Developing Spiritual Community

Love

2012-02-14T10:20:00.001Z

It just so happens that it is St Valentine's Day today - whatever that may mean. I am a cautious supporter of commercialism as it provides jobs for many people. However commercialism can over-shadow thought and reflection about different seasons and special days. I have been mulling over this post for some time it just so happens that I am writing it today.

There has been some talk on national forums about the rights of existing congregation/community members and those of new people as if a rights-based approach is what guides our actions. Even if it did I am not sure who could define the rights of anyone within a congregation without also talking about people's responsibilities. New people coming into any group cannot have the same 'rights' as those who have been here a long time - what have they invested in the community? Our 'old timers' have spent years in service to their community washing dishes, cutting lawns, doing the accounts, attending hours of meetings, donating money, visiting sick people, writing newsletters etc etc. It is because of them that we are here, now with a spiritual community to belong to.

But this really is not the point - the point is love. When we are in spiritual community with people we are creating right relationship with all of those we find ourselves with. We are moving in the direction of love - sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is harder - but it is always the right thing to do. Can we say that we love people who we have known briefly or those we do know not at all (the closet Unitarians located somewhere near our building) as much as those people we have committed to loving over some/many years? If we truly love people then we want the best for them not just the sub-set of people who believe what we believe.

If we want to change and modernise and if we want to reach out as well as in then we must surely decide to do this together. If we decide that the majority has it and we are going to make significant changes without taking people along with us, then are we really prepared to wound those people that we love, who love us and who love our community? There are ways to gently challenge, there are ways to ensure that we provide a range of spiritual and social offerings, there are ways to make our love real. These things may slow down any process for change but they are fundamental - because love is fundamental. I would not want to join a community which behaved otherwise.

Love, understanding and a supportive hand

2012-02-12T09:05:00.000Z

The Unitarian spiritual community extends beyond our own congregational or local boundaries. All local communities are part of a wider district and are all members of the General Assembly. We take our place within international networks like the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists. What allegiance do we owe to any of these? Should we be compassionate in our actions and our words towards those we would call our spiritual bedfellows (or such like!).

Facebook is a means of discussing issues with fellow Unitarians and those who are interested in it. You might be forgiven for thinking that what goes on in the UK Unitarian Facebook group is a reflection of UK Unitarianism as it has 315 members but there are probably no more than 30 active, regular commentators.

In recent months we have lost some contributors because of the way that discussions have gone or what particular people have written. Sometimes it is difficult to keep the faith when people make quite pointed or judgemental comments towards individuals - in particular if that individual is you.

I awoke this morning to find one particular post entitled 'This is the *rubbish* Unitarians say' thread. What should be in it?' The word wasn't rubbish but let's gloss over that. A fairly high profile Unitarian was inviting others to be critical of their fellow Unitarians. What was the purpose to this? Was it to build community? Was it to express compassion to our fellow Unitarians? Was it to explore what people think, to try to understand? Was it a marketing ploy to increase the number of people attracted to Unitarianism?

It appears that what a question like this does is create a Unitarian universe where there are us and them. Us - we - are good, forward- thinking, the saviours of Unitarianism in the UK today. Them - they - are the ones who have questionable ideas, say bad things and are driving Unitarianism into oblivion. This is a dualistic world. This is a world of conflict. This is a world where we look at the mote in everyone else's eyes but do not look at the mote in our own.

Thankfully only six people participated in this thread. One actually said, 'Every point of view is valid in its own way, whatever size.' However this is an open group - anyone who has a Facebook account can see it. Is this really what we want to be showing to the world - is this how we want to be 'marketing' Unitarianism? 'Hey, come join this group of people - some of whom talk rubbish and others who like to think that they don't and point the finger at those who they think do.'

I believe that I have said some startlingly daft things in the past and continue to do so. I believe that I am full of contradictions and prejudice. I believe that working in community I can become a better person. Because I believe that about myself then I believe that about other people. I do not grow by being sniped at or put down. I do not grow by people picking on one thing that I have said and rubbishing that. I do not grow by having those who consider themselves better than me lecturing me. I grow when people show me love, understanding and a supportive hand.

History

2012-01-24T18:50:00.001Z

There is something about history that either turns people off or turns people on. I have to say that it intrigues me. Not the big stuff but the little things about how people lived, their relationships and the influences upon them. It makes me wonder how much of what I am is because of when and where I was born.

But like it or not some of us have to take account of history because we own historical buildings. As ever I think that if you have something then you have to make it work for you. History works for us because it brings people into our building. We participate in Heritage Open Days and we have a link with a very popular local historian who has done talks in our building. We are currently working on a service about the Titanic.

There are local connections, Captain Smith was born in Stoke-on-Trent which is down the road and Thomas Andrews, the designer who went down with the ship, and many of the directors of Harland and Wolff who built the ship, were Unitarians/Non-Subscribers. Some of us will find this intrinsically interesting but others may just see it as an opportunity to get some media coverage and to potentially have new people visit our building.

I think that history has lessons to teach us. One of the problems with the Titanic was its size - this was celebrated as a wonderful feat of engineering but captains and their crews were not used to steering such large boats. Captain Smith had already had one accident in a previous boat that he had captained - but apparently this was not unusual. So does innovation always come with increased risk? I suspect that it does.

The other thing that strikes me about the Titanic disaster was the way that the lives of those with money were thought to be more valuable than those without. I hope that things have changed and that this is less so these days. It has not completely disappeared and I expect that we can all think of cases where this is not true. But this is one of the things that history usually does, it makes me feel gratitude. Grateful that I was born at a time and in a place of plenty and comfort.

I suppose then we have to ask the question,'If I have so much, what must I give in return to those less fortunate?' From those that have to those who do not. Which brings me round nicely to another debate that we are having about our charitable giving. But that is food for another blog post.

Access - the larger picture

2012-01-24T18:21:00.001Z

We are currently debating the use of our building, and its accessibility. With a few modifications the physical access would be considerably improved. But of course physical access is not the be all and end all of access. In the main physical access is less important than communication access - if you don't know what's going on then you are not likely to try to get to the place. As a community which attempts to be inclusive we need to ensure that we make ourselves aware of a range of needs and how we can best help people.

I have worked in social care and in community development so have some understanding of the range of needs that we may experience ourselves or encounter. Apart from direct physical access they include

Having the correct information in a timely manner;
Having the information in accessible formats;
Having transport;
A nearby bus-stop;
Clear signage;
Times of services;
The language used;
Support from people with children;
Having hymns in large print;
Good lighting;
Having a loop system;
Having an accessible toilet; and
Specific dietary needs.

We already do things to ensure that the place and our community are accessible. This ranges from helping people with lifts; to ensuring that everyone gets information, at times putting that information onto CD; printing out large print hymns; and generally trying to ensure that people are included. Often people with specific needs are most affected by attitudes.

If we as a community are to be committed to accessibility then we must look very broadly at what this means and then commit, every one of us, to doing something about it.

Here are a few websites which might be helpful

http://www.churchesforall.org.uk/all_welcome.html

http://www.christian-horizons.org/downloads/Church%20Accessibility%20Handouts.pdf

New Year - reality hits!

2012-01-09T11:46:00.002Z

Our first service of the New Year and we were exploring what we do as a community to make our faith real in the world. I guess one of the questions that we have to ask is, 'Do people join a faith community to take part in social action?' There has been some discussion on the comments of a UUA (Unitarian Universalist in the US) blog with some saying they did. And some saying that what they do in terms of social action is quite separate although they would be happy to share what they do with their fellows.

I certainly didn't join a faith community to get involved in social action - this was one area of my life which was well developed. I have been volunteering since I was 12 and I'm now 57. Apart from maybe three years I have been actively volunteering my whole adult life. I have been a Unitarian for 12 of those years. This is not to say that we shouldn't participate in social action as a community but for me my personal choices about where I give my time volunteering are already well-established and currently difficult to change.

The question then might be, 'What do we define as social action?' Is it always about what we do outside of our communities or is it also about what we do within our communities? We have had a difficult few years with many people experiencing significant bereavements and health and disability issues. Much of our attention has been within rather than without. We have been living out the tenet that charity (love) begins at home. Although 2012 looks a bit brighter there are still some issues - and some of these can be dealt with by working on the building to make it more accessible. But more of this later.

So social action/witness can include to my mind how we help each other. It may include how we use our non-human resources - our building and our money. It can also be about how we use our human resources - our skills, our time and our compassion.

I then want to ask the question, 'What does our community have to offer which is particular to a faith community, to our faith community?' We did find our way to this and came up with

Our building
Our open faith and belief in religious tolerance
Our willingness to make alliances with other, like-minded organisations - we have already had an approach from the regional worker for Friends of the Earth via Facebook
Our connections which already exist for example with the inter-faith forum and the IARF
Our ability to influence our district and the General Assembly
Our connections with other Unitarians elsewhere in the country
Our skills, abilities and experience for example we have a registrar within our community who is going to find out about registering our building for civil partnerships; and we would like to start offering healing services
Our existing approach to charitable giving
Our goodwill

Driving home I reflected that we had drifted into a solutions focused approach. Whilst I felt that I needed to put a marker down to say that I was unable to commit much new time to anything. As one of the people who lives closest, who handles the lettings as well as all the secretarial duties, I am aware of the work that goes into just keeping us going let alone taking on something new. I am also aware that if we commit to something we have to do it which often takes more time than we at first estimate.

So focusing on what we have and being honest about what we don't, we have come up with some suggestions. Perhaps we have not come up with something as big and as bold as some of our local faith communities but we have continued a debate that we started last year and come up with some real actions. We will also keep talking about this.

So to our building - we are hoping to make it more accessible and to make a second lettable space. This will impact on the lives of those who use our building as a member of our faith community and those who just want a cheap place to hold meetings. It may be seen as a distraction but our physical space is a key element to our community. it reflects us and our values. It always takes much longer than anticipated to get these things done.

I am glad that we started 2012 looking out but recognise the reality that the sum total of what we do in 2012 will be very similar to what we did in 2011.

May 2012 bring us renewed commitment and patience to achieve our goals; the will to achieve these goals together; the will to achieve these goals together in good faith with good will; and a renewed commitment to a life serving others - our loved ones and strangers, who as they say, are just friends we've yet to meet.

Where Unitarians get their inspiration

2011-12-14T12:24:00.001Z

And yet more inspiration from Facebook - who would have thought?!

There was a debate about whether people attending Christian services understood much about the finer points of theology and at some point I wrote

I think that people are much more alive to their own personal relationship with God/the divine and much more open to other influences e.g. the TV, books,the radio and the Internet then in times gone by.

A little later I was surfing for another topic and came across the six sources of the Unitarian Universalist Association - here's the explanation and detail ...

Unitarian Universalists place emphasis on spiritual growth and development. Unitarian Universalism is a creedless religion. The Unitarian Universalist Association affirms seven principles: The official statement of Unitarian Universalist principles describes the "sources" upon which current practice is based:

1. Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
2. Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
3. Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
4. Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
5. Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
6. Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

I would argue a bit with four - because whilst our roots may be Christian and Jewish - there are other roots in other religions and the Golden Rule (treating others as you yourself would want to be treated) can be found in most, if not all, of them.

Which led my to our national website which says something similar but not in one place. Here it all is ...

We believe that

Everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves.
The fundamental tools for doing this are your life experiences, your reflection upon it, your intuitive understanding and the promptings of your own conscience.

And then

On our personal life journey we are aided and inspired by:

The example and spiritual insights of others.
Writings deemed 'holy' and 'sacred' by the various faith traditions of humanity.
Inherited traditions of critical and philosophical thought.
The ongoing creative work of artists, musicians and writers.
The scientist's search for knowledge and understanding.

I like the fact that the UK sources include a more egalitarian view of inspiration - it doesn't have to be teachings, religious wisdom or the words of the prophets. How often are we inspired by our fellow travellers, by simple acts of kindness or an encouraging word? My blog is evidence to the fact that I get a lot of inspiration from words written on Facebook.

When we are in spiritual community sometimes, or perhaps often, it isn't an individual but a group experience which moves and inspires us. Whilst it is always nice to get recognition it is really not important who said what, whether it be a prophet or our next door neighbour. It is the content of the message and the meaning that we extract from it.

Perhaps each local community could have a go at describing where their inspiration comes from.

Why do I attend my local Unitarian meeting House for services?

2011-12-08T10:13:00.001Z

Another Facebook inspired posting.

So what are services for? Whilst they need to be inclusive of new comers they play a significant part in community building for our local community. The traditional view of Christian service, whence we came, is that people go to church to worship God. However as Unitarianism has evolved and morphed is this still the case? Clearly there will be different views on this and mine might not be the same as others - it would be interesting to find out what others thought.

The question asked in the Facebook posting was 'Do we worship God?' Which I answered, 'Not in a traditional sense'. I then went on to say ...

Everyone has a different view. I cannot understand a god that is one entity with human feelings and emotions. So for example I don’t understand the concept of ‘God loves you’ or the idea that god has a gender, female or male. It is all so difficult to understand that I tend to rely on experience – my experience is of an otherness and of a strong need to live a principled life. This is part of my everyday life and I don’t need to go to chapel to connect or to strive towards being a better person.

However I do need to go to a Unitarian service of a community to which I belong to get a sense that (a) what I believe is OK; (2) there are others who have a similar faith; (3) together we can move forward in our understandings; (4) in doing this it’s fine to change one’s mind; and (5) by creating intimate bonds with others I am challenged to be a better person by being vulnerable, opening myself up to receiving love, and by being strong to giving love – in real and tangible ways. I also expect to be moved by words and music which embody beauty and the best in human behaviour – I expect to be inspired. At times I just come for an hour of peace or respite from difficult times.

Using the word God and having things such as the Lord’s Prayer do not mean much to me. But I have learnt that to be an inclusive community we actually have to be inclusive, so we don’t always get what we want. Respect for that is easy to say but often more difficult to do.

Not sure that I can add anything more to this.

Young people

2011-11-30T16:53:00.001Z

Have had a bit of a debate about the needs of young people within Unitarian communities. I was arguing to take a more balanced approach - what do young people want from older people and what can they offer to the wider community. Another person finished her post with

Also, I do think we have to weight it a bit more towards what we can give them rather than what we can expect from them in general since they are young people in our care.

I have been musing on this. In what sense are young people in our care? Do many congregations have young people unattached from their families? Whatever it is we might be providing I have never thought of it in terms of care over and above what anyone else gets. I suspect that some of our older people are much more vulnerable than some of our older young people.

To some extent this is about how we view young people and whether we see them as having specific needs just because they are young. I have also been involved in a debate about communities on another site and the TV programme about Amish communities was mentioned about how children in Amish families are expected to take on chores. One of the British teenagers living with an Amish family commented thus

‘From a very young age, the Amish children do chores,’ Charlotte says. ‘It creates a lovely family bond, and means they work well as a unit and respect each other.’

This was in the back of my mind when I was writing about our young people. What was also in the back of my mind was when my daughter disengaged from the Unitarian community. She was preparing to speak on behalf of the youth group about marriage equality at an Annual Meeting (she was 16 or 17) when she was stopped by the President and told she had no right to speak as she was not a delegate or an Associate Member. It was the triumph of bureaucracy over compassion. All kinds of apologies were made but the scar has remained.

So what was that about, her need to have a voice or our need to hear her (or not!)? It seems to me that unless we have a rigid view of adults providing for young people's needs because they are in their care then the give and take of contributions will be more fuzzy. I don't believe that we can just ask the question 'What do young people need?' separately from 'What do our communities need?'. I also think that part of what our young people need is to be included within the wider community as in a family. Sometimes young people go and do young people's things and sometimes they spend time with the adults.

Good families know how to make whole-family time work for everyone. Good faith communities should know how to do that too.

Communities

2011-11-29T16:31:00.001Z

Communities can be large or small. What marks out members of a community is that they share something and the something that they share is then the focus of the community. So in neighbourhoods it is the physical space that people share; in faith communities it is the faith and the values; and for many self-help groups it is a shared experience for example eating disorders or an abusive childhood. The one thing that is shared by people within communities is a sense of belonging.

Last night I was at our borough's community and voluntary sector awards ceremony. It is the second one that's been run although I wasn't there last year. I only went because an organisation that I chair was sponsoring one of the awards. It was an overwhelmingly lovely evening. Young people from the university where the award ceremony was, were playing in an orchestra and a 16-year old local singer sang us some country and western songs; the food was good; and the company was excellent. But the first 'best bit' was recognising how many wonderful people there are on my door step. People who have given years of service quietly and without fuss to help the people living in their community - in a wide sense. Not just those people who live next door to them but vulnerable people from across the borough who need additional support. When I hear so much negative comment about people today it is heart-warming to have evidence to the contrary.

The second 'best bit' was the award that went to my daughter's volleyball coach. I had put him forward for the sport's volunteer of the year. He and his wife have given years of service to not only provide good coaching but also help my daughter and her friends develop as young women. How do you say thank you for that? Thankfully I had to opportunity to say why I had nominated him and what it has meant to my daughter and me.

It is so lovely to be able to say thank you and mean it from the bottom of ones heart. We live in a highly inter-dependent world. We are very lucky if we find ourselves in a world where the majority of the people who impact on our lives are kind and encouraging. It makes me pause to think of those people who are not so fortunate. Counting our blessings is an old idea which has regained some currency.

Perhaps as Unitarians we need to discuss how we recognise and appreciate those who give of themselves for our community - both lay and ministers. Perhaps we need a few more awards and a bit more celebration of our achievements.

Safety

2011-11-20T08:44:00.001Z

In our Unitarian community we each have the opportunity to lead services or gatherings. We have a minister but he only leads one service a month as we share him with another community. I am lucky in that I am quite active am often the first to know that we have a gap to fill. Our Monday gathering tomorrow had no-one to lead it. And so it was that I jumped at the chance to lead this. I want to explore the issue of safety and whether our faith communities can offer us a feeling of safety when we feel unsafe in other parts of our life.

It has been difficult to find much material using the words safe and safety - I then tried to search for things about protection. It was only when I searched on words such as haven and sanctuary that I found more material. They hare both such lovely words. I recognise that our Meeting House, even without people in it, feels like my own personal sanctuary. During the week my car was blocked in outside the Meeting House. I had parked briefly to show someone round the building prior to renting a room. We rent our parking spaces out and the lady who uses it had returned in the ten minutes that I was in the building. I decided that even though I could ask her to move her car that I would stay and do some cleaning. I put on some swing music and spent a couple of hours cleaning and singing. I felt very safe and very happy.

Yesterday I was on our monthly walk. We chatted and laughed. We gently ribbed each other about recent events. And I felt safe. This haven of community really works for me. I feel held and cradled. If we accept some of the work that Abraham Maslow did on the hierarchy of needs (although it has been much criticised please bear with me) then we will appreciate that if we feel unsafe we will not feel secure enough to move forward. For those of use who feel a strong pull to developing our spirituality we need to ensure that we have a safe place, physically, and amongst people that we trust. We need to co-create this safe space so that others may feel equally safe.

Our spiritual growth is not always about new and exciting experiences but is also about providing safe space and time: providing sanctuary. It is also about the development of trusting relationships so that not only does the physical space feel safe but the people that fill that space can be relied upon to provide us with protective love when we feel vulnerable and in need.

Feeling unsafe

2011-11-12T17:21:00.001Z

My neighbour of nearly ten years has been committed to Crown Court accused of sexual offences against children. Whilst it is in the local paper, let's just call him Mr X. Mr X is a public servant. I have always had a good relationship with him and his wife - they have no children. We laugh and joke together, we've been known to sit with a drink (a non-alcoholic one for him) either in a neighbourhood garden or the local cricket club bar. We've exchanged emails and we've watered each others' plants. I've driven them to catch a holiday coach in the early hours of the morning. It seems to me that we have been involved in an implicit good-neighbour pact. I have often spoken proudly to friends and family of the lovely local community which has enabled me as a single-mother to feel safe. And now I feel devastated.

I have been involved in sexual violence services for over 25 years. So I know full well that sexual abusers and sexual predators look like the rest of us. They don't have a mark on their forehead proclaiming the fact. My Mum reminded me that about ten years ago a near neighbour of hers, who was a senior administrator with a national professional association, was convicted of taking sexualised photos of his own daughter. As with my neighbours now, my Mum and her neighbours were in complete shock. However in that instance the man's wife threw him out and she got tremendous support from everyone. Mrs X is reportedly denying that there is any foundation to the charges. Perhaps there aren't. But my experience of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in sex abuse cases is that they will not take them to court unless there is sufficient, credible evidence.

In my nice, rural idyll of a neighbourhood I have believed myself to live in a safe community with like-minded people. It is not a wealthy area - we're just ordinary working people. I believed that we shared not necessarily a political outlook but a common sense of what one might call decency. Throughout her childhood I have let my daughter wander around on her own down the rear service road of our terrace of fifteen houses. When she was little she would disappear to her favourite neighbour, Mike, who lived with his wife Helen down the road. I would never have imagined that Mike would have done her harm and I am sure that he never would. But I would have felt the same way about Mr X. I am not sure what the charges actually involve but another neighbour suspected that Mr X had exposed himself via the internet to his daughter some years ago. Mr X and this neighbour have been, to my eyes, good friends.

I continue to be absorbed by this. Mr and Mrs X are nowhere to be seen. Indeed I am not sure if both of them are there - if they are then they are not talking much as I usually hear the muffled sound of voices some time during the day. They move the car each morning from their garage so that they can get into it without being seen. I am anxious as to what I should do or say to either one of them. In this instance I cannot separate the act from the perpetrator. I cannot see a fellow human being. I do not believe in innocent until proven guilty. This is not about the law but about the morality of behaviour. If he has abused a child then he is guilty of that. I would like to be supportive of Mrs X and feel some sense of the pain that she must be feeling.

And what of my beloved community? It is the first time in many years that I have considered the possibility of moving. I guess that this is the response to the shock. How will other neighbours respond? It is not about endlessly gossiping about this but about how to heal our small neighbourhood so that we once again feel safe and trusting.

All communities can be harmed by one of its member's behaviour. Within faith communities at least we occupy a common space for some time each week or month and, if we are brave enough, we can discuss any issues that arise. Each time something like this happens, it is like losing ones innocence again. I am reminded of other people's lives, people who live in areas where they cannot trust their neighbours or perhaps even their family members. The underbelly of life can be closer than we imagine. Ultimately we need to commit to grow to be bigger people than we imagined we could be. We need to respond.

For now I will let the shock and the anger have their day. I will wait for the time when compassion takes the lead and then talk with my neighbours. Not sure what we will talk about but whatever it is I need to re-establish my sense of trust in those who I share a neighbourhood with.

Balancing our perceptions of others

2011-10-14T10:48:00.001+01:00

My daughter has just left home to go to university - so she hasn't left for good but it's still been a bit strange. I don't lead many services, one or two a year. Last Sunday it was my turn again. I was restless trying to find a theme, and as I said at the service, I kept circumnavigating the elephant in the room. Once I recognised this I led the service on change, loss (including loss of role), comfort and healing. We have had a quite a few bereavements between us over the past three years and we are still dealing with these as individuals and as a community, so I tried to tie this all together.

I used a lot of recorded music - when I am low or thoughtful I turn to music. I thought that I might cry but I didn't - I think it had been very therapeutic preparing the service. At the end I thanked them for bearing with my self-indulgence. However the response that I got was fantastic - many had been through the same and gave me a big hug reassuring me that it would be fine. I had an interesting exchange with someone who was struggling to find a role. A previous service that I led last year on families brought a flood of revelations and confidences.

In our own communities we often recognise each others' struggles with life. We want to reach out but sometimes don't know how. The telling of our own stories can reveal our own vulnerabilities. This may encourage others to feel sympathy and perhaps empathy. It may also touch some some nerves and enable a greater sharing of the self. The more we get to know each other the more we can strengthen our network of relationships.

This article in the Guardian is about how the general public seem to be viewing Amanda Knox, who has just been found innocent on appeal of Meredith Kurcher's death. It talks about what one psychologist. Emily Pronin, has called, 'the illusion of asymmetric insight'. This is essentially about when we communicate with others - our experience of them is their outward appearance and what they say, whilst our experience of ourselves is our own minds. Which the article says leads to a situation where we think, 'I am infinitely subtle, complex and never quite what I seem; you are predictable and straightforward, an open book'.

This certainly rang true for me. How often I have been surprised as I have learnt more and more about people. Surprisingly we find that they are as complex and interesting as we ourselves are! To get more symmetry into our relationships we need to know each other better, spending time to get into those complexities of thought and personality. Being together in open, honest and respectful community is one way to move towards balancing our perceptions of others and of ourselves.

Decision-making

2011-10-07T11:50:00.001+01:00

My last post on my Governance4 Unitarians blog was about conflict of interests and mentioned decision-making. I have decided to put this post here rather than on my Governance blog because I think that how we make decisions can help or hinder the development of our spiritual communities. Last week I watched a TV programme about the Calendar Girls as it is the 10th anniversary of their calendar being produced. It was a major success and afterwards they had two different offers to make a film of how they'd come to make the calendar - the group was split as to which offer to go with. They voted and the majority carried it which caused a split in the group, which caused much upset and sadness.

I have come across these examples before. There's a disagreement and someone says, 'Let's vote!' and the majority carries it. This can lead to a very sour taste in the mouth for the minority. So is there anything inherently wrong with this approach or have we all just got to grow up a bit? My personal view is that we have to ask what we are trying to achieve. There are of course times when a decision needs making and it needs making quickly but there are times when a decision can take years to make. The decision is important but so is the process.

The important thing to know is how decisions will be made and who needs to be involved. Any trustee board needs to consider who can make which decisions. More often than not powers are delegated either to a person or a sub-group of the main group in particular when simple decisions are needed - for example someone contacts you and wants to rent a room. It is best to have a policy which says who can rent rooms and what the charges are together with a rental agreement and an understanding of what the building's insurance will and will not cover.

But when fundamental decisions need to be made there has to be some thought about how this will be done. And who will make it - should we open up decision-making to our whole community and not just the board of trustees? For example, we have been having discussions for several years on how to improve the access to our top floor where we have meals after services and social events which some people cannot get to. We cannot have these downstairs as we have fixed pews and very poor kitchen and toilet arrangements. The need to make some kind of decision has become more pressing as some of our community have developed significant mobility issues.

At the end of September we decided to look at re-configuring downstairs which would include removing the pews. This is a major decision and has been made by everyone as we have explored the possibility of making upstairs accessible and failed to come up with an answer. It has also been reinforced by a couple of occasions when people have been excluded from what we have done. This is just the first stage of changing downstairs. We have no plans yet and much more to discuss. Whilst we have no written policy we knew that any kind of vote in the early stages of this debate would have split us, probably irrevocably.

Our purpose was to find ways as a community to solve the issues which brought about a real commitment from the whole community. Against this we have had people who have been excluded from some of what we do. Whichever way we had done things we would be hurting some people. This is an uncomfortable place to be in for a community which seeks to promote compassion and I am not sure that there is any way to avoid some hurt. It comes down to a judgement about how to minimise the hurt.

Whatever faces us as communities we would do well to discuss how we make decisions before we make them. A majority decision vote is one way of doing it but you have to agree to that beforehand. As communities we need wisdom as well as compassion to make the best decisions that we can at the time. Perhaps we then need to reflect on how we decided and whether we should do things differently in the future.

Who carries responsibility for action within a group?

2011-09-26T08:34:00.001+01:00

Recently I was at a meeting where at least two-thirds of the items on the agenda were things that I needed to talk to and were about things I had either done or papers I had written. There was an issue where I had not done something and had not done it for about a year. One person kept on about this. This person had not done anything as far as I could remember between meetings. I was very apologetic. But this did not cut much ice. I said that it was on the list and it was clear from what I had already done that my list was long (and getting longer!).

