Our Minister

The minister, Rev David Shaw, was originally a member of the congregation.

David studied theology at Unitarian College Manchester and qualified as a Minister in June 2007 and conducts about half of the services each year.

Passing Thoughts

Changes Afoot

Early in March our aged cat Ebony died. We watched her increasing frailty over recent weeks and eventually, after seventeen years with us we had to make that decision.

No longer will she peer at me from my in-tray, glance over my work, and give me a look that said, “I wouldn’t have done it that way!” and then go back to sleep. She was never just a pet!

It is a reminder that change is about us all the time but sometimes something happens that makes us realise that we have travelled from one chapter to another.

Nature travels in chapters too. For us, four of them each year and bit by struggling bit we are travelling towards Spring. We have been so used in recent years to a growing season that has been getting earlier, that it has come as quite a surprise this year that, as I write in mid-March, temperatures seem to be really struggling to rise. As I look out of my window I cannot see one sign of any of those yellow harbingers of spring – the daffodils.

I read that ‘Tourism Chiefs’ in Cumbria have noticed the absence of ‘golden hosts’ and asked residents to report sightings of daffodils!

Such is nature – I expect that by the time April is well with us the golden trumpets will be blowing triumphantly. Nature does seem to have a natural ability to sort herself out.

Change will be afoot too at a congregational level in preparation for and after my departure as minister at the end of April.

A special meeting of the congregation in early March was held to consider what might be done long term and short term too. Various jobs are being distributed and if you feel that you could talk on a task or too to help with the running of the congregation then please - like the daffodils in spring – raise your heads.

It is also the season for Annual General Meetings and the season when that bit of extra clearing and cleaning takes place too.

Changes can extend to our minds as well. So often to admit to having a change of mind is seen as a weakness and yet surly it is a visible sign of strength to think, consider and then proclaim that you now hold a different view.

Some ideas are held on to with much grit and determination rather like holding on to a dear friend from which we do not want to let go.

In Ecclesiastes 3 we find the passage that starts, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” and indeed there is. The poster on our notice board reminds us of the words of Carl Yung: ‘Only that which changes remains’ - Carl Yung’.

David

INTRODUCTORY BOOKLET:

A FAITH WORTH THINKING ABOUT

click here for a free download

Old Chapel (Unitarian)
Great Hucklow
Buxton
Derbyshire
SK17 8 RG

t: 01433 630541

NEWSLETTER (pdf 456K)