When I first arrived in New Zealand there was a kiwi-ism that greatly troubled me… “She’ll be right.” It threw me as I can’t think of an equivalent aphorism from my native tongue. Of course, in a country that could make Trump president, that’s not so surprising.
Christians are celebrating the First Sunday of Advent today, one of the four Sundays before Christmas. As Unitarians, it is fair to ask, why do we care? Well, because Advent is all about celebrating waiting. Continue reading What are we waiting for?→
This week has been an uncommon one for me. I spent the first three days as a guest speaker at the Sea of Faith Conference in Upper Hutt. I was joined by six members or friends of this congregation. The focus was on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The structure was for each of the four keynote addresses to be followed by small group discussions of the questions raised by the talk. Continue reading Reclaiming the Common→
In 1870, in the last days that Czechoslovakia was ruled by the Austrians, a poor village tailor and his wife lived with their only son. They named him for the saint’s day he was born on, Norbert. The couple having little money for proper food or schooling, sent him to live with his Uncle Victor in Vienna. Continue reading Flower Communion→
Decades before he was diagnosed with cancer, the late, great Unitarian preacher Forrest Church described religion as “our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”
As most of you know, Rachel and I took off for paradise last week to celebrate her birthday. We hoped to get off the grid on a 14-hectare island 45 minutes by boat from Nadi, Fiji. We weren’t disappointed. We did find paradise. Temperatures in the low 30s. Gentle tropical breezes. Sea turtles to feed. Excellent food served by a friendly staff. Coral gardens and a flamboyant tapestry of diverse fish feeding from them, oblivious to their face-masked observers. Time to read books with no obvious use for a future sermon, on hammocks strapped to coconut palms, interrupted only by colourful parrots squawking overhead.
I wrote this sermon prior to knowing yesterday’s election results. All I know is that those results will be very much on our minds this morning. It has been a roller-coaster campaign with leadership changes in three of the parties. Poll results shifted almost daily, sometimes dramatically, leaving confusion in their wake. There were the usual outbreaks of dirty politics and debates about what influence they would have on the final outcome. There were the debates about the debates and who “won”. But once the dust, or stardust, if you will, settles I believe historians will see this as the “compassion election”. Continue reading Compassion: The Doorway to Faith→
Steff Werman, Jonathan Mason, Viv Allen, Henri vanRoon, and Kurt Payne share their thoughts on various issues around our upcoming election, with questionmaster Clay Nelson.
When the Unitarians and Universalists were debating whether or not to merge into one association a joke was frequently told. The Universalists were afraid of being swallowed up by the Unitarians. The Unitarians were afraid they would have indigestion.
Like all the best jokes, it revealed layers of truth. In any merger, there is always an element of fear that you will lose your identity. In this case, the Universalists were the smaller of the two parties. Being swallowed up was a realistic fear. For the more powerful Unitarians the fear was how would they absorb the Universalists into the denomination.
This was an issue of classism rarely discussed openly, only joked about. For example, Universalists believe God is too good to damn them. Unitarians believed they are too good for God to damn. Unitarians considered themselves to be of the elite due to their social status. They would have looked upon the Universalists with some disdain, as they were lower down the social ladder. If it had not been necessary for survival, I suspect class differences would have never allowed the merger. Continue reading Class and Religion→
“Neuroscientists tell us that our brain is constantly looking for ways to be more efficient, and habits and routines are one way of achieving that. While following a routine is somewhat antithetical to the idea of being present in the moment, of “being here now,” it does allow us to be in the present moment in a very different way, with a different consciousness, a different awareness.”