Our Mission Statement

We join together to create a nurturing, inclusive environment for the exploration of ideas and the informed search for spiritual truth.

Upcoming Events

December 1 11 AM "The Virgin Birth: Fact or Myth?" Discussion. Led by T.O. Sheffield.

December 15 10 AM Adult Discussion. :Led by Denise Backstrom. Continuing discussion of Hinduism from The World's Religions by Huston Smith.

11 AM "Celebrating the Season." This is our annual open service where everyone is invited to participate. Bring your
favorite song, reading, or any contribution you would like to make to the service.

There will be a Board meeting following the service.

January 5 11 AM Stewart Guernsey from Water Valley, will be guest speaker. Service leaders: John & Gwen Wages.

From the Mid-South District Office:

General Assembly 2003 -- in Boston next June 26-30, 2003 -- promises to be the largest and most inspiring ever. In anticipation of a sizable turnout, a special "early bird" registration offer is in place until November 15, 2002. Early registration can save $25 - $50 per person. To check out the details, visit www.uua.org/ga, or go to the links on the Mid-South web site at www.uua.org/msd. Don't miss this opportunity to connect your congregation with the wider Unitarian Universalist movement at the best rate ever!

Members' News

On Oct. 22, 2002, T.O. Sheffield's mother passed away. Maxine Hughey Sheffield was born in Beaverton, AL, in 1916. She is survived by her sons, Thomas Orman "T.O." and Larry E. "Eagle", and a daughter, Betty Sheffield Fargo. Our thoughts and prayers go out to T.O. and his family.

From Ruth Jaeckel:

As a way to introduce ourselves, we are including brief biographies of members who contribute them. This month's bio. is from Ruth Jaeckel:

