Unitarians lead children's holidays

It was barely two and a half hours that I spent with Uni-Kids last night but I came back refreshed in spirit, though tired.  Uni-Kids is an annual adventure holiday for children largely from the south of UK, arranged and run by Unitarians.  This year, like last, the holiday is taking place centred on Burley Youth Hostel in the New Forest.  As this is only six miles from Ringwood, the opportunity to go and meet everyone and take part in a few activities was too good to pass up.  I’m not much good at children’s ages, but I would say that there wasn’t anyone over 13 in the group of ten children.

Burley Youth Hostel, New Forest, 28 July 2015

I turned up after dinner at the end of their first full day and heard tales of beach art and canoeing, blisters and getting wet.  Plans for the lido and a fusty museum tomorrow.  I was assigned to the Jumping Jellyfish team for the last two rounds of the evening quiz, which balanced things out a bit as several other teams also included an adult.  A hard fought competition ended in a four way tie-break; victory was underplayed by the children and the disappointment of the losers very slight.  All low key stuff.

Next we wrapped up warm, ready for a dusk walk in the Forest, and before we set out we played the old “Post It note on the forehead” game.  We each had an identity assigned through a picture of a Forest animal and by asking other people questions we had to work out what our animal was – or perhaps, who we were.  Funnily enough, I had seen this game often enough but had never before been a player.  I quickly found how hard it could be to think of fruitful questions to ask about “myself” out of the blue, and how much easier it became once I learnt to look at other “animals” and ask questions about “myself” through reference to other animals’ characteristics (am I stripey? – I asked the “badger”).  Hmm.  Serious learning point for me there, I think.  Can I easily learn about myself in isolation?

A shortish walk in the deepening dusk led us to a clearing where two mature oaks and two beech trees had been felled by some winter storm or other.  The Moon is about three quarters now and she was a beautiful sight above the tree line.  We carried out an exercise in mindfulness, paying full attention to all the noises we could hear.  For me, and for another as it turned out, it was a bit of a struggle to welcome the raucous throb of the tuned-pipe Harley Davidson motorbikes asserting themselves rather unnecessarily as they passed quite close by.  Much easier to welcome the alarm calls of the blackbirds and robins settling down for the night.  We didn’t hear any of the badgers, deer, sheep, donkeys, hedgehogs, squirrels etc that we had been earlier on, but we were able (after completing the mindfulness practice) to catch sight of a small bat.

When we got back to the Youth Hostel we had a reflective session over hot chocolate and biscuits, where we were each invited to say how we were feeling and name it in animal form, how that had changed since yesterday, what we had most enjoyed today and what we were looking forward to the next day.  And what would be tomorrow’s biggest challenge.

I felt like a heron or an ibis, poised, concentrating, watching, learning, picking out nuggets of food.  For I don’t have children of my own and I could recognise the skill it takes to make a learning programme seem like a holiday, or a holiday seem like a learning programme, without slip, without forcing, without pressure, without winners and losers.  I salute all those who carry out work like this to build the health and wholeness of the next generation.

For wholeness was what they were learning.  Working in groups and sharing the tasks and the responsibilities.  Walking quietly with intent, learning to listen.  Practical techniques for de-stressing and reconnection with the body.  Connection with the Earth.  Use of metaphor as a powerful tool of thought.  Listening to each other and self-awareness and self-examination.  A habit of active reflection and closure at the end of the day.  No wonder I felt refreshed as I drove home across the New Forest.



Holocaust Memorial Day Wednesday 27 January 2016

http://hmd.org.uk/genocides/nazi-persecution

We have started the early planning work to hold a witness event in Ringwood to mark International Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday 27th January 2016.  The Assistant Priest at the parish church has agreed to be involved and we hope other churches and the Quakers will, too.  But this will not be a religious event and there are many more groups of people, and individuals, who would want to show their commitment to this event so we will be seeking other participants from all sectors of Ringwood.

July meeting

On Sunday 12 July the theme of the day was religious freedom.  Two hundred and two years ago, in July 1813, the Unitarian Relief Act was passed, which meant that it was no longer punishable to deny the Church's doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  This is an important commemoration for anyone who thinks that in the 21st century freedom of religion is as important as other human freedoms.

We listened to how Jesus had asserted that some of the religious rules of his day restricted people’s freedom – and hence he rejected them.  We heard about a chain of heroes throughout the ages who stood witness to freedom to religion by rejecting certain restrictions of their own day, and how they suffered for it.  Included were heroes local to Ringwood, such as Dame Alice Lisle, buried at Ellingham church.   And we heard how some Unitarians today feel that the word “tolerance” is outdated because it sounds grudging; and how they prefer the word “respect.”  Tolerance avoids engagement with others; respect welcomes it.

Included in our service were our usual ritual of sharing flame (light), bread, water, and smoke (air), all with due deference to participants’ respective needs; a couple of hymns from the green hymn book; and our seven minutes’ silence in which we had the chance to bring it all together.  Not that it was very silent with the busy footpath outside and the beautiful sounds of the bells ringing out from the parish church – and goodness knows how silent we were able to be within our own selves !

It was lovely to be able to welcome two new people to our service and we enjoyed our conversation afterwards.

