Rocky roads

If we are truly taking the path less travelled then we are likely to hit some rocky situations. We are likely to trip, become tired and irritable, become lost and bewildered or just plain fed up. Perhaps we want to go back and take the other path, we're fed up with the challenges and the uncertainties. Except, of course, we can't. Living a life of faith means going where and when the spirit moves us.


When we are attempting to do this within a faith community we have to work out for ourselves how we deal with our frustrations - personal and community-focused. We are all called to have faith. Faith in the road - not necessarily any particular direction - but in the imperative to keep putting one foot in front of the other on this road.


However we deal with our frustrations we need to do this in love - with compassion for ourselves and our beloved companions. And with gratitude - because these glitches, these stumblings, these times when we say,'Hold on am I really in the right place?' or 'Am I really with the right people?' are times of grace. If we can hold to our authentic selves - if we can accept that usually (but not always) at least half of the problems stem from us - and if we can give ourselves time to travel within, then my experience tells me that the hard times and how they are dealt with herald real personal growth. For this we should indeed offer sincere thanks.


So how, within any group or community, do we make it OK for people to express their unhappiness without those hearing the words feeling defensive, hurt or helpless? I think that there probably are no rules apart from the need to accept as a community that this is OK. I have seen people walk away because of a piece of behaviour or one approach or some words said in anger or frustration. There are times when I have felt like doing this myself. And in some instances I have walked away from people and groups. But never in haste, never in anger and never without being certain that I get more pain than joy from the situation.


It is very difficult to deal with internal problems for communities which maybe only meet weekly, fortnightly or monthly. The storming can seem to go on for years when if we saw each other every day the storming would be over much more quickly. When I work with voluntary organisations experiencing difficulties I often advise them to go back to basics - to look at their governing document and their aims. In developing spiritual community we often need to return to our purpose - what we collectively and individually are within this community for. And perhaps sometimes we need to re-find our purpose. It can so easily get lost in the need to do things like looking after the building and focusing on growth in numbers.


There are times when we feel that our needs are not being met - perhaps we have changed or other people have. At this point we need to faithfully take the next step on the road, with our communities or not, as the spirit leads us, or in some cases as the spirit pushes us.

Communities as families

Sometimes communities can become like families. To some this can be comforting, to some stifling and to some exhausting. Those of us who seem to find ourselves effortlessly taking on a mothering role can find ourselves experiencing similar emotions to being at home. We value the role but could do without the added responsibilities. We can endlessly moan or we can do something ourselves to adjust how people perceive us and what we do. 


Some things are just simple little irritations. A small task force for an organisation that I chair has produced some papers for us all to read - one person is not on email. Thankfully I was not asked to print them out and send them but I was asked for the person's address. I have been sending out contact updates for the past three years and the last one was sent in February. Is it just easier to ask me than to look (echoes of having a child at home!) or can't they be bothered to file what I send them? Another example was with a planning application that will affect another organisation - I sent out the details asking others to comment directly to the council. Someone sent me their views asking me to submit them. Why? 


Some things are slightly more significant. Having just spent a congregational weekend alone - many people having originally been excited about the prospect and then one by one people dropping out - I have had a sharp lesson in how not to work within community. How not to go forward thinking that everyone is with you, thinking that because many people say that they are with you that they will be there at the end. Despite our communities being built on trust sometimes we need to formalise that a bit more. To make a commitment something that we sign up to. And in some cases something we hand money over to secure.


On Facebook a week or so ago there was a conversation about membership and one person seemed to be talking about it as if it was just one way - as a member you got something from your community. But in our communities membership is a mutual relationship - we take and we give. But they are not like families - there is no mother, no father - no-one is a child unless they are children. We must attempt to grow our communities as adults together - each of us experience difficulties in our lives and need a bit of help at times. But no-one should feel that they are only there to give, no-one should feel that they are only there to receive - it is about finding balance. Only then will all the flowers bloom in our metaphorical garden.

Divine stirrings

Last night we had our monthly Monday Gathering. It is attended by a small number of people - last night there were six of us. We have a theme and then the leader has music and words on that theme. Last night our Danny led us in 'that small voice within'. It was a great opportunity to consider whether we believe in such things which we may call divine guidance and eventually may lead us onto discussions about our conceptions of God/gods/the divine/ the non-material world. We had a discussion and one left and then another two. Three of us stayed behind and discussed further our own understandings and our own beliefs.


