York Unitarian October - Unitarians in the UK & Ireland · The York Unitarian (October 2017) page 1 FROM THE MINISTER October seems to me a good month for settling in to Autumn. It’s

The York Unitarian (October 2017) page �1

FROM THE MINISTER

October seems to me a good month for settling in to Autumn. It’s definitely here! No more pining for maybe a few more days of summer. I love the leaves falling off the trees, the musty smell of Autumn pavements and parks. I revel in it and it was something I missed when I lived in sub-tropical Auckland. Most of the trees there were evergreen. I really like to know where I am in the year.

September has been a busy month with the Minister’s Autumn Conference on the t h e m e o f ‘Boundaries’ with a promise from the new Ministry and Congregational Life man Simon Bland promising he will b e p u t t i n g o u t suggested changes to the Guidelines for Ministers and Congregations and w o r k i s b e i n g carried out on a n e w C o d e o f C o n d u c t f o r Ministers.

I am a member of the committee of t h e U n i t a r i a n College in Manchester who have been working with our Executive Committee on the new t r a i n i n g a n d e d u c a t i o n p r o g r a m m e development. This will set up a Foundation to co-ordinate training for Ministers, Lay leaders, Service leaders and others just wanting to take a module or a day course. They are looking to provide a more flexible and accessible way for

people to train and a pilot programme will start to train ministry students in Autumn 2018.

I am so pleased to be in a ministry with a congregation who ”do things”. Last month we opened for Heritage open days and hosted an exhibition of charming paintings of Tibetan costumes for the Tibet Relief Fund. It’s great to be able to support other compassionate causes by using what we have, a building! I believe it is an important part of the Unitarian message of hospitality. As a part-time Minister I can’t do it all so it’s fantastic to have members with

connections and interests that we can support in the wider community.

The Unitarians have been around in York contributing to “relief of the i n d i g e n t ” f o r c e n t u r i e s , w e l l before the Welfare system, so it was a pleasure to attend t h e 3 0 0 t h A n n i v e r s a r y o f Colton’s Hospital Almshouses and learn a bit more about this historic charity and meet s o m e o f t h e residents.

All these events mean more people become aware of Unitarians and what we can offer and we have more new people attending Sunday services. As different people with different outlooks and histories join us our community changes and we learn and grow. Fantastic!

Nicky Jenkins


THE YORK UNITARIAN St. Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York YO1 8NQ

October 2017

Unitarian flaming chalice symbol

Unitarian Universalist Church Piedmont, North Carolina USA


OTHER EVENTS IN OCTOBER

• Monday 2 October 8.00p.m. Soon Amore rehearsal (Chapel)

• Tuesday 3 October York Interfaith Group Conflict Resolution: the Place of the Faiths Speaker: Revd Dr Inderjit Singh Bhogal OBE Chair: Mark Cosens; Host: Sr Patricia/Sr Agatha) (York Medical Society, Stonegate)

• Thursday 5 October 10.30 for 11.00a.m. Meditation Group (Upper Room)

• Saturday 7 October 1.00p.m. Late Music: Jennifer Cohen (flute) and Mark Hutchison (piano) (Chapel)

• Saturday 7 October 7.30 p.m. Late Music: Ebor Singers (Chapel)



• Friday 13 October 12.30p.m. Occasional Friday Music: Garland of Flutes (Chapel)

• Friday and Saturday 13 and 14 October Unitarian Theological Conference (Mill Hill Chapel, City Square, Leeds)

• Saturday 14 October Yorkshire Unitarian Union AGM (Pepper Hill Unitarian Chapel, Shelf, Halifax)

• Saturday 14 October 7.30p.m. Da Costa Academy of Singing (Chapel) £10



• Friday 20 October 11.00a.m -3.00p.m. Craft Day for Christmas Market (Chapel)

• Monday 22 October 8.00p.m. Soon Amore rehearsal (Chapel) • Wednesday 25 October 7.00p.m Chapel Poetry Group (Simon & Marta Hardy's)


• Friday 27 October 1.00p.m. Last Friday Music: Val Parker, mezzo-soprano (Chapel)

NOTICE OF SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING

A Special General Meeting of Members of the Congregation will take place on Sunday, 5th November, at 12 noon following the morning service to take forward proposals to become a Char i table Incorpora ted Organisation. A list of voting members will be on the Notice Board prior to the meeting. Non-members are welcome to attend and may speak but not vote.

Margaret Hill Secretary


A MONTH OF SUNDAYS at 11.00a.m.

Sunday 1 October Revd. Nicky Jenkins Membership Service

Music by David Hammond

Sunday 8 October Nick Morrice

Hope springs eternal Music by Helen Drewery

Sparklers at Great Hucklow!

Sunday 15 October Claire Lee

. . . and the day is my own Music by Nick Morrice

Sunday 22 October Bright Lights Intergenerational Worship

Claire Wilton and Dee Boyle Flying Free

including Tin Harvest for Carecent Music by David Hammond

Sunday 29 October Revd. Nicky Jenkins

Cafe Church Music by David Hammond

Nicky Jenkins celebrating her first anniversary as our minister


CREATIVE SERENDIPITY Sunday 27 August

We brought items to Chapel which we had created ourselves and spoke briefly about them. Here is what we brought:

• Peter Exley A blacksmith’s cross and nails. • Nick Morrice about his new novel ‘Castaways’ 16 children on a tropical island. • Brinley Price a sonnet ‘Forge’ for Laurie and Dave • Adrienne Wilson ‘Sugar plums' to eat and remembering John Yudkin. • Betty Rumsby a jumper she had knitted from wool which she had spun. • Joan Sinanan a special china mug which she had repaired. • Matthew Palmer a short piano improvisation. • Elizabeth Claughton paper collage • Laura Francis advent calendar bunting. • Diana Robinson a painting of Glenfinnan • Simon Hardy on a ‘creative Mexican mistake’. • Alan Pennington a teaching model made to show the structure of common salt. • Margaret Hill a quilted water lily pad made specially for the quiet room at Unitarian General Assembly 2003 in Edinburgh. • Jen spoke about taking up the BBC painting challenge. • Elizabeth Faiers silver pendants and earrings she had made. • Jenny Jacobs A victorian pattern ‘Lucy Boston inspired’ crazy patchwork tea cosy • Jen Atkinson A Bargello work cushion the making of which had helped her through a difficult time. • Barbara Barnes a picture of a child with curly Afro hair from her beginners art class. •Andrew Hill a new hymn about a chapel close by ‘a city wall’.


EVENTS SUPPORTING CARECENT

the breakfast centre for all homeless, unemployed or otherwise socially excluded

members of community based at Central Methodist Church, which is our neighbour at

the top of St. Saviourgate. Carecent is our Chapel’s 2017 chosen charity.

Sponsored Walk Sponsored 5 mile fund-raising walk, around

Welburn and the Castle Howard estate Saturday 30 September.

Meet outside Crown and Cushion pub in Welburn at 9.45a.m.

Enquiries to Alan Pennington <[email protected]>

01937 845575

Tin Harvest The tin harvest will be part of our

Bright Lights intergenerational worship on Sunday 22 October.

Care cent stocks are low and gifts of the following would be appreciated:

Tinned tomatoes (preferably whole not chopped)

Tinned meat which can be served cold – ham, spam, corned beef. Tinned hot dog sausages

Tinned spaghettiBaked beans

Breakfast cerealPorridge oats

Canned fish (especially other than tuna)Brown Sauce

Tomato Ketchup Tea

Instant CoffeeSugar

Marmite / Peanut butterTinned fruitFruit juice

Volunteers needed after the service to pack and transport the tin harvest gifts the short

distance along St. Saviourgate.


