The inspiring Bruce Findlow

Blog by Graham Williams from an address by him at New Meeting House

 We in the British Unitarian movement have a rich heritage to call upon when we think of some of the notable people who have espoused our beliefs. We need only to think of some of the great scientists who rejected the accepted doctrine of the day and found their way to Unitarianism: Joseph Priestley, Isaac Newton, Alexander Bell, and others, as well as great literary figures like Coleridge, Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and many others like Beatrix Potter, George Eliot who, if not full Unitarians, had Unitarian leanings. That's not to ignore figures like Josiah Wedgewood, Florence Nightingale and great thinkers like James Martineau- the list is endless.

 At the same time we should not disregard some of the more modern protagonists of Unitarianism. Look at the green hymn book (Hymns for Living) and study the words of such people as Frank Clabburn, Sydney Knight, John Andrew Storey, Cliff Reed, amongst others, and you begin to realise that not only do we have a rich heritage but this heritage is still alive and kicking.

Freeing school meals

Post by Ash

It`s very easy in difficult times, to batten down the hatches and look after number one. Balancing the  natural determination to protect our own position, and the well-being of family and friends , against the innate need in most to support the weakest, becomes increasingly challenging. It`s easier to justify `turning our heads`. The political and media atmosphere and frequently, even the air of local conversation , are littered with caution about `wasting` even more resource . We all have to bear the pain we are reasonably told, even the poor.  It`s easier for us to be anecdotal about a scrounging sub-culture, undeserving of `handouts`; benefits reforms we may nod , are essential.

Logic of course dictates the need for caution. In common with much of the western world we are effectively `bust`. But the path to economic absolution requires long-sightedness that guards against even greater inequalities between people, down the line. Reforms and actions taken now, in the heat of austerity, must be fair to all.

So it`s an unpromising side-effect to the Government`s attempt to replace the over-complicated benefit system with a system of Universal Credit, that a significant number of our poorest families may lose access to Free School Meals once this reform is introduced.

The Children`s Society estimates that under current proposals due to be phased in from April 2013, an earnings threshold of £7,500 means that to be `passported` onto eligibility for Free School Meals, 120,000 families will be faced with the prospect of either cutting their working hours or taking a pay cut-ironically the very thing Universal Credit is attempting to prevent.

The alternative to this they estimate, is that 330,000 of our poorest children currently receiving Free School Meals ,will no longer do so, and that those families will become ,relatively speaking, poorer than if they were to remain on benefits. In addition, the obvious long-term health benefits accruing to those children from a guaranteed daily nutritious meal will be lost.

Help! I'm downshifting ….

Post by Liz
This is the new buzz word. It's cool and it's the trendy new movement, what it actually means is simplifying your life and deciding how you can live your life in accordance with your spiritual principles or ethical beliefs. The reason I'm shouting help is because it is much harder than you can imagine.

 My husband and I are slowly a little bit at a time, making changes in our lives so we can better live according to our beliefs. I have to say Martin feels the courage of his convictions more profoundly than I, in many ways he is my inspiration and I know he draws strength from his Quaker faith and testimony. Living your life in a simple way sounds fairly easy doesn't it? But many of us have been living quite a materialistic life, one that our Grandparents and Great Grandparents could only dream of. We are bombarded from birth with advertising and how we are 'entitled' to this and to that. Our lives are incredibly busy, rushing here there and everywhere, bleeping phones, endless emails, we can be found anywhere in the world. Big Brother watches over us and the big corporation supermarkets supply us with an endless array of relatively cheap goods of food and clothing.

Blissful in our ignorance we don't think where our food comes from, how it is produced, where our clothes come from and who makes them. We are happy putting our empty packaging in the recycling bin once a fortnight. Our rubbish is taken from us and hidden away. We turn on the tap without thinking, perhaps even leaving it on for a minute or two unnecessarily. We have light at the flick of a switch not caring how perhaps we are using up our resources. People drive their petrol guzzling cars even if they are too big for their real needs, but they will say they are entitled to them, they paid for them what business is it of anyone’s? We are used to convenience at others expense and it's comforting, it keeps a thin line of padding between us and the real world. We have forgotten many of our skills once so natural to us, we rely on stuff to make life happen for us. Many of us have abdicated responsibility.

Budgeting for responsibility ?

