Theme “Being Unitarian”
Rivington chalice words
These are Chalice Words that I wrote a long time ago and they are an attempt to encapsulate the joy of being Unitarian, they are easily adjusted to suit an occasion.
We light our chalice flame, it is our Unitarian symbol of Freedom, Hope and Love. Freedom to express our many and varied beliefs and ways
Co-weavers
We light our chalice, symbol of our free Unitarian faith
Sign of the spark of life in all living beings
Fire of commitment to love and justice
As the chalice cup embraces the flame
May we hold one another in loving community
Sharing our gratitude, our pain and our hopes for our world
For we
What does church mean to me?
I was brought up going to church. I was taken every Sunday, week by week, sometimes once, sometimes twice a day. I never liked it. For some reason it was just the Sunday services. I don’t know why I was never sent to Sunday School, maybe the bus times didn’t work out. I couldn’t sing.
Grace
Grace is a word I had some resistance to for a long time. I associated it with the line from the song, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” Saving, wretch, all that stuff does not compute with me. But some time ago I had an experience of grace, when
Sacred
I had my first spiritual experience at about ten years old, on a family holiday on Rousay in Orkney. There are few people on this wild island, but there is archaeological evidence of ancient human habitation in abundance. One evening I left the holiday cottage for the Neolithic burial chamber in the field nearby. I
Trust
‘Trust is something that must be earned’ is a common phrase, but if we expect others to earn our trust, we place the responsibility on them. We only take responsibility for ourselves when we give trust freely.
For me, trust is something that must be learned. This lesson has not been easy for me. My subconscious
Truth
I grew up in the Anglican Church, but the ‘sin and salvation’ side of Christianity never resonated with me. At school I became fascinated by the different approaches of world religions to ‘the big questions’ and decided to study Theology and Religious Studies at university. The more I studied world religions, the more I understood
Faith
Unitarianism is a creed-less faith. It is hard to describe my faith, beyond that it is a faith in love as our ultimate purpose. What I can tell you is what it means to me to be a woman of faith; how my faith compels me to try to treat others with respect and compassion;