you can also
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David Hines © 22nd January 2023
My original subject for today was Gonna lay down my sword and shield, which was about concentration camps in World War 2, and how this appalling story was the background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But it was such a complicated story I couldn’t get my head around it. And I was looking for a new topic.
And then Jacinda came up with the idea of resigning …. And it was obvious.
Continue reading Election Wishlist 2023Read below or download the PDF
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Rachel Mackintosh © 15th January 2023
If you think about the vastness of space, and how enormous our galaxy is, and how big our planet is, and how small we are, I’m not really eating all that much cheese.
Thanks to Kay for finding and sharing that.
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Ted Zorn © 8th January 2023
Today, I want to talk about finding our humanity in a technologized world and the dangers of relying too heavily on technology to do tasks that we expect to be done by humans. Specifically, I want to delve into the questions raised by the fact that a machine like ChatGPT can write a speech, a personal letter, or your child’s essay assignment.
For those who may not be familiar, ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It has been trained on a vast amount of data and is able to generate human-like text on a variety of topics. It is a relatively new technology and its capabilities are still being explored and refined.
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Alix Geard © 1st January 2023
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou katoa
Greetings, greetings, greetings to us all.
Welcome again to this – small, niche – gathering of our community. Thank you for the opportunity to stretch outside my own comfort zone to address our group here. Happy New Year.
Or should I say “Happy Gregorian New Year”? Let’s come back to that.
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On this first day of the year, I want to talk about meaning. Specifically, I want to talk about how we take our small blue planet’s gravitationally-bound sweep around its star and turn one point on that circuit into a time for parties and new year’s resolutions and setting up a calendar for the year to come. About how different people – and peoples – do that differently, and how we navigate getting along together.
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Rev. Clay Nelson © 18th December 2022
I don’t consider it Christmas until I have watched It’s a Wonderful Life. I ticked that off last Sunday. So, for me, it’s now Christmas.
I don’t know when it became one of my treasured Christmas traditions, but I can’t remember when it wasn’t. When my kids were teenagers, there was lots of eye-rolling when I insisted that watching it was a family event. Something about it appealed to my Unitarian heart, and I wanted to inoculate theirs. They would ask me when I would find a new tradition. My answer was, “When I stop tearing up at the end.”
Continue reading It’s a Wonderful Life, a UU Christmas CarolDavid Hines and panelists © 11th December 2022
A panel of leading religious and non-religious leaders discuss the government’s new religion in schools programme.
The panel:-
Paul Morris, Emeritus Professor, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington / Te Herenga Waka.
Secular Education Network chair Penny Ehrhardt, and New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists vice-president Sara Passmore, have already spoken in our church, but that was before we had the full text of the government’s plans. They’ll be on Zoom.
Anjum Rahman, Founder and Project Co-Lead of Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, who must be the best known Muslim leader in the country, due to her frequent interviews on TV. She has also advocated for religious studies and the end of Christian religious instruction (Bible in Schools).
David Zwartz former president New Zealand Jewish Council will be speaking for most Jewish people.
Peter Lineham religious history prof, is equally well known. Not so well known is he is a Christian who once described himself as a liberal evangelical.
Also this statement was read to the meeting from Robert Hunt, chair, NZ Buddhist Council, on behalf of the Executive Committee.
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Rev. Clay Nelson © 4th December 2022
Shakespeare had it wrong. When Juliet tells Romeo, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” she is arguing that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family’s rival house Montague. The reference states that the names of things do not affect what they really are. I disagree. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Continue reading A rose by any other name is not a rose