As I drove away I was reflecting on times in my life when people have been a bit more supportive. When friends have just done things - they've invited themselves to stay and re-tiled my bathroom, spent some holiday helping me decorate the hall and stairs, made me sit down whilst they washed up/cooked/did the garden. They are people whose response is to do - to recognise that something needs doing and not necessarily in their lives - and to do it. 'Why,'I thought, 'did no-one at this meeting say, "Louise you have enough to do, you have done too much already, I will do this"?'

It is so much easier to see a job as belonging to 'you' rather than to' us'. I will get onto doing this job but it would be interesting to wait to see how long it would take before someone actually steps in and volunteers to get it done.

In our own communities do we see each job as belonging to someone rather than to us as a community? Do we think that we are there to support each other rather than to criticise. Sure there are times when individuals fall short but there are also times when we as communities fall short. We do not make sure the job gets done but we do make sure that the blame gets attributed. This can isolate people, make them feel unappreciated, make them feel resentful and ultimately may not get the job done. Let us take more co-operative approaches and focus on how to get the work done. Let us make our response to problems much more about action than about words.

Active listening and more

2011-09-22T14:39:00.000+01:00

I was at our District meeting last night and we were talking about developing community - being active and engaged. I was talking about listening to people to understand what it is that they want and need. I was reminded of when I moved from working with one local authority to another in social services.

In the first local authority for anything to change there was a whole process which meant writing committee papers and getting agreement from several layers of management before planning what to do and blah blah blah ... as the confused and complex process meandered on. It essentially meant that not very much changed, certainly not much change was instigated from below. The frustration levels were very high and the services were very outdated and did not serve the local population well.

I moved to the other authority and it couldn't have been more different. There was encouragement to find solutions locally and to change services quickly in response to need. When 18 months later I was promoted to manager of a new day services team we had numerous occasions when we heard that people couldn't get to a group or they needed specific help. As a team we had the authority to start new groups and try new approaches, within boundaries. This made for a more responsive and more effective service. You are then not waiting for formal feedback but taking note of conversations and picking up information from a variety of places. We could set up a new group in a matter of weeks.

This is what we need to do. If someone has problems or feels that things are not quite working for them then is there a way round that? There are some very simple things that we can do for example large print hymns, giving people a lift to and from the building or finding out people's food preferences and making sure they are included. We have a vegan and someone who has an allergy to wheat - you may need a magnifying glass when you got shopping for biscuits but we've found a great variety of oat biscuits that suit both. It is so often the little things and most importantly the attitudes which impact on people. Does everyone really value me enough so that what I want counts?

Which begs the question - who needs to do the listening? In my social services role it was clear that it was me and my staff but we also asked other people who used the service not only about what they thought but also what their observations of how other people were getting along. We all have a responsibility to listen to each other and to think about solutions to problems. It can be difficult to ensure that everyone is on board with change - and with significant change this must happen. But some things - like starting a mid-week service should only matter to those who will have to do something, not those who do not want to get involved.

So active listening and then some - which means finding ways to make the experience of our communities even better as soon as we can after finding out that someone has a problem.

Why belong to a faith community?

2011-09-17T10:35:00.000+01:00

I was speaking with my younger brother yesterday - we chat quite a bit over the phone. We live fifty miles apart and both work from home. We are both interested in technology and dogs. He does some casual social care work. Having been a social worker and manager some years ago I can offer a bit of support and advice. So we have much in common and are both chatters.

He was talking about his views on life and about ethical living. I said that that what he was saying sounded very Unitarian (should the adjective have a capital letter?). He then asked a few questions about whether we prayed at our chapel and whether we got down on our knees. He then asked, but why do you need to join a group to do this? Which is a very good question and I guess one that some of us ask ourselves quite frequently. It's not as if I'm short of friends - I don't get to see my non-Unitarian friends enough. It's not that I can't have interesting debates with friends, real and virtual. It's not as if I can't find spiritual stimulation from books and from the Internet. But these are relationships which have a simplicity.

Once more than three or four people decide to become something other than just a group of friends then that something takes on an identity which is bigger than the sum of the parts. It is this thing which we (locally) call community. We create something which helps us to create our spiritual and ethical selves. It is the power of the group which we believe in. However I have been to some congregations which do not have so much of a community feel. There is sometimes a sub-set of people who feel deeply connected, who feel part of a community, and others who only come to be a member of a congregation.

Can we develop our congregations to become communities? Do people want that? It does demand quite an investment, not just in time but also in emotional energy and courage. We are opening ourselves up. To date our congregational assessment process has not recognised this as a key element for some local communities. And if it isn't recognised then perhaps it isn't promoted or even appreciated that this is one choice.

I return to my brother's question - why do I belong to a faith community? Because this way of being reflects my take on life - that to get the best out of life demands that we put the best into it. Spirituality is not an add-on, it is integral to the holistic view of human existence and as such the whole human has to be present for our own spirituality to develop. We can challenge ourselves from the comfort of our own homes or even free-falling in the sky. But the challenge that is deepening human relationships with people, some of whom we perhaps would not choose to be friends with, has a different feel.

It is here that the word faith becomes so important. This is our faith in the goodness of humanity and the faith that others can provide us with much more than we alone can. I searched long and hard for a spiritual community, feeling incomplete exploring spirituality outside of a faith community. Every day I am grateful that I have found a community of similar minds who are committed to and enthusiastic in developing something which is bigger than us all. It isn't always easy but it is always satisfying.

Youth

2011-09-14T12:03:00.001+01:00

Our service on Sunday was led by Phil Silk. He is a member of our community and a qualified minister (in the US) although he has not had a permanent pulpit (is this how you say it?) since moving to this country many years ago. The theme was peace and he read a piece that he had written when he was 17 and still at school - not quite sure where he would have been in the US educational system. It was a marvellous piece written with great passion and depth of knowledge.

I have started writing an on-line diary - my younger brother had alerted me to one application - as usual I surfed the Internet and found another one called Penzu and signed up for that - and I started to write. I was reminded of the diaries that I kept when I was in my late teens. I have got them from my chest of treasures and have reread bits of them. I could have written them yesterday - the style and the observations.

Of course I know more now, as does Phil - but knowing more can also be accompanied by having our prejudices hardened and our cynicism more finely tuned. Observing oneself from a distance of many years it is interesting to note our abilities and thoughts at age 17 and 18. It highlights the value that young people bring to the table and the reason why we should attempt to engage more with them and just listen. We may then be able to go back in time and remember ourselves at 17 - full of enthusiasm and hope, perhaps with a view that anything is possible.

The nature of services when developing spiritual community

2011-08-31T14:04:00.000+01:00

One thing that I have noticed at our Meeting House is that our services are moving away from 'services' and developing into conversations. There is often no sermon. The question, 'what does this all mean for our community?' is never far away. The service then becomes an open conversation within the community about what is valued and our developing spirituality.

I am reminded of being on the Foundation Worship Studies course. Two issues that I identified as being key - the first was the difference between leading worship in your own community and elsewhere. The former should be part of the on-going conversation and development. The tone will be very different. Although each service has to be stand-alone so that newcomers, or those who have not been for some time, feel included. The other issue was the need to look at the service as a whole. Much of our worship training deconstructs the service so that we have sessions on hymns, readings, music, sermons, delivery and children's stories. Whereas what I value most is a service which seamlessly includes all of these elements and is driven not be the individual elements but by the purpose of the leader and the theme that they have chosen.

It takes some confidence to move away from traditional ways of service delivery to one where the service leader tries to engage in a dynamic and responsive conversation during the service. Whether this can be done with large congregations is not clear to me (linking back to my previous posting). It is also not clear to me if the physical constraints of some of our worship spaces actually helps this. We have pulpits which are many feet off the ground and pews which mean that we spend much of a service looking at someone else's back and others looking at ours. Or in some instances actually staring straight at people. In our own chapel whilst it is possible to move out of the pulpit it is difficult as the CD player and loop mic (mike) are in the pulpit. We have a hand-held mic (mike) and need to explore how we can set up our sound system to be operated from elsewhere.

Our physical space should work with us as a community, not against us. Funnily enough I may be having some of these conversations in ten days time on Heritage Open Days when history buffs will perhaps be promoting the preservation of physical space rather than the preservation of our culture, which should be dynamic and led by the needs of the faith community. Which all leads me to reference comments that I have made on one of Adrian Worsfold's recent blog postings about whether we can agree about what ministry is about.

If we take the view that our task is to build spiritual community then there are consequences far and wide about our buildings, our services and activities, our training, the sorts of people who may be employed by communities, the support that is needed and the body of knowledge that we choose to write down and develop. This seems to me to be a paradigm shift - or would be if it happened - for Unitarianism.

Large congregations

2011-08-31T13:47:00.000+01:00

I write from the experience of belonging to a community with perhaps 40 people in it. There is a core of about 20 of us and then people who are linked in some way - usually attending services or walks when they can but they have busy lives, are too far away or not well enough to attend frequently. Within this size of community we can see how we could shape and develop community. But a posting on Facebook has made me wonder if this could be done with say a community of 200+.

The idea of engagement groups is a way of facilitating deeper relationships within large congregations. Here between 6-10 people agree to meet up as a minimum monthly to develop closer relationships with others - this may be through a shared activity or through spiritual practice or exploration. However it appears that this is outside of the main worship activity on Sundays. So is it possible to create community in large communities during Sunday services?

I would love the opportunity to view congregations where this works to see how it works. I would love even more if this was our own community.

This posting has led me to think about how our own services are developing but have decided to make this the next posting.

The building blocks of community

2011-08-29T10:38:00.001+01:00

The building blocks of community are very simple - they are the individual relationships between people rather than the people themselves.

At our lunch after the service yesterday we only had 12 people - others had had to leave. At first I thought, 'What a shame that we are not large in number'. But as time went on I realised how precious this opportunity was. An opportunity for us to not just speak with each other but also to have quite long conversations, without thinking that we had to get round to speak with many more people. The general pattern seems that as we eat our savoury course we attempt a large table discussion - with some side discussions which tend to be short-lived - but then when we have pudding and teas/coffees people form into smaller groups and have more intense conversations.

These tend not to be times for debate and difference but for chats and similarities. I remember hearing on the radio many years ago that the vast majority of communication is chatting - and we do this to bond. So in our chatting we learn more about each other and strengthen the bonds that tie us together. To build community we have to increase the opportunities for this. Perhaps this should be a rule for community development - allow plenty of opportunities to chat.

Open, honest and loving relationship

2011-08-19T09:26:00.001+01:00

I was talking with a friend yesterday about how she was looking for a spiritual community. She had been to one place and really liked it but then one person was quite rude to her and that put her off. Which is understandable. I then spoke about our community and my approach. Unless you are very easy going (and I am not that!) you probably come across people that you don't warm to or you find difficult or they irritate you or they drive you nuts or ... And others might feel the same about you/me.

So is there an imperative to make an effort within our communities to find connection and to get on with one another? I believe that there is. We are called to be bigger than we thought we were and to find a connection however slight with everybody. How do we do this? We have to spend time with those that we find difficult and we have to listen and we have to speak. We have to find common ground and we have to feel a sense of equality - that we are two people with the same rights and responsibilities deserving of respect.

This is not to say that we don't judge or at least have an opinion. Some people have some quite significant personality flaws - they may be mean, they may be lazy or they may be rude. But normally people aren't like this all of the time. When faced with people that we find difficult we ask ourselves many things depending on our own personality. We may ask, 'Am I like this person?' or we may think, 'They remind me of my Dad' or 'Do they like me?' or 'Might it be best if I just avoided them?' or 'Did I do something to make them act that way?' Sometimes these questions can lead to answers that make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves - either our own sort-comings or memories of difficult relationships in the past. It may be instructive to stick with these feelings.

We may also think about the person themselves and consider what has led to them being as they are. This is not about finding excuses but about trying to understand. Whilst harmonious relationships can bring much joy, disharmonious relationships can bring much understanding and insight. And, it is hoped, they bring change. We can commit to changing ourselves and we can believe that the way we approach others can change the way that they behave albeit just when they are with us.

One sign of a healthy community is not that there is no conflict but that conflict is resolved in a healthy way. That conflict may be about views or approaches or about personalities. We can avoid these or we can work with them. When we sing, 'All are welcome here,' we should mean this and be committed to being in open, honest and loving relationship with all: a tall order but a worthy aspiration.

Holding each other in grief

2011-08-15T09:44:00.000+01:00

When in community we are relating to people who we know but perhaps don't know that well. We may know several people well but it is difficult to know everyone. We had a discussion at the end of July about our social welfare work as individuals and as a community. We were looking outside of our own community. I commented that we also needed to look within - we needed to ask, 'What do we do for each other?'

Perhaps the first thing we have to ensure is that we are a community where people can be honest about how they are feeling and where the giving and receiving of help and support are part of our way of being. This can take many forms - from a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, a reassuring hug, or something more active around problems solving. For example a lift in a car, changing times of meetings to accommodate people, helping out with children and dependent relatives, visiting in times of need, providing food and giving a bit of advice where other help may be available.

Within our communities we should be offering active friendship - I purposefully use the term friendship because I think that it is about equal relationships, where we each give and receive. We do not want to be setting up informal systems or even see informal system evolving where there are a group of people who always give and a group of people who always receive. Those who give have to get their mind around the fact that they too may need help and learn how to ask for it and receive it gracefully and gratefully - from personal experience I can attest how difficult this can be. In my case it was an internal dialogue about the meaning of strength - but this is part of another discussion.

My main concern in this posting is about grief. Grief comes about after loss, often a bereavement but not necessarily. We all respond differently to grief and what was thought to be a process following clear stages is now seen as highly idiosyncratic to the person and to the circumstances, both about the loss and about what else is going on in life at the time. Some people are remarkably resilient and manage well and some do not manage at all: most I suspect sit somewhere in between. My own reaction to the loss of two fathers in one year and two good friends was of a closing down, an inability to think effectively and a real struggle just to get on with life. This was very marked for at least six months.

In my opinion our bodies are wise, often despite our best intentions. They create the right conditions to heal. Closing down is a way to protect ourselves from further hurt, to save energy for actual healing and a time to readjust to our new life - life without that person (or job or house or child living with us - whatever the loss is). There may be reminders around us which trigger an emotional response - for me when I see a silver Mercedes I think of my Dad and fill up. Without knowing this you might be a little surprised at my reaction to a car!

Within our communities there may be lots of people in various states of grief. One friend told me it took her seven years to get over the death of her mother. To support people in healing we have to be present - be with people, talk about the hurt and the pain, recognise their real and deeply felt experience of loss and not expect an immediate return to normal service. We as communities have to create a safe, secure and comfortable place for people to lick their wounds and regain their strength and purpose. But we also have to be joyous and fun and engaged with the world - a reminder that life goes on.

What attaches people to their community

2011-07-30T11:50:00.002+01:00

Surfing the Internet for something about soulful community I came across a site about a project called Soul of the Community. It says this

What makes a community a desirable place to live? What draws people to stake their future in it? Are communities with more attached residents better off?

Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation launched the Knight Soul of the Community project in 2008 with these questions in mind. After interviewing close to 43,000 people in 26 communities over three years, the study has found that three main qualities attach people to place: social offerings, such as entertainment venues and places to meet, openness (how welcoming a place is) and the area’s aesthetics (its physical beauty and green spaces).

Whilst our meeting houses, chapels and churches are not neighbourhoods it is worth thinking about these three characteristics

Social offering;
Welcome; and
Beauty.

Although we believe that people are attached to others in a community and not the physical building, many of us have a very open love for our worship space and the place where we meet. When newcomers first walk through our doors they will be confronted with our welcome and the physicality of the place. So this seems to be quite a good starting point. Time for a bit more thinking.

How can we measure a community's soulfulness?

2011-07-29T18:50:00.000+01:00

I have been busier than usual and so my reading for pleasure has been books with short chapters and snippets. I have returned to a book called Journey to the Light edited by Linda Jones and Sophie Stanes which is about people of religion and their encounters with doubt. There are some fascinating stories but the one that I love the most is from Rabbi Lionel Blue. He is my secret crush - not so secret now!

I like Lionel Blue for, amongst other things, his humanity and absolute faith in God - which he calls WW (Whomsoever, Whatsoever). He casts a critical eye over religion - Christianity as well as Judaism, and writes about every day encounters with WW. It was one of his books which gave me permission to be religious - to be able to think in terms of faith as quite pragmatic and integral to life rather than dogmatic and church-based.

Here's what he writes about growing up.

'We have to be careful because sometimes we grow up and we don't allow God to grow up as well. You end up as an adult and God as he was at the Sunday school stage. I remember a boy at barmitzvah who asked me. 'Rabbi, do you believe everything you read in the book of scrolls?' I replied, 'Of course not, some of it's unbelievable,' and he looked really shaken. I said to him, 'You're supposed to become an adult today, you've asked me a question, so here's an adult answer. The best way of looking at it is that the book is the beliefs and experiences of all our ancestors, our forefathers and foremothers. You've got your own truth and you've got to add it on. You can't be your own grandfather.' I tell my students that they should be careful not to be trapped by religious rules. They've got to find Whomsover, Whatsoever wherever it is. They've got to make their own journey.'

As Unitarians we don't need telling this. As individuals we are committed to finding and following our own path or perhaps forging our own path would be a better description. And as communities we must do the same. Each community is different and has its own path to forge. As our own individual paths cross and collide we create a wonderful magic that is religious community - or not.

If we think that we are not creating magic - then what is it that is holding us back? Do people themselves know the issues? I suspect that in many communities at least a few people will know what the difficulties are and why, but there may be some communities where people really cannot fathom what the problem is. We have congregational assessment forms which give us an idea of how the patient is doing - all the vital signs are being checked - but still there is something missing.

I think that we might call this the soul of the community. What is our community's higher purpose? Is there a dynamic or are we stuck? Does each individual feel that they matter and that they help to create the whole? How is a community's soulfulness expressed? Is our community's soul mature, has it grown as we have grown or has it remained as a Sunday school soul?

Is there something more profound than the congregational assessment form that we can create which helps communities move into more soulful being? This needs some thinking - I am not sure whether it needs a lot or a little. If anyone has any thoughts then please do comment.

The Charter for Compassion & UHU

2011-07-11T18:30:00.001+01:00

There is something warm and fuzzy about signing up to a Charter for Compassion. It says this about what it is about

The Golden Rule requires that we use empathy -- moral imagination -- to put ourselves in others' shoes. We should act toward them as we would want them to act toward us. We should refuse, under any circumstance, to carry out actions which would cause them harm.

Which seems to me to be a good start. However there is something to me about action which demands something of us. If compassion were easy, why would there be all the fuss about it? And so we have to ask ourselves - what can I do? What cost am I prepared to pay to put compassion into practice?

It is often easier to do things for people that we don't know - give some money for a good cause or sign a petition. It is can be more difficult to do something for those that we know. How do we show compassion for those around us? Within our own Unitarian communities - local, national and international - what might we be called to do?

The issue of money is a touchy subject. And yet for many people the issue is about money. I remember when my daughter was small that I would use her Christmas money to pay for food so that we could eat during the month of January until I got paid when I would pay her back. Single-parenthood brought financial difficulties which I had not experienced since my childhood. And because I had experienced them in my childhood it took me back to those times when I felt helpless and different to my friends. Money is an emotive subject for a variety of reasons.

During the years friends have paid for hotel stays when I have gone away with them as they knew that I would struggle to afford it. Another friend in a two-income, no-child household sent me a cheque for over £500 when an assurance policy matured - he and his partner's kindness meant so much. I have been touched by such actions - love in action. To make real a person's love and concern by doing that very practical thing of providing money has meant so much to me and to my life.

Perhaps I am sensitized to this and I am glad that I am. I have tried to be supportive of friends and those in our local community who struggle. It is not easy for those in need and those trying to help. I once sent a friend of mine some money and my mother told me off - as if it was not the thing to do. On the phone I asked my friend if she felt offended - ready to apologise - on the contrary she had needed money at that point and was glad of it.

Many of us live in a world where we always have enough money for the mortgage, the food, the utility bills and more besides. But many of us do not. We may stand side by side with people every Sunday whose circumstances are very different to ours. We don't have special pews or boxes these days for those with the money. We are all in it together.

Should Unitarians try to do something about this? And if so what? To help those Unitarians wanting to attend training events and conferences I have started a Facebook page - UHU (Unitarians Helping Unitarians). There are three rules - which are

Ask when you are in need;
Give when you can; and
Give what you can.

I know the importance of getting a financial leg-up. I hope that others will be motivated to help fellow Unitarians in financial need. It could, and most probably will, change someone's life.

Shaping the Future

2011-07-01T09:24:00.002+01:00

The results of the Hibbert Trust funded project can be found here. Interestingly for a publication which extols us to use new media there is as far as I can see no on-line forum to engage us all in the debate. For a document that is supposed to shape our future it looks suspiciously like something that is mired in our past. The last paragraph says this

However, the group has been able to offer pointers. These primarily concern communication; involvement in contemporary issues of concern, whether social, political, or global; and a spirituality that is based on active acceptance of the individual and his or her needs. Thus principles have been identified on which action can be based.

The project cost thousands of pounds and involved people giving up a lot of their time and energy and this is the result. So social action and individual spiritual need - sounds very 19th century to me. If anyone is interested in a debate I have posted this link onto the UK Unitarian Facebook group.

Time to think more creatively than this, to do real collaborative enquiry (if that's what we want to do) and to produce documents which look and feel modern and appealing to the eye.

Oh dear!

Storming once more

2011-06-27T09:02:00.003+01:00

We had a short workshop over the weekend looking at publicity and the like. There were six of us - several people had had problems getting there. We all knew each other and as far as I know liked each other and yet ... At times it seemed like we were meeting for the first time - storming away - trying to establish ourselves in the group, sometimes not listening and at times seeming to fall out over minor details. Thankfully we ended with agreement and with some actions.

I could have been frustrated by process. Perhaps I should have structured it. But my experience at previous workshops is that people like an input into the agenda. Perhaps I had not been calm enough at the beginning - it was my birthday and I had had several emails, Facebook messages, texts and phone calls before I left home and then two en route about the workshop. One was when I was trying to buy a paper and one was as I was parking the car. Of the six people, four thought it started at 9.30 a.m., one at 9.00 a.m. and one at 10.00 a.m. And at least two of the people were in the midst of some work-based and/or home-based stress. So perhaps ever-wonder that we were all a bit jumpy and not quite meshing together.

We can always look to the negatives and ask what went wrong? Or we can look to the positives and think, with all the confusion and the tired individuals, we actually ended as friends and we ended with achievements - which was an achievement in itself. Things aren't always going to run smoothly and there are times when we begin to doubt ourselves and our communities, but this is how life is. If we are to be authentic then sometimes that's not pretty!

But what it certainly does remind me is that I will take nothing for granted. Every day (or at least a few times a week) I have to consciously work on myself and on my relationships. Whilst there is a time for negativity and despair, that time must not be the end but the beginning of doing things just a little bit better.

Talking of the individual and healing

2011-06-21T13:16:00.003+01:00

People can get lost in communities - they can be quite happy being unnoticed but not always so. And anyway what is community for but to recognise the other - in a safe and loving environment?

On Monday night I attended a very inspirational midsummer's eve gathering at the Meeting House. This was not a special do but one of our monthly meditational gatherings where we take a less structured approach, more music, fewer words and, by and large, no hymn singing. The woman leading it has been with us a couple of years and has led services before. Yesterday evening's was a good one - wonderful words and a great sense of spiritual connectedness in these and the music. On walking out into the rain she said something along the lines of, 'I think that I am getting used to speaking publicly."

For those of us who will speak to anyone, at any time, about practically anything, it is hard to imagine how some people fear public speaking. I remember winning a vote to attend a union conference (I was in my late twenties) when the local shop steward had failed to get enough votes. He asked if I would give my place to him because he was proposing a motion and I would have to do this if he wasn't there. Talking to 3,000 - bring it on! He would have been more successful if he'd said that I wouldn't be allowed to speak. But for some the idea of speaking to others, as when leading a service, can be unthinkable. Just as some people won't wash up - but perhaps that's not about fear :)

We can offer support and hand-holding and then be amazed and delighted at the result. The ancient link between 'church' and 'psychology' had been lost by the twentieth century but in the latter part of the century with ideas like holism it has crept back in. We recognise the difficulties that separating out parts of ourselves can lead to. We are not offering psychotherapy but a place to address our own demons - sharing them with others and working towards either overcoming them or accommodating them more comfortably.

For many our communities are not just spiritual homes but places where we can bring ourselves for 'healing'. The healing comes about through our relationships and how we support each other in moving towards being that person that we were born to be. It seems to me that this is one of the prime responsibilities for us as spiritual community members - both in supporting others and also in being brave in looking as honestly as we can at ourselves and being bold in committing to personal change.

Parenting our communities

2011-06-17T13:14:00.004+01:00

Gosh I've been busy! And I love it - I love having things to do, places to go to and people to see. I love to meet new people and perhaps above all I like to be useful. I am not alone in needing to be useful. As our lives shift and re-shape we need to find new ways to be useful. As a parent we need to be mindful of our children's changing needs if we are to maintain our usefulness.

My daughter is now 18 and driving. She can cook her own meals if need be and doesn't need much apart from money and a place to sleep - well that's in the physical sense. What she does really need is a mum who will listen, talk, give advice, provide support, calm things down, crank things up and generally love her well as she prepares to move onto the next phase of her life. Change brings with it excitement and anxiety and usually a sense of leaving something behind as well as moving towards something new. I find myself listening to my daughter both about the excitement of moving on but also about the sadness of leaving her childhood and her existing life behind - it will never be the same again.

This is very much like communities. We can sense that we are moving onto the next stage of our development - so who is there for us who will listen, talk, give advice ...? Who will be a parent to our community? Who will listen to our fears of change, be with us to experience the thrill of the new and the sadness at leaving some things behind?

To some extent we do this ourselves and if we have a minister who can take a more objective view then that can be very helpful. Perhaps there is someone in the District or nationally who can be there. If we are to feel confident in our development I suspect that many of us would like some wise counsel and a steady hand to help us on our way. How can we make this happen for each other?

What do we expect from life?

2011-05-30T09:29:00.008+01:00

I was visiting another chapel yesterday - the service was on the theme of joy. Towards the end the service leader said something along the lines of what a dreadful six months the world had had with earthquakes and tsunamis; the threat of nuclear contamination; and the Arab uprisings bringing death and destruction. There may have been more - my memory tends to be a bit hazy these days.

I was struck by this reflection on the last six months - there had been many days when there were no earthquakes and no tsunamis. There were countries where there was no political unrest and no civil war. There would probably be many people who would say that they had had a good six months. And anyway, 'What do we expect of life?'

Whether we believe the gods or God has a hand in it, what is our expectation? That life will always be trouble free, that the sun will shine during the day and it will rain only at night? That all people will live together in harmony? That the natural world will always be at peace?

We only have to look at Wikipedia on the page on natural disasters to see that they happen on a fairly frequent basis - for example did you know that 56,000 people died in Russia last year due to a heat-wave? On the page on ongoing conflicts over 15,000 died last year in Mexico's war on drugs. So part of this is about what gets reported -perhaps a heat-wave is not as spectacular as an earthquake plus a tsunami, despite it killing many more people. Perhaps the war on drugs only kills people who are seen to be guilty.

I think that we need to accustom ourselves to the facts: our world can be a dangerous place. We, here in the UK, in 2011 are fortunate to live at a time and a place when we are safer than the vast majority of humanity. So it is not just when the news tells us that there are dreadful events happening but all the time that we need to be mindful of our own privilege and not squander it.

