Welcome to our Spring Programme, 2012.

It used to be said that there were no more than six degrees of separation between any two people. Recent research suggests that, thanks to the rise of Facebook with more than 700 million members, we are now connected to everyone else on the planet in no more than four steps.  So my friends’ friends’ friends’ friends encompass the whole world.  I’m not so sure about this, because if it were really true surely there would be more tolerance, more compassion and more peace than there is right now?
 
There’s a growing risk that we confuse the number of connections with the quality of the relationships.  The quality of relationship relies on our ability to recognise and appreciate both the similarities and differences between ourselves and another human being.  The core similarity, as taught by Christianity and the other great faiths, is that separation between our individual selves and God is but an illusion, so we are all one in God.  So rather than there being four degrees of separation between us, there are really none at all.  This is hard to acknowledge when our human egos are so well designed to meet our personal needs and defend our individual interests.  We create so many categories of difference that our fundamental unity is lost or forgotten.
 
It’s easy to dismiss the urge to have more and more ‘friends’ on Facebook as nothing more than a fad driven by insecurity.  But perhaps this behaviour speaks to a much deeper desire to be connected with something that transcends our individual selves.  Ironically, that something doesn’t lie out there in cyber-space, but is waiting quietly in our own hearts.  We can find it by engaging in real communion and service with others and by regularly spending time in silent contemplation. 
 
We hope that our forthcoming programme offers opportunities for you to engage your hearts and minds, and to develop some real, rather than virtual, friends.  It would be good to have you along.  Please phone or e-mail to book a place.  And why not forward this programme to a friend?