Manchester College Oxford Chapel Society

A CONCERT FOR HAITI

A Celebration of World Music and Roots Music

in aid of the Haitian Disaster Appeal

featuring The Oxford Drum Troupe, The Harris Manchester Choir,

The HMC Blues Band, Alejandro Ortiz-Monasterio and many more!

Harris Manchester College, Tuesday 9th March at 8 pm (doors open 7.30)

Admission free, but donations to the Disaster Appeal will be greatly appreciated.

PREACHERS IN MARCH AND APRIL

Sue Woolley (Sunday 7th March) is the hard-working Facilitator and Secretary of the Midland Unitarian Association, Secretary of the Northampton Unitarian congregation, and now in training at Harris Manchester College for the full-time Unitarian ministry. … On Mothering Sunday (14th March) the service will be led by chapel member Josephine Seccombe, who began attending services in mid-2009 and recently became a formal member of the Chapel Society. In February 2010 she led a congregational Away Day for us, based on Enneagram techniques. The guest preacher on the 14th will be Josephine’s friend al">Revd Geoffrey Hooper, who was ordained in the Anglican church in 1966 and served with RAF Benson in the early 1970s before serving as Rector of Hook Norton in Oxfordshire for several years. In the 1980s Geoffrey was made Director of the Mansfield Settlement in the East End of London, for which work he was awarded the OBE. He currently serves several rural parishes in Wales. … Jim Corrigall, Hon. President of Golders Green Unitarians, a member of the national Unitarian executive, and currently a student at HMC for the Lay Pastorate, will lead our services on 21st March and Easter Sunday (4th April). … Revd Frank Walker, retired minister of the Cambridge Unitarian church, and an active member of the Sea of Faith movement, will lead our service on Palm Sunday (28th March). … Gavin Lloyd (11th April) is a member of our own congregation and a recognised Lay Preacher who conducts many services for Unitarian congregations in the Midlands. … Revd Peter Hewis (18th April), our former minister, has been the Chaplain Emeritus of Harris Manchester College since retiring from the full-time ministry in 2006, and he currently serves as the President of the Midland Unitarian Association. … Chapel member Leo Bowder will lead the service on 25th April, based on the life and teachings of Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet, novelist, musician, and playwright who visited Manchester College Oxford in 1913 and preached in the chapel on a second visit in 1930.

The self-expression of God is in the endless

variety of creation; and our attitude towards the

Infinite Being must also in its expression have a

variety of individuality – ceaseless and unending.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)

ENGAGEMENT GROUPS

We have set up three engagement groups which offer a long-awaited opportunity for members to share time together beyond the Sunday morning service: a chance to enjoy the company of others, and potentially an opportunity to learn more about ourselves, the universe, and everything.

Initially the Discussion Group will meet on the second Sunday of the month after the service, and on the fourth Wednesday evening; the Film Group on a mid-week evening in the third week; and the Walking Group on the fourth Sunday afternoon of every month. All groups are open to everyone, and anyone can attend any of the meetings whenever they are free to do so.

FILM GROUP

First meeting: 6.30 for 7 pm on Tuesday 23rd March. For choice of films and details of the venue, contact Alan Carter on 07736 847425 or Mary Ann Cardy on 01865 779 041.

WALKING GROUP

Typical walks will be approximately 5 miles long, in places not far distant from Oxford. Next meeting: Sunday 28th March, after the service in the chapel; and every fourth Sunday thereafter. Contact: Evelyn Taylor, tel. 01865 724478 or 07743 489504, to arrange lifts and for information about the route.

DISCUSSION GROUP

Next meeting: 1 pm on Sunday 14th March 2010, and every second Sunday afternoon thereafter. Venue: University Club, Mansfield Road. Bring sandwiches (and your card if you are a member). Sunday topics will be based on the sermon of the day. In addition, a weekday evening discussion in the home of a member of the congregation is planned for the fourth Wednesday in each month, from 8 pm to 10 pm. Contact: Dominic Scholfield, tel. 01865 421326.

