Niki Harré talks about her year as a self-appointed secular priest. She undertook three vows – simplicity, hospitality and pause, offered weekly services and personal conversations, and attended a Christian church. While she experienced considerable resistance, she also learnt a great deal about humility, listening to and caring for the other, and an awareness of the world as it is, rather than as we wish it was.
A continuation of our series on spirituality – and lack of it – in Unitarian experience. Explores how some of us adapt and adopt cultural metaphors, including considering “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” as a kind of journey.
Speaker & Worship Leader:- Alix Geard
Travel Tips for Spiritual JourneysListen, or download the MP3 – Full EpisodeListen, or download the MP3 – Talk Only
It’s been a while since I’ve led a service here. I’m once again going to split my musings into 2 parts, with 2 different perspectives on the theme of spiritual journeys.
I’ve heard positive responses from people in this community about the sharing of personal stories during our series of talks about spirituality. So in this first part I’ll share my story. In the second portion I’ll explore the journey metaphor. For now, settle yourselves and get comfortable – this’ll take a while.
Spoiler: I had a non-traumatic Protestant upbringing. It shaped me culturally but mostly didn’t stick religiously. It went hand-in-hand with valuing science and using the mind I’d “been given” to make sense of the world. But I’ve been to my share of Roman Catholic masses to sing the music.
There will also be a few very religious references.
In the recent service “Listening into the Difficult Places,” we explored the power—and limits—of communicating through differences. This follow-up asks how do we do that as a community? How do we work through differences in deeply held values and beliefs?
I suspect I’m not alone in this, but I often choose a topic for these talks because it intrigues me and not because I have a clear set of answers. That is certainly true today.
It reminds us that Unitarian Universalism is a covenantal faith, not a creedal one. Neither of those words — covenantal or creedal — was part of my vocabulary before joining this church. But the idea is simple enough: we are not held together by a shared doctrine about God, salvation, scripture, or the afterlife. We are held together by acovenant — promises about how we will seek truth together, how we will treat one another, how we will repair harm, and how we will hold one another accountable.
That sounds like what I signed up for.
But as Timothy Ellis points out, covenant can easily become something we talk about more than something we live. It can become a set of nice words, recited occasionally, but not truly integrated into the life of the congregation.
Can spiritual journeys be something other than finding a religion or a God? A personal interpretation. My story’s a bit different – but maybe it’s yours too ….
Speaker & Worship Leader:- Maria Hayward
Reflections on a Spiritual JourneyListen or download the MP3 – Full EpisodeListen or download the MP3 – Talk Only
According to AI, “a spiritual journey is a personal, non-linear quest to deepen self-awareness, connect with a higher purpose, and find inner peace”. The definition continues: A spiritual journey “involves shifting from ego-driven living to authenticity, often marked by meditation, mindfulness, and self-reflection. The process often starts at the heart, nurturing compassion and a deeper connection to the cosmos.”
I quite like that definition – although a connection to the cosmos might not be the words I’d use. And churches or religion are not mentioned. I also think that it doesn’t matter whether our spiritual journeys include a concept of God or religion or church. These are all personal worlds and we make our own decisions about which aspects of spirituality have relevance or meaning for us. It doesn’t matter that there are differences in our spiritual journeys or beliefs or credence. In my opinion, what matters is how we live our lives. And how we make decisions in our lives – what guides us? It is interesting to hear the variety of spiritual interpretations and journeys that we’ve been hearing over the last few weeks.
Today I’ll share my journey. Mine is not so much about waka jumping (or faith/church swapping) – it’s more about that ethereal thing, the development of my moral compass, perhaps, that steers or guides me in my life. This is today’s ‘take’, the theme or topic for today’s service.
I am delighted to be invited to speak to you again today in this beautiful building and in this beautiful fellowship. Tēnā koe Shirin, Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
Introduction:
The development of Science, Technology and Military Intelligence has not been balanced by collective development of Spiritual Intelligence. This is essential for Evolution of Human Consciousness, in order to save Humanity from Nuclear War Apocalypse and Ecological Destruction of Earth.
A few weeks ago Ruby introduced our series of talks on personal journeys of spirituality. She titled her talk Grappling with Spirituality, which is perhaps an appropriate title for the whole series, since here we all are in the Auckland Unitarian Church, and most of us did not start our religious or spiritual lives as Unitarians.
After volunteering to do this talk I started to wonder if I am, in fact, a spiritual person. What does that word even mean? It reminded me of teaching and lecturing at the university; there’s nothing like teaching a subject to make you realise you do not understand it at all.
Guest speaker Catherine Delahunty has had a lifetime of working for justice. She is an ally and champion of the people of West Papua, who live under occupation.
What if fear is not a flaw to be fixed, but an invitation to be answered? This sermon explores stories of courage – what it means to take trembling steps into the unknown and what holds us when we do. If you have ever stood at a threshold you did not choose, wondering whether you had what it takes to cross it, this one is for you.
Jesus is passing through Jericho, and the whole city has come out to see him. It is loud and pressing and alive with anticipation. And somewhere at the edge of that crowd is a man named Zacchaeus — a tax collector, a collaborator, a man who has made himself comfortable by extracting money from his own people. Everyone knows who he is. Everyone knows what he’s done.
And this man wants to see Jesus. But he cannot get through. He is short, and the crowd — the very people he has harmed — are standing between him and what he is reaching for. So he does something that must have looked absurd: he runs ahead and climbs a sycamore tree.
I want you to hold that image. One of the most compromised men in town, up in a tree, alone above the crowd that has every reason to keep him out. Straining toward something he is not sure he deserves to see. Not knowing whether the door is open. Not knowing whether, if he came down, anyone would make room for him.
As a community, we have momentum that we want to build on and ultimately be able to hire a new minister. This talk focuses on the power of our community striving together, building on success, and creating virtuous circles.
This service marks the start of our annual pledge drive.
Now, for my main talk – my random musings, as Clay used to say — Building Virtuous Circles.
When I agreed — yet again — to lead a service at the start of the annual pledge drive, one immediate challenge for me – given my business school background — was branding.
How exactly do you make ‘please help us meet the budget’ sound spiritually uplifting?
You can’t really call the sermon ‘Cash Flow for the Kingdom’ — especially not in a Unitarian church.
And ‘Friends, let us now contemplate deferred maintenance and operating expenses’ does not have quite the same inspirational quality as, say, resurrection.
So this year I was grateful to land on the title Building Virtuous Circles, because it sounds much nobler than ‘Ted Talks About Church Finances Again.’
In the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, set in the time of Jesus, Brian’s mother confesses to Brian that his father was not Jewish, but was, in fact, a Roman. She reminisces: “Promised me the known world, ’e did.”
This is funny.
Although it is generally fatal to a joke to explain it, I now risk killing the joke by pointing out that it is funny because it plays on the catch-cry of disappointed lovers, “… promised me the world”. But is also calls us to contemplate our own known world.
The Life of Brian is about Brian, not about Jesus, although Brian does almost get the gold, frankincense and myrrh in a brief moment of mistaken identity, because he and Jesus are born at the same time in the same neighbourhood in the Jewish homeland, and so even wise men can get confused. So the known world of Brian is also the known world of Jesus.
In this context, the Easter story occurs — in a world of Imperial Roman occupation.