Sometimes it is such a relief to be talking about things of the spirit. Not everyone believes in a spiritual world in Unitarian communities and sometimes it is not a place that we dare to go to very often. Whilst it is great to spend time with people discussing how to behave, about social action or about inter-faith dialogue, sometimes, just sometimes I want to talk about spirituality. I want to experience the divine. The previous Monday Gathering had been just we three - all of us had concerns about our children - so we sat and focused on healing for ourselves and our children - it was powerful stuff.


It is this experience of something unknowable but very real, of connection and faith, which moves me and is what I came to church for. I use this term quite deliberately - church as a place to experience spirituality within community. I suspect that it is not possible to connect so profoundly in a larger group in particular as there are people who do not experience anything which may be called the divine. So we dilute our spiritual experience during the Sunday service - we need to ensure that all our comfortable. But we need to ensure that there are other opportunities to share more deeply with those whose understanding resonates with ours. 


It is this dichotomy - those who believe in the a divinity/a spirit world and those who don't - which impacts on my experience of religion and not the tensions between theologies which to me seem minor when we actually talk with each other about what we mean when we use the word God, or we talk of Jesus or Mary or the Buddha or whoever. Actually sharing a belief in the divine seems to me like a real bond. Although I think that it is probably when we talk that we fall out rather than when we take time to experience things together.


Long may my local community contain people who are moved by experiences of the divine. Long may it contain those who don't. And long may we continue to explore these things amicably together and amicably apart.

A sense of place

Local communities are about people. But is that all? 


It is interesting to note how many Unitarian websites have the picture of a building on their home page. I considered this for ours and decided against it - I wanted the community to appear to be bigger than just the building. I also purposefully chose the domain name 'staffordshire-unitarans.net' to denote that people came from all over Staffordshire (and some from Cheshire but that would make the name a bit long) and to denote a network rather than .org or .co for an organisation or a company. Perhaps people don't notice those things but it was important for me - I wanted the greatest flexibility and the greatest sense of inclusion.


And yet ... I was at the Meeting House yesterday with Barbara, cleaning up. We hadn't done it properly for a couple of months so although it was tidy it was a little grubby in corners. It looked lovely afterwards. I have to say that the Meeting House does make my heart sing and my soul smile. Some people are unemotional about buildings but I expect that the vast majority of us are very fond, perhaps even love, some buildings and not just our own homes.


Our Meeting House was built on a shoestring in 1717 so it is not per se a beautiful building. I am not a particularly visual person and cannot imagine any photograph could encapsulate what I feel about the Meeting House or the chapel within it. When we use the word 'home' we can feel a warm fuzziness full of emotional content. How would I encapsulate that for our beloved Meeting House? Perhaps I don't have to. Perhaps people have to experience it themselves.


So back to the original question - is a community just about people? I don't think so. It is about how humans and their sacred space interact. To some extent the building represents the continuity of the community. Whilst we may disagree about how much importance, time, effort and money we expend on our buildings, we recognise their importance to that thing that we call spiritual community.

That multi-faceted jewel

It is often difficult to define what holds a local Unitarian community together let alone our national and international community. To be able to call ourselves a community we must share something.  As a faith community I would suggest that what we share is faith. But what does this mean?  


I recently read something which advertised us as a faith for all beliefs and none.  But does anyone exist without beliefs? Probably not - so is this about a belief in God? Either you believe in God or you don't (however you may describe God) - or you simply don't know. Is this statement saying that we are a faith for theists, agnostics and atheists? In this sense it is not a belief in God which identifies you as a Unitarian. But what does? 


The thing that communities share is the thing that not only includes but it also excludes. If not then we are describing humanity. As a Unitarian community we do not want to be there for everyone whatever their beliefs. There are clearly some beliefs which we do not accept - religious beliefs which we believe are inherently un-Unitarian. Which takes us back to an old chestnut - describing Unitarians by what we don't believe rather than by what we do.


If we are going to become more distinctive as a faith in these changing times we need to focus on what we are. The glue that makes the diversity of Unitarian experience, thought and belief coalesce into a meaningful whole. Whilst not all people who attend Unitarian services will call themselves Unitarians and whilst we have people with dual or multiple allegiances there is a core to our beliefs when we are in community. 


