Auckland Unitarians

with Rachel Mackintosh.

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 13th March 2022

What do you see when I show you this image?

(Image of orange human figure used in advertising by the New Zealand Electoral Commission).

Who do you see?

Do you project yourself on to this person?

Yes?

I don’t. I see a neutral person, not me.

Could it be a woman? Hard to imagine.

I see a man.

Could he be Māori? Doesn’t even occur to me.

Could he be disabled? Clearly doesn’t need a wheelchair, and invisible disabilities don’t enter my view.

Could it be a non-binary person?

What?

Is this person old?

No.

This is just a normal, average person.

A young white able-bodied man, that is. Did I not mention cisgender and heterosexual? Goes without saying.

Normal.

For more information, see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/transform-a-scream-into-a-song/

with Rev. Clay Nelson.

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 6th March 2022

Ukraine national anthem - https://youtu.be/HJBdn_O1gwo

I find myself in a conundrum. One of the chief reasons amongst many that drew me to live in Aotearoa New Zealand was its long history of nonviolence, beginning with the Moriori of the Chatham Islands. They once were warriors but chose to become warriors for peace. They paid a high price when more violent and aggressive Māori invaded the islands. Gandhi considered them greater geniuses than Isaac Newton.

Then there is the moving story of Parihaka. Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi preached a gospel of non-violent resistance to European settlement on confiscated Māori land, and more than 2,000 followers came to live at their community at Parihaka. They passively resisted the surveying of their land for European settlement by ploughing it. On 5 November 1881, about 1600 volunteers and Constabulary Field Force troops marched on Parihaka. Several thousand Māori sat quietly on the marae as singing children greeted the force with songs.

For more information, see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/come-dream-a-dream-with-me/

with Rev. Clay Nelson.

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 27th February 2022

I have been musing this week on a quote by Heraclitus that has long intrigued me: “It is impossible to step in the same river twice.” It has brought to mind an attractive, fresh-faced, twenty-something woman with a huge smile who visited me at St Matthew-in-the-city. At the time a list MP, Jacinda was laying the groundwork to contest the seat in the church’s electorate. You would be justified in wondering how I made the 26-century leap from a Persian philosopher to our prime minister.

For more information, see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/it-is-impossible-to-step-in-the-same-river-twice/

with Rev. Clay Nelson.

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 20th February 2022

Like the vast majority of Kiwis I have been unimpressed by the behaviour of the anti-maskers, anti-vaccinators, anti-mandators, Trump wannabes, neo-Nazis, Jacinda haters, and miscellaneous malcontents creating chaos in Wellington for nearly two weeks. Protesting is a justifiable activity in a democracy. Sometimes that protesting leads to civil disobedience, which is an essential force for bending the arc of justice. The question I have been mulling over is: can what is happening in Wellington be considered civil disobedience or uncivil disruption of the peace?

For more information, including links to items referred to in the talk, see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/uncivil-civil-disobedience/

with Rev. Clay Nelson.

Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 13th February 2022

The future has a history. My guess is that humans have always been obsessed with predicting the future. It doesn’t matter if they were using tea leaves, animal entrails, numerology, bumps on the head, palmistry, tarot cards, or dreams interpreted by oracles, shamans, prophets, priests or spiritualists, they craved to know what was going to happen next.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/predicting-the-future-yeah-right/

with Rev. Clay Nelson.

Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 6th February 2022

I find water to be not only a miraculous source of life, but also a rich metaphor for who we are.

I recently bought a new scale because the mirror says my health would benefit by losing a few kilograms. OK, maybe more than a few. The scale I bought is high-tech. You know me. What other kind would I buy. It reminds me of cell phones. Remember when a phone’s sole purpose was to call someone. How 2005. Well, my new scale does tell me my weight, but it also tells me my BMI, muscle and bone mass, and what percentage of my body weight is water. For those who are curious, it was 48.6% this morning. Wow! I had no idea. It also tells me a few other things like what the weather will be and records it all on my phone. No, I can’t call anyone with it.

What I have been musing about this week is how water is within, between and beyond us, much like the sacred.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/water-within-between-and-beyond-us/

With John DiLeo.

Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 30th January 2022.

John DiLeo © 30 January 2022.

For much of my life, my conscious perspective on ‘freedom’ was always in terms of “freedom to.” As a child enjoying nearly every privilege one could – an able-bodied White, Christian, cis, hetero male of European descent, born to a reasonably stable two-parent household, and living in a quiet, small, lily-white town in rural Connecticut – “freedom from” wasn’t something I ever thought about.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/freedom-from-what-exactly/

With Rev. Sally Mabelle, Nina Khouri.

Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 23rd January 2022.

Sally Mabelle © 23 January 2022.

When I was preparing today, I googled ‘Unitarian Mysticism’ and to my surprise and delight, up came an inspiring 10-week Adult Religious Education course on the Unitarian Universalist Association website (uua.org) called ‘Spirit in Practice’ by Rev. Erik Wikstrom Walker. This morning, I’ll be weaving together some of the stories he tells on that course with readings and quotes from other inspiring authors.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/unitarian-mysticism-as-activism/

Birdsong from New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC)

With David Hines.

Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 16th January 2022.

David Hines © 16 January 2022.

My sermon today says Let’s stop making apologies for God. She’s a total nuisance.

In the Christian circles I grew up in, people were constantly saying how good God was.

They blindly ignored all the grief and harm in the world, and if anybody drew attention to it, they’d come up with excuses. Like: God sent this to test you.

If you pointed out that God also did nothing whatever to help you through these troubles. You prayed for help and nothing happened, they’d say: God always answers your prayers: Sometimes the answer is Yes. Sometimes it’s no, and sometimes it’s wait.

I was not very old before I realised this too was crap, because that means absolutely any thing can be called God, and in practice that’s the same as there being no God at all.

So I’d like to talk about the claims religious people make for God, and the major excuses they make when she doesn’t deliver.

For more information see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/lets-stop-apologising-for-god/

with Rehanna Ali, David Hines.

Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 9th January 2022.

Rehanna Ali is head of the Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ‘s Islamic Awareness programme and joint convenor of their Education Sector Development; and was a founder of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ).

For more information, including video containing the slides used in this talk see:-

https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/what-kind-of-religion-in-school-muslims-are-hoping-for/