With a lot of my blogs I sit at my table in my kitchen and look around the room, How I choose The Sunday Assembly as my subject was that I was reading the article I got for us through my friend Paula, she is sub editor of the Northern leader newspapers in Melbourne Australia and they are always looking for an  interesting article http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/central/abbotsfords-sunday-assembly-gathers-atheists-and-others-into-the-fold/story-fngnvlpt-1227092995319?nk=9e95699130ce2590a780890578c00898 I thought that we at the Sunday Assembly were one and she agreed.

So the best way to talk about Sunday Assembly is to tell Rod’s story as too how he became involved. I have a friend that I admire greatly, the always feisty Catherine Deveny read her great stuff at http://www.catherinedeveny.com/ who posted about this thing called Sunday Assembly and if you weren’t doing anything at 11 a.m. on a Sunday you should go along, so I did. I didn’t know about Atheism and no God as I’m a bit of a Deepak and Wayne fan and travel the spiritualist path and replace God with Gaia to make it okay when that word that reminds one of the Sunday School horrors rears its ugly head.

So I went along not knowing what to expect, to my surprise there were all age groups with a smattering of people wearing Atheist paraphernalia gathered in this hall in South Melbourne all waiting expectantly, The Dev came on and lead us singing one of the three songs that you do at the assembly. It was I come from a Land down Under and the next minute we were doing a Conga Line, Catherine has the ability to take you from point A to point Z very quickly. The speaker at this assembly was Ezra Bix https://www.facebook.com/ezrabix and he spoke on Wonder, one of the three premises of Sunday Assembly.

So a little bit of a history re how Sunday Assembly came about.

The Sunday Assembly started on a car journey to Bath when two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans , realised that they wanted to do something that had all the best bits of church, but without the religion, and awesome pop songs.

The first version of this was in January 6th 2013, and though they weren’t expecting many people, the entire place was full. At the next Assembly there were 300. Then they had to go to two services a day.  And then it went viral.

Now there are 28 Assemblies across the world (check here to find one near you), and it looks like there’ll be 100 by the end of 2014. It is the most exciting thing in the world.

People across the world were drawn to our simple values, clear message and excellent mission.

• We are a godless congregation that celebrates of life.
• We have an awesome motto: Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More.
• A super mission: to try to help everyone find and fulfil their full potential.
• An awesome vision: a godless congregation in every town city, or village that wants one.

We are dedicated to helping the people that attend, and the folk in the wider community, to make the most of this one life that we know we have. We harness fun and joy and wonder to build communities and to help others.

So who do we have speak at The Assemblies, wide and varied from asylum seekers who had made it to professors who spoke about the statistics of happiness. A few of my favourites, Frazer Kirkman on Mindfulness http://frazerk.net/ Trevor Young on having your own brand in the world of Social Media http://www.trevoryoung.me/, and the comedian Ben McKenzie http://labcoatman.com.au/  at the inspirational and very humorous talk on What would Doctor Who Do.

This month we have Dick Gross ex St. Kilda Mayor speaking about Ritual and a naming ceremony for one of our members new borns, its on the 26th October at 11 a.m. Its called The Grand Hello : A secular ceremony at the Collingwood Senior Citizens Hall behind Collingwood Town Hall in Hoddle Street. http://www.meetup.com/SundayAssemblyMelbourne/events/207136642/

Last of all we cannot forget our musicians who donate their time so lovingly, for two oof the past three months Tom Carty http://tomcarty.com/bio has been our resident musican Tom has an awesome project in mind, Busking for swags, he will pick a specific time and gather people together and when he has the money for a sway for a homeless person, about 70 bucks he will give it to the person.

Unfortunately I cannot make it but go along, bring your cake and have a great sing, be inspired and tell your friends.

Namaste till next time , my friends