with Maria Hayward

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 3 August 2025

Refugees: People like you and me. A picture show and commentary about New Zealand’s Refugee Reception Centre at Mangere (Te Āhuru Mōwai). What does it look like, which agencies are based there and what happens during the 5-6 week stay for former refugees.

For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/the-refugee-reception-centre/

Speaker:- Ron Ahnen

Worship Leader:- Viv Allen

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 24 November 2024

As you all know, we just finished an election in the U.S. with so many different candidates—not just presidential ones—putting forth many competing claims about what “the truth” is. The good news is that we’ve got fact-checkers and journalists all trying to help us sort out exactly what is and is not true. You might think it’s easier to find the truth these days, given that you can Google just about anything in a nanosecond. It turns out, finding out the truth is not so easy. In fact, it’s often really, really hard.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/listening-for-your-own-truth/

with Barbara Thomborson

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 17 November 2024

Ageing and death are two timeless themes, universal to our human experience. Our culture’s near phobia about death has created unneeded anxiety and irrational fear about “passing on, passing away, kicking the bucket, giving up the ghost, breathing your last, losing your life, expiring (like a use-by date), or just plain croaking”. That’s a small sample of the euphemisms English has for dying. In her book The Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvior says, “The vast majority of humankind looks upon the coming of old age with sorrow and rebellion. It fills them with more aversion than death itself”.

For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/ruminations-on-ageing-and-dying/

with John Maindonald

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 10 November 2024

Today, no business of any size uses paper based accounting. The move from paper based systems started in the late 1950s when large corporations started using computer mainframes, as they were called, for basic operations. In the 1980s personal computers made computer-based accounting systems widely available.

For more information see:-

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 3rd November 2024

Barbara Kingsolver, in her novel Demon Copperhead, has Demon say this:

“… she looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.”

Like not being hungry.

She looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while.

I’ll never forget how that felt.

Like not being hungry.

Have you ever been seen like that by another person? Have you ever shared such a deep understanding, be it of sadness or of some other emotion? Do you know that feeling, of not being hungry?

Will you ever forget how that felt?

I will never forget how that felt.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/a-year-and-a-day/

Speaker:- Randolph Hollingsworth

Worship Leader:- Viv Allen

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 15 September 2024

With scarce documentary evidence, one might be tempted to relegate to the sidelines any efforts to examine the political ideologies of Annie Jane Allen Schnackenberg (1835-1905) of Auckland, New Zealand. A national leader who oversaw the petition campaigns of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand, culminating in the world's first self governing nation's right for women to vote, Schnackenberg rarely arises beyond a note or

Speaker:- Peter Lineham

Worship Leader:- Ruby Johnson

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 28th April 2024

Ralph Waldo Emerson knew how to upset Unitarians, for he had been one of them. Emerson was from a Unitarian family, trained at Harvard College, and his brother William was educated at Gottingen and was a minister. Waldo became minister of Second Church Boston in 1829. But he took a break, after the death of his wife, and headed to Europe. Returning he wrote this extraordinary essay, Nature, from which I read. He was a mystery to his fellow Unitarians. In 1838 he spoke to the Divinity Class at Harvard, in words that caused a huge controversy...

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/the-american-transcendentalists/

with Karn Cleary

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 21 April 2024

I titled today’s service “Remembering Anzac Day”, purposely. It disturbs me to see or hear references to “celebrating” Anzac Day, when I believe it should always be a day of mourning for all those who died so futilely at Gallipoli, and all the others whether they returned or not, who have gone off to war from New Zealand.

The 24th April, the day before Anzac Day is the anniversary of the death of my father, Bror Muller, who died in 1967. This talk is really about my father’s experiences during the Second World War as an enemy alien and, in his words, 100% committed pacifist. I’ll also talk about how those experiences affected his life after the war, and the impact on his family, or at least on me, growing up in the 1950s and 60s.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/remembering-anzac-day-2/

With Rachel Mackintosh & Betsy Marshall

Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church 14 April 2024

Unitarians are a mixed metaphor. Roots from flora, wings from fauna.

There is no exact Greek mythical creature to represent this idea but perhaps we can think of a dryad or tree-nymph, maybe combined with a phoenix, the bird who rises.

We are a mixed metaphor and a mixed faith, one that values pluralism and whose hymn book is called Singing the Living Tradition.

For more information, see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/roots-hold-me-close-wings-set-me-free/