Are you a Ringwood Unitarian without knowing it?

There are Unitarians in Ringwood.  It's just that they don't yet call themselves Unitarians because they don't know the name "Unitarian".  Are you one of these?

The thing about being a Unitarian is that there is no rule about what a Unitarian is.  Some say it's about hope, some say it's about systems of belief, some say it's about how you live.  Some say it's about freedom, reason and tolerance.  Some say it's about how you do a radically 21st century way of faith.  The national support team for Unitarians says it could be described as "nurturing faith, embracing life, celebrating difference".  All would agree that being a Unitarian is about exploring fundamental and searching questions, and not about preaching answers.  Unitarians also agree that the ultimate authority for anyone has to be their living, challenging, perplexing conscience, no matter what any other person says.  Behind all of this is the traditional Unitarian insistence on the oneness of God or the God idea, from which we get our name.  We set great store by any wisdom framework that points towards that oneness, without worrying about where that wisdom comes from.

Unitarians insist on the central call to love and typically care about right relationships such as

• equal rights and the ending of oppression
• being in touch with the Earth and its growing creatures and living lightly on the planet
• being in touch with how we have got to where we are now and what that means for our shared future
• being in balance in our inner life
• being human together and supporting strong communities

and about doing more than thinking about right relationships - Unitarians typically care about getting down and working for it, working for that better world now.

June meeting

The Unitarian meeting in Ringwood on 8 June was centred on the theme "one world".  We heard readings from the Bible (Genesis Chp1) and from Wordsworth.  There were some lovely prayers seeking lessons from the Earth for our daily living.  We mused on the smallness of the Earth in space as we listened to music from "The Blue Planet" and we sang hymns that reflected the interconnectedness of humans and the Earth.  We welcomed a new participant and we marked the passing of one of our number who was with us as recently as our May meeting.  There was a calm still feeling to the service which had lots of silence and time for meditation.