Uncategorized

This talk was given by the Rev. Geoff Usher.

In March 2009 I went to Japan for the Council meeting of the International Association for Religious Freedom, held at the Tsubaki Grand Shrine near Suzuka.
While in Japan I was given a copy of a book by Ervin Laszlo, entitled “You Can Change the World: The Global Citizen’s Handbook for Living on Planet Earth.”
.
.
.

The first chapter is entitled “The World in Our Hands”, and I have taken that as the title for this sermon, in which I want to share with you some ideas from Laszlo’s book. It sets out the simple message that we must not wait for fundamental change to come from “above”, from the elected or appointed leaders of contemporary society.
Meaningful change must come from “below”, from the people – the ordinary people like us – who live in those societies.

The complete sermon can found here.

The Rev Steve Wilson is Unitarian minister from the US who has visited our Fellowship in the past, and with whom we keep in touch. This message, titled as “The Quiet Opportunity and Cost of Catastophe”, relates some thoughts on the current epidemic.

It is almost too cliché to say that we are presently “living history,” but it so overwhelmingly true that it must be said.
Every e-mail, every newscast, almost every new advertisement, even, has to connect to the virus or risk feeling out of touch. The Coronavirus storyline is so strong, we barely notice it’s spring, that Passover and Easter are right around the corner, that baseball season would have started Thursday, or that the Dems haven’t even completely figured out their candidate yet. This new reality has left most of us working through our day with a mix of “I’m bored” meets “What’s the next shoe
to drop?” I don’t need to tell you that the present drama in which we are trapped has an element of fear in it, a through line of certainly some isolation, but also some down time.
Living in any culture, or at any given time in history is always, mostly silently, a little like being a character in a script. In normal times with a thousand stories and our own lives pulling in different directions, we don’t feel it so strongly, but who we are down to our souls is always greatly both affected and effected by our surroundings. Mostly,
however, it is really only in times of great tragedy or celebration that we feel absorbed. As I said last week, these days feel like we are reading the same script, but it’s a fresh, unfinished script that has no clear ending. It is a moment when the sense that all is lost can rub shoulders with a sense that humanity could turn the page on a lot of false divisions and inequality. Part of the underlying anxiety is that we know this moment could go a few ways.

The full text can be read here.

The Rev. Rex A. E. Hunt contributes this stimulating meditation, written by Lewis Connolly and Dean Reynolds, on how to respond to the current COVID19 crisis. They draw on the writings of the poet, Lucretius, and the Epicurean philosophy.
While the talk is complete in itself, there are included included a number of links to further interesting material. While, in the original, these links were implicit and indicated by coloured text – the pdf format used here does not permit this. These links have been placed at the end of the paper.

The complete talk can be accessed here.

This amusing, but informational talk by the Rev Rex A E Hunt can be found here.

Personal maturity through mutual help groups in a caring and sharing community. Isn’t that the sort of aim that we should be able to have as a
congregation? especially the “caring and sharing community”?

The Rev Geoff Usher discusses the aims of friendship and mutual support in the following sermon, the full text of which can be found here.