UNITARIAN WOMEN’S GROUP 20 -22 October 2017

The Nightingale Centre, Great HucklowIf you haven't already booked,

there are still places. It's not too late!

Contact: The Nightingale Centre or [email protected]

or talk with York Unitarian, Sue Catts

OCTOBER MUSIC IN THE CHAPEL

Late Music Saturday 7 October 1.00p.m.

Jennifer Cohen (flute) & Mark Hutchison (piano)

a global journey through night to dawn

Late Music Saturday 7 October 7.30 p.m.

Late Music: Ebor Singers includes music by Hildegard of Bingen and Errollyn Wallen’s new work setting Langston Hughes’s poem ‘The negro speaks of rivers’

Occasional Friday Lunchtime Friday 13th October 12.30 p.m.

A Garland of Flutes

Da Costa Academy of Singing Saturday 14 October 7.30p.m.

Songs on a summer night

Last Friday Friday 27 October 12.30p.m.

Last Friday Music: Val Parker, mezzo-soprano

YORKSHIRE UNITARIAN UNION AGM Saturday 14 October 2017

Pepper Hill Unitarian Church Shelf HX3 7TH

10.30:Yorkshire Unitarian Lay Preachers AGM and future planning

11.15: short break 11.30: Opening devotions Rev. Celia Midgley

11.45: Yorkshire Unitarian Union AGM 12.30: Lunch

13.30: The work of the Bradford Peace Museum: and its education workshops for schools encouraging children to develop critical thinking based on peace related themes.

14.30: short break 14.45: YUU General Meeting

15.45: tea or coffee and departures


UNITARIAN THEOLOGY CONFERENCE 500 YEARS ON:

THE REFORMATION MUST CONTINUE

John Calvin Michael Servetus 1509-1564 1511-1553

Friday 13 & Saturday 14 October Mill Hill Chapel, City Square, Leeds.

FRIDAY starts with worship at 11.30...then: Ant Howe: Wrestling, resisting &

resting . . .responding to the Divine voice Jane Blackall: Models of God and the

Meaning of Love Lewis Connolly: The Unchained Spirit

–‘Death of God’ theologyPanel Discussion with three speakers

SATURDAY starts with devotions at 9.30...then: Ann Peart: Theology from Women’s

Experience Justin Meggit: Early Unitarians and Islam: radical dissent and its consequencesStephen Lingwood: What is our Unitarian

Good News? Panel Discussion with Claire MacDonald,

Lucy Harris, Robin Hanford…. ending at 3.00

or


HOW NOT TO SPEAK OF GOD A sermon by Jenny Jacobs on 23 July 2017

I have a confession to make. Although I think of myself as a Unitarian nowadays, I have been persuaded in the past to fall in love with the idea of the Holy Spirit. There’s a great book by John V Taylor called The Go-Between God and it characterises the Holy Spirit as exactly that – the part of God which reaches out from the godhead and animates the spaces between us, informs the meeting of minds, is the spark when any two people feel there’s some real discourse going on between them. But why the need to separate off one aspect of the godhead from any other? Why the human urge to analyse, label and dissect? This forensic skill is a very useful tool on occasion - when we are describing the parts of a plant, for instance, and the very many thousands of species and how they relate to each other. I like knowing that if a plant has the word salicifolia in its name it means it has long narrow leaves like a willow or if it’s described as lutea then its flowers are bright yellow. But when it comes to God, these forensic labelling skills just don’t end up being very helpful. The Trinity as a concept seems symptomatic of our very human desire – our need even – to dissect, chop up, label, characterise and thereby assume some level of control over and intimate knowledge and understanding of something inef fable, unknowable, unquantifiable. The great mystery of faith, surely, is to know that the thing we seek is unknowable. We may label it but it defies our labels. We can break it down into ‘father, son & holy ghost’ and thereby think we’ve got a handle on it – and not just a handle but ‘the handle’ – but our presumption is misplaced.

KAREN ARMSTRONG’S GOD I spent years looking for a God I could get a handle on. Maybe, one I could cling onto for grim death! I remember reading Karen Armstrong’s book The Case For God during this period and being dismayed and even flummoxed by her statement:

“Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is “nothing” out there; in making these assertions [she says], their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God’s transcendence.”

What is the point, the old me might have asked, of a God that does not exist? Who doesn’t sort us out after we die, rewarding good behaviour

with an endless stay in a heavenly holiday camp and punishing others in a nightmare of everlasting torment? A God who doesn’t stir himself to save that child from drowning or that granny from an earthquake or indeed, who doesn’t find me a parking spot when I desperately want one? That was then. I resisted Karen Armstrong’s Case for God when I read it. But it had an impact all the same. It dropped into my consciousness like a stone flung into a pond – the ripples are still spreading.

R.S.THOMAS’S GOD In R S Thomas’ poem, God is felt not as a solid presence but is known more by absence, that sense of coming into the room through the door just as God left through the window. There’s something in that imagery which resonates with me; that in my past years of very earnest seeking, God eluded me, whisking out of sight, leaving a teasing sense of having been there before me - like a waft of perfume or a draught that is felt as a coolness on the skin. Occasionally I would catch a sideways glimpse out of the corner of my eye. Enough to keep me chasing over very many years, even though I was looking for the wrong thing, that God more concrete and physical that I could grab hold of. I wasn’t then aware of St Augustine’s saying, “If you think you have grasped it, it is not God.” Looking for the wrong thing can blind you to what’s actually there. Instead, perhaps we need to make room for God – as R S Thomas puts it, provide a vacuum he may fill.

SIGNPOSTS So rather than prescriptive definitions of God, which inevitably must fall short, we need signposts to ways of encountering, recognising, experiencing and undergoing God. In this regard, perhaps the difficult concepts do work best – not God as any kind of being, let alone a grand old man with a plan and a long white beard but rather the sort of abstraction which poet Henry Vaughan described as “a deep but dazzling darkness”. And this meshes with the surprisingly modern, Eastern possibly, holistic vision of God in Psalm 139, where God is to be found as much in the darkness as in the light.

NEITHER A PRESCENCE NOR AN ABSENCE So when I think of God nowadays, I am content for it to remain a mystery I cannot grasp; neither a presence to me nor an absence but rather the fundamental necessity of all that is. Should I



doubt this on occasion, it seems to me that it’s just my mind-set that needs polishing up. Which reminds me of that William Blake quote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” A speech by David Foster Wallace contains this story:

“Two young fish are swimming along, and they meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"”

According to Wallace, the point of the fish story is that the most obvious, important realities are the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. American theologian Marcus Borg used this idea, when he said – “We are in God like fish are in water.” Just as the fish are unaware of the water but can only exist because it is there, so we live, move and have our being in God. So that concrete, manageable, graspable God I started out looking for, I would tell the old me, is a gold-plated idol, an inevitably disappointing creation, made up of wish-fulfilment and despair, projected onto what we are terrified is in reality a meaningless, indifferent universe.

AN ENABLING GOD The God I have found since, on the other hand, is an enabling God. A God that encompasses all, that demands we embrace our own responsibility and allows us to create our own Heavens and Hells right here and right now. This imagining of God is not an omnipotent God but an empowering God, who, as St Teresa said way back in the 16th century, has no body and no power but our own. It rests with us and our willingness to let our hands and feet and hearts and minds do the divine work of compassion and self-giving love. I find that vision awe-inspiring, terrifying even, in its enormity, but rewarding with its message that everything we do matters and makes a difference. Do we choose to enact Heaven or Hell? Do we choose life? Do we look on this world with compassion and do we stretch out our hands to our neighbours? If that is what we would wish for ourselves then that is what we must do for others. No-one else will do it for us. Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop in the fourth century, wrote:

“the true satisfaction of [the soul’s] desire consists in constantly going on with her quest, and never ceasing in her ascent,

seeing that every fulfilment of her desire continually generates further desire for the Transcendent.”

