Manchester Liberal Jewish Community has joined with local Unitarians in celebrating the amendment to the Equality Bill which will lift the current ban on Civil Partnerships being held in places of religious worship. The vote was passed in the House of Lords on Tuesday 2 March, by 95 votes to 21.Congratulations to all concerned. This is marvellous news.
The amendment to the Equality Bill was jointly sponsored by the Unitarians, Liberal Judaism and the Quakers, with support from other inclusive religious communities such as the Metropolitan Community Church.
The Reverend Jane Barraclough, minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester city centre, was enthusiastic about the news: "At last (if the bill is passed) liberal people of faith can register their partnerships in their places of worship. We can welcome all those who share our progressive and tolerant values to our churches and chapels and celebrate the blessing of their relationships and their lives together."
Equality, diversity and justice are core values for both Liberal Jews and Unitarians. Both movements have welcomed lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people into their congregations for many years. Openly LGBT people participate fully in community life and leadership in both movements, which includes some serving as rabbis and ministers. Both movements are to begin amending orders of service for same-sex commitment ceremonies.
Tim Moore, a member of Cross Street Chapel and Associate Member of MLJC added, "I am very proud to be so closely involved in two of the inclusive religious movements who have taken a unified stand for equality and tolerance and against prejudice and discrimination. The latest amendment on civil partnerships is just one more success in the growing national campaign for full marriage equality for LGBT people."
"Liberal Jews, Unitarians, Quakers and their supporters have witnessed to their faith based on conscience, guided by reason, and tested in welcoming communities. We will continue working with our partners on looking into ways of furthering the campaign in the North West for marriage equality."
In Gaskell's estimation, true Christianity was not to be found in organized denominations nor in liturgy nor in theology. She believed and acted on a religion of works, "the real earnest Christianity which seeks to do as much and as extensive good as it can." Local action for change by those most intimately concerned, not government legislation, was her solution to social problems. Those who have should help those who have not. For her such charity began at or near home. She took her motto from Thomas Carlyle, "Do the duty that lies nearest to thee." Unitarian rationalist feminist journalist Frances Power Cobbe, after reading a story by Gaskell, wrote, "it came to me that Love is greater than knowledge β that it is more beautiful to serve our brothers freely and tenderly, than to hive up learning with each studious year."
The new website works better in larger screen resolutions, and has a more modern look to it, but you can still find your way around if you are more familiar with the old style of the site.It's a new day for UUA.org! Our new home page addresses topics of interest to newcomers to Unitarian Universalism, including a video feature and an interactive banner highlighting our principles and beliefs. A short "Find a Congregation" form makes it easier than ever to look for a local congregation. People already familiar with our faith may want to bookmark the new Resources for UUs page, which features expert-recommended resources, multimedia, and more!
UUA Announce 'Music in Worship'
The UUA now have a new expanded 'WorshipWeb' with a facility called "Music in Worship". Among other things, this includes a UU Composers Database.
Contributed by Rev Dr Linda Hart
The first episode of the CUUPS Podcast features basic info about CUUPS and an interview with British academic Michael York recorded at the Dec. 2009 Parliament of World Religions provided to us courtesy of the Pagan Newswire Collective.The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans promotes networking among Pagan-identified Unitarian Universalists, and provides for the outreach of Unitarian Universalism to the broader Pagan community.
What UUSC will do
UUSCβs disaster response in Haiti will focus on those survivors less likely to have access to aid, such as child domestic workers (restaviks), women-headed households that work in the informal sector, and people living with HIV/AIDS. Haiti has a vibrant grassroots movement with a vision of empowering people. UUSC will work closely with partners in this grassroots movement to reach those survivors at greatest risk of being overlooked. As of this afternoon, weβve already connected with three organizations and will be reaching out to others over the next 24 hours in order to shape our response.
We will be updating our website regularly as our plans develop.
In the depths of the global crunch, why would anyone want to waste precious money on pointless junk that ends up in the trashcan after a couple of uses?
But sales of consumer nonsense are still rocketing - stuff such as wand-shaped TV remote controls, desk-top hoovers, and electric toothbrushes costing hundreds of pounds. Even a hollow plastic golf-club you can wee into while playing a round (don't show it to Tiger Woods, please). We're still madly addicted to consumption.
Despite the financial collapse, carbon emissions from fossil fuels rose by 2 per cent last year to an all-time, planet-melting high. Scientists in Nature Geoscience say that much of this was caused by Chinese exports of consumer gadgets to Europe.
So, welcome to the Landfill Prize 2010, a divertingly subversive initiative to help to break this costly cycle.
