Join us this Easter Sunday as Keola Whittaker, currently in his second year of the Starr King School for the Ministry, Oakland, CA, USA, explores the profound metaphor of resurrection through the lens of our Southern Hemisphere autumn. He examines the boundary between life and death, and what might exist beyond. Drawing from Unitarian Universalist theology and personal stories, this sermon contemplates how, like autumn leaves that transform in brilliant colors before falling, love doesn’t end with death but merely changes form. This exploration offers a uniquely UU perspective on Easter, asking not for belief in a literal resurrection but for engagement with a powerful metaphor: What if love truly is stronger than death? What if the greatest certainty about our afterlife is that the love we share continues to ripple outward long after we’re gone?
The autumn air has settled around us now, though I’ve noticed it’s been unseasonably warm. Just yesterday, I walked through Cornwall Park, watching the leaves turning color before drifting down to carpet the paths. I watched as a father and daughter played with the leaves together throwing the leaves in the air, crunching them under their feet, and enjoying the season. It struck me how different our experience is here – while people in the northern hemisphere celebrate Easter as spring bursts forth, we in Aotearoa mark this season amid autumn’s gradual transformation.
In this second talk for us during his sabbatical visit to Aotearoa New Zealand, he will share his views on Unitarian Universalism in India, based on his recent visit to India as part of his sabbatical.
Speaker:- Daniel Kanter Worship Leader:- Shirin Caldwell
Daniel Kanter is senior minister of the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, one of the largest UU churches in the USA, and author of the book, Faith for the Unbeliever. He is visiting Aotearoa New Zealand as part of his sabbatical. In this talk, he will share his views on what being a Unitarian Universalist means to him.
Video to come
Audio to come
No text this week
Meditation / Conversation starter
Many of us had our early experiences in different churches; but have chosen to join this church. What influenced your choice to come to the Auckland Unitarian Church either as a member or a visitor?
True to our Unitarian tradition of having an open pulpit, this past week we welcomed Zeo Haami as our speaker. Zeo is Community Organiser with Te Ohu Tāmaki, of which our church is a member.
In her address, Zeo highlighted the difference between Te Tiriti (as the agreement between Māori and the British Crown) and the Principles of the Treaty. To explain the difference, she used the analogy of marriage, where there are two key parts: the legal contract and the relationship. Te Tiriti can be seen as the legal contract while the Principles can be compared to the living relationship part of marriage.
After hearing Zeo, we had an opportunity to stand up for justice by making submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill currently before the New Zealand Parliament.
If you were unable to attend the service and/or the workshop, you still have an opportunity to learn about the Bill and make a submission. As the submission deadline of 7 January is fast approaching, please contact me for background information as well as tips on how to write one.
In this sermon, Ron Ahnen (Intern Minister at First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA) reflects on the nature of Truth and how we find especially our own personal truth.
Truth. What’s the truth? Can you handle the truth? I want the truth.
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.
About a year ago an email dropped into my inbox from my cousin Hamish who I only catch up with at family funerals. Attached to that email was a 93 page thesis on my great, great Aunt, Annie Jane Schnakenberg nee Allen, who I knew little about except that she’d fought for women’s suffrage in NZ and was a fluent speaker of Maori, so I was very excited to find out that Randolph Hollingsworth had done a huge amount of research into Annie Jane’s life and written a thesis about her. I quickly got in touch with Randolph to find out more and was delighted to meet her as she now lives in Auckland. Randolph is now an independent scholar, who enjoys researching women’s history which is how she came to write about Annie Jane. Often in NZ we only hear about the main characters in history such as Kate Sheppard but there were many more women who helped fight for women’s rights. Now I’m going to let Randolph tell you more about this fascinating women, Annie Jane.
Ko Kōtirana, ko Aerana, ko Ingarangi te whakapaparanga mai
Ko Owairaka to maunga
Engari, ko Titirangi te whenua tupu
I nāianei, ko Te Onewa te kāinga
Nō Tāmaki Makaurau ahau
He Kaiako au i Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa
Ko Penman-Cooney te hapu
Ko Green-Clark te whānau
Ko Mal Green toku ingoa
I am a fifth generation descendant of Scottish, Irish, English immigrants to Aoteroa. I was born in Mt Albert, grew up in Titirangi, live now in Northcote. I teach at Massey University. I come from the Penman-Cooney extended family. My immediate family is Green-Clark. I am Mal Green.
Today I will share a bit of my spiritual whakapapa.
I was born into an evangelical Christian family – a missionary evangelical family that has produced countless missionaries and pastors. The main motif in this spiritual orientation was vindictive – if you did the right things and pleased God, you were blessed; if you did the wrong things and offended God, you were damned. So, God was judgemental; the world is evil; humans are depraved; Jesus is divine. I got involved in youth clubs, performed at and produced concerts, toured with performing arts groups, ended up in church leadership, wrote pamphlets – all to spread the message.
‘Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind is drawn to them: (they are) the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’ Immanuel Kant ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ [1724-1804]
Let us start with 3 Questions: What are ‘higher values’? Why do we want or need them? How do we develop ‘Higher moral values’ for living a good life?’
Simple answers are:
Higher Values are the ideals, beliefs and principles for living a good and moral life, as individuals and as societies.
We want Values because it is in the nature of being Human for our intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual Well-Being.
We develop Higher Values through philosophical inquiry into ‘what is true and good’ within Ourselves and in Humanity. It is a lifelong journey of Inner reflection upon our experience, study, knowledge, dialogue and questioning what we think and why.
I would like to start off today by telling a story. From there, I will describe some of my own experiences growing up a UU. Then, I will analyze our Seven Principles and explain thoughts others have had about UUism as they have told me. I will end by explaining my own creed. But first, as I said, a story.
So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; `Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler’s trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation, — a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God, — he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature in The Conduct of Life, Nature and Other Essays, Dent/Dutton 1908, 1937, Pages 37-38.]
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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: