BANGOR — In September, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor welcomed interim minister the Rev. Arthur Vaeni. He is serving the Bangor congregation after the departure of the Rev. Becky Gunn last spring.
Vaeni said, “As a minister, you have the privilege of accompanying people through their lives’ triumphs and hardships. In this era of radical individualism, ministry provides the opportunity to help create religious community that, at its best, brings us into shared quests through which we come to know life more truly, experience life more deeply, and serve life more fully.”
Vaeni was raised in New Hampshire, and both he and his wife, Sally Gove, still have family ties within the Granite State. As a young man, he moved away to attend college and spent several years in the Army.
It wasn’t until the age 30 that he felt a strong desire to seek out a religious community. “While I had not attended a Unitarian Universalist congregation previously, I discovered the Unitarian Universalist church in my hometown. I soon realized I had found my religious home. In time, this led me to the ministry, he said.”
Vaeni attended Harvard Divinity School, graduating in 1987. He served the Starr King Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Plymouth, New Hampshire, until 2001. It was then, with their children off to college, that he and Sally decided to embark on a midlife cross-country adventure. They settled in Olympia, Washington, for the past 13 years where he served as the minister for the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation before returning to New England to serve as interim minister in Bangor.
The Unitarian Universalist Association recommends that congregations undergo a two year interim process after the departure of a long-term settled minister.
Vaeni said he is pleased to serve this Bangor congregation for those two years. “I am very happy to be back in New England and to have the opportunity to serve the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor. Our Unitarian Universalist Association’s first principle calls us to ‘affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person,’ and we must recognize that we become wholly human through healthy and loving relationships in the midst of a caring community. From what I have seen in my short time here, this congregation embodies such a caring community and the desire to simultaneously deepen and broaden its experience as a congregation in service to life’s wellbeing,” he said.
To learn more about the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor visit, uubangor.org.