A SELF-FUELLING JOURNEY As the years have rolled by, I have found the quest is indeed a self-fuelling journey. It seems to me now that it’s impossible to find a God you can grasp hold of: what’s significant and fulfilling is the realisation that instead, God has got some sort of a grasp on you. And it proves the truth of the paradoxical Sufi saying:

you can’t find what you’re looking for by seeking, because it’s not a thing to be found; but only seekers find it – because the seeking is the finding.

In some sense, everything happens at the same time. If you’re looking, even for the wrong thing, you have already found. And more importantly, you have been found. Having deplored humanity’s attempts to define God I have to admit that even this musing on the nature of God, and better and worse ways of trying to capture that mystery, is after all just another attempt to describe God, if only through saying what God is not. And whilst it’s impossible to pin God down, there’s no harm in it either, so long as one is aware that all of the words, however skilfully woven, are just nets we weave and cast to catch the essence of something that can be lived and felt but never captured nor anatomised. We are by nature curious creatures. We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. We are united by the flame of life burning within us and our endless quest for knowledge and understanding; our restless urge to imprint ourselves on our surroundings and leave a mark, however faint, on the vast universe in which we inhabit a tiny far-flung planet around a rather moderate star. God inspires us and contains us. Within each one of us is imprinted the image of God. It’s that which impels and moves us to create ourselves and the world around us. We may never truly understand how we and God fit together, but if we can let go of that need to quantify and categorise, if we can let go with faith, if we can allow ourselves to venture out beyond those safe and shallow certainties where our feet still touch the bottom, if we let ourselves float free, we may go under briefly but as it says in the psalm, even in the uttermost depths of the sea, God is there; encompassing all, infusing all, enabling all. And his hand will hold you fast.



ST. CRUX HALL FUNDRAISING DAY SATURDAY 9 DECEMBER 2017

Our St. Crux Hall fundraising day this year will have a Christmas theme. What can you make? To help we have another ‘craft making’ day planned for Friday 20th October. Also, please remember to keep any new but unwanted gifts for the stall. We will be collecting them in Chapel once the concert season has ended. Can you make Christmas cakes or Christmas puddings for sale on the day? On the actual day we will need home-made cakes and as many volunteers as we possibly can get, so please do make a note of it in your diary now. There will be more reminders over the coming months. P.S. St. Crux Hall is at the top of St. Saviourgate corner of Whip-ma-whop-ma Gate.

YORK INTERFAITH The Revd . Dr. Inder j i t Bhogal OBE was a key person in the development of Sheffield as the first CitySanctuary in the UK. The movement seeks to b u i l d w e l c o m e a n d hospitality into the heart of the community. It was an idea whose time had come, and the movement has been growing steadily across the cities of Britain since 2005. Inderjit will be speaking on the subject of ‘Conflict Resolution;the place of the Faiths’ at the York Interfaith Group on Tuesday 3rd October, a t 7 .30 pm. Meetings are free to attend, and take place at the York Medical Society Rooms, 23 Stonegate,

FINDHORN UNITARIAN NETWORK

(FUN) EXPERIENCE WEEK 2018

27 January - 3 February

Following the success of FUN week 2017 you are invited to share a week experiencing the community life of the Findhorn Foundation a globally recognised spiritual, ecological and educational charity at Forres near Inverness.

A unique opportunity to experience, learn from and reflect on the spiritual principles and activities on which the community is based in company with fellow Unitarians.

7 nights full vegetarian board and lodgings £660 plus transport. Some subsidies are available based upon financial need. Last year some churches and districts offered members assistance with transport costs.

Are you under 40? The Wood Green Trust will fund 50% of the cost of the programme for the first three applicants.

Enquiries to: Valerie Chamberlain, [email protected].