We want people's nominations for the most needless, wasteful uses of our planet's precious resources that they've seen, bought or been given in the past year. Whether it's an electronic skipping rope, an automatic cucumber peeler or a laser-guided pair of scissors, we want to spotlight such pointless ingenuity as it makes its fast-track journey to the junkheap. This year we're specially interested in 'faux' green goods.
The prize, to be presented to the 'winning' manufacturer in February, celebrates the stupendous creativity of the people tasked with inventing constantly inflated new wants for us to want. It's a monument to perverse imagination and needless consumption. Most importantly, it's a plea for us to say, "Thanks. We've got enough stuff," and to break free from this crazy cycle.
The Landfill Prize site features a list of scientifically backed ways in which you can help to proof your brain against consumerist chicanery, written by John Naish, a national newspaper health correspondent, the author of Enough, Breaking free from the world of more . and the man behind the prize.
Nominations will be judged by a panel consisting of:The winner will be announced on the 16th February 2010. We'll invite the makers along to a little prizegiving. and if they don't want to come, I guess we will have to pop around to their place to make the award.
- John Naish (author of Enough: Breaking free from the world of more )
- Anna Shepherd (author of How green are my wellies?)
- Carl Honore (author of In Praise of Slow )
- Ben Davis (co-founder of BuyLessCrap)
For more information go to www.enoughness.co.uk
There are two time honored institutions in Unitarian Universalist churches that are, or should be, guarded by clergy and laity as if they were the Holy Grail. They are the free pulpit and the free pew. Succinctly stated, the free pulpit means that when a congregation lends its pulpit to a minister by calling that minister as its spiritual leader, the congregation pledges complete and unencumbered freedom of speech to say anything from that pulpit that he or she believes to be true. But that freedom is not something the preacher is born with, but originates in the bond of affection, the covenant established between the congregation and the minister. The free pew means that when a Unitarian Universalist congregation is gathered by a bond of affection, a covenant that makes it into a spiritual community, the most sacred agreement made is that no theological test will be given for membership in that congregation.A number of churches and ministers put their sermons and addresses online - it's a fantastic spiritual resource and a way to understand Unitarianism better.
<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />
<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />
<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" title="The Nightingale Centre" />
Name | Phone | |
---|---|---|
Joe Bloggs | 0208 123 4567 | jbloggs@gmail.com |
Ann Other | 0208 234 5678 | annother@gmail.com |
Fred Smith | 0208 345 6789 | fsmith@gmail.com |
The information architecture of your website makes it easier for visitors to find information. A typical church website will have times of services, contact details, how to find the church/chapel, sample sermons, profiles of the members and the minister, newsletter articles, and so on.
- The structural design of shared information environments.
- The art and science of organising and labelling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support findability and usability. Β» More
In computing, internationalisation and localisation are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalisation is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.~ Wikipedia, Internationalisation and localisation
Bad | Good |
---|---|
|
|
For people who want to bring together different services to create a unique blend (also known as a mashup), there are some really useful and easy to use tools out there.
Widgetbox allows you to develop small applications for embedding in webpages. The easiest widget to set up is the blidget, which fetches an RSS feed (from a blog, news service such as the BBC or the University's News pages,del.icio.us tags, Yahoo! Pipe or Flickr) and creates a shiny widget for embedding in a web-page, or for turning into a Facebook application or Google gadget.
Yahoo! Pipes allow you to bring together (aggregate) several different RSS feeds, filter out duplicate items, add author information, and so on.
Flickr is an online photo storage site, where you can display your photos (either publicly or so that only friends and family can see them), and you can use advanced search to obtain photos for use in presentations and on websites under the Creative Commons licence.
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, which means it is like bookmarking a favourite page in your web browser, but the bookmarks are saved on the del.icio.us website, and tagged with labels to make them easier for you and others to find. Each page on del.icio.us (whether it's popular tags, all tags, your bookmarks, or one of your tags) has an RSS feed associated with it, which can then be imported to a blidget or an RSS reader.
Jotform is the first web based WYSIWYG form builder. Its intuitive drag and drop user interface makes form building a breeze. Using JotForm, you can create forms, integrate them to your site and collect submissions from your visitors.
Google Scholar provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles. You still need an Athens account to log in to many of the resources you can find via Google Scholar, but it searches across all of JSTOR, Ebscohost, Blackwell Synergy, the DNB, Google Books, etc.
Google Books - Google have digitised many books libraries around the world. If the book is out of copyright, you can download the entire book, and search all of its content. Books that are still in copyright only allow a limited search. Β» More information
These are just two of the many tools offered by Google.