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Kate Lewis© 15 December 2024
This service focuses on how “nonviolent” or compassionate communication can help us deepen relationships, heal conflicts, and connect with integrity, in harmony with Unitarian Universalism ideals.
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AUC © 15 December 2024
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.
Submissions:
Several members also have offered to make their submissions available as examples.
Betsy Marshall
Unitarian/ Te Ohu Working Group Member
betsy_marshall@icloud.com
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After a short talk about the latest research on how it’s been shown that there is a link between the amount of green space in our lives and our better health, mood and longevity, we’ll break into small groups and discuss this.
Viv Allen © 8 December 2024
Once upon a time in ancient Greece in the town of Delphi on the slopes of Parnassus, there stood a temple. This was a temple to the god Apollo. The ancient Greeks believed in many gods who had many different responsibilities. Apollo was the god of the sun, of music and dance, of healing and disease, and many, many more.
Continue reading Communing with Nature – Tree Hugging may now have been proven to work – who would have thought it?Video to come
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In this service, long-time members of the church share memories from the 1950s, 60s, 70s & 80s, and what keeps them coming back.
Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.
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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.
Ron Ahnen © 24 November 2024
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.
Continue reading Listening for Your Own TruthFollow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.
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Barbara Thomborson © 17 November 2024
Ageing and death are two timeless themes, universal to our human experience. Our culture’s near phobia about death has created unneeded anxiety and irrational fear about “passing on, passing away, kicking the bucket, giving up the ghost, breathing your last, losing your life, expiring (like a use-by date), or just plain croaking”. That’s a small sample of the euphemisms English has for dying. In her book The Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvior says, “The vast majority of humankind looks upon the coming of old age with sorrow and rebellion. It fills them with more aversion than death itself”.
Continue reading RUMInations on Ageing and DyingFollow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.
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John Maindonald © 10 November 2024
Today, no business of any size uses paper based accounting. The move from paper based systems started in the late 1950s when large corporations started using computer mainframes, as they were called, for basic operations. In the 1980s personal computers made computer-based accounting systems widely available.
The chatbots that have attracted wide attention in the past several years are a very different technology from accounting systems. In January of last year, Ted Zorn spoke about “Finding our humanity in a technologized world”, looking in particular at the abilities of 2024 chatbots akin to ChatGPT. Chatbots per se are not all that new. The Eliza chatbot came on the scene in the mid 1960s. One could ask it “What can you say that will make me happy?”, and it would come back with a sympathetic response. ChatGPT is of course a vastly more powerful beast, using information that it gathers from the internet for answers that usually appear plausible.
Continue reading The Age of the Machine —Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.
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Rachel Mackintosh © 3 November 2024
Barbara Kingsolver, in her novel Demon Copperhead, has Demon say this:
“… she looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.”
Like not being hungry.
She looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while.
I’ll never forget how that felt.
Like not being hungry.
Have you ever been seen like that by another person? Have you ever shared such a deep understanding, be it of sadness or of some other emotion? Do you know that feeling, of not being hungry?
Will you ever forget how that felt?
I will never forget how that felt.
Continue reading A year and a dayApologies from the video editor, we’ve had a hiccup with editing recent services, they are recorded, but we haven’t been able to prepare the videos and audio files for publication. That has now changed. From here on – 3rd November – we’ll be adding new services soon after they happen, and catching up with the old ones, listed below, as time allows.
“Music Sunday”, Rachel Mackintosh, 27th October
“Certification of the organ”, Rachel Mackintosh, 20th October
“The importance of ritual”, Barbara Thomborson, 13 October
“Jain wisdom in a pluralistic world”, Claire Butler, 6 October
“A language of reverence”, Ted Zorn, 29 September
“Flower Communion”, Karn Cleary, 22 September
Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.
From Viv Allen:-
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.
Randolph Hollingsworth © 15 September 2024
We’ve no text of the talk this week but Randolph has provided extensive notes by way of a draft PDF of the content of this talk.
Opening Words:- “Equality” by Maya Angelou
Chalice Lighting:- is by Albert Schweitzer
Closing Words:- “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou