17 delegates from nine congregations (including Leicester Unitarian Fellowship and Mansfield) attended a training day on Alternative Worship, led by Sue Woolley and Alison Thursfield. After some preliminary words about using ritual in ordinary services, and putting together completely alternative services, the delegates were split up into three groups, and given an occasion each to make up a 15-minute ritual about. The themes were One World Week, Mothering Sunday and the Summer Solstice, and the ingenuity shown by people was amazing. It was clear that the delegates very much enjoyed the group work, and after lunch, we got back together, and each group presented its ritual to the rest. Then our guest speakers, Mel Prideaux and Linda King, who had come all the way from Yorkshire, talked to us about walking a labyrinth. We then de-camped to the Heaviside Hall (probably the largest flat space in any MUA church) to walk the labyrinth itself, which is seven metres square! Most people enjoyed it, but a couple had literal and metaphorical cold feet. Then it was time to brave the vagaries of Coventry’s ring road, and go our separate ways.
