Greetings to you all.

This update contains:


• A link for the Morning Service of Mindful Meditation, Music & Conversation. Remember we are now meeting in the hall for the duration of the cold months
• The Music Group will practise two pieces following the morning service. One of these will be sung on the 18th January.
• An important note about two Life of the Church Meetings after the service on Sunday 18th and Sunday 25th January 2026
• A note about this coming Thursday’s Zoom “Kiitsu Kyōkai” Seiza Meditation & Conversation Meeting, this week, 15th January at 19:30-21:00
• A note about an 8-week online Soul Deep course, taking place on Wednesdays from 14th January at 6.30pm facilitated by Aisha Madha and Mandy Reynolds
• Links to the minister’s address/podcast
• A link to additional national Unitarian news
• A copy of the church’s Planning Application

A link for the Morning Service of Mindful Meditation, Music & Conversation

Our regular Sunday Morning Service of Mindful Meditation, Music and Conversation starts in the church on Emmanuel Road at 10.30 am and finishes at 11:40 am. Should you wish to join this by Zoom, please use the following permanent link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86882949446?pwd=kliXbdABEfbU8FjDMtNRNJ4Lr2lb5z.1

Meeting ID: 868 8294 9446
Passcode: 612407

The Music Group will practise two pieces following the morning service. One of these will be sung on the 18th January.

Marianna writes: Hi all. We shall practise two items this coming Sunday, after the service. One will be sung on 18th, while the other will await another date. I had a squizz through my folder of favourite songs, seeking something to match our imminent conversations/information about the possible changes to buildings/community purposes. One is Power and Magic is a round which I introduced a year or so back but which we have never sung in a service. On this occasion, I expect we will sing it as a straight chant (with repeats), but whenever we gather enough confidence, we’ll do it as a round! See score below, but here are the words:

‘Whatever you do, or think you can, begin it! Begin it!
Boldness has genius – power and magic – in it!’

The second item is a chant with words by former GA president Anne Mills, which I set to music.

‘Love in our living. Love in our thinking. Love in our yearnings – heart’s love for ever.’

Please let me know if anyone would like a recording of either song.

An important note about two Life of the Church Meetings after the service on Sunday 18th and Sunday 25th January

On these dates, the service will not contain a thought for the day or a conversation as the thought for the day/conversation will be the content of the meetings themselves.

These meetings are being arranged so that the trustees and the minister can bring before you all information they have about the current state of our buildings (the church, the hall, and the old manse), as well as the past, current, and expected, income of the church. This information will then act as the necessary background to a shared conversation about what we might/would/could like to do in the future to ensure that we have buildings, and a financially viable model, that is sustainable over the longer term for our small free-religious community. A community that, we would add, continues to desire to serve the needs of the wider, local (non-church) Cambridge community during the coming years.

To this end, the minister and trustees will also share with you at these meetings a few possible (and non-binding) scenarios (including the one currently with the council planning department — see this at the end of this update) simply to help us begin our shared conversation about what we want to do.

PLEASE NOTE (and I cannot stress this enough!) PLEASE NOTE: No final decisions are going to be made at these initial meetings. They are simply taking place to help us all to have the information before us that will show that, unless we wish consciously to enter into a process of managed decline, we cannot continue with the status quo, and that we will need to find ways to work together compassionately, kindly, respectfully, creatively, and at times, courageously, to find the path that will be for us safer than the known way.

When we are all informed, and have had the proper kind, and length of conversation together in which everybody will have had a chance to contribute, we will, as befits a genuinely democratic organisation, hold an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) and take a vote on what we wish to do. Obviously, it is still too early in the process to know when any EGM can meaningfully be held.

We invite you to this new stage of a conversation that was begun with the development of our Principles of Living during 2023/2024 (see below), and continued with the Three Horizons Workshop held in the church on the 18th October 2025, facilitated for us by Nick Butler-Watts on behalf of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (also see below).

A link for the Thursday morning/evening Zoom “Kiitsu Kyōkai” Seiza Meditation & Conversation Meetings:

This coming Thursday, 15th January, the meeting will be at 19:30-21:00.

For more information, please visit:
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/p/kiitsu-kyokai.html
https://www.cambridgeunitarian.org/evening-service/

Join Thursday Zooms at the same link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85775868333?pwd=LEuyKnfbRJORbqsuzkhsonHui4ttwA.1
Meeting ID: 857 7586 8333
Passcode: 970614

A note about an 8-week online Soul Deep course, taking place on Wednesdays from 14th January at 6.30pm facilitated by Aisha Madha and Mandy Reynolds

Links to the minister’s address/podcast:
In written form at:
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com
Or as podcast episodes at:

For additional national Unitarian news, please click on the following link:
Uni-news
https://us20.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=1590ea5f53cdc6fb8a17c311c&id=7bce4a21b7

Planning Application—if you would like to look at the Planning Application, the Church has put in can be found at the following link:

https://applications.greatercambridgeplanning.org/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=SYVKZODXGQW00

There are a lot of drawings, sections and plans as separate documents on the application, but the Heritage & Access Statement draws everything together in one PDF (see below) and outlines the process leading to the final plans. Please remember that these plans have been submitted simply so that we will soon have before us some necessary information so that, as a congregation, we will be able to decide together how best to use/reuse/reconfigure our buildings in the coming years. It’s vital to be absolutely clear that no decision has been reached about what we might, or might not, do, and no such decision can be reached before the congregation has worked through all the possibilities available to it.

Andrew James Brown
(Days off are generally Monday and Tuesday)

Minister
Cambridge Unitarian Church
Emmanuel Road
Cambridge
CB1 1JW
07477 462 110 (Mobile)
http://www.cambridgeunitarian.org/

Blog: Caute
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/
Podcast: Kiitsu—Returning-to-One
https://kiitsu.buzzsprout.com
Jiyū Shūkyō / Free-Religion
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/p/free-religion.html
Kiitsu Kyōkai (Returning-to-One Gathering) 
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/p/kiitsu-kyokai.html
Seiza Meditation (Quiet Sitting)
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/p/seiza-meditation.html