Catholic, and I was raised Jewish. But these were the faiths of our past when we were thinking of marriage and starting a family. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial UU Church in Charlottesville, VA, where we lived at the time, had just declared itself a nuclear-free zone. Knowing some of the interesting people there, and it being nuclear-free and all, we thought that it might be a safe church to try out. We loved it and soon were married by its UU minister. One reason we decided to move to a small town in the mid-west when a job offer arose in Columbus was that it had a UU congregation. We hoped to find a friendly, religiously liberal congregation here and, indeed, the people of UUCCI soon became the core of our social and caring community lasting now nearly 28 years. We are humans being. And we are humans becoming. We are being and becoming in an ark of community.

My aunt retired in 1970 and returned to Columbus. She had been a Unitarian Universalist since the 1920s, first in Memphis, Tennessee, then in Washington D. C. When she came home to Columbus she invited me to come to church with her, because she didn’t drive. We went to the small Unitarian Universalist group that was meeting in those days at the Chestnut Street building. I helped her support the church with garage sales and with keeping the books – she was a Certified Public Accountant. Sometimes she paid the utility bills herself, when there wasn’t enough money in the treasury. In those days we would pick up a dozen donuts on our way to the Sunday meeting, and that would be enough. I have continued to attend this church because of the people who think like I do – the first people I had ever been around who did.