The Pope shares a prayer with everyone with faith in God the Creator

ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME

Pope Francis, of the Roman Catholic faith community, invites and urges everyone - individuals, families, local communities, nations and the international community - to an "ecological conversion"; to change direction by taking on the beauty and responsibility of the task of caring for our common home.

In his letter given in Rome at Saint Peter’s on 24 May 2015, he reflects as follows:

"Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live......If everything is related then the health of a society's institutions affects the environment and the quality of human life.....Human ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good.....injustices abound and growing numbers of people are deprived of basic human rights and considered expendable....The acceptance of our bodies as God's gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation."

Pope Francis offers this prayer that we can share with people of all faiths who believe in God who is the all-powerful Creator.

A prayer for our earth

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.

 You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.

 Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.

 Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.

 Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united
with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.

 We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle
for justice, love and peace.

(Ringwood Unitarians are grateful to Ringwood and Fordingbridge Catholics at Sacred Heart and St Therese of Lisieux, Ringwood for their precis "map" of the Pope's Encyclical.  Their website can be found at  https://www.shandolos.org.uk/drupal/ )

Southern Unitarian Association

Newport Unitarian Church, 9a High St, Newport, Isle of Wight

Ringwood Unitarians count as a group in contact with the General Assembly of Free Christian and Unitarian Churches of UK, but as yet we are too new for any official status.

We are headed in a direction that will allow us to affiliate in time - we just need to grow a little more before we can join.

But unity and oneness is important to us - in our view, to take a separative stance in the spiritual life is to limit your spiritual life - so we are acting in the supposition that we belong in GA right now.  So we take to heart all that is asked of us by GA, as well as all the opportunities offered to us by GA.

One of the most important offers is to form relationships with the constituent congregations nearby, who meet together as a district association - the Southern Unitarian Association.  We're glad to have done this, and over the past year or so we have participated in the quarterly meetings and indeed have hosted one of them.

We cannot be at the next couple of meetings, but we wish all our SUA friends well, as they meet on 19 September, in Newport, Isle of Wight.

September 2015 meeting for reverence

The meeting for reverence followed our usual format.  We do not have a minister associated with our congregation; instead one of us as a lay person presides for each meeting.  It’s rather lovely to be able to use an apposite but rarely used word for this role: we use the word “president” with a lower case “p”.

The president for the day devised the service using texts from the Northern Pagan Tradition, and chants.  The first text was a reflection on the nine worlds, and how each brings its imperfection to make the perfection of the whole. The perfection of the whole is represented by the cosmic ash tree, Yggdrasil, whose roots reach into each of the levels of the nine worlds.

The second text was on the idea of wergild, where we navigate the victories and failures of ourselves and others in a spirit of mutual recompense, knowing we will be either side of it at different times throughout our life.

A lovely coffee morning followed.