It was this time last year that Sunday Assembly Brighton took itself outdoors and held the July service on Hove lawns. This year, we brought the outdoors inside, which was just as well as the heavy rain would otherwise have made for some soggy cake!
Anita and Izi were our hosts for the day and kicked off proceedings by leading us into singing one of Sunday Assembly Brighton’s favourite songs, ‘Born to be wild’. Our reading was a poem called Dragonfly Dance written and read beautifully by our avid supporter, Meg. It was a wonderful poem, inspired by a time that Meg had spent with her mother in the countryside of Cannock Chase. The imagery Meg created captivated everybody in silence and wonder. Even the young ‘heckler’ who joined in with the excited exclamation of ‘a dragonfly!’ seemed only to add to the magical feel of the reading. Many thanks to Meg for sharing it with us.
We were delighted to have Dr Tony Whitbread, Cheif Executive of the Sussex Wildlife Trust as our main speaker. His talk was titled ‘what have flowers ever done for us?’, and as he demonstrated, the answer is ‘quite a lot’: we simply wouldn’t be here without them. Besides which, they look nice and can make us feel happy.
Timeline of the creation of the universe, life and everything
For more information about the Sussex Wildlife Trust, how you can support them and how you can learn more about our beautiful Sussex countryside you can visit their website https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk.
Also let us know if you would like Sunday Assembly Brighton to set up a one-day volunteer project with them – they could always do with some hard-working volunteers!
Our second song, musically accompanied by our amazing guitar duo, Chris and Paul was ‘Wild Thing’. As a special treat, I dusted off my recorder (which has not seen the light of day since primary school!) and I filled in for the ocarina solo, much to the delight (at least I think it was delight?!) of the congregation. Thanks for cheering me on, everyone!!
Our ‘This Much I Know’ slot was filled by an inspiring tale by Russell Clark. Russell had felt disconnected from his fellow passengers on his daily commute between Redhill and Brighton, and recognising that people seem more sociable when they are in the countryside, he decided to bring the countryside inside the train by handing out flowers. You can read about his project to promote social interaction here: https://www.facebook.com/flowersonatrain.
We concluded things with a slightly slowed-down groovy version of ‘I wanna be like you’, accompanied by our fab choir. We have started to hold regular choir sessions, lead by Rob and Phily, for anyone who wants to sing for fun. There is no obligation to stand at the front on service days if you don’t like the limelight – the choir sessions are for anyone, whatever your ability. If you would like more details and dates of when and where the sessions are being held then please email us at sundayassemblybrighton@gmail.com.
Thanks to everyone for making it such a great service: to the tea crew, to the washer-uppers, to the meeters and greeters, to you for your generous monetary donations (which go towards the running costs, equipment hire and speaker expenses), for the food donations (which go to the Hangelton Food Bank), and for the cake bakers (thank you Amy C for the timely supply of the Banoffee Pie, following the recent death of its creator, Nigel Mackenzie).
Sunday Assembly Brighton is run entirely by volunteers, some of whom will be standing down from the committee at the AGM in September. To ensure the continued success of Sunday Assembly Brighton we would really appreciate some more voluntary support, either in a formal capacity as a committee member, or as a dedicated part of the planning team. Perhaps you only have time to send one email a month, or perhaps you’d like to be responsible for building a whole new website? Or maybe you’ve got good communication skills and are good at motivating people to help? Or perhaps you live round the corner from the venue and can pick up the keys and open up the venue every month? There are lots of ways that you can help out, depending on your availability and amount of time to spare. At the moment, there are a lot of jobs being done by a few people but we need to spread the load to make things sustainable. If you would like to know more, or can offer to help on a regular basis, or if you would like to stand for election to the Sunday Assembly Brighton committee then email us at sundayassemblybrighton@gmail.com
We look forward to seeing you at the next service at 11am on Sunday 23rd August.
With love,
Jo xxxx
Sunday Assembly Brighton 