As I was sitting at our District Songs of Praise on Sunday, having been to my own community's Sunday morning service, I felt a real sense of community with people who I knew believed very different things from me. I sang hymns which I would not normally sing. Whilst singing the words I knew were meaningful to others I gave them my own meaning. I found great joy in being able to love what they loved.


As a glass half-full sort of a pragmatist I am aware that I see sun where many see shadows. Whilst I may not agree with people about Jesus' role in my own religious experience I can relate to the meaning that this gives to people's lives.  I can relate to hope, to love and to doing the right thing. I can relate to a sense of something more powerful than me.  I can relate to wanting to show reverence . 


This may not be enough for some people but for me it is what I value in our diverse community.  We try to find shared meaning and understanding - we try to find the ties that bind. We try to see past language and individual belief to the whole - that multi-faceted jewel of which we only glimpse a part.

Leadership as service

Many of our problems in life come from how we communicate with each other - the giving of opinion and information and the receiving of both. Having just had a fairly controversial piece (on the 2020 Programme concerned with congregation planting) published in the Inquirer, it is fascinating to observe how people have interpreted it. The views that worry me are those who think that I am (a) being negative and (b) against change. 


It is always easier to make a sweeping judgement - we do these things all the time. I say 'we' because I see myself doing it. It is always easier to label the person that we don't agree with as 'other' - to give them characteristics that we don't consider ourselves to have ... being negative, anti-change, conservative, old-fashioned and so on. What this does is close down debate - if there is one.  On the issue that I have written about there has been no debate outside of the General Assembly's Executive Committee and staff, or if there has it has been carried out in private.


I could go on about this particular issue but this is not my point.  My point is about how we develop spiritual community. I will re-post a section from my other blog, Governance4Unitarians



The Charity Commission identifies six key principles for good governance. The last of these is being open and accountable. It says this


An effective board will provide good governance and leadership by being open and accountable.  The Board will lead the organisation in being open and accountable, both internally and externally. This will include:

• open communications, informing people about the organisation and its work;
• appropriate consultation on significant changes to the organisation’s services or policies
• listening and responding to the views of supporters, funders, beneficiaries, service users and others with an interest in the organisation’s work;
• handling complaints constructively and effectively; and
• considering the organisation’s responsibilities to the wider community, for example its environmental impact.

Whilst, as someone remarked to me, we do not need to be driven by the Charity Commission in all that we do, I do think that as Unitarians we should welcome and promote open and accountable governance. In co-creating spiritual community we need to hear what people are truly saying; we need to try not to label them, as a way to argue against them, but engage with the issues;and those of us who lead our local or national communities need to be accountable.



As leaders, we are not just accountable for a bit of what we do, we are accountable for all of it. We are not at war with those that we lead, we are serving them.

Pastoral care

I visited one of our old members on Saturday.  I have not seen her for ages.  She was 99 the next day and has severe dementia.  She did not recognise me or even remember the Meeting House. I felt very sad as I sat with her, holding her hand, barely speaking.  She had a TV guide in front of her and was trying to make sense of it. The dates which were in the previous week did not help. I had written out a card and put her address on the envelope in case I hadn't had time to visit. She kept reading this and knew that the place was a home but did not recognise that that's where she lived. I slid it into my bag.


I have worked in social services and within communities but I have not come across dementia very much. I was concerned at my lack of knowledge and my being stumped in terms of how I might be able to help. Sometimes, probably most times, we just want to make things better. It seems to me that if we are to offer pastoral support that sometimes we need professional support. I thought that next time I might take some photos of when she attended the Meeting House but will that help?


I am moved to ask how we respond as communities when people are unable to connect with us, not because they don't want to but because they can't? Do they ever stop being one of us? We are fairly lucky although we only have a very part-time minister he does do pastoral visits and several other community members keep in touch with those who can no longer get to us. The National Unitarian Fellowship provides an opportunity to make links with others but that is perhaps a little impersonal for some. It is the human contact between people who have shared a worship space and a loving community.


Can all communities and congregations provide support to all its members that cannot get to services? What do we know about the needs for support at home or in residential care? Sometimes the support we are called to provide is to relatives. And then there is the sticky question of the funeral - although we all need to think about this I suppose. I would like to see us provide much more help in supporting the giving of pastoral care. I don't know what training ministers get but I haven't seen anything for lay people.


Pastoral care is love in action, often it goes unnoticed in the larger scheme of things, but always it is valued and very much appreciated.