Our regular Sunday Gathering. An opportunity for wisdom, joy, solace, and community – followed by a healthy dose of caffeine, cake, and conversation.
Gatherings include live music, a story for children, singing, poetry and literature, a talk from our minister, and time for sharing joys and sorrows.
The theme of this week's Gathering is 'Dehumanising Labels. Labels can reduce our complex, many-sided humanity to a single identity, encapsulated in a single word and symbol. When this brutal simplification occurs, we're pigeonholed into separate boxes and can come to be seen as uncomfortably alien, distressingly different....even a potential threat.
This Sunday, the day after Holocaust Memorial Day, we explore how the dehumanising effect of labels has played its part in some of the worst atrocities of modern times. We seek ways to challenge dehumanising labels, whenever and wherever they occur. And we imagine a world where human diversity and complexity are rightly celebrated. Where people are free to explore and experience a multiplicity of different identities, deepening and enriching their own humanity.