Karen Rayne, Austin, Texas.

    I am a junior at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas,
majoring in secondary education, with focuses in English and chemistry.

    My mother raised me UU (as did her mother before her)
and I've been very involved in everything
from my local church to national youth activities.
Now that I'm in college I've stayed local and district focused.
I'm attending St. Edwards University in Austin, Tx.
St. Edwards is a Catholic U, so there's no UU group,
but I am organizational head of a YA group here in Austin
that is mostly for college age UUs
who are not interested in the University of Texas UU group.
I am a voting member of Live Oak UU church,
but I spent my youth years at First Church of Austin.
(My childhood years were at First Church Dallas.)
I'm a pretty good UU, not a whole lot to shout about,
but I've done a lot of the organizational stuff.
I was involved in the youth/advisor
leadership workshops as a youth,
I led a workshop at GA with my mom one year,
I've led the YA section of our district summer camp one year
and been involved in other ways
in the YA section and the youth section
(running workshops, tee-shirt design, touchgroup leader, etc.)
for the past five or six years.
I'm only twenty, so I'm a bit new to the YA scene,
but I'm a junior in college
and I'm very involved with all the older folks in my district,
so I'm well connected too.
And I was editor of a creative writing magazine in high school.
Here's my e-mail address:
Karen Rayne
<ladykaren@cheerful.com>

Jimmy Sheldon, Santa Cruz, California

    My name is James Sheldon.
I'm 18 years old and I go to University of California,  Santa Cruz.
I'm a freshmen.  I'm listed as a computer science major.

    I have been a UU since I was 6.
I have been very involved in my fellowship's
social responsibility committees, and have been to 1 GA.
I have been to a half-dozen YRUU conferences, 1 YRUU Con-Con,
and 1 local UUYAN (UU Young Adult Network) conference.

    I am firmly committed to the UU principles and ideals.
I love this religion-- it's so perfect for me.  [Thank you, Mom]
I just sometimes wish it had more answers than questions.

    One of my favorite quotes:
from "Words I Wish I Wrote" by Robert Fulghum
(A UU Minister and author of
'Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten').
It had the following selection:
 

... have patience with everything
that remains unsolved in your heart.
Try to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language.
Do not now look for the answers.
They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.
It is a question of experiencing everything.
    At present you need to live the question.
Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it,
find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet

    For some reason I found this very meaningful
-- sort of like all my unanswered questions are there
because what fun would life be if there were no questions
-- no unsolved mysteries-- no investigation--
if all the answers were just given to me
and there was nothing left to discover...

    My hobbies include working with computers,
politics, Star Trek, science fiction, reading, volunteerism,
watching cool movies and tv shows, and student government.

    I've been using the computer since I was born.
I'm surprised I wasn't typing in the womb :)
I really like politics-- have been interested in activism, and all that
ever since I took 8th grade US history
-- for some reason I was fascinated by how the government works
and how we get a vote and determine the direction of our country
-- prior to that it never occurred to me that any of this stuff existed!
Star Trek-- I've always loved star trek.
Ironically, the first time I saw it, the original series episode,
Who Mourns for Adonais, I was scared by it!
I consider myself a Trekker, though, not a "Trekkie."
If anyone reading this likes Star Trek,
there is an online STar trek theology course,
e-mail me and i'll look up the details.

Science fiction--I mostly like space type stuff, like STar trek,
Star Wars, Journey to Mars, all that kinda stuff...
but I also like X-files type stuff except sometimes it scares me
-- I get scared easily by horror movies-- after I saw Urban Legends
I was checking the backseat of my car every time I got in.

reading- i love to read books.
I have like 10+ waiting to be read over the rest of my break (1 week)

volunteerism-- I used to do a lot of volunteer work,
but its hard to balance with everything else.
I try to do an occasional community service project type thing,
but believe that real change comes from changing the system tho...

watching tv, movies-- I'll watch almost anything and enjoy it
-- there's few things I hate.

student government- I am fascinated by organizations in general,
parli pro, interaction method, consensus,
and how people work together to vote,
reach decisions and implement them and get them done.

    My e-mail is: Jimmy Sheldon:
jsheldon@cats.ucsc.edu

James Park, Minneapolis, Minnesota

    James Park is a graduate of the University of Minnesota
and holds a Master of Divinity degree from
Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

    He has been a member of
the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis since 1980.
For seven years in the late 1980s and early 1990s
he served as a paid staff member of the
Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Campus Ministries
(MUUCM) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
This campus ministry continues.
The name of the students organization is
The University Unitarian Universalists.
Here is the UUU home page:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~unituniv/
For several additional years he was
a member of the Board of Directors of MUUCM,
serving several of these years as the congregational representative
of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis.
Thus, he was involved with MUUCM in one way or another
from 1986 to 1998---12 years in all.

    Since then, he has been involved in electronic campus ministry.
He founded Heart, Mind, & Spirit
---an electronic magazine for UUs on campus---in 1999.

    James Park is also the editor of
The Online Handbook for UU Campus Ministry:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/CM-BK-DX.html
This is a collection of the best contributions to
The Unitarian Universalist Campus Ministry List (UUCM-L),
a UUA mailing list for everyone involved in UU campus ministry.

    He is also the webmaster for the Spiritual Paths Project,
an attempt to identify and profile
(thru their best living representatives)
the diverse spiritual paths within Unitarian Universalism.
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/SPP.html
Much more information about James Park
is available on his home page:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/
Here is his e-mail address:
James Park
<PARKx032@TC.UMN.EDU>

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.