“A friend is one before whom I may think aloud” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

With this sentiment we began the first meeting of the Chapel Society Discussion engagement Group. After the service on Sunday 14^th February a dozen members of the congregation, plus Lindsey Van Gemeren, who had led the service, took their sandwiches over the road to the University Club to continue discussing the theme of the service – love (what else, on Valentine’s Day?).

Lindsey’s service had drawn on insights from Christianity, Islam, and Taoism. Her comparison of ideas from East and West formed a central theme of a thought-provoking discussion. Is the perception of love in Western religion essentially emotional, and the Eastern approach more philosophical? The Abrahamic tradition focuses on a one-to-one relationship with the Divine, often expressing the love of God in language that we apply to our human relationships and emotions – as in the words of Jesus, and indeed in the Qur’an.

By contrast, other Eastern religions, unencumbered by a concept of a personal God, seem to offer a more transcendental perspective. Given the often transient nature of human emotions, there is an obvious case to be made for freeing ourselves of desire and focusing on a more philosophical idea, a higher plane of thought and consciousness. But then, what of passion? What of the animating fire of love burning within? In this context we flirted with a Unitarian heresy: perhaps we need, dare we say it, a Trinitarian approach – love as an emotion, love as a philosophy, and love as action in the world. Perhaps the gospel writers and early church were seeking to identify God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit with these three faces of love?

One of Lindsey’s readings included Jesus’s injunction to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” – another trinity of love! As Unitarians, might we see such an all-consuming love of ‘God’ in terms of that same transcendent state of oneness with the universe that Taoism and Buddhism are seeking? Perhaps a true understanding of love includes all these different dimensions. We also explored the notion that love can be a destructive force if ‘unbalanced’ – resulting in lust, materialism, and obsessive attachments. In the end, the essential nature of love seems to come down to a loss of ego. The unconditional love of a parent is a consistent biblical metaphor, and it is often our most visceral exemplar of total self-sacrifice. Can we only experience that total love of God, that transcendence to enlightenment, if we let go our desires – not to lose our passions, but to truly give ourselves to the world and receive the world in return? – Dominic Scholfield

DEAR PHILIP PULLMAN ...

“Your views about the Christian faith were rarely out of the news in 2009, and you have probably been the target of many earnest attempts to convince you of the rightness of fundamentalist dogma. But you might be interested to learn that there is at least one religious community which shares your views about the humanity of Jesus.

“Unitarians honour the moral teachings of Jesus, but do not worship him. Since the foundation of our faith in the seventeenth century, we have rejected the doctrines of Original Sin and Atonement, preferring to believe in the innate potential for good in every human being, and refusing to project responsibility for our personal redemption on to a mythical sacrificial figure. Although we try to live by the precepts of Jesus, we don’t believe that Christianity has a monopoly on religious truth; so we seek inspiration from the texts of all the world’s religions, and we reject the notion of priestly authority: we recognise no authority higher than that of the individual conscience.

“It is not easy to define Unitarian beliefs, because we don’t have a fixed creed. But enclosed with this letter are a few pamphlets about our values. More information is available at www.unitarians.org.uk. Oxford Unitarians look forward with interest to the publication of your new book (The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ), and we would be pleased to welcome you at one of our services of worship, which are held each Sunday at 11 am in the chapel of Harris Manchester College in Mansfield Road.”

The above letter, recently sent to local author Philip Pullman by the Chapel Society Publicity Group, received the following response:

Thank you for your letter and the leaflets about Unitarianism. I was aware of your presence, and knew a little about the valuable work that Unitarians have done. As for my forthcoming book about Jesus, yours is the forty-fifth letter I’ve received about it, and the first positive one, which made a pleasant change. I hope that when you read it you will find it not unsympathetic, but I’m encouraged in that hope by the evident intelligence and open-mindedness of everything I’ve read about the Unitarian position. I don’t think I’ll be joining you for worship quite yet, though.

WELCOME TO NEW ATTENDERS

A belated welcome to Imola Mikó, a member of the Hungarian Unitarian community in the Transylvanian region of Romania. Imola was born in Brașov and studies at Babeș–Bolyai University in the town of Cluj-Napoca, where she has led seminars on Contemporary Hungarian Literature and World Literature. She worships with us while spending the current academic year at Oxford Brookes University, where for her PhD degree she is studying Film and doing research on representations of the body in contemporary literature and film.

And welcome to Sabine Brigette and her daughter Naya from the town of Whitefish in north-west Montana. They are members of the Glacier Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on the borders of the Glacier National Park, currently living in Oxford while Sabine, a student of English Literature at the University of Illinois, is attached to Christ Church College for one term. They hope to return in August for a full academic year. Sabine formerly worked as a nurse and a yoga teacher but now aims to become a teacher of English. Naya attends a primary school in west Oxford, where her favourite subject is Art. She also enjoys the theatre, acting, and making up stories.

We also welcome Amaryllis Roy, who has recently started attending Sunday services in the chapel (on the recommendation of a friend who belongs to the Brisbane Unitarian congregation and enthused to her about a church where “you don’t have to believe in God”). A graduate of Cambridge University (where she studied modern languages at Emmanuel College), Amaryllis began her working life in publishing at Oxford University Press but then changed tack and moved into a publicity job at the mental-health charity Oxfordshire Mind, where she now works as a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner. She is currently taking a course at the Warneford Hospital in mindfulness and meditation as therapy for patients with mental-health problems.

NEW TO CHAPEL?

New members and attenders are recommended to read two recent books about Unitarianism, on loan from our library (in the bookcase next to the stairs in the vestibule):

The Unitarian Life: Voices from the Past and Present, edited by Stephen Lingwood

The Larger View: Unitarians and World Religions by Vernon Marshall

In addition, every regular attender is entitled to a free personal copy of Unitarian? What’s That? by Cliff Reed, and every new member can claim a free copy of The Elements of Unitarianism by George Chryssides. Please ask John Bridgen, our new Librarian.

If we strive to build community, the strength we gather will be our salvation. If you are black and I am white, it will not matter. If you are female and I am male, it will not matter. If you are older and I am younger, it will not matter. If you are progressive and I am conservative, it will not matter. If you are straight and I am gay, it will not matter. If we join spirits as brothers and sisters, the pain of our aloneness will be lessened, and that does matter. In this spirit, we build community and move towards restoration.

(Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, quoted in The Unitarian Life)

BOOK REVIEW:

Worship That Works by Wayne Armason and Kathleen Rolenz

The authors, a married couple living in the United States of America, shared a Unitarian Universalist co-ministry, leading worship at West Shore UU Church near Cleveland. During their ministry they led regular services of worship according to well-tried and familiar formulas. But waking up one bleak Sunday morning in January, neither of them felt like going to church. Duty called, however, and they both climbed out of what they describe as their “valley of the shadow” to do a workmanlike job on the service they had planned. What was going on? They gradually became aware of a deep dissatisfaction with their role as worship leaders, and with the state of UU worship as a whole. What could they do about it? After much thought, they decided that a light at the end of this tunnel could be a period of sabbatical leave, and so they embarked on an 18-month road trip, driving all over the USA to attend services at different churches, both UU and non-UU. It gave them a unique opportunity to engage anew with the diversity and creativity of worship-forms within our tradition and those of other faiths. They were searching for worship that “worked” for them and would be transformative for them.

This book is the result of their research. They came home from their sabbatical convinced that a renewal of engagement with worship in congregations of all sizes is critical if Unitarian Universalism is to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century. The book is a challenge to all Unitarians who care about the services in which they participate. It provides practical, specific advice on how we could improve the key elements of our services of worship. All of the following are discussed at length, often with very useful tips and innovations to try: entering into holy time; including all generations; the use of music; the power of symbols; the sermon; prayer and meditation; and even the announcements.

Worship is a hot topic these days, and it is time for Unitarian Universalists to regain the place that we once held at the cutting edge of congregational worship. It is time to ask ourselves what “transformative worship” means in our lives, and how we can create it for future generations. The authors hope that the book will be of interest and use to all those who lead their congregations in worship. A copy may be borrowed from our library in the chapel vestibule. – Heddwen Hewis

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

(Thich Nhat Hanh)