From Hart to Hearts
A Message from Rev Linda Hart for the month of April 2009
As I sit to write this, I have just returned from four days up at the Nightingale Centre in Great Hucklow. After attending the Gathering for Growth conference, I am inspired and wanted to share a little of my inspiration here.
Fourteen ministers from churches of all sizes were led by the Reverend Peter Morales, a Unitarian Universalist minister from the US. Peter has a wide knowledge of organisational development, and leads a strong (750 members!), growing congregation near Denver, Colorado. Though his context is vastly different – he is in the suburbs of a large city in the western United States, serving a church that is larger in membership than all the churches in the environs of London combined – he had words of hope and encouragement to offer to United Kingdom Unitarians.
Most importantly for me, he reminded me about the importance of our church communities and what they offer. It is so easy to become mired in the details of buildings and committee meetings, planning for the annual meeting and other events that I forget what is at the heart of our being together. For me, it is salvation.
That’s a difficult word for a lot of us with it’s resonance back to exclusive ideas from Christianity. Rejecting original sin, there’s not really anything that we have to be saved from, some have said when I’ve suggested that we Unitarians have a saving message.
There is much that we do need to be saved from in this world. Our intensely individualistic modern world can literally drive people crazy. We struggle with isolation and the meaninglessness of the marketplace. All you have to do is to look at the adverts on the television or in the newspaper to see that we are under attack by materialistic culture. It is far too easy to become numbed by the flow of goods that we are bid to buy and buy and buy. Every day there is a new gadget that we can’t live without.
News from every corner of the world carries with it the message that all is very nearly lost: there is global recession and wars without end; there is starvation and disease that cannot be healed in Africa; gun violence and knife violence grow here in our own metropolitan area; ancient angers are nurtured and extended. What can anything we do matter?
There are lots of people in our neighbourhood, in our town, in our lives who are doing battle alone, who are trying to live lives that are worthy and meaningful. I know, and I hope that you know, that it is easier to do this in a community that upholds those values and encourages us on our journeys.
Peter suggested to us that it is a moral imperative for us to invite others to join us in our community, that there are people who are isolated and suffering, who need the sort of sustaining energy that we can offer. The world needs us!
You’ll be hearing more about this conference and my ideas about what sorts of things we might do here to help us to grow beginning with the service on 5 April. I hope to see you there.
Linda