My Autobiography With My Faith Affiliations

Ruth Johnson Jaeckel

When I was born, Mother (Ila Jones Johnson) named me for three teachers, all Ruths, with whom she taught and especially admired.
At Cheyenne, Wyoming, Mother and Dad, my little sisters Lael and Kay, and I were members of the Methodist Church. I remember attending Sunday School in one of many carrels off a large open space. Following the class, all of us stepped out of the carrels, stood in a vast circle singing a tune that began 'Goodbye! Goodbye!' We waved our weekly Bible story picture cards up and down at each other. That was probably my first participatory ritual.
When I was in First Grade, our Johnson family moved to Aurora, Colorado. We had a dairy farm and we attended the Baptist Church. I remember tearing up after Sunday School when going home in the back seat of our old Ford. I was pondering the picture of the crucified Jesus on yet another Sunday School picture-story card.
In a year or so, we moved on to Alamosa, Colorado where Dad helped dustbowl farm families from the great plains resettle in the San Juan Valley. It was Methodist from there on with one exception. During my 6th and 7th Grade, my family lived at Pueblo, Colorado. Dad was a manager of a cooperative dairy pasteurizing and distributing milk from farms up in the mountains around Rye, CO. There was a Quaker Church at Pueblo. That being my father's birthright and life long denomination, my family attended that Quaker or Friends church. It was at a youth camp in the forest near Rye that I was 'saved'. That 'salvation' experience was a major religious influence, one that I dealt with well into my young adult life and it still probably has a grip on me.
Corydon in Iowa was our next hometown. Through high school, I was active in Methodist Youth Fellowship, MYF. I attended summer 'institutes' for Methodist youth held on the campus of Methodist founded Simpson College at Indianola, Iowa. A friend I
keep in touch with over the years remembers that a man named Truman was a speaker during that week. I memorized I Corinthians 13 and was selected as one of a dozen chosen to lead all in reciting that chapter at the closing service.
After graduating from high school, I attended Earlham College, founded at Richmond, Indiana by Quakers 100 years before my freshman year in 1947. My more than two years at Earlham 'was the high light of my life' as far as beginning to gain a big picture of who I am and in what sort of world, abstract as well as functional, I exist. With Quaker
professors (Alan Hole, D. Elton Trueblood), among those of other denominations (Bill Clark, Methodist), with a variety of student groups focusing on philosophy/faith, war/peace conflicts, world concerns (I scrubbed kindergarten cots at Indianapolis inner city community center), chorus, Western Civ., and Old Testament from the view that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, I rejoice in my Earlham College experience!
For the first time, I myself joined a church, a small Friends Church off-campus in a townlet near Richmond. Professors Alan and Helen Hole with their four children took a group of us students in their old 'woody' out to the little church. We were a real church that participated in the real Quaker/Friends setting by participating together in 'quiet meeting' and officially 'visiting' Quaker churches in Indiana and Ohio.
In mid junior year, I transferred to Iowa University at Iowa City. I went directly to Methodist's Wesley Foundation where I became an active member, cherished 'motive' magazines, and met Hank Jaeckel (!) who had also gone to the Methodist youth 'institutes' at Simpson College. We both remember the main thing that would be remembered about one institute. It had been rumored that the guys housed in the gym on cots rolled marbles across the floor in the night. Hank knew that to be true.
Attracted, fortunately, by an advertisement on the back of the Methodist student 'motive' magazine, I applied and was accepted into the new Methodist short term missionary program becoming one of the first set (50) of college grads to go to Africa. I was an A-3.
The history goes that Gen. MacArthur asked the Methodists to send young college graduates to Japan to teach English, needed in the post-war situation. Methodists Missions responded to his request. Then, with that concept, Methodist Missions decided to send fresh college grads into mission fields for short periods of time rather than for long times / careers. There were, summer after summer, groups who went, first to Japan, J-3s, then to India, I-3's, to South America, SA-3s, then to Africa, A-3's. It was a whole
new concept in the world of missions. And it had an influence on President Kennedy who, a decade later, created his 'Peace Corps'.
For a variety of reasons, I cut my term in Algeria from three years to 5 months. Being engaged to Hank was one persuasive factor. I came home aboard a luxury liner, unlike the freighter nine of us had taken to Algeria. For a year, I taught school in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa. I used that year, for one thing, to ask God's forgiveness for my 'putting my hand to the plow and then turning back'. It was a revelation and, probably, a step towards Unitarianism, when I discovered finally that what was needed was my forgiveness and acceptance of my decision rather than God's.
Hank and I married at the Methodist Church in Corydon, Iowa, high school hometown, with my Johnson family and his Jaeckel family all participating, June 14, 1953.
While I was in Algeria, Hank, in his first job after Iowa University as Industrial Engineer for John Morrell Packing in Ottumwa, had become active in a Methodist Church.
Together, we served that Methodist church actively for a decade. Our three sons were born in Ottumwa, Iowa. The company moved him/us to Ark City, Kansas for six years and there we were Methodists. When we were moved to El Paso, Texas, Hank and I became members of the Unitarian Universalist Church. There, our sons graduated from high school and went on their way to college and to work, Karl to Denver eventually, Kurt to Albuquerque, and Eric to Iowa. Moved finally by Morrell to Memphis, Hank and I became members of the First Unitarian Church, also known as the Church on the River.
When we moved to Mississippi in 1984, the only UU's were: at the church three hours down at Jackson, at Our Home in Ellisville and in a coastal fellowship. When the folks at Oxford, 50 miles from us, began getting a UU group started, we joined them for the next three years. Ima Beam (driving 67 miles to the Oxford Congregation), Barbara Fournie (who decided to move to the Tupelo Methodist Traceway Retirement Center), Okolonans Robert and Debbie Shinn, and Hank and I decided to put an ad in the classifieds, Jan. 2000, inviting people to 'come grow with us' in a new Unitarian Universalist start-up group.
By now, thirty or more friends of UU meet at the Temple B'nai Israel in Tupelo with twenty-one so far having 'signed the book'.
Where I have been in my faith pretty much follows the path of the Catholic ex-priest James Carroll as he describes his faith journey in 'An American Requiem'. Where I have come in my beliefs is pretty much where retired Episcopal Bishop John Spong is as he expresses his faith in 'The New Christianity for a New World'.

And the faith search goes on!
Ruth Johnson Jaeckel
November 2002