As a faith community we have a duty to find out about the world around us and to talk about such things – Channel 4’s Unreported World is for me a recently discovered gem. We also have a duty to give something of ourselves – something that costs us. It is in community that we can nudge and be nudged. There is no joy in seeing others suffer but there is joy in knowing that together we can all make a difference, even those of us who only have a ‘widow’s mite’. We can make a difference to at least one person – probably someone we don’t know but nevertheless connected to us by the life and spirit which flow through us all.

Models for moving forward

2011-05-21T15:04:00.002+01:00

I thought that when I started writing this blog that it would be easy to identify theories of community development and mould them for our purposes. I should have known better having worked around community development for many years and being confounded by the lack of theory - I thought that it was just us.

Anyway there are certainly organisational theories and some interesting insights into how to develop. One of these is Appreciative Inquiry which has been used in the US with the Unitarian Universalist Association and some of their churches. In some ways Appreciative Inquiry is similar to Solutions Focused approaches which I have mentioned in July last year.

Here are the Assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry from a presentation at the Florida UUA District:

In every congregation, some things work well.
What we focus on becomes our reality.
Asking positive questions influences the group for the better.
People are more willing to journey toward the future when they know they can keep the best of what is past.
There is no need for detailed analysis of problems.

Solutions Focused approaches would say - find out what you do well/what went well and do more of it/do it again. These positive approaches I think suit Unitarians very well.

I will leave you with these thoughts as I spend some time thinking about how these approaches could be used by our communities.

Acting as a community

2011-05-15T14:17:00.005+01:00

If we want to be seen as a community we have to act as one. But what does this mean? A community is defined as a group of people who share something - with geographical communities what is shared is physical space. There are some communities defined as communities of shared experience such as groups for people with certain disabilities e.g. the Deaf community. For our faith community it is about shared interests. But what is the interest that we share?

We return again and again to the same place - which for me is about shared values and principles. We act as a community when together we make those values and principles real. I think that it is often the small things that reinforce our feelings of being together and acting well. For example, when one person has a good or bad experience we recognise that by connecting and marking the event e.g. by sending a card or a message.

Of course it is also about the big things - the way that we make decisions and the way that we handle potential conflict. For example if we know that someone is unhappy with a certain aspect of what we do, how do we handle this? Do we ignore it? Do we act defensively? Or do we engage in meaningful dialogue? Do we consider the finding of resolution a spiritual imperative or a do we think it stands in the way of our spiritual imperatives? How we deal with difficult situations holds up a mirror to our actions and lets us know if we are living our values.

Whilst our communities may have agreed values and principles it can be enlightening to understand what our own values and principles are. For me there are some clear drivers to how I behave. This is off the top of my head and so a little random and unformed.

(1) I commit to being present - perhaps when I am not feeling 'in' the mood' I make the effort to go and be there. Being present is not just physical presence but about emotional presence (hearing the feelings behind people's words and actions) and intellectual presence (engaging with our communities' thinking). And of course spiritual presence (holding onto faith)

(2) I bring my whole self - not just the good or even just the needy parts - but all of myself as a sign of commitment and faith.

(3) I commit myself to action - responding to information and sometimes taking the initiative to stimulate action.

(4) I am committed to learning from others.

(5) I commit to developing wisdom.

For not only are we working with our communities to act well, we are at the same time working with ourselves so that we may act well. In the Tao there is a lovely phrase, right action. In acting right as a community we have to act right as individuals - we aspire to be more than we are now.

Overwhelmed

2011-05-09T13:04:00.002+01:00

This weekend I have been immersed in our Unitarian community. On Saturday I had a Communication Commission's meeting in Manchester followed by the East Cheshire Union's AGM at Dukinfield in the afternoon followed by tea and buffet - delicious! I covered over 100 miles by car and also had a train journey from Ashton to Manchester. Getting home to an empty house, my 18-year old daughter was out celebrating a friend's 18th, and my mind was buzzing.

I watched some TV hoping to empty my mind so that I might sleep well. But as soon as my head hit the pillow my mind started racing again. So many ideas and issues - so many important things - what to do, what to say - so many happy exchanges with like-minded people. On waking very early I got up and turned on my computer. I had to get at least a few of my thoughts written down. I then wrote on my other blog and prepared the announcements for the morning's service. I was feeling jaded by then - not enough sleep and too much mental activity - and although I like services I could happily have stayed at home and snoozed.

As I drove there with the radio on, listening to messages of love passed from one person to another via the DJ I began to reconnect with the world outside and was happy that there was such love around. I parked my car and spied two of my friends and we juggled my bags and their garden produce so that we could help each other to the Meeting House. A lady who had just got out of a car called out, 'Are you going to the Unitarian church?' 'Yes,' we replied, 'are you?' Turns out that Cathy and Jack from Washington State were staying with Helga and Mark from Crewe and always tried to visit a Unitarian chapel whenever they visited somewhere new. We chatted with our visitors as we walked towards our Meeting House.

When we arrived others came forward to welcome our visitors and I had some time to put packages down and get sheets of paper out of my bag. The mother of one of our member's had just died - he was not there but we like to be with people in spirit at difficult times. We were unsure about whether one of our members was on his way - if he is coming then we start the service a little later to allow for his bus journey. So it was a bit delayed and a bit raggy at the start. Our bus-rider arrived and we felt able to then hold our bereaved member in our thoughts and send love and comfort.

One of our members led the service on awe and wonder. It was a stirring service with mainly unfamiliar hymns which we did our best with. We finished with Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. What would our visitors think? They loved it. And they loved the welcome. And they loved, as we did, that sense of connection. Now they will be included on our list to receive our newsletter.

We were asked in the service to think about those things that made us feel 'wow!' Whilst I like a good view, it is also human connections that make me feel 'wow!' The simple pleasures of feeling connected to so many people over a 36-hour period. The joy of listening to the radio and feeling warmth as messages of love are sent by and to people that I don't know and probably will never. Thinking about all the opportunities to connect - I asked Helga about her name, her father was German and had been a prisoner of war. 'Locally?' I enquired.' 'No, near to Leicester, ' she responded. It just so happened that I was going to Leicester that afternoon to my sister-in-law's 60th birthday celebrations. I also have a family connection on my paternal grandmother's side.

As I left to drive home I felt so proud of our community for all that we do together - at how we work so hard to translate our values into real attitudes and actions. I reflected on the rest of the weekend and the broader network that we belong to and the feelings of sincere love that underpin my experience of our Unitarian community. It is not just a feeling of 'wow' but a more sustained feeling of awe and wonder at the dynamic of this, our religious community.

Pluralist's questions

2011-04-18T10:21:00.002+01:00

Adrian Worsfold has posted 20 questions on his blog - which if you spend some time considering may provide some interesting food for thought. I have spent some time writing my own answers but may use them to write something bigger - so at the moment will just sit and consider what to do :)

You, Me & Religion ...

2011-04-12T09:05:00.003+01:00

... is a blog started in January 2010 by Debra. Don't know anything more about her but her blog is fascinating - people from different religions respond to the same set of questions. Gives a great view from the 'pew' - mine will be posted in October.

If you want to know what a Pantheist believes or a Baha'i thinks or a Muslim or a .... Very quick to read and gives religions a personal touch. Thanks Debra.

Individual vs organisational need

2011-04-05T11:16:00.005+01:00

One of the issues with diverse groups of people is that we need to understand the particular needs of each member as well as the needs of the group itself. This takes both time and energy and also a sincere desire to include.

I am reminded of the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 which changed the way that social services were delivered (amongst other things). The premise was that services had been provided to suit the organisation and staff and not the individual client. In short-hand they needed to be more person or needs led. This was a challenge in particular for those of us who managed group services - how did we balance the need for organisational efficiency with the needs of individuals. Any group faces this balancing act.

As an example I will look at communications. The ever-growing use of electronic communications means that we can persuade ourselves that we can communicate much more effectively and efficiently via email and other electronic means. Indeed for the provider of information this is true. We can be very creative with the use of sound, colour and pictures which we may not be able to do using paper formats. However we then assume that our readers

Have access to an Internet enabled computer; and
Do access it on a fairly frequent basis; and
Find all electronic communication effective; and
Only want to read, say a newsletter, sitting at a computer rather than on the sofa with a cup of tea.

Most computer enthusiasts like other means of communication - I like to read a paper, love to read a book and enjoy thumbing through magazines. But not all readers of paper format like to read on-line content for a variety of reasons. Of course if people have a printer they can print things out but that adds expense which some can afford but some cannot.

So how do we ensure that individual needs are met? First we have to know what those needs are and then we have to respond to them. We can say that the majority has it - asking for a vote for one type of communication and going with one medium. But as a community which prides itself on including minorities this seems to be much too exclusive.

I think that we need to look at paper communications, telephone including text, electronic means (in all its diversity) and face-to-face communications. Some of us also try to produce CDs and DVDs. One person cannot do this alone - including others in the production of printed material, audio material and in its distribution is key. This is the commitment to communicate made real.

Whilst this thinking about the totality of needs may slow some things down it will also speed some things up - the development of those feelings of being a loving, participative and informed community. We all need to walk the walk.

Perhaps we lose some organisational efficiency in the short-term but in the long-term such organisational efficiency will lead to people feeling isolated, feeling that they are not important and wondering why no-one cares whether they are kept informed or not.

So perhaps it is not such a balancing act after all. Perhaps it is about what we are aiming to do and where we are aiming to get to. I would suggest that inclusion should be an aim for us all.

Remembering to ask and to remember

2011-03-24T08:55:00.003Z

We had our monthly Monday Gathering this week. It's a meditative time led by one of the community with words, music and time for reflection. We have a cuppa first and then 45 minutes of 'gathering' and then more drinks and chatting. There were just five of us this week.

But there was a lot of woe - elderly parents being ill and in hospital, a husband already with a disability having fallen, money worries, concerns about friends with mental health problems and concerns about ourselves and how we will cope with all of this. Four of us know each other well and see each other most weeks. One woman only comes to these as she goes to another chapel on Sundays.

She had been quiet - but tends to be so - but in a lull I turned to her and asked, "And how are you?" She replied that her Mum had died a fortnight ago - although she was 90 it was unexpected. Having lost two fathers (birth-father and step-father) over the last few years I had an inkling of what she may be feeling - if she was feeling anything at all. I felt a deep sadness - it doesn't matter how old our parents are when they die they are still our parents and we can't grow another one.

We could so easily have missed this significant event in her life as we were trying to be supportive of the people who had been more up-front about the current challenges that they were facing.

We must always remember to ask - in larger congregations and communities this becomes harder. We must find ways to ensure that the network that is community is effective in including everyone and then respond in a loving way.

We must then continue to remember - I was in grief for a least a year with my fathers. A friend in her fifties, whose husband had died suddenly, told me how she found the second year worse than the first. We don't necessarily need to keep asking but we do need to keep remembering these significant events and try to understand the unique effects that they have on each one of us.

Love is very much an action rather than merely a feeling.

Perfection is not what it seems

2011-03-14T17:20:00.004Z

I led our service yesterday on the theme of 'late-blooming'. I will be 57 soon and my daughter will be leaving to go to university in September. I have a constantly niggling anxiety about what I will do next so thought that I could do with a bit of encouragement. I suspect that many of us construct services to meet our own needs.

My usual way of constructing services - and I only do a few a year, sometimes only one - is to think about it for ages, get a few ideas and download a few tunes, find a few poems and readings and then on the Sunday morning get up early and stitch it all together. It is a bit hairy but it works for me.

So by the time that I got to the Meeting House I was tired, feeling that I'd done half-a-day's work. My best performance was probably reading out the notices! I then welcomed myself and off I went. I had a few things that I needed to do - to make mention of our district which had a Songs of Praise later in the day that no-one could make. So I read what I had sent to them and had used the last verse of the hymn we'd chosen as words for the chalice lighting. We sung the hymn later. Then I felt compelled to mention the Japanese earthquake and had a very moving reading from John O'Donohue's book on Blessings about the need not to give in to helplessness.

The rest of the service was on the theme. I had periods of being tongue-tied - had I really constructed sentences which were so difficult to say? I missed a hymn out which people reminded me of at the end - so we sung it then. The last hymn that I'd chosen was unsingable so we read it. And I'd got rather a jolly version of Forever Young, the Dylan classic, by Mike Scott and Sharon Shannon, only it was too quiet and people struggled to hear it.

I closed with relief - not the most perfect of services - E for effort - must try harder next time! But the feedback was so lovely - someone said it was the best that she'd heard me do - either it was good or the others were pretty awful. People were moved by the idea that dreams are not restricted to the young and that we can be inspired by those we know and love. We don't necessarily get inspired by the good and the great.

And I was moved that by stumbling through a service on a theme that I was passionate to explore, which had such strong personal references, I could produce something that was perfectly me. And in being perfectly me, it was perfectly us, as people responded to my creation and made it bigger and better.

My way of constructing a service takes me from the general to a specific to the individual to our community - not sure if this is what I am supposed to do or if anyone else does it this way but it suits. I am always drawn back to the question - what does this mean for this community of ours? If it was just about the individual and their spiritual experiences I would feel that I had not completed the circle. Leading services in our own communities is a precious moment of community building - sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

Accentuate the positive

2011-03-11T10:43:00.002Z

We have a new community centre being build in the parish where I live. I went for a visit last week. I have had some involvement in the early days with the business planning and bid making but stepped away when more and more volunteers appeared to help out. But I have kept in the loop and have been invited along to things. Being in this position I know how much work so many people have put into the project - the vast majority have done this for free. And are still doing so.

So when the woman from the Derby and Joan Club started on about not being able to bring their own teas and coffees and having to pay the caterer for a cuppa I saw red - but managed (thankfully) to keep reasonably civil. She also added that the Club had been going for over 50 years - what that meant to her I didn't explore but it seemed to somehow mean that they had more rights than more newly formed groups and people who weren't even born in the village. This new community centre is linked with a new facility for elderly people which will probably see another 100 elderly people living in the village, all potentially new members of the Derby and Joan Club.

