It has been said that ‘Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.’ Although some may differ, I think we can assume this statement takes in modern woman too.

Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.

It has been said that ‘Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.’ Although some may differ, I think we can assume this statement takes in modern woman too.

Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.

Being fully human, in the most positive sense, is about our relationships with other people and indeed, all other beings. It is also about our dreams and aspirations.

To be a living, breathing, fully human being is also about wanting something more for this world and for its other inhabitants. It goes beyond acting with kindness ourselves to the dream of a world where kindness is universal.

The fully human being is, in some ways, eternally unsatisfied. While she may become sufficiently enlightened and free of ego to be satisfied with her own life, she continues to strive in the interest of others.

Robert Zend was a Hungarian writer who moved to Canada after the Soviet Invasion in 1956. He was a wonderful phrase-maker and his writing perhaps reflects a pessimism born of repression. Zend asserts ‘There are too many people, and too few human beings.’
There are too many people who live without a sense of connection and a sense of care for others. There are too many people who live without a passion for this world to be a better place – more loving, more just, and more peaceful.

The great 20th century Unitarian Theologian James Luther Adams contributed to an understanding of the purpose and meaning of religious participation freed of dogmatic constraints. Adams put it simply: "Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human."

May we, together, create such places – where each of us may grow toward the fully human with the whole of the world the better for it.

May it be so

It has been said that ‘Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.’ Although some may differ, I think we can assume this statement takes in modern woman too.

Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.

It has been said that ‘Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.’ Although some may differ, I think we can assume this statement takes in modern woman too.

Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.

Being fully human, in the most positive sense, is about our relationships with other people and indeed, all other beings. It is also about our dreams and aspirations.

To be a living, breathing, fully human being is also about wanting something more for this world and for its other inhabitants. It goes beyond acting with kindness ourselves to the dream of a world where kindness is universal.

The fully human being is, in some ways, eternally unsatisfied. While she may become sufficiently enlightened and free of ego to be satisfied with her own life, she continues to strive in the interest of others.

Robert Zend was a Hungarian writer who moved to Canada after the Soviet Invasion in 1956. He was a wonderful phrase-maker and his writing perhaps reflects a pessimism born of repression. Zend asserts ‘There are too many people, and too few human beings.’
There are too many people who live without a sense of connection and a sense of care for others. There are too many people who live without a passion for this world to be a better place – more loving, more just, and more peaceful.

The great 20th century Unitarian Theologian James Luther Adams contributed to an understanding of the purpose and meaning of religious participation freed of dogmatic constraints. Adams put it simply: "Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human."

May we, together, create such places – where each of us may grow toward the fully human with the whole of the world the better for it.

May it be so

Celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, we consider his impact on the religious world. The recognition of the process of evolution shook religious traditions with a force whose aftershocks continue to be felt. But this new world view also brought us the possibility of a more connected way of living together and the realisation of the importance and power of change.

Celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, let's consider his impact on the religious world. The recognition of the process of evolution shook religious traditions with a force whose aftershocks continue to be felt. But this new world view also brought us the possibility of a more connected way of living together and the realisation of the importance and power of change.

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

~Charles Darwin, from The Origin of Species, 1859

Two hundred years ago on the 11th February, Charles Darwin was born. One hundred and fifty years ago, he published “The Origin of Species” – a book that shook the Judaeo-Christian world to its very foundations. 

The notion of breaking free from traditional teaching was clearly influential to Darwin. He was nominally an Anglican, but this seems to have been more a matter of convenience than reflective of his beliefs. As an agnostic, Darwin’s theology would have been too radical even for the Unitarians of his time.

It is hard to imagine today the impact of the changes brought about by Darwin and other great thinkers whose work preceded and supported Darwin’s bold proposal. Life, explained Darwin, is as it is not because God made it so, but because of something far more subtle and less dramatic. The force that created the diversity of living things is a process of experimentation. Individuals differ from others or their species in ways that can be passed down to their offspring.  Those with advantageous variations in each generation did just a little bit better than others and are slightly more likely to pass these traits on.  Over millions of years, tiny changes accumulate to create the strange and wondrous assortment of creatures we see today, including humankind.

Before we knew about evolution, God was the all-powerful creator and designer of life. He created each thing to be suited to its environment or to be useful to His greatest creation – humankind.  Human beings stood at the top of the hierarchy of living beings. We were apart from the others and held dominion over them.  God was the producer and director and set-designer and held just about every other role in the creation of the universal drama and we – alone among living things were made in his image. The advent of the theory of evolution brought a dramatic change in God’s job description.

With Darwin’s remarkable insight, an understanding of the world that had stood for millennia came crashing down.

It is hard to imagine today what kind of a shock it was for society to recognise the truth of evolution.

You have probably seen the lists that come out every once in a while showing ten most stressful life events we can undergo. They are not cheerful lists, as you might imagine.

At the top is divorce or the death of a life partner.

[What I can’t understand is why the next item on the list is not “shopping at Ikea…”  clearly, they are not surveying the right people!]

Next in the list is imprisonment, then death of a family member, major illness or injury, and loss of a job.

It’s easy to understand having each of these items on the list.  Every one of them involves real trauma, pain, and loss. Interestingly, almost as stressful as separating from a life partner is reconciling and reuniting with that partner, and the loss of a job is only slightly more stressful than a change of job. We might think that retirement would be the beginning of 24/7 relaxation, but it is also right up there in stress levels.

Each of these life events has in common that it takes our feet out from under us. Our basic assumptions about our lives, the people we share it with, and our sense of purpose in living are challenged.  If any of these have happened to you, you will know and recall that lost and empty feeling – maybe a sense of numbness as you try to imagine how to rebuild a life.

In the same way, Darwin’s great realisation pulled the feet out from under western society.  God – that ideal companion, the creator of all things, the all-powerful hand that works in our lives, was now was being relegated to t position something like your kindly uncle who you never actually hear from but might visit once a week on Sundays.

The reaction to evolution brought, not surprisingly, a mixture of fear and anger. One Anglican cleric famously claimed that "humanity… would suffer a damage that might brutalise it, and sink the human race".

Some liberal religionists, inclined to accept the truth of the new science, tried to find a place for God in this altered understanding of the world.

