We returned to the Prague Unitarian Chapel, some of us earlier than others, as a final rehearsal of the Unitarian Choir was required. Yours truly had been wisely relocated from the altos to the tenors by our outstanding musical director, Amanda Thomas. The chance to be led in music by Amanda was an unexpected joy of the event. Her musicianship, knowledge, professionalism, mighty force of personality, and ability to herd cats (or at least herd singing Unitarians, not a dissimilar experience) left a lasting impression, and we were very blessed to have her as an integral part of the event. The choir finished its final rehearsal, ahead of our starring role in the closing worship later that morning.

First up, we had the ‘incubating, harvesting, and meaning-making’, a short half-hour in which we gather together to reflect on what we had learned. Jon Dorset’s excellent work capturing all we had learned was a key part of this, as shown in the photos – I do hope the gigantic wall hanging he produced summarising all our learning has been kept safe somewhere!

Our final session was our closing worship, both uplifting and a little sad as we prepared to end the event, say farewell to new friends, and return to the real world. It was a pleasure for me to sing once more in a choir, and as we took the stage I was reminded of my schooldays performing with the school choir. I hope the listeners enjoyed our music as much as we enjoyed making it!

Finally, we ate lunch, and made preparations to depart. I went for a long sightseeing wander around Prague city centre, then returned to share a taxi ride to the airport to travel back to Newcastle. Later in 2023 and early 2024, we would continue our work by having online small groups gatherings where small numbers of us would gather to work together on topics including listening and community, personal and shared faith, faith when living in a more-than-human world, and theological education. I’ll leave you with this list of things of things I learned from the event.

Things I have learned from ‘Leading Into the Future’:

1. Unitarians are Unitarian, wherever in the world we hail from.

2. We need to talk theology. Where is God (by all names)?

3. We are stronger together than apart.