{"id":170,"date":"2016-03-09T23:17:13","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T23:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unitariancongregation.org\/ceremonies\/?page_id=170"},"modified":"2016-05-20T12:24:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T19:24:30","slug":"what-is-a-unitarian","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.unitariancongregation.org\/ceremonies\/what-is-a-unitarian\/","title":{"rendered":"About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ceremonies Project was an idea by Liz James inspired by material created by Amanda Tarling<\/a>. The project\u00a0has been generously sponsored by The Unitarian Congregation of Saskatoon<\/a>,\u00a0Capital Unitarian Universalist Congregation<\/a>,\u00a0The Canadian Unitarian Council<\/a>, and by the contributions from\u00a0Northern Lights<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Unitarian Universalist Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Amanda Tarling is passionate about creating rituals. She created her first ceremony, a Blessingway, in 1998 to celebrate the imminent birth of her daughter. Since then she has created and led hundreds of ceremonies. She is currently a Lay Chaplain<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0Capital Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Victoria BC.<\/a>\u00a0When she isn`t celebrating rites of passage you can find her hiking in the Sooke Hills or doing Hot Yoga.<\/p>\n

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Liz James<\/p>\n

Liz James is a seminarian, blogger, and mom of four. She believes passionately that ritual is a human right, and shouldn\u2019t be linked to a specific religion or set of beliefs. She became involved in the Ceremonies project after holding a pigeon funeral for her kids\u2026 another parent asked her how she knew how to do pigeon funerals. She realized the importance of ritual resources being available online, and took on fundraising for the project.<\/p>\n

Our thanks to Dick Jackson for the web design and ongoing consultation and advice.<\/p>\n

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We believe ceremony and ritual are a part of being human. We don’t care what your religion is, or if you don’t have one at all. That said, we feel we should mention that we\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0have a religion. It\u2019s informed what we\u2019ve created here, although we\u2019ve designed our materials to be usable by anyone.<\/p>\n

We’re Unitarian Universalist, which is a tradition that spans centuries and draws from a variety of sources for it’s practice. Unitarian Universalists are a diverse group, including atheists, theists, and agnostics of all types. Turns out, you don’t have to believe the same things to join together in spiritual community. In fact, it’s pretty amazing to share a spiritual community with neighbours who believe very different things from what you do.<\/p>\n

If you resonate with the ceremonies and rituals on this site, you might want to check us out. Below are links to our principles (the closest thing we have to a \u201cwho we are\u201d statement), and a bit more about us!<\/p>\n

The following is from the Canadian Unitarian Council’s website<\/a>. Unitarian Universalism (UUism) is a liberal religious faith grounded in the principle of covenant. UU communities come together in covenant of our shared principles. Our beliefs are diverse, and we walk our paths to spiritual discovery and truth together.<\/p>\n

Unitarians are united by values rather than belief in one set of creed or dogma. Our values include acceptance of one another, compassion, and a commitment to justice and equity. We believe in exploring the mysteries of life, we believe in ethical living, we believe in living out our spirituality in this world by working for peace, justice, equality, democracy, and respect\u2014for one another, as well as for the interdependent web of life, of which we are all a part.<\/p>\n

We believe that it is not who or what you believe in that is important, but rather, how you live your life.<\/p>\n

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The 7 Principles of Unitarian Universalism<\/h2>\n

Unitarians draw inspiration from many religious, theological, philosophical and ethical sources, and as individuals and member congregations, we are bound together by our affirmation of our 7 principles:<\/p>\n

We, the member congregations of the Canadian Unitarian Council, covenant to affirm and promote:<\/p>\n