Last night I went along to Winchester Cathedral to the third talk in the Just 10 series. These evenings centre around a set of 10 talks delivered by J John looking at the 10 commandments. Rather than focus on the commandments as a simple list of dos and don'ts they are turned round into a discussion of how they can guide our lives. Last night we were treated to the 7th commandment and how to "Proser with a clear conscience" rather than a simplistic "do not steal".
Delivered in a humorous and engaging way the talk had lots of thought provoking content and challenge to us all to reflect on some of the less obvious ways that we may have been "stealing".
The evening ended with a challenge to the audience to use the coming week to return any items they had stolen and if that wasn't possible to bring them along next week to place them in "Amnesty Bins". On previous occassions these bins seem to have attracted a wide range of items from wads of cash to a good supply of hotel bathrobes/towels.
Based on my experiences last night I will definitely be back in future weeks to hear more of these talks. If you are around Winchester on a Wednesday evening I'd recommend you get along.
As I wrote this post I wondered what sort of things might find their way into the bins well the Week 4 update newsletter tells me that... "As you may remember J.John introduced the Amnesty Bins which were put out at the front of each of our venues after the meeting and again before the start and at the end of this week’s, as they will be for the remaining six. He explained that these could be used for people to dispose of anything they had not obtained honestly. Well, after Wednesday night we struggled to lift the weight of the sacks from the Cathedral bins! Every single venue reported items and/or money deposited with one outlying venue seeing over £1500 in cash deposited. Here in Winchester we counted over £1000 in cash handed in. This is along with jewelry, and other items of no material value but obviously greatly significant for the person wanting to be rid of it. We also received notes detailing how people had donated to charities or returned items to their owners during this week. "
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