Reverend Charles Kingsley called evolution "just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that [God] created primal forms capable of self development... as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to [fill the gaps] which He Himself had made."

One wonders if he truly believed his own words.  God was being demoted to the role of setting the great machine of evolution in motion and then stepping back to allow it to operate independently.

It is no wonder that we continue to find those today who want to put the genii of evolution back in its box. Creationism, “creation science,” and now “intelligent design.” It is not sheer obstinacy that leads people to turn to these arguments. They simply want to find a way out of the pain and disorientation of a universe without a constant divine guiding hand.

Whenever old structures crumble, new ones rise to take their place.

Darwin’s innovation brought about a change in world-view that continues to this day. It took from us the comforting notion that there is a divine plan for everything and removed the notion that humankind is the pinnacle of creation, it took away the dominant position we enjoyed, and it took away the changelessness of human nature.

And as it took away, it also gave. Within the understanding that evolution brings, we have the opportunity to understand and appreciate the world in new ways.

First, in a way that the scriptural story never could, evolution guides us toward a deep understanding of connection.  You are probably familiar with Mark Twain’s novel “The Prince and the Pauper.” It is the story of a poor boy who happens to look identical to Edward, the Prince of Wales. As fate would have it, they encounter one another and decide to change places.

Nothing could have prepared the two boys for the unfamiliar worlds they would each encounter. The young prince, having lost the power of the throne and his royal birth, encounters the suffering and injustice of the real world. But amid his suffering at the temporary loss of his royal stature, comes connection. He comes to know the common people as real people – rather than as mere subjects to be looked down upon.  He grows in compassion and wisdom. He will never again assume the callous, arrogant attitudes of the detached ruler.

The understanding of evolution yanked the undeserved crowns from our heads and the sceptres from our hands.  The evolution revolution has not yet fully run its course, but we humans have begun to recognise our kinship with all life. As Darwin himself said, "It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another." He recognized that humans are of a kind with other creatures – that evolution does not flow from bottom to top, but from creatures that are poorly suited to their environments to those that fit like a hand in glove.

We increasingly understand that although we may be quantitatively different from other animals, animals we surely are! We carry many of the same needs and instincts as other creatures and we begin to realise that what hurts us also hurts them.  We are part of an interconnected web of existence. If we are set apart, it is because we can carry that realisation and act to respect and preserve this great unity.

Second, evolution shows us that we are immersed in an ever-changing universe. In the scriptural view of the world, creation happens once. It’s done. That’s it. Not only is that misleading, is also a tough way to think about our lives. There is always the possibility for growth and adaptation – this is the hopeful truth we can come to see.

Evolution relies on diversity and experimentation. Every slight change in a plant or animal is an experiment. It is a potential improvement even though it is likely to fail. What if you gave yourself complete permission to try even though you might fail?  What if failure wasn’t seen as a penalty but a step forward?

Change is a constant and the evolutionary viewpoint helps us to see the beauty and power of that eternal process of transformation.

Today, as we prepare to celebrate our congregation’s new members, the lessons of evolution are very fitting.  Within this congregation, we seek unity amid diversity. We know and recognise and rejoice at our differences. They are, as all the tiny variations upon which evolution acts, a source of hope and strength for the future.

And we embrace change. We know that the living being that is a congregation changes with each new arrival. We do not fear this change. We know that each new life brings more life to all and that the flame of love within each new loving heart strengthens the fire in all hearts.

It is our great mission to show the world that diversity can be a strength, that change brings growth toward wholeness, and that we are connected within the single fabric of life.

So may it be with you.

A few months ago, a man came to the front door of the church and rang the bell. He wanted to see the minister.

I thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’

The first time someone came to the door with a tragic story that ended with needing some money – that he would surely return – I was taken. I lost £35 of my own money on that one and I resolved never to fall for it again.

A few months ago, a man came to the front door of the church and rang the bell. He wanted to see the minister.

I thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’

The first time someone came to the door with a tragic story that ended with needing some money – that he would surely return – I was taken. I lost £35 of my own money on that one and I resolved never to fall for it again.

So, when I saw this fellow and heard that he wanted to talk to me, I knew just what to expect.

I sat down with him outside the door – knowing that it would be easier to get rid of him if I didn’t let him in the building. He began to tell me his tale of woe. He had had a job until something went wrong. He wanted to assure me that he wasn’t an alcoholic, although he had been drinking. He was down on his luck and needed help.

We talked for a while and he looked so sincere – but then, even the con man who took my 35 quid managed to squeeze out a real tear or two…

I was ready to be resolute about money with this man. I wouldn’t give him any. But he didn’t ask for any…

So, I told my visitor that I could do three things for him. First, I could listen to him as I had been doing. Second, I could get him a sandwich. And third, I could give him a bit of work to do and pay him for doing it.

A con man would have argued at this point – about how what he needed was just 20 quid to get his truck back so he could rescue his child, or 30 quid for a train trip to his mum’s funeral, or 25 for his wife’s emergency dental work… you get the idea.

But my visitor was delighted with the three options. I got him set up with my pressure washer and started him off cleaning the entry area to Unity and then went to make him a tuna mayo sandwich.

When I returned, he was hard at work. My expensive pressure washer was still there –he did not take off with it… I stopped him working for a bit and he gratefully took the food and ate quickly before getting back to work.

Hours passed. I checked on him occasionally, but not often. Whenever I checked, he was there – hard at work.

At last, he said he was done. I paid him for the job from my own money, not Unity’s.

I looked at his clothing. He was now pretty well soaked with water and covered with spattered dirt. And yet, he had a strange sort of happy look on his face.

Finally he spoke again.

He told me that while he was working, people who walked by thought he was a workman – not a homeless person. And they met his eye. They might have even smiled. He was overjoyed at this small thing – something that any of us would probably take for granted.

He said to me ‘Thank you. For a few hours, you’ve let me feel human again.’



It is no small thing – to be treated as human.

Our Unitarian faith tells that each human person is born with inherent dignity and worth.

Perhaps it’s our recognition of that fact that leads us to dehumanize people. We need to do it to justify our hatred of them.

In vilifying non-Muslim minorities in Iran, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Iranian Guardian Council, has said, “Humans who follow anything but Islam, are the same as those animals who wander about and commit corruption.”

In Rwanda, Tutsis were depicted as cockroaches and snakes to make way for the genocide there. To make the holocaust possible, Jews in Germany were called poisonous mushrooms, pigs and spiders.

Each of us who can hear and understand these words is human, with the dignity and worth and responsibility that this status confers.

We all dehumanize others. It’s a way of defining positions and of getting through the day.

Next time you’re in a crowded public place, try this. Look at the faces of the people around you. Most of them will be expressionless. Some will look sad or angry. A few will appear happy. Very rarely, you might even detect contentment.

As you look, remember that each of these people feels as you feel. As different and as ‘other’ as they may seem, each one has loved and lost and dreamed, just as you have. They had parents. They have hopes and fears just as you do.

Do this, and just for a barely tolerable and unsustainable moment, you may recognise life in its full overwhelming sweetness, misery and complexity. Keep that thought with you.

In a world of dehumanization, let us work toward rehumanizing all who are treated as less.

Sometimes, hard things are worth doing.

I looked down at the bamboo knitting needles in my hands. The cotton string that had been in the process of becoming a lace scarf was hopelessly muddled, and there was nothing to do but to unravel it back to the beginning. Again. For the fourth (or was it fifth?) time.

Sometimes, hard things are worth doing.

I looked down at the bamboo knitting needles in my hands. The cotton string that had been in the process of becoming a lace scarf was hopelessly muddled, and there was nothing to do but to unravel it back to the beginning. Again. For the fourth (or was it fifth?) time.

I must have sighed aloud as I began to pull the stitches out, because my husband Peter looked a bit concerned. Gently he asked if I perhaps should be doing something else. He had watched as I had knit for a while, and then, realising that I had made a mistake, focussed in on correcting it. Painfully slowly and very carefully, I took apart two rows stitch by stitch for about 40 minutes, and finally made satisfied noises, pleased that I had managed to put things to right. Now, only a few rows further along, it had all gone wrong again with no hope of getting it right. I was too lost.

It wasn’t long before I began my next attempt. And I will continue to work at it until I have created the scarf no matter how many times I take it out and start again.

It’s a change for me. I don’t often have patience for things that I don’t do well straightaway. I don’t like doing things badly, and sometimes – maybe often even – it has kept me from risking new experiences. I watch someone do something so very well, and doubt that I’ll ever be able to achieve it. I listen to singing or poetry, see feet and body embody a lovely dance, or note the graceful curve of stroke of paint on a piece of paper. Then I keep my hands folded in my lap and sit quietly believing that I could never make something of real beauty, dance like that, sing or speak with such confidence or clarity.

But doing hard things is worth the effort. Keeping faith with the process of learning, being open to failure, and carrying on helps to train our hearts and minds for what life gives us.

As the lacy fabric became string again, I pondered winding it back into a ball and setting it aside for another project.

No, I decided as the last stitch popped out. I’ll continue to work on this scarf, seeking to make it as perfect as I can, trying to have the orderly stitches open in delicate leafy patterns.

Learning patience on a small piece of handwork is still learning patience. Paying attention to a single stitch is still learning to focus on the moment. It is, like meditation, a way to discover your own truth, your own strength. It is a way to learn how to be in your life and to appreciate it, no matter that it may be difficult.

I cast on 57 stitches again. I can see the that cream coloured string has become gray and a bit tattered. I cut off what is no longer usable, and begin one more time. Breathing deeply, I start knitting the pattern and watch the scarf begin to emerge. It is good to do a small difficult thing, and to notice the learning that comes along with it. I am training my heart and mind whilst I train my hands. Knit two, yarn forward, knit two together. The cloth grows on the needles. I will succeed, if not this time, then soon.

On a visit to the London College of Psychic Studies Open Day, I certainly gave my inner sceptic room to breathe, even more so than usual.

On a visit to the London College of Psychic Studies Open Day, I certainly gave my inner sceptic room to breathe, even more so than usual.

Having grown up in a "New Age" household on the West Coast of Canada meant that Astrology, Tarot cards, crystals, Wicca, Reiki, Native Amercian and Ancient Egyptian mythology, faeries and Angels were the norm, and a big part of my childhood and teenage years. Add the requisite dash of Irish ancestry into my mix (thanks Grandpa Jim), and let's face it, I am essentially pagan and my sister and I have been rightly called "Indigo Children".

So where in all this lives any scepticism you might ask - which is exactly what Nearly Reverend Andy did... and it stopped and made me think. Do I actually have a rationality scale? Or am I the flip side to the "normal" coin? My mother was born to an Irish Protestant father and Polish-Ukrainian Catholic Mother, and she attended CGIT (Canadian Girls In Training) whose motto is "Cherish Health, Know God, Seek Truth, Help Others" - she taught Sunday School. As much as I know she has only fond memories of these times, she endeavoured to raise us in a diverse, non-judgemental and non-dogmatic way, though essentially, the "do unto others" rule applied. So this liberal neo-hippy upbringing has led me to ask myself, Should I be open to everyone and everything? Where is my filter? Where do I draw the line between helpful and harmful? Between paranormal and abnormal? Is it necessary to separate my heart from my head?

I have been to the College before to attend lectures, and had a reading with Tracey Ash-Ingley, a well-known Psychic Channeler who specialises in life purpose and arcangel work. She is a highly respected teacher and speaker in her field, and has even been featured in The Guardian. I have great respect for its ethos, which was "founded 125 years ago by a group of eminent scholars and scientists. Its purpose was to facilitate formal investigation into the psychic and mediumistic phenomena that were such a topic of debate in the Victoria era."

