Five years since George Floyd Died by Celia James – 7th September 2025
It is five years since George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, by a white police officer kneeling on his neck and back for over nine minutes, asphyxiating him: he was 46. His dying words “I can’t breathe” affected millions and was taken up in the Black Lives Matter movement. When George Floyd was murdered I […]
Amen! by Myrna Michell 31st August 2025
I’ve called this talk Amen, looking back to an amusing comment made to me some years ago. In the months prior to staring ministry training at Unitarian College, Manchester (UCM), on most Sunday mornings, I would set off to take services around NELUM (North East Lancashire Unitarian Mission) or I would drive up the new […]
Reading & Restlessness by Jerry Carr Brion – 24th August 2025
According to the National Literacy Trust report for 2025, just 33% of young people said that they enjoyed reading, while only 19% said that they read daily. Both figures are the lowest ever reported since the surveys started in 2005. Similar trends have been noted in the United States, where a Gallup survey from 2022 […]
How’s your attentions span by Marianna Michell
I’ve heard claims recently that our attention span is shorter than it was; that writers and other creatives should adjust to that expectation. Supposedly, people now want something to read, or to watch, that flashes by in an instant. On TV, we see adverts where people flash through walls or change costume in a trice! […]
Thoughts on 80 years since dropping the bomb on Hiroshima by Celia James
This week it is 80 years since the Americans dropped two atomic bombs, the first on the 6th of August, onto the city of Hiroshima and the second three days later onto the city of Nagasaki. These are still the only occasions when nuclear weapons have been used, but in the intervening decades several states […]
The Sower by Celia James 13th April 2025
I’m going to talk about a parable, the one about the sower and the grains of wheat. As a child I liked parables; I still do, but their meaning has changed significantly for me over the years. At my boarding school in Africa we enacted parables with a devout and gentle teacher and I just […]
The Temptations by Celia James 18th May 2025
Although I do not approach the Bible in a devotional way, I am glad that I had become familiar with many of its stories as a child because an image from a bible story has sometimes jumped into my mind, usually at a time of stress. What happensis that I notice how the word I […]
We Cannot Know the Future
4th May 2025 Jerry Carr-Brion We Cannot Know the Future It is a common human desire to want to know what the future will bring. Many people crave certainty and fear an unknown future. Online astrologers and assorted gurus are read by millions, while the so-called ‘prophecies’ of Nostradamus continue to attract new interpretations. Of […]
A Child’s Vision of Heaven
by Marianna Michell – 11th May 2025 Twenty years ago, after leaving this church to enter ministry training in Manchester, I was living in the Rossendale valley in Lancashire – just over the moors from where I grew up near Nelson. Rawtenstall Unitarian church is a modern and strange-looking building on a rise off the […]
A poem for International Women’s Day by Joy Magezis, 8 March 2025
International Women’s Day International Women’s Day Very important holiday For me, millions of women worldwide Perhaps my story will explain My Grandma Esther Immigrant sweatshop worker A women’s needle trades union organiserHelped build General Strike of 20,000 Women like her demonstrated Against appalling working conditionsIn New York, 8 March 1908For better pay, conditions, suffrage Then Socialist Women’s ConferenceDeclared March 8, yearly International […]