Diary For April/May 2013

UMB - Unitarian Meeting Bristol, Brunswick Square,
WL - Women’s League, WA - Wedding Anniversary,
IM - In Memoriam, tba - to be arranged, tbc - to be confirmed
---------------------------------------------------------------

APRIL

Wed 3rd UMB 7.30 pm (tbc) Meeting to discuss this year’s GA motions
and concentrating on the motion regarding ‘Assisted Dying’.
“ Frenchay 7.00 pm, Kundalini meditation

SUN 7th FRENCHAY 10.30 am - The MINISTER
UMB 6.00 pm - The MINISTER
Teas - Mr P Wildman
Flowers - Mrs S Wildman
Thur 11th - Sat 13th Unitarian General Assembly at Nottingham Univ.

SUN 14th FRENCHAY 10.30 am - tba
NO SERVICE AT UMB
Mon 15th Frenchay 6.00 pm Group meditation - Person Centred,
Relax into peacefulness

SUN 21st FRENCHAY 10.30 am - tba
UMB 6.00 pm - Mark Gartside
Teas - Ms S Pugh
Flowers - Mr P Wheeler
Thur 25th Women’s League meeting at the home of Grace Cooper

SUN 28th FRENCHAY 10.30 am - Mr GERALD WITCHER
UMB 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm ‘BRIGHT LIGHTS’

MAY

Wed 1st Frenchay 7.00 pm, Kundalini meditation

SUN 5th FRENCHAY 10.30 am - The MINISTER
UMB 6.00 pm - The MINISTER
Teas - Ms S Pugh
Flowers - Ms G Williamson
UMB service proceeded by a congregational meeting at 4.00 pm
Mon 6th Redland Fair - UMB stall. Contributions please: preserves,
plants, books and good bric á brac please.


SUN 12th FRENCHAY 10.30 am - tba
NO SERVICE AT UMB

SUN 19th GROUP WEEKEND AT IVY HOUSE, WARMINSTER
FRENCHAY 10.30 am - tba
UMB 6.00 pm - tba
Mon 20th Frenchay 6.00 pm Group meditation - Person Centred,
Relax into peacefulness

SUN 26th FRENCHAY 10.30 am - The MINISTER
UMB 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm ‘BRIGHT LIGHTS’
Thur 30th Frenchay 7.00 pm Group AGM

DATES FOR JUNE

SUN 2nd FRENCHAY 10.30 am - Lis Dyson Jones, GA Past President
UMB 6.00 pm - Lis Dyson Jones
Teas - tba
Flowers - tba

SUN 9th FRENCHAY 10.30 am - tba
NO SERVICE AT UMB
Sat 29th UMB- worship workshop facilitated by Rev Margaret Kirk
and Rev Lindy Latham


PLEASE NOTE
The next ʻCatch Upʻ sheet, covering April and May 2013, will be
ready on 28th April. Please send details and dates of events and
services to both Karl and myself by 24th April
PETER/KARL

Mark's Service on 'Worry' at UMB, 21.4.13

This is what I was planning to say on the subject of 'Worry' if time hadn't run away with us. The end bit I managed to slip into the closing blessing, so those who were there will have heard that already.

Address:

We want so much.

We want to feel special and warm and loved and fed and wanted and desirable and safe.

We want to be challenged and reassured and left alone and surrounded by friends and picked up when we’re down and listened to when we’re hurting and to be understood, to be praised, to be celebrated, to be adored, to be helped.

We want so much.

We have so much to give. We’re creative and loving and smart and funny and intelligent, we’re sensitive and empathic, hard-working, insightful, we’re great dancers, singers, poets, artists, philosophers, scientists, nurturers, care takers, hunters, gatherers, lovers, friends.

Our dreams are bigger than the big blue sky, and our disappointments plunge deeper than the deepest ocean. Our vulnerability runs like seismic fissures, our broken places are deep and well worn.

Yet we have so much to give.

We carry all this around with us. And in spite of our rational, logical scientific perspective that tells us we’re really really small and insignificant, and in spite of our post-modern relativist perspective that tells us that nothing really matters, and there’s no such thing as truth, or unity, we know that we are our entire universe. We are everything to ourselves. We are incomprehensibly important and vital.

So no wonder we worry.

But our universes don’t exist in isolation. They are superimposed on top of one another. They overlap, they intermingle, they inform each other. While I’m trying to hold up my universe, and while you’re trying to hold up yours, we can actually be holding up each other’s universes. My worries are your worries.

Worry can be all-consuming. It can take every last bit of our attention, and paint a gloomy picture of reality where the world is a dangerous and threatening place. So different to the spiritual values we aspire to.

Worry is about our continued grasping for control and the feeling of always being on the edge of losing control. It is the difference between holding on and letting go. There is no grace, no serenity in worry. Courage and wisdom desert us. There is only tension in our shoulders, knots in our stomach, thoughts that race and don’t explain themselves, feelings that are elusive.

Worrying can be the by-product of prolonged exposure to fear, of always having to stand guard of our big unruly universes. Worry can become a way of life in which we project into the future about situations and scenarios that are yet to be, and may well never happen.

We have material worries such as, where is my next meal coming from, how will I pay my mortgage, what will I do if my car, or boiler or washing machine breaks down. Will I be able to afford to live in my old age? What if I get sick and I can’t support or look after myself anymore?

We have emotional worries, perhaps along the lines of, what if I’m not good enough? Am I unlovable? Does this person like me? I’m lonely. I can’t cope with life.

Then there are existential worries such as, what happens when we die? Where are my loved ones now who’ve passed away? What if I get run-over when crossing the street? What if my friend has a car accident? Does God really exist? Does hell really exist? What is time? What is eternity? Am I more than the sum of my parts? Is there such a thing as good and evil? Am I a good person? Do I have the right to be happy?

Worries.

Things we might be afraid of, but the processes of worry mythologizes and even fetishizes these things. Well-worn grooves in the records which spin around in our heads. A mode of thinking we get into. Promoted and encouraged by the media, infectious like a cold, passed on to your by your friends, your family, your parents.

The process of worry focuses our attention on narrow range of worst-case scenarios. Worry can be like a cloud that surrounds us, which blocks us from seeing and feeling the light of God, the light of the universe, the expansiveness of the skies.

But our worries tell us something spiritual about ourselves too. They tell us that we care. That we care about whether we live or die, that our fellow creatures and our planet suffer and decay, about whether our world will end up going to hell in a hand-basket.

Our pathological patterns of worrying belie the fact that we care and that we have so much in our stewardship.

We are stewards of the great mystery that is life and creation. We are the interface of being, portals of the divine, gateways of despair, guardians of demonology, midwifes of creation.

But if we just angle our worries in the direction the wind blows, keeping an eye on our spiritual compass, we could see our worries turn to cares and our cares turn to butterflies and the butterflies turn to love, right before our very inner eyes. And the stress that our worries afford might just melt away now and then, as we are held from time to time by the arms of the divine, strong but unseen, silent but all-telling.

So let us make friends with the Worry Monster. Next time he comes to visit, let’s edge closer to him: try to rub his tummy, or tickle him under the chin. He might be our life’s companion. We might grow to understand each other yet.