Kafka-esque Presidency

(This will appear in the next issue of Quest (the newsletter of ANZUUA), as the first of a regular column called "Presidential Ponderings")

Franz Kafka begins his story "The Metamorphosis" with one of the great openings in world literature:

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous vermin."

​Gregor's shock, at once horrifying and comical, has become my own. Waking up from drug-and-flu induced dreams on a Sunday last October to find that I had been elected (appointed?) ANZUUA president in absentia and unopposed will probably not be the only Kafka-esque thing that happens over the course of the next few years.

Because I meant what I said at the BGM (through a healthy proxy)--that I had zero interest in presiding over an organisation content with managing its own decline and irrelevance, and that if you don't want a brisk (and probably brusque) change agent, please don't vote for me. And so it follows (as does the night the day) that you've only got yourselves to blame for what follows from turning me into this...President-creature. 

As regards the 2017 ANZUUA conference, I can't read a room I wasn't in, but reports from eye-witnesses suggest we did ourselves no favours as an association, and I think anybody who was there will know why. Let me say, straight up, that I have zero tolerance for bullying in any context or form. Committee meetings and General meetings will be forums where mutual respect and democratic principles will be firmly enforced. Those who insist that their will prevails by shouting down opposition may wish to consider whether they care to attend any such future events. We need to stop these petty internecine wars if we're ever going to grow and thrive together. 

But maybe that's a mistaken assumption. Perhaps, in our heart of hearts, we don't actually want to grow and thrive together. Perhaps we are prepared to let ANZUUA burn on the altar of our personal/local hobby-horses. Often, the core of such self-seeking destructiveness is having ONE SACRED GOAL against which all others must be disregarded. Social justice martyrdom must trump nourishing fellowship. Atheism must trump theism. Bourgeois politeness must trump speaking prophetic witness. I use the word 'trump' knowingly...

If Unitarians are anything, they are the church of BOTH/AND rather than the church of EITHER/OR. The heart of our spirituality is seeing the divine not in one or another isolated things, but in all beings and all things. This is the stern challenge of our Unitarian faith that has never been as easy as it looks. As an association of churches and fellowships, we have to make enough space in our hearts and in our forums so that all concerns and dreams can be heard and gently held.  Love, and the respect that follows from it, is the one and only trump card we hold.

With that caveat out of the way, here are a few general directions in which the current ANZUUA committee is heading:

1. Freeing up the frozen assets in the Bottomley Trust
2. Developing an annual budget
3. Developing criteria for material support of small and emerging congregations/fellowships
4. Developing methods of greater resource sharing and communication amongst our congregations
5. Developing regional ANZUUA in-house print material for all congregations.

Also, feel free to write or call anytime to express hopes, dreams, concerns, whatever. My personal email is robmacpherson1@hotmail.com and my direct line is 0419 550543.

With every good wish and blessing for our shared future,

Gregor Samsa  Rev. Rob MacPherson, President