I believe Laurel will guide Unitarian Universalism into the 21st century grounded in our heritage and theology that will enable us to respond to the challenges of bringing a vital faith to a changing world. She understands the power of knowing who we are as Unitarian Universalists and being able to articulate that to the wider world as we expand our participation in an increasingly diverse multi-cultural nation and world.

Laurel will maintain the balance necessary to achieve this movement into the future best expressed by Walter Brueggman, "Every community that wants to last beyond a single generation must concern itself with education. Education has to do with the maintenance of a community through the generations. This maintenance must assure enough continuity of vision, value, and perception so that the community sustains its self-identity. At the same time, such maintenance must assure enough freedom and novelty so that the community can survive in and be pertinent to new circumstances. Thus, education must attend both to processes of continuity and discontinuity in order to avoid fossilizing into irrelevance on the one hand, and relativizing into disappearance on the other hand."

Laurel will educate us in our self-identity and can provide the leadership required to move us into the future powerfully pertinent to the new circumstances that face us.

Rev. Dr . Elizabeth M. Strong
Interim Minister
First Church Unitarian Universalist Ashby , MA