Needless to say I was looking forward to the Open Day, and I was not alone as it was rammed! On collection of our tickets we were asked to choose a taster session, and healing, mediumship, astrology/tarot, dowsing and psychics were on offer. Psychics (our first choice) proved to be most popular, so we opted for medium instead. Bad choice! Needless to say, after a long wait in the stairwell, the gentleman on the other side of the door was disappointing, though not for lack of effort on his part. I tend to be on my guard with anyone that claims to be a medium or psychic, partly for my own protection, and partly because there is a sliver of me that wonders if it can't all be demystified and elucidated a la Derren Brown, that it's hokum and I am desperate for believing in anything otherworldly in the first place. I think what was most disappointing about the gentleman on the other side of the door was that he was not a medium at all (I was really hoping for someone who would speak in tongues and talk to my ancestors - note sarcasm), but rather gave me a pretty basic Tarot card reading. And tarot cards immediately conjur up childhood connotations of playing with my Auntie Barb's deck, so he was going to have to relay something really revolutionary. Admittedly, parts of the reading were accurate concerning my loss of direction in life, my pigheadedness, my holding on to an old relationship - but technically those statements could apply to almost anyone. We knew he was off the mark when he told my dear friend that she would meet a young dark man with whom she would have a baby... not likely seeing as she is gay and past her childbearing years!

Feeling slightly disheartened, we squeezed past the crowds downstairs to the Sanctuary to take part in the "Introduction to Psychic Awareness" lecture.

This was where my inner sceptic got a run for her money, as it was quite an amazing hour.

Led by Janet Limb, herself a graduate and now tutor at the College, she guided us through a 10 minute meditation, and then asked us to pair up with a complete stranger. This was awkward, to say the least. Janet then instructed us to (either with closed eyes or by looking at the person - eyes closed please!) imagine that this person were handing us a map and a set of keys. The map led to their house and they keys opened their front door. And away we went! She told us to imagine walking out the door of the sanctuary, up the stairs, out the front door of the college, and then... needless to say, I was off on a very peculiar but remarkably particular journey. I knew I was going to South West London on the District line. I was walking down a residential but still busy street, passing a few locals walking dogs, and then I stopped in front of a red brick house with a green door. I walked up the stairs, and when I used the imaginary keys that I had been given, they opened up to a split level flat with a white throw rug, light coloured walls, and black leather sofas. To the right of the entry were stairs leading up to the bedroom, and straight through to the back I walked to the kitchen. At Janet's instruction we were to make ourselves a cup of tea (chamomile, in my case) and have a seat in the kitchen, continuing to take in what we saw. The kitchen looked out onto the garden, and it was bright and pleasant. There was a white marble island in the middle of the kitchen, and I was sat at a wooden table and chairs.

We were then instructed to finish the tea, wash up (polite psychic guests, we were) and leave the home, locking the door behind us. When we opened our eyes, we were to share with our partner what we had seen, without holding back for fear of judgement or being wrong.

Needless to say, the exactness of our exchange was astonishing! My lady described my flat rather accurately, and though she got two minor details wrong (I don't live in Waterloo and I don't have hardwood floors), all in all she portrayed it as well as someone who had actually been there in the flesh. In turn, my only errors were that I failed to recognise that she had a cat, and she didn't have an island in her kitchen. The post code, green door, brick house, throw rug, wall colour, garden view from kitchen, staircase on the right leading to the bedroom - were all spot on! Similar accounts were given from nearly all the other participants, and after Janet guided us through a "close down" exercise, we went on our merry ways, and I am still taking it all in. What does it mean to be psychic exactly? Janet described it as having an enhancement to our five senses, or to look at it as a skill we are all born with, like drawing, and that although some of us may be born with more inherent talent, nevertheless we are all capable of further development. Definite food for thought.

Next up was Stewart Pearce's lecture on sacred voice. Stewart is someone I have been keen on for years, and though I have never met him or taken one of his workshops, his resume is quite impressive, having been the Head of Voice for Shakespeare's Globe, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Drama Centre, and coach to Princess Di and the London 2012 team in leadership to boot. He sounds fantastically camp on paper, and when you add in his photo and my keen sense of "gaydar" - well this is clearly a man after my own heart. He didn't disappoint in fabulousness! Though I only managed to force my way in (having been informed by the receptionist on the door that it was completely full, I snuck in as soon as she was called away) I did miss the first half, but there he was in all his transcendent luvvy glory - slick, witty, with an incredible feline grace and theatrical panache to every movement, he had what I can only describe as a phenomenal speaking voice. It was elastic and highly maleable - obviously posturing and ridiculously posh, yet still managing incredible depth and intimacy, he was rather fascinating, wonderfully self-assured, and funny! I'm sure you can already hear the "darlings" being thrown casually around. He managed to tie it all together with well-timed and sensitive quotes and anecdotes, and truly put an authentic spiritual bent on it.... I'm mulling over whether it was all a well-choreographed dance delivered by a professional thespian, or a genuine communique from a true master who is speaking from a connection with the divine. It is apparent to me that he knows exactly what he is talking about in terms of technique, however, is his branching out into the outer esoteric realms a bona fide leap of faith or is it for profit? Judging by the cut of his designer trousers and the exquisite rings on his delicate fingers, I doubt he is in need of financial assistance. I want to believe he is coming from a place of good, but where is that handy rationality gauge when I need it?

So I left the College, walking up the stairs and out the front door, just as I did when I went on an imaginary trip into a stranger's house just an hour earlier. And in the fading sun of a warm London evening, I was finding it difficult to reconcile my heart and my head. Walking home through the jade glory of Hyde Park, I found myself lost in my intuition, caught somewhere between washing my hands of the entire night and at the same time wanting to know more, delve deeper, become a full time seeker. Because there has to be more to life than this, right? Surely this isn't it? When every living moment is a mini miracle unto itself and a reminder of the interconnectedness of each creature great and small, there must be other levels, other senses, other dimensions, other journeys not yet taken that beckon to our soul.

The answer to my question, are logic and spirituality compatible? My guess is yes, once we learn to connect our heads to our hearts. I ain't there yet.

Celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim, we examine the very human tendency to create categories: us and them, good and evil, and recognise that only by listening for the stories behind the story can we truly begin to create understanding.

Every Jewish kid loves Purim. Not because of the story itself, but because a synagogue is usually a place where you have to be still and quiet – where you have to behave.  Purim is a joy because it’s the only time when you’re allowed to be as loud as you want!

Purim has more to offer us though… There are some fascinating themes in the Purim story. In a number of ways, it stands in contrast to the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.