I am sure that other members of the Club will be much more impressed with our zero-carbon building with ICT equipment, training facilities, improved library services, a chiropodist and other health professionals, a bar, a cafe and a lovely big social hall and the potential for new members. When you weigh this against the cost of a cuppa it is hard to understand how some people think.

I used to manage a mental health day service and advised my staff never to ask, 'How are you today?' but to say something like, 'It's lovely to see you' or 'My, you do look well' or 'Let's go and see who else is here'. Setting the scene for an experience at the day service on a positive note was very important. Of course life can be tough but sometimes we need to enjoy what we have and appreciate what people do in our name.

When working with groups on organisational development I often start with - you've got ten minutes to moan about what is wrong, what doesn't work and how awful things are. Then we will discuss what does indeed work and how we can do more of that. We need to focus our time and energy on what works not what doesn't.

In our communities focusing on what works can makes us feel very proud and helps us to appreciate what everyone brings to the table. Perhaps we will have to pay more for our cups of tea but let us focus on what we get in return for that investment. And let us be grateful that we have the means to pay more for our cuppas.

Ann Peart's focus for 2011/12

2011-03-11T10:09:00.005Z

Some of you will have seen the excellent GA Annual Report Summary (you guessed it, I had a hand in its production!). Ann Peart, the Vice President, has set out what she hopes to do as President from April and says, 'Next year I intend to focus more on our present day groups, and explore aspects of our religious faith which lead us to work together in caring, respectful communities.'

I look forward to increased debate about community and how we can promote it.

Deep Value

2011-03-05T09:57:00.005Z

A report has just been published called Deep Value: A literature review of the role of
effective relationships in public services. And it does exactly what it says on the tin. Here is a piece from the summary

Effective relationships are not an added extra but are core to the
delivery of effective services. Increasing the effectiveness of relationships,
therefore, is a lever for improving quality and performance.
Effective relationships are much more important and complex
than just offering ‘tea and sympathy.’

I guess that many of us could have told them about the personal relationship bit but it is also about competence and professionalism. Whilst we build our communities we recognise that good relationships are key but we also need to recognise the value of competence.

There are many insights to be gained from this publication when it comes to community development, even if we are not sure who is providing a service and who is receiving it - when a community develops itself it is a collaborative venture - it still provides some interesting and relevant conclusions. For example the report says that effective relationships are about

• Understanding – the service provider seeks to understand the needs and circumstances
(economic, personal, emotional, cultural) of the person using services and treats people
with dignity and respect demonstrating that they are ‘on their side.’ In return people
using services acknowledge the pressures on service providers and their need to make
judgements about good use of public funds.

• Collaboration – there is trust, founded in part on demonstrable competence of the
professional, both sides have confidence in each other, both are honest and achieve a
position where agenda setting and decision making are shared.

• Commitment – where both sides demonstrate dynamism and commitment and is
thorough and well prepared for meetings.

• Communication – where the service provider listens and opens new lines of questioning
to draw out relevant deeper issues.

• Empowerment – where relevant, an aim of public services should be to support people
to change thinking and behaviour so as to cope differently with challenges in the future.
This may involve challenge and confrontation but if the other elements of effective
relationships are in place, the result can be powerful for the individual and cost effective
for the public purse.

• Time – having the time is important, but this is not open-ended. With the right skills and
systems in place people can quickly put these elements of effective relationships in
place.

We could rewrite this to

Understanding: Everyone seeks to understand the needs and circumstances (economic, personal, emotional, cultural) of everyone else within their community.

Collaboration: There is trust, founded in part on demonstrable competence of everyone who takes on a role within the community. People have confidence in each other, are honest and achieve a position where agenda setting and decision making are shared.

Commitment: Everyone demonstrates dynamism and commitment and is thorough and well prepared for meetings.

Communication: Everyone listens and opens new lines of questioning to draw out relevant deeper issues.

Empowerment: People are supported to cope with challenges in the present and the future. This may involve challenge and confrontation but if the other elements of effective relationships are in place, the result can be powerful for the whole community.

Time: Having the time is important, but this is not open-ended. With the right skills, the right level of commitment and the right attitudes in place people can quickly put these elements of effective relationships in place.

This is a quick re-write and probably needs a bit more work. However for me it shows how we can use research and best practice and meld it to our own particular circumstances and hopefully help us as we develop our beloved communities.

World events

2011-03-02T11:59:00.002Z

We have all been moved and saddened by the earthquake(s) in New Zealand. It is at times like these that we look outside of our immediate circle and feel a connection to the wider world - either through sheer compassion or through some link, some thread which binds us to the people affected. We know that our fellow Unitarians have been affected.

Similarly the unrest in many parts of the Arab world cause us to feel a concern for our fellow human beings. I am in awe of the sacrifices that people will make for freedom and self-determination. I am hugely grateful that my forebears have fought many of these battles for me.

It is in these seemingly dark days that I wonder about my own strength and courage. I realise how small and insignificant I am but I am drawn to ask the question, 'How can I help?' Knowing that there are people, mostly unknown to me, who are doing things - organising ways to donate money, providing aid and assistance on the ground, organising media for expressing support, sending pictures to grab the world's attention ... Sometimes just being there prepared to do things is what is needed.

It reflects that today, as always, there are significant numbers of people who are brave and resourceful, who want to make a positive difference to the world. When people moan about the world today and the people in it I think that they must be living in a different world to me. There are always acts of kindness or courage or principle, often within spitting distance, that should move us if we could but see them.

The expression of joy

2011-02-22T10:56:00.004Z

You may have read Sue Woolley's article in the Inquirer at the beginning of February about her visit to a Baptist church which led to her assertion that many Unitarian services lack joy. On our walk last weekend one of our community mentioned this and said, 'She should come to visit us'. The weekend before we had had visitors who remarked afterwards in an email to me, 'You've got an interesting, lively group at Newcastle, haven't you?' I responded, 'Yes we do lively rather well in Newcastle'.

I know that lively does not necessarily equate to joyous and I also know that we are not always lively and full of energy. However I would say that we tend to be more joyous than less most times that we meet or communicate. We don't raise our hands and shout 'hallelujah' but we often participate in services and we value emotion as a means of experiencing the divine - however we conceive of this.

I remember a discussion once in some Unitarian forum and the issue of clapping the organist was raised. One person said that it was inappropriate to do this. I said that it was not for any of us to say what happens in other people's communities - each community must decide for itself. We don't routinely clap our organist but if he delivers a particularly vigorous performance at the end of the service many of us are moved to show our appreciation and warmth towards him - he has after all been separated from us, sitting on the balcony throughout the service. This may not suit everyone but it suits us. We also sing happy birthday to people with birthdays coming up in the next week or two (we have two weeks between services). I like this but many would not.

One thing that I particularly value is how our community can go from joyous participation to quiet reflection in no more than a few seconds. It is as if we are attuned to the ebb and flow of the service and respect its rhythms and our part in making this 'heartbeat'. Silence is all the more noticeable after a period of boisterous communication.

Sue's article has reminded us that we should be mindful about how we are as communities. How do we know that we are being the best communities that we can be? Is laughter and active involvement of those sitting in the pews to be frowned on or welcomed? How do we balance the need for quiet and the need for words, music, singing and discussion? I suppose like many of us have already done, we look to other traditions and see what we can borrow and how we can shape that to suit ourselves.

We need to take a few more risks - perhaps? To try new ways of worship and to allow people to miss the mark. In a loving community which seeks to develop there must be courage and trust and the understanding that unless we try things we might not know what works and what doesn't. We must then be honest enough to say if something doesn't work for us. But also to have the commitment to others by appreciating that some approaches, which may not suit us, actually do suit others. We give a little and we take a little.

May we go forward with a little more adventure in our souls.

Thinking about the other

2011-02-18T17:57:00.002Z

I had a phone call today - couldn't quite make it out, something about rents and housing benefit. It was a young woman - she did not introduce herself, she just launched into asking me this indistinct question. On second hearing it still made no sense so I asked her who she thought that she was talking to - thinking she'd got the wrong number. So she asked if I rented out properties and when I responded, 'No,' she said, 'Well you should have said that in the first place' and put the phone down.

I shouted an expletive to a dead line. Who on earth did she think she was? On calming down and after having said a silent apology to my neighbours, I reflected a while. I imagined that she was a young woman in a job that she didn't like, phoning up strangers and feeling less than confident. I began to feel sorry for her and perhaps a little empathy. I have certainly done jobs that I wasn't very keen on and felt that I didn't have the confidence to carry off the tasks I was charged with doing. Especially in my younger days. I was beginning to feel a little motherly towards this woman whom I had had the briefest of telephone encounters with.

Perhaps this was just a story that I had made up and perhaps it was far from the truth but the issue is that we often don't know the story of the person that we are interacting with. We don't know how much we have in common and we don't know what we might feel for them if we did know their story. And often we don't even know our own motivations.

In my fifties I now have a sense of being a bit of a mother hen - trying to look out for young people. It is a persona that I have grown/am growing into and feel comfortable with. I remember as an 18-year old on a rag (charity) hitch around the country with a friend, being picked up on our first night - a Friday - and taken back to lodge with our kind driver. He and his wife must have been in their sixties (or perhaps fifties - most people seem older when you are 18). Their children had left home - they had ample room for guests and it sounded like they were used to accommodating a houseful of young people. They fed us and looked after us like we were one of theirs - and we'd only just met them having begged a lift.

Now I have a sense of how they felt - they were parenting all the young people that they came across because they liked doing it - being with young people gave them a buzz and perhaps made them feel useful. Again I am making up the story. But that's how we understand the world through stories - real and imagined. I now feel a sense of kinship across the decades with these generous people and hope that I can show similar love and concern to complete strangers.

And so I wonder still about the young woman at the other end of the phone and hope that she can find a way to making phone calls which don't upset people, don't leave a sour after-taste and also don't elicit sympathy. Perhaps feeling sorry for her was not the best feeling but for me it was the best that I could do. That is the real trick to respect - turning feelings of sympathy to feelings of real connection and respect. To do this I think that we have to get to know one another.

Strangers and familiars

2011-02-07T15:31:00.007Z

Current debates about multi-culturalism remind me that the growth of the community that we call the UK is not just people soaking up knowledge about what it is to be British but is also about recognising that they come to our country with their own identity and culture. Our own culture changes over time and this development is made richer by people with different cultures coming to live in the UK. Multi-culturalism should be about confidence in our core British culture which is enriched by the cultures of the people coming in from the rest of the world.

In Unitarian communities it is easy to see newcomers as empty vessels coming to us to be filled. It is almost as if their lack of knowledge of Unitarianism and/or of the local community reflects their lack of knowledge full-stop. Rationally we know this is not the case. I would hope that we really don't think this but when people are new and soaking up the newness of the experience, we do need to remember that they are already full - full of all sorts of other things.

Perhaps it's a timing thing - perhaps in the early days it's about feeding the hunger to find out about Unitarianism and the local community. But as people become more comfortable and confident in their Unitarianism we should be asking them, 'What uniquely do you bring to us and what would you like to see developed and changed?' - this is not a one time question but a continuing conversation. I also think that this is not just with newcomers.

When we talk about being hospitable and compassionate towards people we are usually talking about how we are with strangers. Those of us who have had problematic relationships with our families know that being compassionate with strangers is a breeze compared to being compassionate towards some of our family members. And so it is with our communities - listening to the needs and concerns of newcomers can be much easier than doing the same with established members.

Developing communities is a finely balanced approach of recognising the needs of all, the different stages that we are all at and that we all need to give as well as receive. Our culture as a faith community should, I think, have a common thread running through time which reflects our values. How it develops is down to us all - may we all have the confidence to participate in this and the confidence to embrace change.

Personality

2011-02-01T17:26:00.005Z

When we have a fifth Sunday we do something different - it may be a discussion or it may be trying out a new way or worshipping or it may be a workshop. We borrowed this idea from Martha's Vineyard UUA church where their fifth Sundays are musical events - well they were a few years ago when I visited. There tend to be many fewer people at ours but it is good for those who do attend to have a more intimate experience to explore some aspect of their spiritual lives.

Last Sunday was a fifth Sunday and I led a discussion/workshop on personality using the Myers Briggs Inventory (MBI) with insight from others who have written on personality. The MBI takes four personality preferences -

* where we primarily direct our energy and where we get our energy from - the external (E) or our internal (I) worlds;
* how we process information - through concrete and observable facts in the here and now (S) or through internal reflection with more of a focus on the future and possibilities (N);
* how we prefer to make decisions - through logical and rational thought (T) or based on feelings and values (F); and
* how we organise our lives - in structured way with clear decisions (J) or in a flexible way discovering things as you go along (P).

No one is completely one preference or the other - it is all shades but most of us have a preference. These four preferences E or I + S or N + T or F + J or P gives us a four letter personality type and there are 16 in all. No one personality type is better than any other and research has shown that the best groups are made up of a variety of personality types. Sometimes if we are fairly balanced in our preferences it can be hard to decide what best describes us but that's why a group is good to discuss how we are each experienced by others.

We discussed what our personality type meant for us as individuals and how we approach our spiritual lives; how we might design the services that we may deliver to be more inclusive and then the danger of trying to be all things to all people and losing ourselves in the process; the 'grip' experiences when we are stressed and whether we can learn how to deal with stress a little better; and the ways that we might try to bring more balance to our lives.

We then looked at our own community and whether we could determine what sort of 'personality' the whole community may have and what this meant in times of stress for us all; how we might overcome such stresses and how we may become more balanced.

Whilst there were only six of us we had a good go at doing this and began to appreciate how we are as a community. It gave us some pointers as to how we might try to move things forward - we decided that we definitely needed to be better at making decisions.

Whilst it is not a perfect tool and some may be sceptical of its use with groups it was a good way to get discussion going, to appreciate what we do and what we don't and to pinpoint, in a non-blaming way, what may need to change if we are to become a little more balanced. We also decided that in some areas there were some clear strengths which we wanted to protect and promote.

Ultimately doing anything like this is about group rather than personal responsibility and taking 'corporate' responsibility for the weaknesses that may be observed. It is about being open to using different tools to move forward as a faith community - putting faith in the active processes of people interacting much more than the particular approach that is taken.

Referring to the thrust of the blog - this is about community development. To develop anything it is necessary to know what that thing is - I don't think it matters how we do that but it does matter that we do do it.

The Shadow

2011-01-29T14:46:00.007Z

I have many bees in my bonnet – one that troubles me a lot is the linking of religion and faith with all that is good in life, either forgetting the other bits of life or ascribing some devilish intent to the darkness.

And yet if a life is to be lived truly, with integrity, in balance and with wisdom then it must be lived whole. And if our spiritual selves are not turned on and off as a convenience – for example seeing the divine in a rose but not in a slug – then spirituality and our spiritual lives have to be as alive in the darkness as they are in the light. So what do I mean by ‘darkness’?

In this posting I will look at the Shadow which is a term used by Carl Jung. Our shadow influences us usually without our awareness. Everyone has a shadow self. And I believe that every organisation/community has a shadow.

I think one of the problems with our shadows is that they make us think of ourselves as perpetrators or wrong-doers rather than as victims which many painful experiences can make us feel like. It is more comfortable to think of ourselves as the ones who are hurt rather than the ones who do the hurting. Recognising our shadows can be difficult – we have often hung onto illusions about who we are for many years.

Rev. Dr. Ed Piper of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Waynesboro (VA) said in his sermon in November 2010 entitled, Encountering Our Shadow,

Our conscious ego employs several strategies to keep the Shadow at bay. “Shadow work,” as the Jungians call it, involves penetrating the walls that separate us from our Shadow: denial, avoidance, repression, and above all projection, which involves attributing the qualities we deny in ourselves to other people.

I have been interested in the idea of the shadow following my exploration of alternative ways of viewing illness. Thorwald Dethlefsen in his book, ‘The Healing Power of Illness' says this ...

Our shadow fills us with fear. And no wonder, in view of the fact that it consists exclusively of all those aspects of reality that we have pushed furthest away from ourselves, that we least want to live out or even so much as to discover within ourselves. The shadow is the sum of what we are most deeply convinced must be expunged from the world if ever the latter is to become good and whole. Yet exactly the contrary is actually the case: the Shadow contains everything that the world - our world - most needs for its salvation and healing. The shadow makes us ill - un-well - because it is the very thing that is lacking for our well-being.

Within groups there can be a collective shadow. I have observed abuse in the sexual violence sector and have observed bullying in the domestic violence sector - these have not been conscious but I believe were the playing out of the organisations' shadows. So what of our Unitarian communities - is there illiberality? Is there irrationality? Is there intolerance? Is there a lack of freedom of conscience?

It is easy to look at others and point the finger - but can we honestly look to ourselves and our beloved communities, that we are so committed to, and be brave enough to recognise our own shadows. Can we work within our communities to make those shadows visible and then address them and make real change? I believe that this will make us healthier and stop us projecting our shadows onto other organisations/faith groups.

It is a real challenge but one that I think we have to meet.

It's 2011 already!

2011-01-14T12:36:00.005Z

Is really it nearly three months since I last posted? Indeed it is :)

My daughter achieved her majority at the beginning of December i.e. she turned 18. Sometimes we like to hang onto old ways of expressing ourselves - it can be a comfort. Talking about achieving my majority reminds me of when I was 18 - the voting age had been reduced three years earlier to 18 from 21 and I couldn't wait to vote. I expect that I also couldn't wait to be legally served in a pub but that's not my memory - we filter our memories - as people and as groups of people.

I led a Remembrance Day service a few years ago when I looked at memory. We, as people, are defined by our memories to quite a large extent - think of someone with dementia and how we say that they are no longer themselves. Memory has enabled the human race to learn and faulty memory can lead to creation as we adapt to not knowing. We can learn new things by mis-remembering.

And we can make things up or elaborate on our memories. Many stories dredged from our past are much more entertaining if they are elaborated upon. We also have great powers of selective memory – which help us to maintain our opinions regarding ourselves and the world around us. We tend to remember those things which confirm our opinions and prejudices and forget those that don’t.

As a community we also have a collective memory which is not held in one place (similar to the human body which stores its memories across the body – for example transplant patients who have memories associated with the organ donor). Sometimes the memory is about an event which happened many years ago - like Remembrance Day, many of us have no memory of the world wars of the 20th century but we 'remember'.

There is a fine balance to be achieved between respecting our collective memories and co-creating a new reality. Different people have different experiences (e.g. long-standing members and newcomers) and different attachments (from our personal as well as collective memories) – most of us cling onto ways of doing things because that’s how we have always done it and some are much more inclined to do things differently. My view on tradition is that it should serve you well and new traditions have to start somewhere and at some time.

I think as communities it is important to record events – in word and picture (video and audio too, if possible) – to have a sense of shared experience – this is one defining element of a community. But we are not defined solely by our past but also by our present and by the dreams that we have for the future. It is a wise community which manages the tensions inherent in achieving this.

How do you define a good community?

2010-10-27T13:04:00.003+01:00

I was talking on Sunday about our community and how it feels. I was wondering out loud about how to encapsulate what made it so welcoming and inspiring. This reminded me of when I did an evaluation of a regeneration scheme which was very successful - everyone said that the one factor above all that made it good was Eric the programme manager who had led the project from day one. Given that there was only one Eric I needed to talk to people about what it was about Eric that made him such an effective leader if we were to find similar staff to run schemes. When I had finished I was not certain that I had the essence of Eric - but I was getting close.

And so it is when we try to encapsulate the best of our communities - there are things which we can explain - how people are welcoming and then describing what welcoming actually means: how people are generous - with their time, their money, their resources and their smiles; how people approach difficulties - being committed to resolving conflict without feeling hard-done to at the end of the resolution; being mindful of the needs of others; being committed to making changes if things aren't working well; and I guess some other characteristics. Whilst we can describe all of this, it is how to make it real that is the hard bit.

I feel that there is a spiritual imperative to invest time and energy into my chosen faith community. The choice that I/we make is whether to commit or not to commit - if we decide to commit then we should be prepared to do what it takes.

What is a community?

2010-10-19T11:08:00.004+01:00

I have been away for two weeks with my sister who lives in Australia - we did not grow up together as our connection is through my father who lived with his second family many miles away leaving the UK for good when my sister was 14. We have re-established our family link over the last ten years. I have been to Australia several times and on two occasions stayed with her and this is the second time that she has visited me. This time we had a 12-day tour around the country - almost 24-hours a day with each other and it was all very easy. The biology of our shared genes shows up when we think the same thoughts and like the same food - and our differences reflect our uniqueness, our different genes and our different experiences.

I love having a sister, having grown up with a clutch of brothers (brother, half-brother and step-brothers). My half-brother whose father was my step-father shares no blood with my sister but they consider themselves related. They have never lived together indeed they have only seen each other twice but they connect via Facebook. My sister's mother died several years ago and she is very fond of my mother so is adopting her as a surrogate Mum. When my Dad (step-father) was alive my sister and her daughter visited my Mum and Dad and he behaved like a Dad and a Grandad towards them.

As an aside my daughter has a cousin who is my step-brother's step-son's step-daughter - we can decide ourselves to make relationships meaningful and recognise that love is more important than blood.

So with thoughts in my mind about what a family is, I am reminded and return to the beginning to reflect again on what a community is. Do we have to share a theology? Do we have to share experiences of a Sunday service? Do we need to share personality traits? Or do we just meet in the middle in a bit of a mess - being happy to be within this thing that we call a Unitarian community - moved by the feeling that love is more important than theology.

Who develops community?

2010-09-23T14:53:00.003+01:00

This week I have been musing over models for how our local communities run - who gets paid to do what? Whilst we had/have the Ministry for All initiative I suspect that what should go alongside this is some kind of administrative/communication/development support: in essence community development support.

I am thinking that I am going to sketch out what gets done at ours and see what that amounts to in terms of work.

Trying to think of something else to write - but I think that I've said all I want to at the moment - if anyone reading this has any thoughts on this please do let me know.

Reflecting on strong communities

2010-08-26T08:22:00.007+01:00

I was thinking whilst driving the car a few days ago that someone reading the posting about how strong communities are might reflect - but this sounds like a social group. So what differentiates a social group from a faith community. I have been musing on this in all the usual places - the bath, bed, the sofa and in the car. Must get out for a bit of fresh air!

I think that there are three major differences between my conception of an emerging and developing faith community and a social network and these differences are

(1) purpose and intent;
(2) the quality of relationship; and
(3) the emerging nature of the group as it opens itself up to new members.

I am now using the word 'emerging' which captures within it concepts of emergence and organic growth. Hold that thought - this will be the subject of another post.

So first - purpose and intent. Each of our communities has a purpose whether overt or covert: spoken or unspoken. For our local community it is being spoken as part of our principles - we are here to support each others' spiritual growth within a loving community. As we have not finished our conversations on this there is no definitive version at present. But this gives a flavour. Spirituality is the core of our purpose and our intent is to do this communally.

Second, we look at quality of relationships within our communities. This is not something that one person can magic but is a commitment from most, if not all, community members to work at the relationships within the community - making each link strong. This goes beyond friendship. It is not about only spending time with the people that you feel comfortable with, that you have things in common with or that you 'click' with. It is a commitment to see beyond ourselves - to cultivate connections with all community members. We can do this through many routes - spending time with each other, finding out what each other likes and dislikes, taking an interest in what the other is interested in, wishing in the depth of our heart for each person to live well, finding true and meaningful love for all within our communities. Of course if we can develop ourselves to be like this with those within our faith community then we will not be able to confine our loving to the space within our community's walls.

Our relationships also create the entity that is our community - the body, heart, mind and soul. It is where we attempt to lose our egos and just become ... become that which we are meant to be. Our communities are more than the sum of the parts because they are based on the 'spaces in-between' the parts - they are based on the relationships. I was listening to a TV programme about swing bands and someone was talking about the Duke Ellington Band and how they had been together for some thirty plus years and the person was describing the knowingness between musicians based on the years of playing together.

I was reminded of a time when a relative newcomer volunteered to co-ordinate a music hall night which involved getting tickets done, tickets sold, getting people to volunteer to participate (sing, play an instrument or read a poem), getting music sorted, getting a pianist, and overseeing everything else. Someone had the idea of a fish and chip supper which an old-timer helped with as he knew a local chippy and another newish person was on mushy pea duty. Our co-ordinator was very anxious as she had not experienced the meeting house community in action as a body - this is not to say that some very hard work and well thought out planning didn't occur - but it is to say that people worked as a self-organising group, bringing what they were to co-create a wonderful evening. Our co-ordinator was surprised and delighted at how the thing had come together. As with the Duke Ellington Band it does take time to create a knowing community.

And third - the emerging nature of the group as it opens itself up to new members. My view is that communities have to be comfortable and confident in themselves before they open themselves up to large numbers of new people. There may be people who find us and are keen to get involved - so we will be welcoming and invite people to join us - but we want our communities to be the best that they can be so that new people come, get involved and stay. At what point do we feel that we are ready for new people? I purposefully use the word 'feel' in this question because I think it is about feeling rather than thinking. I think that its when we start to feel that being a loving and caring community is coming naturally - that we are at ease with ourselves - that we can give our time and attention to new people because the community itself thrives without a lot of extra effort. It is when we are an attractive, enticing and warm place to be - where people can feel the joy as they walk through the door.

This can be difficult if there are only three people in a congregation but these things can be done - but before advertising what you are, become want you truly want to be.

Healthy communities

2010-08-24T09:45:00.009+01:00

Whilst I am off at a bit of a tangent - there are more community development models coming - it occurred to me that it is not just about how strong a community is but also how healthy. So what do we mean by healthy communities or organisations? If we think about ourselves then does health just mean the absence of illness - sometimes illness is a sign of health - for example being sick when you've eaten a dose of salmonella is the best thing to do; or being depressed when a loved one is very ill or has died is a healthy response to pain and loss. So health is not about the absence of symptoms.

There is something about the strength of our immune systems, something about how strong our organs and bones are and something about emotional robustness amongst other things. Anne Odin Heller in her book, Churchworks: A Well-body Book for Congregations writes of congregations as bodies with these analogies

• Brain: Core documents of your congregation
• Breath and Spirit: Animating congregational life
• Circulatory System: Nourishing healthy congregations
• Ears: Fostering good communications
• Eyes: Developing a congregational future
• Feet: Public relations and evangelism
• Hands: Social action and spiritual growth
• Heart: Creating and nurturing ministry
• Liver: Dealing with congregational conflict
• Reproductive Systems: Membership development
• Skeleton: Congregational structures
• Skin, Hair, Teeth and Nails: Better, more attractive buildings
• Stomach: Financial nourishment and stewardship

This is an interesting take on how congregations and communities run and how healthy they are.

However I think that perhaps the section on the brain might refer to leadership rather than to congregational documents and there is no overall view - the holistic view of the 'body'. There also needs to be something about the body in movement, for life requires movement and therefore change. I also think that each local faith community has choices to make - there is not just one good way to be, different circumstances and different people require different approaches. Having said all this I like this book and find it useful when thinking about congregational structures etc.

From the New South Wales Government website (where else?!) comes these

The five characteristics of emotionally healthy organisations

1. Validation of emotions
2. Appropriate emotional authenticity
3. Healthy & appropriate boundaries
4. Absence of organisational taboos
5. Culture supportive of constructive conflict

These appear to be more holistic in nature and something that we could perhaps work with as faith communities.

There are more theoretical approaches for envisaging healthy communities and organisations which I will write about next time.

How strong are our communities?

2010-08-17T17:53:00.004+01:00

How do you measure how strong (not how large) our faith communities are? Humour me - I know that people think that there are some things which aren't measurable but I think most things can be evidenced if not measured even if that is taking a photo or asking a simple question or often by just observing.

I have been moved to think about this when eavesdropping on some conversations and reflecting on what has happened - I will only reflect on 2010 but these sorts of things have been going on for years.

