'It's the thought that counts'   broadcast on community radio station 'Bolton Fm' (96.5fm)


    (1)   When Bolton was a cotton town belching smoke and pouring grime on to its terraced cobbled streets, a group of young men used to meet at Unitarian Chapels and took walks on the hillside in the fresh air.  
    They read poetry to one another and talked about life and the future and what was the meaning of it all.      
    There are messages in the poems they said,  of religious things and philosophical things.   Messages of how life should be and how life could be.     
    One day one of them came to the group with the poem - ‘Leaves of Grass’ by an American poet, Walt Whitman.
    This poetry astounded them, moved them so completely that they abandoned all others and from then on read only from Whitman and his ‘Leaves of Grass’.
    Whitman wrote about the beauty of life and the spiritual beauty in everything - hold a book in your hands and feel its beauty.   Look at the street, look at the ocean, look at the blossom on the apple tree.
    And he wrote about God.   Don’t look up for God, look at for God - for God is in everything you see. Look at one another to see God and look at the grass -
    The young men became known as Whitmanites.     And the Whitmanite tradition continues, every year gathering to read the poems, drink from a loving cup that the old poet sent them and salute his memory and his spiritual values.
I am tony mcneile, a Unitarian


(2)    They both came to the church.   He was a wheeler dealer who became chairman of the congregation and ruffled feathers with his abrupt manner.   She wrote poetry and articles about the countryside around their home.   She ran a meditation group at the church.
    Then one of his great ideas for making a fortune collapsed on him and put everything they owned at risk.   He was at his wits ends looking for ways out of his misfortune but he was chasing rabbits and nothing came out.
    So she insisted that every morning at the breakfast table they would start with a fifteen minute meditation.   He objected at first but then relented.
    She knew that meditation calms the mind and with practice is able to ignore all the distracting thoughts and focus on just one.     The knowledge in the deep well of the unconscious mind can flow without hindrance into the conscious mind.
    He did apply his mind to this meditation and she guided him.   With a new found clarity he was able to deal with the problems he faced one by one and he was also able to create new schemes in a more thoughtful way.
    These daily sessions at the breakfast table were a turning point in his life and he went on to prosper.
    The religious teachers of old - the mystics knew of these meditation techniques.   They called it contemplation, a positive form of prayer that takes a tortured soul out of the wilderness.
    I am tony mcneile - a unitarian.




(3)     One year at my church we decided to run an advertising campaign to boost our numbers.   We printed leaflets, posted them through letter boxes by the thousand, sat back and waited for the church to fill up.       We didn’t understand advertising.   We didn’t know that for every thousand leaflets we might receive just one enquiry; and for every twenty enquiries, one person might actually turn up.   That is exactly what happened.  He arrived one Sunday morning. 
    He stayed with us for a number of years.
He was a quiet patient man with much wisdom.   He enjoyed running and had had a go at a couple of marathons. 
He also enjoyed gardening.     Running gives time to think he used to say but gardening was his real love.
    He said that when you had your hands in the soil all the negative feelings in your mind drained away into the earth.   Working in his garden gave him peace.     Sowing and planting, weeding and harvesting took his spirit to a different place.    To see the colours, the patterns, all with life, filled his soul with contentment, he said.
    I used to glance sometimes on a Sunday morning.   He was sitting there with a contented smile on his face and I knew his mind had wandered away into his garden. 
I don’t know what he learned from us but we learned much from him.    Church was not the only place.  God is in the garden too.
I am tony mcneile. I am a Unitarian