Greetings to you all.
This email contains:
- A link for the Morning Service of Mindful Meditation, Music & Conversation
- A note about the Write & Read group meeting on Tuesday 29th in the Common Room, 14:00 for 14:15 start
- A note about taking services during the second half of the minster’s sabbatical leave in August/September
- A note that the Thursday morning/evening Zoom “Kiitsu Kyōkai” Seiza Meditation & Conversation Meeting takes its annual break in August and will resume on Thursday 4th September at 19:30-21:00.
- Links to the minister’s address/podcast
- A link to additional national Unitarian news
- Minutes from the last “Life of the Church” meeting on 20th July
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 note the following, permanent link:
Join Sunday Morning Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86882949446?pwd=kliXbdABEfbU8FjDMtNRNJ4Lr2lb5z.1
Meeting ID: 868 8294 9446
Passcode: 612407
The Write & Read group will meet on Tuesday 29th July in the Common Room, 2 for 2.15 start
Marianna writes: “This is a relaxed and informal group, and all are welcome to try it out.”
A note about taking services during the second half of the minster’s sabbatical leave in August/September
Our minister, Andrew Brown, is on the second part of his sabbatical during August/September. As before part of this time will be spent working with the President of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF), Prof. George M. Williams, to produce an English language edition of Imaoka Shin’ichirō’s essays, and to further develop the educational programme of the IARF’s “Free Religion Institute.” On this occasion, Andrew will also be beginning work with the Czech Unitarians to produce a final translation of Norbert Fabián Čapek’s “To the Sunny Shore: A Guide to Living Joyfully”.
To help make this possible, the Cambridge Unitarian Church’s “Life of the Church” group are asking members of the congregation whether they can help to run our Sunday morning services during August and September?
Please use the following Google form to tell us which dates you are available to help, and which roles you are interested in:
https://forms.gle/rqs8G839k7vygvwM9
If you have any queries or difficulties using the form, please contact Jacqui (jacquicarnall@googlemail.com)
A note about the Thursday morning/evening Zoom “Kiitsu Kyōkai” Seiza Meditation & Conversation Meetings
The Thursday morning/evening Zoom “Kiitsu Kyōkai” Seiza Meditation & Conversation Meeting takes its annual break in August, and will resume on Thursday 4th September at 19:30-21:00
1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month: 19:30-21:00
2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month: 10:30-12:00 noon
No meetings on any 5th Thursday, or during August
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
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
A report from the Life of the Church Zoom Meeting, Wednesday 18th June 2025
CAMBRIDGE UNITARIAN CHURCH LIFE OT THE CHURCH MEETING 20 JULY 2025
PRESENT: Andrew Brown (ABr Minister), Frank Walker (FW Minister Emeritus), Sue Tombs (ST Trustee), Laurinda Luffman (LL ), Aysha Madha (AyM), Anita Mannion (AnM), Caroline Carr-Brion (CCB), Jerry Carr-Brion (JCB), Celia James (CJ Trustee)
APOLOGIES: Jacqui Carnall, Elden Horner
A. At the start of our meeting we welcomed Laurinda Luffman, having just signed our book of Members.
B. This was our first face to face picnic-lunch meeting of the Life of the Church Group, which will meet on the third Sunday of every second month. We shall continue our Zoom meetings in the alternating months, at 5pm on their third Wednesdays.
C. We were prepared for this meeting by the minutes of our previous meeting and Andrew Brown’s Thought for the Day in our morning Service reminded us that in our Life of the Church Group discussions we have decided to begin to explore other meditations and possible liturgies of care and concern.
In these Notes of our meeting is an extract about this, from ABr’s Thought for the Day, the full text of which can be found at the website address.
ABr………”I’ve been considering a crucial question: what should religious liberals simply do when gathering? What practices should we free-religious liberals commit to, irrespective of their abstract theological definitions, just as Catholics consistently dip their fingers into holy water without going through all those abstract theoretical definitions? For us, the answer is, I think, our Sunday morning liturgy. We repeat it weekly to embed certain practices deeply into our mental and muscle memory, just as martial artists repeat basic moves. This consistent practice mirrors the way the Catholic Mass, Buddhist or Shinto services, Islamic prayers, or Jewish Shabbat services work. The shared actions done in them are integral to what authentically defines a person belonging to one of those faith traditions. So, these days, if I am asked what our morning gathering means, I often now begin by replying, echoing my Uncle Eugene, “Well, in the first instance, it’s simply what we as liberal, free-religionists must do each week. Yet, given our liberal, free-religious orientation, we cannot simply stop there. The meanings and truths of our actions do matter deeply to us, and we have also long understood that these meanings continually evolve and remain provisional. This is why our liturgy is intentionally designed also to hold open a creative space, allowing for free, conversational exploration, without losing the capacity for committed action.”
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-nascent-form-of-integral-liberal-free.html
D. In our work as the Life of the Church Group, we feel we shall be preparing positively for the time ABr retires and we are keen to be considering how to be a Ministry-led congregation rather than a Minister-led congregation. We are keen to explore the aspects which lie behind the development of a profound Liturgy and Meditation, so that additions of alternative forms are not “scattergun”, but in keeping with the tradition we have developed over the last fifteen years or so; by talking together and trying out even little suggestions, to see what they feel like before adopting them. We like the idea of composing and assembling a collection of readings, meditations and liturgies to be in sympathy with a variety of world affairs and local events, complement a variety of themes about Nature and feelings. We like the idea of accumulating these in our existing Service Folder: all the stages of our liturgy and meditation are filed in the Service Folder which is used on Sundays. We think newcomers would appreciate being able to read a description of Free Religion and we remembered how there used to be two poems printed in the liturgy, which were not spoken but which could be read as a personal aside. We discussed at length the importance of retaining our hard won sense of Consistency and how to decide and weave into that important nuances to complement the stability of our Form of Service.
We agreed that the personal lighting of candles, the Thought for the Day and choice of hymn/music already give opportunities for different themes to emerge on any given Sunday, and so inform the Conversation. Initial thoughts for an additional meditation included one on the Principles for Living which we have composed, and we shall continue to explore this at our next meeting.
E. We agreed to Frank Walker’s request to insert a poem in the Liturgy, instead of the Miracle of Life Responses Passage, and to include a Psalm, having volunteered to lead part of the Service on 3 August. We are content that the consistency of our Liturgy is being maintained.
F. The first Paper provided by ABr for our meeting:
UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES WHICH HAVE BEEN USED FOR OUR FORM OF SERVICE
Abr. “It’s long seemed to me that any modern, liberal, free religious community worth its salt must try to find ways to offer in its central act of worship something which speaks to each of these tendencies and associated type of person. Along with many others, I think that the kind of spirituality our own age most urgently requires is one that we can be called an integral one, i.e. a spirituality that genuinely understands there are many ways by which we can come ever more fully to appreciate in what reality consists and find our appropriate place in it.”
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-nascent-form-of-integral-liberal-free.htm
Thanks to three key nineteenth-century Hindu thinkers, Rāja Rammohan Roy (1772-1833), Pratap Chundra Mozoomdar (1840-1905) and Svāmī Vivekānanda (1868-1902) — the first two of whom were very, very closely connected to the Unitarian movement — we here in the west came to know about the four religious or spiritual tendencies (saṃskāras), paths (mārgas) or disciplines (yogas) often referred to in the Hindu tradition. They are:
the intellectual (jñāna yoga)
the mystical (rāja yoga)
the devotional (bhakti yoga)
the practical (karma yoga)
Eventually, thanks primarily to Carl Jung’s (1875-1961) work, the four tendencies have come firmly into the thinking of our culture attached to the following names and types of person:
the rational (the thinking type of person)
the intuitional (intuiting type of person)
the emotional (feeling type of person)
the sensate (sensing type of person)
G. The second paper brought to us by ABr:
ABr brought us the list currently being used by the International Association for Religious Freedom’s “Free Religion Institute” to shape its own curriculum around confronting the existential challenges that face any modern religious community.
We agree to use this list for the Group to start to collate writings, poems, ideas relating to the situations for which we would like to design alternative meditations and liturgies. In thinking how we might choose aspects from it, we did note that it emphasises the painful and difficult situations, and that we would like also to include positive aspects of living.
15 Existential & 4 Spiritual Tendencies Crises — George M. Williams
1. Order vs. Chaos
2. Fairness & Justice
3. Identity in each stage of life
5. Freedom
6. Sexuality
7. Power
8. Pain & Suffering
9. Self-Awareness/ Self-Realisation
10. Creativity, Self-Expression, Productive Labour
11. Responsibility
12. Desire & Pleasure: Mastery by Denial (asceticism) or Satiation (libertinism)
13. Meaning
14. Addiction
15. Death
————————————————————————————————————————————
H. AyM reported back from her recent attendance at East Anglia Unitarians’ Workshop/Innovation Fund in Bury St Edmunds.
She brought us the email from Nick Butler-Watts, the Innovation Programme Manager, following up the workshop. We agree to invite Nick to come to us and ask AyM to arrange a date with him and ST.
AyM spoke in particular about her idea for a Games, Recipes and Equalities workshop in the Engagement Groups and Workshops section below.
We encourage her to take this forward, as a two day event in November. This will be a seed project for AyM’s idea for our own East Anglian area event, which she thinks to name FEAST. AyM will be able to apply for funding of up to £5,000 and the church is happy to play our part. We wait to understand the details of the funding and LL has said she will help with any fundraising we need to do.
The paper that AyM brought us:
NICK BUTLER-WATTS: THIS IS WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT UNITARIAN LIFE IN EAST ANGLIA, CURRENTLY, AND YOUR VISION FOR THE NEXT 7 YEARS:
HORIZON 1 – WHAT ARE THE SIGNS THAT THE CURRENT SYSTEM OF UNITARIAN LIFE IS FAILING OR NOT FIT FOR THE FUTURE? WHAT IS HOLDING IT IN PLACE?
A lack of knowledge, vision and purpose
* Having little inspiration for gathering
* A lack of knowledge of what Unitarianism is
* Misunderstanding our purpose
* Institutional systems have failed, leading to no collective vision
Lack of diversity
* Lack of young trustees
* Aging congregations
* No activities for young people
* Lack of congregational growth and young people
* Lack of diversity
* Dwindling congregations leading to the collapse of the Eastern Union
Not using our resources to their full potential
* Not knowing about what’s going on within Unitarianism
* Not having enough money to continues as we are
* No vision for how to use our resources for communities
HORIZON 3 – WHAT WOULD WE LIKE THE NEW SYSTEM OF CONGREGATIONAL LIFE AND COMMUNITY BELONGING TO LOOK AND FEEL LIKE? WHAT ARE THE NORMS AND VALUES RHAT WOULD SUPPORT OUR VISION?
We go out to and serve our communities
* Leaving our buildings and meeting in the forest
* A circus caravan which showcases the best or unitarianism and engages media
* Unitarians are at the forefront of helping organisations to be more compassionate
* Our spaces are mobile and serve the community spiritually and. practically
Organisational improvements allow us to do more, better
* Streamlined administration, governance, safeguarding, trusteeship etc. allows for more vibrant ministry
* We have enough money and trustees who aren’t overwhelmed
* One of our buildings/chapels is repurposed as a communication hub
* We know what skills and resources we have, pool and share them, and communicate what they’ve done
Our buildings serve the entire community, meeting their needs
* We have families young people with additional needs
* We reflect the wider community and are inclusive and welcoming
* We become community and spiritual hubs addressing social needs
: Community inclusive ‘ministry of the building’
We offer an inspiring, nourishing programme of events, which sustains us
* A regional speaker programme, on and offline
* Facilitating difficult, well-held conversations
* East Anglia’s ‘FUSE’
HORIZON 2 – WHAT INNOVATIONS DO WE KNOW ABOUT THAT MIGHT BE GROWTH POINTS OF THIS FURURE SYSTEM?
New Social Action Initiatives
* Breakfast club for the homeless
Administration and Governance Improvements
* CIO process and sharing resources
* ‘Task and finish’ groups, offering short term responsibilities
* Moodle and FaithWeb
Engagement Groups and Networks
* ‘Café curious’ (engagement style group)
* ‘Women’s group’ (no governance, free from building/location responsibilities)
* Death cafes
* Heart and Soul (collaborative, open, East Anglian)
* Online ‘Art of Conversation’
* Youth workers network sharing and meeting
* ‘Games, Recipes and Equality’ event
I. We shall meet by Zoom at 5pm on Wednesday 20 August. Aysha and Celia will co-convene the meeting. We shall hope to start explore how to expand our collection of liturgy and meditation themes and ABr will give us some initial suggestions, in our tradition of trying out nuances of change, as they arise for us.
Signed
Celia James
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
http://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com
Podcast—Making Footprints Not Blueprints
https://footprints.buzzsprout.com
Jiyū Shūkyō / Free Religion
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/p/free-religion.html
Kiitsu Kyōkai
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/p/kiitsu-kyokai.html
Seiza Meditation (Quiet Sitting)
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/p/seiza-meditation.html