K has been out walking with V and her new dog. K takes her daughter too - people getting to know each other know and share their love of animals. For our monthly walks we have had four since January ending up at people's houses where the inhabitant has catered for many hungry walkers - inviting people into their personal space and having their homes on show. A newish member B had a significant birthday and a surprise party to which we were invited - she was thrilled. Another B, J and others bring in plants, flowers and vegetables for people - I have something growing in my garden which has come from someone else's. D sends flowers and cards to people for their birthdays and special occasions from us all - but she and her husband pay for these. I have occasionally been surprised when we've been thanked for some flowers when I have been unaware that we have sent any. Three women have decided to take off to distant shores and are having a great time planning this together - two of the women are relative newcomers.

We share genuine friendship and this is made real by the many little kindnesses and the connections within the bigger whole. The network which is our community is strong at each link. Can you manufacture this? Can you encourage this? One way surely is to spend time together - our monthly lunches and monthly walks (plus harder walks for the fit ones including our minister) are times when individual friendships are forged and they take on a life outside of the larger community.

So I think that the strength of communities can be measured although I suspect we would not want to do it. But we could measure how many times people text, phone, write, email each other. How many cups of tea are shared with a fellow traveller? How many birthday cards and greetings we get from each other? How many holidays are shared? We could measure it but perhaps just evidencing it with conversation, photos and blogs is enough.

Community Development Models

2010-08-11T13:05:00.003+01:00

Because community development covers a whole range of ideas it is difficult to get a handle on some of the models but I will mention a few over the next few postings.

The first is one that I used when talking with my community about how to develop a sense of belonging to develop a sense of community.

The diagram come from a PhD thesis by Alastair Iain McIntosh which looks at liberation theology and community empowerment in land reform. But it speaks to me of community development in many arenas.

This diagram gives us plenty to think about and echoes much of what has been written about growth for example about agreeing our identity as a faith community, by discussing and living common values and by actively participating in social action, within and without.

But perhaps we don't talk so much about grounding and about place. Alastair writes this about place, it is "the synthesis of nature and culture, a very human, warm, sense of the context of belonging". There is so much written about the physical enviroment and how it impacts on human behaviour. We understand how people when forced to live away from home feel rootless and dispossessed. And many of us spend many hours cleaning, repairing and renovating our spaces because that's what we do, rather than perhaps more purposefully because this space matters as it is where our spiritual life as a community is grounded.

When I am alone in our Meeting House I usually slip into the chapel, if just for a moment, to express my love for and gratitude to the building. Whilst I believe that our lives as they are lived in their entirety are spiritual and we do not only have spiritual experiences in sacred buildings, there is something reassuring to have a beloved space which is shared with my own beloved community.

Difficult people

2010-07-31T09:01:00.008+01:00

Yesterday I had a lovely moment. This was not with any Unitarians but with people on a board that I chair. Should I have written this in my governance blog? Perhaps but it seems more appropriate here because of what it reinforces for in me. I have to go back to give my lovely moment a context.

I was drafted into this board by the vice-chair some four years ago - her words were along the lines of, 'we need a bomb under us and I think that you could be that bomb'. I quickly grasped that they were not focused on everything that they needed to be focused on and set about upsetting things by setting out what I thought needed to be done - more meetings, more understanding of what was happening, with better reporting etc etc. We had no staff just a managing agent for a property that we owned and some admin and finance support from the local council.

At some point the chair in his late 70s decided he couldn't cope any longer so my friend became chair and I was elevated to vice-chair. I could see that one man on the board was not happy. I have had cordial relationships with this man but he has been a real conservative balking at many of the changes and not accepting majority board decisions. Earlier this year I was catapulted into the position of chair as my friend's husband was dying. This really cheered up this chap - the last phone call I had with him was to let him know about our AGM - he does email very sporadically despite being a local councillor - I was being helpful and I got a mouthful about him being unhappy with a number of things.

I spoke with the vice-chair who is focused on the developments and does not want anyone to stand in the way of these. I then wrote several angry letters and kept the last one - thinking that I would send it to this man if his negative attitude continued. At the AGM he turned up late, made a contribution of sorts and left after the meeting before lunch when we were schmoozing with potential local partners.

Yesterday was our first full board meeting after the AGM and I was ready. I was thinking how I would handle him if he started to kick-off about unnecessary changes. And lo and behold - he finally became engaged with the new changes. This didn't happen at the beginning of the meeting but as we ploughed through a mountain of business I think he finally saw what we were trying to do - to improve things for the local town and for people within it.

During the meeting we discussed getting some information about the history of the building - I thought to myself, all in cliches, 'in for a penny, in for a pound' and 'into the lion's den' as I suggested that I would be prepared to come round to his house to talk about this. Which he agreed to.

We are looking to buy a new property - in a previous existence this property had been a pub that his grandmother ran over 100 years ago. At the end he came up to me and apologised for not pulling his weight before because he had been so busy with the General Election. Now that this was over he would be devoting more time to the organisation. He said that he was very excited about the new developments. We have this man on board - this was my lovely moment. There will continue to be debate and perhaps some conflict but we are now all looking in the same direction.

Despite the letter still waiting to be posted (which I will root out and destroy) I believe that developing real personal relationships is the only way to do things. So I think when developing our local spiritual communities this is how we have to do things. We have to believe in the power of the group. We have to believe that everyone can be engaged with change - sometimes it takes time but being open to developing that relationship and trying to find the human being under all the difficulties has to be our first approach.

So when I read things which suggest that to get new people in we might have to get rid of existing people I am filled with dismay and disappointment. We should be bigger than this. Community development (or group develoment as with a board) is about trying to create right relationships with all. There may be a point when we have to give up but I think that if we do it right then people vote with their own feet when they find themselves unable to adapt to new circumstances - but this should be a long way down the line.

And just as it is suggested that we develop new ways of doing things to suit newcomers we need to be mindful of developing new things for the old stagers who may want something different perhaps reflecting how things used to be.

One of our hymns goes, 'All are welcome here' - we should perhaps have brackets after this with (including those people who are awkward, cantankerous and resistant to change).

Growth and/ or development

2010-07-29T08:56:00.006+01:00

Do growth and development mean the same thing? A brief surf of the Internet suggests that they don't. Here's one phrase that I found: Growth is related to increase in quantity of what we already have whereas development means both quantitative and qualitative improvement. That's the basic difference.

Within the UK Unitarian community there is talk of growth and the need to grow or die - growth is spoken about in terms of numbers and to a lesser extent in terms of our communities growing together. The EC has produced quite a lot of material in order to help congregations to grow which can be found here. This may or may not be helpful given the situation that your community finds itself in.

If we look at the more broader term of development then what is it that you want to develop? This will be unique to your community - who is a part of that, what they bring and where they want to be going. You have to develop trusting relationships and think about how to do things a little differently - easing yourselves into a new way of being.

In our local community we wanted to develop a loving community which supported its current members in their spiritual seeking and spiritual development. To focus on the quality of relationships within the community and to shape the community and its activities so that it enabled people to be authentic in their spirituality, enabling them to give as well as take and enabling them to be part of the co-creation of the community. The focus has not just been within the community but that was where we started.

For all communities it is about starting where you are - if what you do does not serve you well it is unlikely to serve anyone else well. But there is always something that you do that pleases you - what is that and how can you develop that more?

Back to community

2010-07-27T13:09:00.006+01:00

I have strayed a little so now back to community development - well to the community bit.

Communities are communities because there share something. It is often about sharing geographic space as with a local neighbourhood but it may also be a sense of shared experience (as with people who have a certain disability) or a shared approach to life (as with faith communities).

We can be torn apart by focusing on those things that we don't share - by our differences. And we can be put back together again by focusing on those things that we do share.

One of the things that we did at our local Meeting House was to agree on some values - the ones that we hoped that we shared. First what do we mean by a value? I see values as describing words - like adjectives and adverbs. It's not who we are or what we do but how we are and how we do things. It is our principles which define the 'what' and the values which describe the 'how'.

We came up with six values

** Welcoming
** Friendly
** Open
** Respecting
** Caring
** Comfortable

We hope that all we do is done in the spirit of these values and do ask new people if their experience reflects our values. Values are for testing and reminding us of our commitments to each other and to the wider world.

Perhaps if you are stuck and want to move forwards but feel perhaps like an un-community, it would be worth taking time to focus on the very real and very valuable things that you share together. Then as mentioned in the Solutions Focused posting you build on those good things that you share to develop your community.

Web presence

2010-07-25T08:36:00.002+01:00

Most Unitarian communities now have a website - if you don't then you must.

Locally many of our new people come through our website. If you don't have a website then you won't have this opportunity to attract people - this is not about selling ourselves but about letting people know that we exist. I, like many people, would have been a Unitarian many years before I did if I had heard about Unitarianism earlier.

Getting a website is easy now as the DUWIT (Design of Unitarian Websites & IT) team have set up an easy website process.

Having a web presence (a website) shows the world that you are there - it is an important message - to be open to the world.

Solutions focused

2010-07-20T10:47:00.003+01:00

Much of organisational development work takes on a deficit tackling approach - it asks people to think of the problems that they and the organisation experience and then seeks ways to overcome those problems. The difficulty with this approach is that you focus a lot of energy on what doesn't work and forget to look at what does.

A solutions focused approach suggests that we

* Don’t fix what isn’t broken
* Find what works, and do more of it.
* Stop doing what doesn’t work, and do something else.

Taken from the Solutions Focus website.

Which sounds easy enough but what does that mean in practice? For example you are really worried about the number of people coming to services - it is dwindling. What to do - should you do more posters and fliers, should you put a bright poster on you external notice board, should you put an advert in the paper? None of these things - at least not in the first instance.

First think about when you do get a few more people - it may be at baby-naming ceremonies, for harvest or at Christmas. Think about why those events work - and then ask can we do more? So they might work because people invite friends and family to special events - so

** have a few more special events. Do not overstretch yourselves - special events cannot happen all the time or they are no longer special.
** invite people to your usual services. Perhaps you could extend your ideas on whom to ask along. Do you talk about your faith to others? I was chatting to my reflexologist and kept mentioning (probably most weeks as we discussed spirituality quite a bit) our services and one that I was planning. She decided to give us a try and now she, her daughter and her mother are active members.
** invite another congregation to share a service either another Unitarian one nearby or with another faith community - there may be friends and family of people in the other Unitarian congregation who live nearby who could be invited or you may find people in another local congregation who have never been to you and having been once may come again;
** most importantly think what works for you and do more of that - you identify the problem and then ask when does this problem not happen? Focus on those exceptions and do more to make those exceptions happen more frequently.

It is also useful to ask yourself what skills and interests there are in the community. At our local meeting house we had lots of people who liked to walk so we started a monthly walking group - which has now been going for nearly three years. Other people (family and friends) will come along to walks when you can talk with them and find out what they may be looking for in a faith community and you might get some pointers about what would attract them.

I hope that this posting shows that developing your faith community is about focusing on what you can do - alone or with help - and not about focusing on the problems. It is also about doing what works for you rather than following a list of actions which do not necessarily relate to what works well for you and yours. And always keep smiling! What we have is precious.

A starting point?

2010-07-18T11:03:00.003+01:00

From the outset I think that we all have to start from where we are – the communities that we cherish are all very different, with different strengths and different visions. We are different sizes and at different stages. Some have full-time ministers, one or two may have other paid people e.g. lay leaders, some have a part-time minister, some have support from a district worker and some are wholly run by community members. Some communities are vibrant and eagerly look for development, some appear less energised and perhaps less keen to develop different ways of being.

Whatever you experience in your local community there are some decisions that you have to make if you are committed to working with others to develop your faith community. If this were a workplace you may have away-days with a paid consultant to find out how people think and feel and work on discovering a way to move forward. This can happen for local faith communities but it is more often over a cuppa after a service during conversations that we get a feeling for how people are thinking and feeling. It is a much less formal approach, more subtle and takes longer.

Sometimes communities are up for significant change and sometimes you get the feeling that the time for change may be a year or two off. So what do you do then? You build relationships – you have the vision in your mind about how you think things should be and seek out others who think like you – you gauge how others feel and you find ways to build up the internal relationships within your community.

I also think that if you can you ensure that people who come along to services or walks or craft groups take some responsibility for something – be it bringing the biscuits, washing up or leading a service. People are more committed to something if they have invested and continue to invest their personal time and effort into it.

But most importantly you need to focus on what you do well. Don’t linger on what doesn’t work unless if you don’t tackle it you will be in trouble. Focus on what you do well and do more of that – it is easier and you are more likely to experience success.

Community or congregation?

2010-07-15T16:15:00.004+01:00

Some may have seen this before as I put it into the last Associate Newsletter. I have also let others see it. It is important that the language that we use to describe our spiritual communities reflects what they truly are and to do this we need to reflect on our language and use it mindfully.

In faith or religious organisations we may refer to a congregation which literally means to herd or to flock together. This suggests that those people being referred to are those who ‘herd together’ at a service. The word community means (from its Latin root) ‘sharing in common’ and from its Greek it means ‘fellowship’. This suggests a broader definition and includes people who may not be there at services but sharing something else in common and suggests a meaningful link between individuals rather than just sharing a worship space.

This blog is about community development rather than just congregation development. A faith community may hold a congregation within in it but it may also contain broader connections outside of the congregation and want to develop the connections within - that is between community members. The members of the General Assembly (of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches) are also a community and therefore open to being developed.

Essentially the development of spiritual communities is about the development of individual relationships where the reason for developing these relationships is the desire to enhance spiritual connectedness.

Developing Spiritual Community - what this blog is about

2010-07-15T16:04:00.000+01:00

This blog has started from my desire to see the development of Unitarian communities in the UK. Many of the approaches that have been suggested recently take a marketing approach where Unitarianism is a product and if we only marketed it differently we would 'sell' more of it. The model adopted in this blog is one which sees local Unitarian communities as just that - communities - which most community members are committed to developing.

I shall look at a number of community development ideas and approaches from other disciplines to help people see beyond ideas such as the distribution of leaflets and market analysis which are currently being offered as a way forward. I hope that this will be of help to some.