And there was much rejoicing, for we had received a letter from the water company, confirming it was safe to drink. Yay! With that cheerful news, we headed into Danny and Arek’s Theme Talk, little knowing we were about to witness Unitarian Summer School history, with the recounting of the Tale of Chicken Little. I can’t actually do this rendition justice here, you’ll just have to watch the video below, which you should. You could also ponder the key question of the talk; what do you do when you think the sky is falling on your head? We looked at the challenges of online spirituality, the phrase “ABC Unitarian” (‘Anything But Christian’), and the power of humour.

One feature of the Theme Talks was that each contained a question, and we wrote down answers in response on coloured Post-It Notes, working through each of the colours of the rainbow on successive days. The (anonymous) answers were displayed on the window of the dining room – you can see them below. The ‘stars’ are ideas for an evening workshop.

Our Engagement Groups continued, including a short discussion of the talk from this morning. In response to one quote from Danny’s part of the talk, “So – that’s okay here?”, I recounted my tale of encountering someone who asked me what Unitarian views on sex were. I gave the only answer I could think of, which was that as far I knew, we were generally in favour of it. Thinking also of the theme of our talk, we had an appropriate soundtrack as we kept building our house of faith:

This time around, we were thinking of the phrase “one light and many windows”, thinking about why we are Unitarians.

This time around, we were thinking of the phrase “one light and many windows”, considering why we are Unitarians, and thinking about aspects of knowledge, including the ‘feeling / knowing’ and ‘apophatic / kataphatic‘ theology. After that, I paid a visit to the Silent Auction table to choose an item to bid on. Those who have been to the Annual Meetings will recognise this as a fundraiser; everyone donates an item, and we all had an ID number we could use to place bids. I donated a chalice tapestry – see above!

I like to get out and about, so in the afternoon collected my packed lunch and headed down to Hathersage Pool for a swim in the fresh air. A small town in the Derbyshire Hills may not seem an obvious location for an open-air pool, but the world is full of surprises. Dropping off two passengers who fancied a walk, I joined the half-term families of Hathersage. It wasn’t the warmest day, but clearly folks there are made of sturdy stuff, since everyone from teenagers in T-shirts to tiny babies in wetsuits and older folks in swim caps were out and about having an afternoon splash. I found myself humming another appropriate song from the morning:

I plunged into the pool, did a happy hour’s lane swimming, climbed out, and warmed up with a hot chocolate in the café.

Having collected my passengers again, and entertained them with my car’s on-board power display. It’s a self-charging hybrid and watching it flip between the petrol engine and the electric motor can be quite entertaining (for the passengers, I hasten to add), I was grateful for the extra pairs of eyes, when we encountered an unexpected VW Polo around a single-track corner and had to do the “well, this is awkward” game whereby both parties attempt to work out who is nearest the passing place, then one of us (me) carefully reverses backwards and hopes to not hit a tractor on the way.

Manoeuvre successfully executed, we returned home for dinner and learned that one member of the Engagement Group had spent the afternoon crocheting some juggling balls and filling them with smooth stones from the driveway, which was a very cool thing to have done. I spent the evening reading before joining everyone for Emma Roberts-Jones’ restful Epilogue service, and an early night.