For one thing, and Mary Wollstonecraft would have loved this, the real hero of this story is a woman – Esther. Through her courage and ingenuity, Esther manages to save her people from genocide. Female heroes are not unique in the Bible, but they are very, very rare.

The story is perhaps even more remarkable because of the one character that is absent. Unlike virtually every other bible tale, one key player does not appear: God. Not once does God come into the story to slay the enemy, lead the people to freedom, or even give instructions. It’s an oddity.

Jewish scholars have speculated about this for centuries. Some say that this apparent absence is a message of God’s presence. The whole point, they argue, is that God is never absent – even when not explicitly named.  No one can really know what the ancient authors had in mind, but in many ways, this peculiarity makes Esther a more accessible story for us today.

Today, we don’t usually see God dividing the seas, appearing in a fiery chariot, raising the dead and so on.  The kind of God that many of us understand and can relate to is a God more like the God of Purim. This is not a flashy, showy kind of God who performs miracles if we ask nicely enough.  This is a God who is present in a more subtle and yet more pervasive way – a God who is found in our courage, in our joy, and especially, in the inexorable journey toward justice. It is a God who makes miracles through us, rather than for us.

Purim is one of the Jewish holidays that is celebrated with great joy.  Among the many stories in the history of the Jewish people, this is one where the good guys finally win one.  After the destruction of the temple, the exile from the holy land, and the dispersion of Jews to foreign lands, here is a story where things are finally as they should be.

It is a tidy story and justice seems to be served. Haman is evil. He wants to destroy the Jewish people, and he, himself, ends up destroyed by them.

We can understand, I think, why this is such an attractive story. In fact, it’s not that much different from a whole raft of popular films: You know the usual plot. We meet a good guy and we are shown how wonderful he is.  He loves puppies, babies, and helps the elderly cross the street. Then a villain is introduced and we quickly see his wickedness. He drowns kittens, uses lots of disposable plastic bags, and doesn’t swipe in on the bendy buses – also, he’s attached to some world-wide conspiracy to destroy all life, steal tons of gold, or give nuclear weapons to terrorists – something like that.  Soon, the villain gains some advantage over our hero and then, when all seems hopeless, the turnaround happens. Good defeats evil and everyone lives happily ever after.

It’s natural for us to like this kind of story.  We identify with the good guy and it makes us feel powerful to see him win. It makes us feel hopeful.  And one more very important thing, by dividing humanity into neat categories of good and evil, it makes our messy, complicated world seem orderly for once. Human beings – all of us, I think -- crave this kind of clarity.

You are probably familiar with the Kosher dietary laws that observant Jews follow. One of the most credible explanations for why these laws emerged is exactly this kind of inclination toward order. For example, a simple rule for sea creatures is that every animal that lives in the water should be a fish.  What about shellfish and crustaceans? They are from the sea but not fish. They break the category. They are not Kosher.

In the same way, animals with cloven hooves usually are ruminants – that is, they chew their cud. But pigs have cloven hooves and do not chew their cud.  Category breakers.  Not Kosher.

A similar logic explains why homosexuality is seen as dangerous – in the Bible and even today.  Gays and lesbians don’t fit the simple categories of men who love women and women who love men. Just like ham and cheese, they’re seen as not “kosher.”

Our desire to categorise and make order is everywhere in our lives: Us vs. them is how we are tempted to see the world. You have to be black or white – not something in the middle. You have to be posh or poor, sane or crazy, old or young, foreign or native, and with us or against us.  We draw boxes and put things in one or the other. 

To make an enemy, we simply need to identify them as other, as different, as “them.” When George Bush wanted to get people on his side against Iraq, it was this kind of rhetoric he used. They were not people with a grievance. They were not even just the enemy, they were the “Axis of Evil.”

This week, a very troubling story appeared in the news. It told of a mother and son who had been terrorized for decades by a cruel husband and father. The physical abuse went on and on and scarred both the victims physically and psychologically for the rest of their lives.

What this man did was evil. Was he himself evil though? We want to say yes.  We want to know that there are clean sharp lines between the good and the evil.  We want order.  The main focus of the current story though was that some small amount of understanding and peace had finally come to this dreadful situation. The mother and son learned this week that the stories their abuser had told over the years about his own brutal childhood were true. As a child, he had been sent to a now notorious reform school in Florida where severe beatings and sexual abuse were a constant part of life for the inmates. Dozens of children disappeared over the years and are now thought to lie buried beneath thirty white crosses on the school grounds. 

Perpetrator. Abuser. Victim. Innocent child.

Behind any story, there is always another story, and knowing that story helps us to begin to understand our connections – even in the most horrible of circumstances.

As you well know, Unitarians do not have a creed. There is no belief test to become a Unitarian. But, if we did have a creed, it would probably include these few words that are used on both sides of the Atlantic: the “worth and dignity of every person.” We believe that each person is precious, worthy of respect, and to be treated as such.

It is a demanding standard -- A category-busting statement of faith. Can we not divide humanity into good and bad? What about Haman? Your mind jumps to extreme cases…  What about Osama Bin Laden? Can you say his life has worth? Should we respect his dignity? What about Hitler? Pol Pot? Serial killers? The staff at a reform school that abused a generation of boys?

Yes, even them. Not that dangerous people should be allowed to run around free and harm others, but even as we do what we must do to protect ourselves and others, we continue to commit to seeking and promoting the worth and dignity of all. And that means doing the very hard work of seeking to understand – of looking for the other stories.

The important point is not found in the extreme examples of mass murderers. It is that labels and categories create and deepen the divisions that disrupt the unity we seek. We build walls to protect ourselves from “them,” but our walls only make the distances larger and turn irritants into enemies.

There is a unity among all things that some of us call God.

In the Jewish mystical tradition, it is written that in creating the world, God placed part of God’s self into vessels of light that shattered and flung fragments of the divine throughout all existence. Life is sacred, but that sacredness is fragmented, divided, and dispersed. The call we must follow as people of faith is to set about repairing the world – uniting the sacredness within all things to create heaven on earth.

This work is not something that God can do for us, but work that we can do with God. When we listen for the other stories, we begin this work. When we hear and understand, the fragments begin to reunite. And when understanding turns to love, then our heaven has surely begun.

Just before we went away on holiday, our Poetry for the Soul group considered Mary Oliver's poem 'Wild Geese' which includes this line:

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

The next morning as we flew away to Mallorca for a week at a resort hotel, these words stayed with me.

Just before we went away on holiday, our Poetry for the Soul group considered Mary Oliver's poem 'Wild Geese' which includes this line:

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

The next morning as we flew away to Mallorca for a week at a resort hotel, these words stayed with me.

We quickly fell into the rhythm of finding our places by the pool and sitting there in pleasure of sunshine and heat. Between knitting and reading and doing puzzles, I found myself watching the people and was keenly aware of the bodies on display, the 'soft animals' we were surrounded by. What was most remarkable to me was how much flesh I could see: women of every size and age in two piece swim costumes, men of equal diversity in tiny Speedos. Skin was dark brown, nearly black, or browned by the sun or pink or pasty in colour. Some suffered from the effects of the sun and not enough shade or suncream. The truly unfortunate were blotched with whitish areas and reddened areas where their suncream hadn’t got spread..

It was in some ways deeply moving to see all these bodies, these 'soft animals' of bodies. Our common humanity was on parade in the bulges and bellies of the more abundant of flesh, the taut skin of children and youth, the pleated drape of aging necklines and faces, the contours of muscle.

And yet at first I was a bit aghast. My American sensibility and the insistent blare of the media seem to conspire to arouse shame in me when looking at what is (by that unrealistic standard of beauty) an overweight body. You would only very rarely see a woman of abundant figure in a bikini on an American beach. And elder women would be discretely covered up, the truth of their aging bodies cloaked in blowsy fabric. Here women of every age showed belly and leg and cleavage such as it was. A few showed breasts with little thought or care it seemed.

Men – more likely to be casual about their bodies in my experience – might show some more of their skin and but most on American beaches they would likely favour more fabric than the thin strip of spandex that was stretched across most of the men at this resort.

My cultural bias showed itself in my strong response.

Still I knew that there is a beauty in the plainness of flesh, an earthy pleasure in bodies unadorned, unhidden. Day on day I came to appreciate the view at the poolside, and even considered buying a new swim costume myself. That adventure will have to wait for another sun-soaked holiday, but I am renewed in my sense of connection to my own body, and to the soft, sweetness of our physical selves.

This is, of course, one of the purposes of a proper holiday: to shake us loose from that which has become too common, to open our eyes and hearts a little to new experiences, and to put us back in touch with ourselves away from the press of everyday life.

As we come into the summer months when holidays, I wish you some time to rediscover and reconnect with yourself, too. However you find that moment – on holiday or at home – may it be for you renewal and inspiration.

I’ve been thinking a lot about joy over the past few weeks. It started when I attended a solstice celebration. As a part of that gathering, we were all invited to take a card onto which the leader had written a word of blessing, or a quality of life that we might seek in as the light began to return. My card – a slip of paper, really, with swirls of pink and purple and blue – said simply ‘joy’ followed by a heart. In the darkness of the sanctuary, I closed my eyes as tears slid down my cheeks. Joy. Allowing myself to be shot through with the awareness of the preciousness of life, the beauty and wonder of the world. Allowing light into the deepest dark of the year.

Yes. Joy was what I needed in that moment and following.

I’ve been thinking a lot about joy over the past few weeks. It started when I attended a solstice celebration. As a part of that gathering, we were all invited to take a card onto which the leader had written a word of blessing, or a quality of life that we might seek in as the light began to return. My card – a slip of paper, really, with swirls of pink and purple and blue – said simply ‘joy’ followed by a heart. In the darkness of the sanctuary, I closed my eyes as tears slid down my cheeks. Joy. Allowing myself to be shot through with the awareness of the preciousness of life, the beauty and wonder of the world. Allowing light into the deepest dark of the year.

Yes. Joy was what I needed in that moment and following.

Now, in mid-January as I write this, I’m seeing joy around me more, recognising it, holding and savouring it. Ann Sexton writes about joy in the ordinary objects and moments of her day. In ‘Welcome Morning’ she begins:


Indeed this is where joy is best found: in the everyday and common moments of our lives. If we’re paying attention – really paying attention – joy can be uncovered in the smallest of moments. While I am seeing more joy in many places, I’ve been especially mindful of it on the daily walks to and from school that I do with my daughter, Claire.

Most mornings, she and I set out from Isleworth and walk the mile and a half or so to her school, the Vineyard, at the top of Richmond Hill. This in itself is a pleasure. Walking the towpath that stretches beside the River Thames, we get to watch as it changes from week to week, note the birds that are swimming or flying, and, of late, see the sun come up as we walk along. My daughter is often chatty in the morning, telling me her what has been happening in school or events of the day before, or what she is excited about in the coming day. Some of our best conversations happen whilst we are walking along. Even on the most gloomy of days, the walk is both satisfying and lovely.

In the afternoons, I pick her up from school and we walk down the hill to catch a bus home. This is where the joy shows through most clearly. Since she began at this school, Claire has danced down the hill from school. She hops and skips, shifts her body from side to side, kicks her legs out in unusual ways, jumps and leaps. It’s more subtle than it sounds, but it is all in there. I’ve always been bemused by it, but lately, it feels more joy-filled. It took me a bit to get it well sorted, but I finally figured out that part of what Claire does is she watches the pavement we’re walking along. She hops over cracks, sees designs that she can make with her body and feet as we walk along, and is continually responding to the particular place in the world that she is at the moment. She’ll perceive a hopscotch pattern in the paving stones and begin to play: two feet out, hop on one, two feet out. When those pavers are gone, replaced by a different pattern of bricks or smooth asphalt, she’ll end with a flourish of some sort and watch for the next opportunity to dance along.

This is a joyful way of being in the world, this readiness to dance, to be present to this moment, to what is around us. I haven’t yet worked up the courage to let go and dance with her, though occasionally, I’ll jump or skip a little, maybe do my own hopscotch next to her. But it seems that the encouragement and the reminder is always there with me as we walk along.

‘Remember joy!’ say her feet as she dances over a crack in the pavement. ‘Dance through life!’ says her spirit as she turns and shifts, as she leaps along down the hill.

Joy, I think, is more a habit than simple happenstance. We find it when we are open to it, when we look to the world for its sweetness and pleasure, when we are attuned to the opportunities for delight and renewal. It also comes as a gift. Anne Sexton finishes off her poem:

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

May it be that we all speak of our joys with one another, that it may live within and among.

Bright blessings of joy to you all!

I saw you. You may think that no one noticed, but I saw you.

In fact, you may not even have thought that what you did was worth any notice, and certainly not any comment, but what you did has stuck with me over the last few days and I just needed to tell you that it didn’t go unnoticed and certainly it was appreciated.

I saw you. You may think that no one noticed, but I saw you.

In fact, you may not even have thought that what you did was worth any notice, and certainly not any comment, but what you did has stuck with me over the last few days and I just needed to tell you that it didn’t go unnoticed and certainly it was appreciated.

My daughter and I got on the bus just ahead of two, shall we say, older women. Noticing them behind us, you moved from your comfortable seat and threaded your way to the back of the bus. I don’t know that the woman who took your seat even saw that you left it for her. The bus was filling up, but there were still seats in the back, and you found one and settled in. Claire and I sat behind you. I was mindful that you had just acted kindly, and no words of thanks were offered. You probably would have dismissed any thanks. Anyone would have done it, you would have said. But that’s not true. And even so, it was an act of kindness, and those shouldn’t go unappreciated.

Then a mum with two young boys moved toward the back of the now full bus. She directed her sons into the remaining seats in the back of the bus. Hesitating not a moment, you got up again, and she sat. Distracted by her energetic sons, I’m not sure she noticed that you had gone so that she could sit. She took the seat, I suspect, gratefully as any mother of two small sons would.

You didn’t ride for all that far, perhaps 4 or 5 stops further along. You strode off the bus, looking thoughtful and your attention on where you were going, no doubt you were already on to whatever was next on your schedule for the day. If today I saw you and said something, you likely wouldn’t even remember doing it.

But I saw it. And I gave thanks out into the universe for those two small acts of kindness. And, while I am fairly certain that you won’t see this – if you read the Unitarian, you would likely buy it from my church – still I wanted to let it be known that those small acts did not go unnoticed.

It is those little acts of kindness that weave the fabric of the world, I think. They are mostly unnoticed – a smile offered along the street, a hand held out for assistance whilst crossing a street, a word of care spoken in a difficult moment, making a seat for someone who might need it. Acts of kindness endure in ways that moments of meanness never can. Small act by small act, goodness is woven, and each of us is a thread in the weaving.

Today I say thank you to you:

You, the woman on the bus who gave up her seat twice;

You, who smiled at a baby;

You, who held the hand of a friend in pain;

You, who made a meal for someone you love;

You, who performed one of those innumerable and important acts of kindness.

I saw you. And I say thank you from the depth of my heart.

I like candy floss. There’s something delightful about its airy fluffiness and that incredibly sweetness! I even like the artificial colouring! Too bad there’s nothing really there and it doesn’t do you a bit of good.

I’ve been wondering if some of what passes for spirituality these days isn’t awfully similar to my cloud-like pink delight on a stick. Now, I know there are plenty of people out there who believe that anything outside of their own chosen traditions is worthless and shallow. I’m not one of them! My mind and heart are open to new wisdom and my own personal spirituality is drawn from multiple sources. Furthermore, I firmly believe that different people may thrive on different spiritual paths.

My question, though, deals with the practices and teachings that might make up such a path. Is everything equally valid? If not, what is the spiritual equivalent of health food, what is candy floss, and what is just plain poison! I know people who chant one word over and over again without much more understanding than that of the meaning of what they are doing. That seems to me to be more magical thinking than deepening, but perhaps I am too harsh.

Please comment. Share your experience. What has nourished you spiritually? What has been like junk food - nice in the moment but with no lasting benefit? And, if you have been unfortunate enough to come across poison in your spiritual smorgasbord, what was that like?

The year that Claire turned one, she, Peter and I went to a week long retreat out on the banks of Puget Sound in Washington State in the US.  Puget Sound is a massive inlet that extends about half way down the state, cutting the Olympic Peninsula off from the rest of the mainland.  Though an inlet, it has the feel of the ocean and many of the creatures that inhabit its shores are ocean creatures.

As is the case with most of the coast in the Northwest United States, it is rocky with tide pools that are home to a wide array of marine life.  I never got accustomed to the beaches out on the west coast of the US.  The beaches that I knew were wide expanses of sand that sloped gently down to the Atlantic Ocean.  I was used to swimming at the beach and lying out in the sun atop a blanket.  In the northwest, however, the Pacific Ocean is always cold, and the coastline doesn't welcome that sort of summertime fun.  It's cloudy, often chilly and rocky.  Where there is sand, people drive their cars along the hard beach. 

            Convincing me to go for a walk on the beach was often a hard sell, but on a day that seemed promising for some warmth, Peter and I set out for a walk along the beach with Claire  in a sling on Peter's hip. 

            The tide was out, and we picked our way along the rocky and pebbly beach.  Not too far into the walk we came upon a large – I mean really large – starfish.  This thing must have been a foot across.

            'Oh my god!  What is that?' I nearly shrieked.  The thing, whilst recognisable because of its shape, was an unnatural shade of dark red with white splotches on the arms.  It was thick, too, perhaps as much as three inches thick at its centre.

            Peter glanced at the creature, amused (as he often is) by my seeming panic at something he took as normal.  'It's a starfish,' he answered me blandly.

            'It's a dead starfish!' I said in reply, still not totally convinced that he knew what he was talking about.  The thing could have been an alien invader from some distant nebula.  Honest. It was that different.  

            I had found starfish before when visiting Florida.  They were small things that fit in the palm of your hand, their fragile narrow arms stretching into their named shape.  Never having seen a live one, I thought of them as hard.  This huge, fat, splotchy red creature couldn’t be the same thing, could it?  I squatted down to look more carefully at it, but still couldn’t believe that it was indeed a starfish. 

            We continued our walk, and passed by another half dozen at least, and each time I was I found myself staring to see if they really were what Peter claimed.  Peter, on the other hand, looked at the variety of sea life that was all around, enjoyed the view out onto the Sound, showed Claire rocks and shells. 