Come along for the weekend to learn how to

x Reach out to others through implementing your own outreach plan, based on public relations methods created for one of our local communities;

x Create an electronic newsletter using the free Mail Chimp service;

x Learn about WordPress for your congregational or society’s website; and

x Make audio recordings, for example of sermons and interviews with local Unitarians.

And please share your knowledge with those present.

We’ll take some time out together to develop ideas for our own local Unitarian communities.

UNI-COMS 2017

3RD - 5TH NOVEMBER 2017

@ THE NIGHTINGALE

CENTRE

For more information please contact

Unicoms on [email protected]

To book a place please contact

Stella Burney at The Nightingale Centre

Prices from £124/per person [email protected]


ABOUT PEOPLE • Congratulation to Laura Francis on achieving her Baden Powell badge in the Guides. • Claire McDonald, who entered the Unitarian movement through our congregation, has been appointed half-time minister of the Lewisham Unitarian congregation in south London. • Andrew Hill is retiring as a Colton’s Almshouse trustee from the end of the year. • David Chippett recently swam across the Firth of Forth! Whow! • Our special thoughts are with Dee Boyle following the tragically early death of her neice.

2018 UNITARIAN GENERAL ASSEMBLY Wednesday 4 until Saturday 7 April

Next year’s meetings will be held at The De Vere Staverton Estate

Northamptonshire. For more information, please see the

2018 Annual Meetings website.

UNITARIAN COLLEGE MANCHESTER PPSU (Past & Present Students Union)

Thursday19th - Friday 20th October 2017 Luther King House,

Brighton Grove, Manchester M14 4PP (Commencing 2.00 pm October 19 and

concluding with lunch October 20) Caring for frail church members

Findhorn experience in ministering Safeguarding updates

Worship UCM Governors meeting

RSVP [email protected]

INTERNATIONAL SHARED MEAL 6-9pm Saturday 28th October 2017 Acomb Parish Church Hall, Front St,

Acomb, York, Y0243BX Bring a dish from your own country or tradition

to share and contribute just £3 at the door. Children under16 free.

Please bring food by 6.15pm. Entertainment after the meal

Event organised jointly by York Racial Equality Network, York Baha'I Community

and York Interfaith Group Contacts: Tricia Castle: 01904 641657

[email protected] or YREN 01904 642600 I [email protected]

There’s a crack in everything - that’s how the light gets in

(Leonard Cohen)


USEFUL CONTACT DETAILs York Unitarians

St. Saviourgate Chapel St. Saviourgate, York YO1 8NQ

<www.york.unitarians.org.uk>

Minister: Revd. Nicky Jenkins 01904 501308/ 07821 250800

<[email protected]>

Chairperson: Nick Morrice 01904 765424

<nick [email protected]>

Secretary: Margaret Hill 01904 693427

<[email protected]>

Treasurer: Simon Hardy 01904 423604

<[email protected]>

Chapel Committee members: Jen Atkinson, Barbara Barnes, Dee Boyle, Sue

Catts, Elizabeth Faiers, Andrew Hill, Jenny Jacobs, Claire Lee and the Officers

St. Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel Charity (registered charity:230167)

Trustees: Elizabeth Faiers, Alfred Fletcher (treasurer), Simon Hardy, Jen Atkinson,

Andrew Hill (chair), Sue Catts and Claire Wilton.

Colton’s Hospital (registered charity: 221281)

(Clerk/Treasurer) Elizabeth Faiers Trustees: Dee Boyle, Trevor Gant, Marta

Hardy, Simon Hardy, Carol Lawson, Richard Thompson, Geoffrey Williams, Andrew Hill

(chair)

York Unitarian editor: Andrew Hill

01904 693427 <[email protected]>

Documents

York Unitarian October - Unitarians in the UK & Ireland · The York Unitarian (October 2017) page 1 FROM THE MINISTER October seems to me a good month for settling in to Autumn. It’s