Morning Worship: Meditation, and Plenary II

Fortified by mugs of Nescafé and possibly the odd breakfast biscuit, we gathered together for a meditation session led by Ewen Sim of the Findhorn Unitarian Network. Focussing on breathing and body awareness, it was a gentle awakening and the chance to start the day with a smile, occasionally enlivened by the odd hymn from the devotional worship next door.

After a quick bowl of muesli and some toast, we started Plenary II, and Rev. Christina Smith led us in worship at the opening of Plenary II with the entertaining tale in verse of ‘The Cookie Thief’, and another favourite hymn, ‘When Our Heart Is In A Holy Place’. Plenary II took us through the reports on Unitarian College, presented by Helen Mason – has it really been five years already? A quick ‘stand up if you’ve done a course’ headcount indicated that rather a lot of us have been touched by the College, and here’s hoping we can continue to build on this. Appropriately enough, this was followed by Rev. Jenny Jacobs introducing the Ministry Stipend report, recommending increases in stipends and pulpit supply payments, and providing clarification on the purpose of manse allowances.

Time for another motion, this one proposed by the FOY Society, and presented by David Warhurst and Tim Baker, asking us to support the NO MORE DEATHS campaign led by the charity Inquest, which calls for the creation of an independent public body to investigate state-related deaths – not only deaths in custody, but also deaths of those in mental health facilities or following a missing persons search. After discussion, the motion was swiftly passed.

Following that, we had an unexpected highlight of the session, as Linda Craig from the Decelerator Project, spoke about ‘Healthy Endings and Brighter Beginnings’. The project aims to: “”support organisations and individuals to anticipate and design closures, mergers, CEO transitions, programming ends, and all sorts of endings as just part of the everyday life of organisations and inevitable cycles of change in civil society”. It’s certainly worth knowing that this sort of support is out that, and on that note, we headed for coffee and books.

The Bookshop, and Plenary III, aka Oh Dear Lord We’ll Be Talking About This One For A While

I fancied a copy of ‘Soul Deep’ and ‘Right Relationship’, so scooted along to the Bookshop, then decided to pick up a personal copy of each book for me and another for the Newcastle upon Tyne congregation’s bookshelf, then, upon seeing Roman Krznaric’s book for sale, decided to say ‘what the heck’, and ended up buying so many books that I had to put in my PIN before the card reader would accept payment. I also donated a couple of copies of the GA Zette to the hard-working bookshop staff, who appreciated the chance (I hope) to catch up on the world outside the bookshop, which was pleasingly busy.

I feel I should add before I start my write-up of Plenary III that I aim to give first impressions of events as a sort of running commentary, but the speed of writing necessarily means that these reports shouldn’t be taken as the final word on matters – we have meeting minutes for that. I also aim to observe on what happens, but I do not claim to have full background knowledge of all events and discussions leading up to the GA.

With that caveat out of the way…

Plenary III started with Kyle McDonald’s opening devotions, and a chorus of ‘Gather the Spirit’. Perhaps we should have done a few repeats of ‘gather in sympathy’, or maybe ‘with body and spirit united once more’, as what many had expected to be a relatively procedural part of the meetings – presenting the Annual Report and Accounts with questions, plus administrative motions 9-12 to adopt the report and accounts, appoint the auditors, thank Rev. Dr Rob Whiteman for his service as Honorary Treasurer, and appoint John Bates to the role – turned into an unexpectedly heated debate over the accounts, and in particular the structural deficit.

I freely confess; this isn’t my area of specialist knowledge (I’ve been busy in my spare time selling and emptying a Grade II* listed Art Deco church; I can thoroughly not recommend this as a way to spend over two years of your life), and I sincerely wished at this point I’d had more time to read through the meeting papers in greater detail prior to the GA. From my understanding, there is a difference of opinion between members of the Executive Committee (EC) about whether the GA’s structural funding deficit renders the Match Funding approach for the Innovation Challenge unworkable. I do not at this point wish to go further into the matters of personal difference that were raised in the meeting; it became intense to the extent that we had arguments from the floor, the President banging the gavel, and the steering committee becoming involved on matters of procedure and voting for motions 9-12. I refer anyone wishing to know more about this situation to the GA Steering Committee and the EC, and the minutes of the plenary that will be produced in due course.

Following this, and with the meeting running over time, we yet again encountered matters of procedure, as the amended motion 3 from Lewisham Unitarians proposing action on the situation in the Gaza Strip was put before the plenary. Although we were voting solely on whether to accept the amendment, the ‘For’, ‘Against’ and ‘Neutral’ speeches seemed at times to be debating the motion itself. Eventually the amendment was passed, at which point we had another proposal, this time to vote to defer the vote on motion 3 to ‘later’. Once it was clarified that ‘later’ meant ‘the next plenary session’, we voted, the motion was passed. At the end of the session, we had motion 7, which thankfully was on the much less-controversial proposal to award Dorothy Hewerdine Honorary Membership of the GA. Following the motion passing, we heard of her long-standing and tireless work to promote Unitarianism in the UK, and a moving speech from her on what this means to her. 40 minutes past the running time, we escaped to the workshops, in many cases, still wondering what exactly had just happened. (Kudos to Angela Maher in particular for her excellent work trying to clarify to the plenary what exactly was going on.)