with David Hines

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David Hines © 6th November 2022

The image of an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is a common one in politics. Left-wing and right wing politicians both use it for different policies.

Left wing politicians use it to say: let’s not be tough on criminals, let’s spend money on fixing the social background that made them that way.

Right wing politicians use it to say: let’s not throw money at unemployed people; let’s spend it on getting people back into their jobs. The national party raised this in a speech last week.

I think, there is a place for both. Sometimes we need to look to the long term, and we call it a fence at the top of the cliff.

Sometimes we need compassion now and we want an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

with David Hines

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David Hines © 28th August 2022

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Introduction

When Shirin Caldwell learned the topic I had chosen, she asked, did I realise that she, Jonathan and Brenda had already covered it a few months ago. I did hear their report and it was excellent However, I believe this topic is so massive, it needs to come up frequently, and from all angles.

The angle I want to speak about today is strategy.

Which are the actions we could take that would be:

1. Achievable and
2. make the greatest difference

with members of the Auckland UU Climate Team – Brenda Bendall, Shirin Caldwell, Jonathan Mason

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Shirin Caldwell, Brenda Bendall, Jonathon Mason © 19 June 2022

From Shirin Caldwell:-

Why we are doing this service.

In November 2021 Clay delivered a service called ‘COP26 Blah, blah, blah‘. He began by saying: Greta Thunberg has been teaching us how to speak truth to power. She has resisted being a token voice used by governments lacking political will and by global companies seeking to monetise efforts to stop killing the planet while doing their best to protect their financial interests in extracting carbon.

• Clay’s particular musing prompted 3 of us from the Climate Action Team and the Peace and Social Justice Group to think about our individual responsibilities regarding the Climate Crisis.
• We acknowledge that our congregation is knowledgeable about, and care deeply about Climate Change, and that many of us, if not all, will have already begun making positive changes to reduce our carbon emissions.
• We are aware that Climate Change is one of the big factors in today’s Mental Health issues, along with Covid and the war in Ukraine. Do contact Clay if you feel a need to talk.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 7 November 2021

To introduce my musings this morning I am turning to an 18-year-old woman who, ever since she was a child, has been teaching us how to speak truth to power. Greta Thunberg has resisted being a token voice used by governments lacking political will and by global companies seeking to monetise efforts to stop killing the planet while doing their best to protect their financial interests in extracting carbon. This is a short speech she gave on the eve of COP26.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 15 August 2021

You may remember the movie The Perfect Storm that came out in the year 2000. It was about a real storm in 1991. A variety of factors came together to create a hurricane that was never named. In the northern hemisphere hurricanes form in the tropics and move north. This hurricane started as a nor’easter that became a hurricane that formed off the Atlantic coast of Canada and New England and then moved south causing considerable damage.

The term “perfect storm” was coined by journalist Sebastian Junger after a conversation with Boston meteorologist Robert Case in which Case described the convergence of weather conditions as being “perfect” for the formation of such a storm. It has entered our lexicon to describe an especially bad situation caused by a combination of unfavourable circumstances. It certainly applies to our new reality.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 18 April 2021

The following tale has been abridged and brutally edited by me in the interest of time. It is from a chapter in Elizabeth Kolbert’s book “Under a White Sky”.

A couple of weeks before the Christmas of 1849, William Lewis Manly climbed to a mountain pass and beheld “the most wonderful picture of grand desolation one could ever see.” Manly was standing in what’s now southwestern Nevada with an empty stomach and a dry and parched throat.” Manly found himself wandering the desert owing to a series of unfortunate decisions. Hoping to reach the gold fields in Northern California they took a detour that led into some of the most inhospitable terrain on the continent.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 14 March 2021

I have shared in the past that I was reared by, and infused with the values of, a staunch empiricist. Yet my scientist father was a highly committed and active member of the Episcopal Church most of his adult life. Furthermore, to everyone’s surprise, including mine, he parented an Episcopal priest who evolved into a Unitarian minister. As a teenager I could not untangle the mystery of how belief in science and faith could be embodied in a single skin. It was a conundrum. It was an impossible juxtaposition. It was mind-numbing cognitive dissonance. It defied an adolescent’s black and white view of reality.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 7 March 2021

To continue with Elizabeth’s Kolbert’s river metaphor, I am reminded of a gift a friend who knew me too well gave me at the beginning of my ministry. It was a poster of a landscape featuring a river. The caption beneath it read, “Don’t push the river”. This intrinsically Taoist wisdom taunted me from its primacy of place on the wall facing my desk. All my stereotypic male traits wanted to move the river faster; straighten its meandering nature; keep it carefully constrained within its banks. There was way too much to be done to accept the river’s natural pace. The river’s course might be more picturesque, but posters be damned, it wasn’t efficient or fit for purpose from my limited view. Time to push it.