Bourne Free - Bournemouth's Pride and how we were there

Only one of us was able to make the date for the Bourne Free parade, but it was really good to be able to take part in this, only our second year.
Bourne Free
has been building up over the past thirteen years and it felt like a really exuberant event.  They have placed a video of the parade on the Bourne Free Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/playwivjay/posts/868638186524888

 

 The Bourne Free Parade organisers had arranged for Ringwood Unitarians to walk alongside the only other faith group taking part, the Metropolitan Community Church  from Pokesdown (Dorset Humanists, some of whom might also want to be mentioned at this point, were also there in strength).  This was wonderful.  What a welcome MCC gave!  And also all eyes were on them – so as a by-product, also on Ringwood Unitarians – because the MCC had co-opted their friends from Liberty Church  in Blackpool who brought their huge mannequin of Jesus.  The children in particular were mesmerized.  “Big Jesus” certainly captured everyone’s imagination, and there were many smiles at “Big Jesus” and about him, too.  Sadly there were also some jeers and boos when the parade passed one place so it just shows that not everyone is content with the idea that Jesus is there for, and welcomes, everyone. “Big Jesus” was carried on the shoulders of one person continuously from 10.30 a.m. to after 1 p.m., and he danced from one part of the crowd to the next, shaking hands, blowing kisses, and waving his rainbow balloons.  Up till now no photos of the Ringwood Unitarian rep have been sent in but here is a picture of MCC, Liberty Church and “Big Jesus”.

It was great fun and wonderful to make some new friends at MCC who, being in Pokesdown, are almost next door neighbours for Ringwood Unitarians.  We hope to build on this by meeting with them again very soon.

The 3 July lecture looking at atheism and Christianity

getting ready for the lecture

We enjoyed presenting a lecture for the people of Ringwood and district on 3 July.  It was given with the support of the Montgomery Trust, a charity which provides speakers of national repute on topics relating to Christianity.  Our speaker for the evening was Michael Poole, author of a number of different books dealing with his research area of the interplay between science and religion, and who is Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King’s College, London.

 

Michael made reference to what is sometimes known as “New Atheism”, explaining that he had had academic correspondence and meetings with Prof Richard Dawkins.  He was saddened by the fact that the language employed in the media and in books by certain commentators has become more strident and pejorative than in past times; otherwise he argued that there is nothing new about the arguments for atheism that are proving so popular with the public today.

 

What he then spent his talk doing, was trying to get us thinking more exactly about what we understood to be the relationship between atheism and a religious view.

 

Michael introduced a number of definitions and logical arguments to show us how we mix up ideas and categories of thought.  He showed that there are usually many different narratives about why any circumstance should be the way it is, and these different narratives do not trump, invalidate or generate conflict between each other.  For instance, it can be explained why a light is on in a room in two ways: (a) because someone wanted it to be on and (b) because the electrons in the electrical supply are flowing through the light bulb.  Similarly, two friends run across each other in the street – it turns out that one person was seeking to make the meeting happen, whilst the other had no thought of it but is always there at that time during the week.  One experienced it as random, but is only able to say this through ignorance of the hidden motive of the other.

 

Science and religion are different narratives about how the world works and it is a mistake to think that one has to be explained in terms of the other.  Michael particularly rejected the model of “God in the gaps”, in which people imagine that contemporary science can only describe the universe so far and then everything that science has not so far described can be put down to God.  He argued that, instead, to sort out what is in the gaps people have to become better scientists – rather than turn God into a leftover bit of the scientific model.

 

He suggested that the words “faith” and “belief” are identical in meaning and they both mean “non-evidenced trust”, that is to say a trust you have of, or in, something despite having no evidence on which to base your trust.  Talking about evidence, Michael showed us that jurisprudence can be used as a useful model for belief.  In court cases, evidence can either be direct, such as the eye-witness accounts, or indirect, where inferences can be drawn from scientific measurements.  In jurisprudence also there is the idea of the “weight” of evidence, where we accept the idea that an accumulation of small pieces of evidence can build up to provide substantial evidence on which we convict.  Science also operates like this.  Yet people are very willing to reject a religious view of life, built upon direct experience or revelation, or indirect evidence from others, and supported by a great body of personal experience over many centuries.

 

In amongst much more that Michael spoke about, we heard that there are problems with some very commonly accepted comments heard today.  “There is no absolute truth” – if this statement is deemed false then it may be ignored, whereas if deemed to be true then it destroys itself (because it says that 'the truth needed for it to be said' does not exist).  Michael also showed that changes in language cause us problems.  “Truth” used to mean a correspondence between a thing and a statement about a thing – something we understand better when we hear phrases similar to “she was being true to herself.”  However, in current usage, “truth” often is used as a synonym for the word “acceptable”.  So: “what is true for you is not true for me” would be more accurately phrased as “what is acceptable to you is not acceptable to me.” Similarly, “to prove something” used to mean “to test or probe something,” whereas now we tend to use it where we might better say “to place this matter beyond any possible doubt.”

 

There was a lively questions session after the talk and of course no overall agreement was found between participants.  But it was agreed that the evening had been enjoyable and stimulating and worth the effort of coming along to.  We look forward to perhaps putting on a similar style of event in Ringwood next year.