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Caitlin Smith © 11 October 2026
To come
Music matters spiritually because it can interrupt us, open us, and connect us—to our own inner lives, to other people, and to something larger than ourselves.
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Ted Zorn © 6 September 2026
Each Sunday including this one we take the opportunity to share our joys and concerns. For me, this talk is an extended joy. I’m no expert on music. I am not here to lecture you on the technicalities of music because I don’t really understand them myself. Instead I want to share the joys that music brings to me and try to explain why that is, and the role that it plays in my spiritual life. My hope is that some of it will resonate with you and that it provides an opportunity for you to reflect on music in your life and share some of the joy I feel.
Continue reading When Music Takes Our Breath Away: The Sounds of ReverenceAfter a month of daily cold-water swimming and meditation, Kate will reflect on the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of these disciplines. Understanding the science behind the practices does not reduce them to dry and rational explanations but adds to our experience of awe and wonder.
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Kate Lewis © 30 August 2026
To come.
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Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.
A vibrant, Auckland-based a cappella choir with a gospel heart and a rock ‘n’ roll soul (so says their website). Founded in 2000, this 30+ strong ensemble brings together people from all walks of life—It was founded 26 years ago by Jean McAllister and the late NZ blues legend Rick Bryant and a number of others who are still in the choir. They love their rehearsal space – our Unitarian Church – where they rehearse weekly. A very warm welcome to Jubilation Acapella Gospel choir.
Exploring music as a development of pulse, breath and vocalisation, and also as a way of building culture through repetition, borrowing and repurposing.
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Alix Geard © 16 August 2026
Friends,
I invite you to begin with something so ordinary that we rarely notice it.
Take a breath.
Feel your heart.
Before we learn language, before we develop beliefs, before we choose identities or communities, we live inside rhythm. The pulse in the womb and the rise and fall of our lungs are among the first music we ever know.
We are rhythmic creatures.
Continue reading Music and Being HumanRead below, or download the PDF
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Rachel Mackintosh © 26 July 2026
If you look at the kinds of things we say about ourselves in this Unitarian faith, you will often find reference to the fact that we don’t offer easy answers, or certainty, or the promise that an interventionist god will look after us.
There is a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke that elegantly sets out this aspect of Unitarianism:
“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Today our topic is art and the ineffable.
By some irony, I will be using words to convey the ineffable: that which is too vast to be contained in words.
That’s okay.
Words have spaces between them.
Continue reading Art and the ineffable