Post by Ash
A budget speech from any Chancellor of the Exchequer can generally be relied upon to stir the emotions. Yesterday`s speech by George Osborne was no exception. The following extract though is about a very different kind of `budget`- that of a `life well-led`. It`s taken from the `The Ethics Of Responsibility` by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and perhaps provides us all with a few fundamental reminders of the things that should really be `taxing` us.

`More than any previous generation in history, we have come to see the individual as the sole source of meaning.....But this selfish quest must surely be wrong. A life....spent pursuing the satisfaction of desire is less than satisfying and never actually provides all we desire. So it is worth reminding ourselves that there is such a thing as ethics, and it belongs to the life we live together and the goods we share—the goods that only exist in virtue of being shared.

This speaks to one of Judaism’s most distinctive and challenging ideas: the ethics of responsibility, the idea that God invites us to become, in the rabbinic phrase, His “partners in the work of creation.” .......Life is God’s call to responsibility and this ethic is the best answer I know to the meaning and meaningfulness of life.

When I first became a rabbi, the most difficult duty I had to perform was a funeral service. New to the position and the people, I often hardly knew the deceased, while to everyone else present he or she had been a member of the family, or an old and close friend. There was nothing to do but to get help from others. I would ask them what the person who had died meant to them. It did not take long before I recognized a pattern in their replies.
Usually they would say the deceased had been a supportive husband or wife, a loving parent, a loyal friend. They spoke about the good they had done to others, often quietly, discreetly, without ostentation. When you needed them, they were there. They shouldered their responsibilities to the community. They gave to charitable causes, and if they could not give money, they gave time. Those most mourned and missed were not the most successful, rich, or famous. They were the people who enhanced the lives of others. These were the people who were loved.

State sponsored Britishness?

Post by Liz.
There has been a great deal of talk in recent weeks of what it means to be British. Many people cry out that we have lost our identity or that our identity is being taken away from us. The Government is on a campaign to right this terrible wrong. Christianity is to be put at the fore, bibles are to be issued to every school child in Britain whether they welcome it or not, the Forward being written by non other than the Godly Gove himself. History of Empire will be taught with greater gusto in schools and our children will feel proud to be British. We shall turn our faces away from un-British things such as poverty and homelessness, we shall celebrate the mighty Olympics and worship our sporting heroes and ignore the fact that people are being priced out from their rented accommodation for this occasion, that people's homes have been destroyed and allotments given to these (not well off) people in perpetuity have been concreted over. There will be no such thing as increased human trafficking and prostitution, the 'riff-raff' are to be cleared from the London streets as I write. We shall ignore the approximately 14 billion it is costing in these times of austerity, which is more than enough to save welfare and the NHS. But I'm sure it will be a grand spectacle, I don't know, because I will not be watching it. But no one does pomp and circumstance like the British eh?

Metta matters

Post by Liz

Metta – The Practice of Loving-Kindness

I've been thinking about many things today. I have much to write about at the moment, there are many concerns both at home in our country and in the wider world and a great many wrongs being committed. The world feels particularly unbalanced at the moment. Sometimes I seem to be on an endless campaign taking up hours of my time passing on information, signing petitions, writing letters, just being generally bothersome both to the people I'm targeting and my family and friends, who probably by now just roll their eyes and think 'Oh, she's off on one again.' I could write a near endless list of all the wrongs in the world from the seeming callousness of Government, the greed of capitalism destroying the only home we have and the lives of human and non-human in it's wake. The horrors of war and genocide and the constant drum beat and sabre rattling towards Iran. The poverty, inequality, and cruelty. And I rage. Some may say I am just passionate about these things. But some days I really do rage against the injustices in the world. Some days it overwhelms me and I feel helpless and hopeless. But I listened to someone speak today, amongst many things two words stood out particularly. Ethics and stillness.

Black and white

Post by Ash

The recent concern over acts of racism both proven and alleged within the Premier League (Suarez at Liverpool and Terry at Chelsea) remind us all that the spectre of discrimination within  our society is never that far away. After all, what we see on the field of play is often no more than a reflection of what we ourselves may experience in everyday life. Yes, great strides towards eliminating such prejudice have been made, and we can rightly be pleased by our standing as one of the most racially-integrated societies in the world. But then the reminders of the distance still to be travelled are rarely far away.