            At supper with the others who were on the retreat with us, I couldn’t stop talking about the massive, red starfish, still stunned to find that such creatures really exist, still trying to connect them with the other starfish, the small and delicate beings I knew from my childhood.

            I think we are often stopped by the assumptions and experiences we bring to what is new.  I realised much too late that I had missed the rest of the day by not being able to reconcile my idea of what a starfish is with the starfish I saw. 

            It wasn’t a dead starfish, nor an alien invader from Galifrey or the Helix nebula.  It was another wonder of this world to be noted, examined and celebrated in the midst of the rest of the beauty by which we are surrounded. 

They were as sorry a couple as I had ever seen.  She was overweight and awkward, he was too thin and short and prone to nervous ticks.  But they were getting married and I was the minister.  They told me that it was the first serious relationship for both of them, neither had ever really dated.  He was fresh out of the Army, and had never lived alone.  His mother had died before he finished his tour of duty, and he was on his own.  It seemed clear, too, that she thought he was her last chance.

The wedding was dismal.  Hot and humid as only the Washington, DC area can be in August.  She was in a shapeless bag of cheap satin, and the stress had caused her face to go spotty.  Thick makeup only made that more obvious.  He was in a badly fitting suit and the beads of sweat kept pouring off his face, his hands were entirely soaked with nervous sweat.

 

            The bride’s uncle videotaped the whole service over my right shoulder.  Still too young to know how to stop him, I just let it go.  The whole day was miserable and I couldn’t escape fast enough once it was done.  Two sadder folks I couldn’t have imagined.

 

            But years later, a cheque arrived from her parents with a note.  Thanks for what you did to make their start, it read.  They’re moving nearby and the grandchildren are treasures we couldn’t have imagined.  They are happy and healthy and living in love.

 

            It was as gentle a rebuke as I could have received.  Their love gave them life and happiness that overwhelmed my judgement.  And more happiness in the world because of it.  I try to remember this whenever I find myself drawn to think I know better or more, or have a vaulted view of what’s right and good in the world.

 

            I believe I should never take myself too seriously

At last, someone is getting serious about the abuses being committed by religious groups that promise wealth for the faithful - where ‘faithful’ often means handing over hefty donations or fees to churches and pastors. US Senator Charles Grassley is launching a probe of groups that are raking in millions through this ‘gospel of prosperity

This may feel like yet another reason to condemn traditional religious groups and embrace the alternative spirituality movement, but ’spirituality’ has not been free of this kind of abuse - far from it. Do a quick Google search for spirituality and prosperity… You’ll find more examples than you can shake a ‘law of attraction’ at! As ’spirituality’ increasingly becomes a big business, more and more spirituality entrepreneurs are ready to trade on human desperation and gullibility in order to line their own pockets.

Human beings need meaning and purpose and community in their lives to be happy. We need to give and receive love. We need to learn how to appreciate the gift of life that surrounds us. Many of us walk around feeling like something is missing in our lives - we feel an emptiness that we desperately want to fill. Advertisers understand this and they’re quite ready to take advantage of it. They convince us that if we own the right stuff and have enough money, we will finally feel happiness. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Any authentic spiritual path has to help us to avoid this dangerous materialistic detour. It must help us to recognise that everything we need to be happy is right here with us and help us understand how to see and touch it.

‘The Gospel of Prosperity’ is not such a path. It is the opposite! It simply reinforces the destructive notion that happiness comes from what we have! Worse, it wraps that damaging message in the clothes of spirituality - and what should be the antidote to our modern materialistic disease is simply another dose of poison.

‘The Gospel of Prosperity’ is an abuse. It should be a crime. Maybe, thanks to the egregious abuses of certain churches in the USA, similar abuses in the growing ’spirituality industry’ will begin now to receive the condemnation they deserve.

A new study, described in Scotlands Sunday Herald, says that fully 50% of Europeans are no longer attached to a particular religious institution but continue to have a sincere interest in spirituality. The researchers are calling this the ‘Fuzzy Fidelity’ denomination - it is virtually the same group as that I might usually call ’spiritual but not religious.’ Clearly, there is a vast number of spiritually-oriented people who have found that traditional religious communities and institutions are not the right fit for them.

A new study, described in Scotlands Sunday Herald, says that fully 50% of Europeans are no longer attached to a particular religious institution but continue to have a sincere interest in spirituality. The researchers are calling this the ‘Fuzzy Fidelity’ denomination - it is virtually the same group as that I might usually call ’spiritual but not religious.’ Clearly, there is a vast number of spiritually-oriented people who have found that traditional religious communities and institutions are not the right fit for them.

Established churches are panicking at the news and disparately seeking ways to get back their lost sheep! As though the building they hold services in is the only problem, they are taking their same old show to new venues

…some congregations are fighting back, holding services in shops and gyms in an effort to attract uncommitted believers into the church.

But they miss the point entirely.  The spiritual but not religious (can I please call them SBNRs?) are not interested in the same old story. As the researchers say, ‘this new denomination has only a vaguely defined notion of a “divine entity.”‘ In other words, they are not looking for a sense of the sacred that is portrayed as Jesus on a cross, Adonai in his throne, or any of the other traditional God images. Theirs is a less concrete - but more immediate and intimate divinity. Many SBNRs have a sense of the sacred all around them - in nature, in human hearts, in all beings, and especially in love. Many of them will identify with what the researchers term ‘Sheilaism’!

‘The term Sheilaists derives from an interview with a woman called Sheila who defined her religious conviction as: “Sheilaism: I just have a little voice in my head.”‘

Religion and spirituality are in a major upheaval. Sheliaists, SBNRs, and theFuzzy Fidelity denomination are not the minority - their way has become the norm.  The old ways no longer speak to the vast majority of Europeans, but the quest for meaning, connection, purpose, community, and acceptance that these institutions once met are still there. We have become a searching people - trying, testing, adopting, rejecting, moving on… And the religious institutions of the future will be those that support this ongoing personalised search.

This is why UKS is here. I hope that UKS programmes provide the kind of opportunities you need to carry on your search and provide you with a community to help. Do let us know if there ways in which we can more fully support your journey!