Morning Worship – Meditation

It’s probably wise to put the morning worship sessions near the coffee energy stations. This calm and reflective session, focussing on awareness of body and breath, was led by Richard Bober of the Unitarian Meditation Fellowship. It was a peaceful and thoughtful start to a busy day.

Plenary II

Aaand we’re back, mostly on time, and with the GA President having been equipped with a gavel, it being somewhat of a challenge to get Unitarians to stop talking at any given moment. After opening worship by Rev. John Carter, Rev. Rob Whiteman presented the Annual Report; he would have presented the Annual Accounts, except that our new accountants dragged their heels, then said they were raising their fees, at which point the GA returned to our original accountants, meaning that the accounts are not yet done. He also commented that we are “living beyond our means”; an interesting point, and perhaps it’s worth revisiting how we spend our money and what on. I tend to lean towards the “there’s no point going extinct with money in the bank” perspective, but financial prudence is an important thing also. Several questions were asked about this, which is a very valuable aspect of these meetings – we need to be able to get involved, as members, in how our national movement is run.

Following that, Ann Howell spoke about her new role as our Social Action Officer, and what she hopes to achieve over the few years. I was interested to hear that she will be working in partnership with the Penal and Social Affairs Panel; this group has been active in promoting social justice issues for the last thirty years, but whilst I’ve used their work myself when giving the Prison Sunday service, they aren’t as well known among our Unitarian movement as some other societies and groups. Hopefully this is a good example of the Unitarian movement starting to pool its resources nationally, because it’s something we need to start doing ASAP. Good luck to Ann in her new role, here’s hoping we can become a bit more outwardly focussed.

Workshop – Torbay Project

Gavin Howell, our Safeguarding and Youth Project Co-ordinator, spoke about the Torbay Project, in which he is being funded to support the development of spiritually open-minded commuities – in whatever form these take. He told us about the creation of a new group in Tobay – ‘Stuff and Things’ – and about work young people in the area have been doing to revitalise their communities. We talked about the difficulties and challenges of creating new communities which are led by their members, including the interesting question “how do you do spirituality in the pub?” There’s a lot to be learned here, particularly for Unitarian communities pondering the question “if people have spiritual needs and the Sunday service doesn’t meet them, what will?”

Reports on Plenary III, the afternoon workshops and the Anniversary Service to follow…