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No text this week
Opening Words:- “Determined Seed” by Laura Wallace
Chalice Lighting:- “Sacred Unknowing” By Amy Carol Webb
Reading:- “A Recipe for Resilience” by Margaret Weis
Closing Words:- are from “The Pathway to Healing” by roddy bell-shelton biggs
No text this week
Chalice Lighting:- “Honoring Our Labors” by Florence Caplow
Closing Words:- “We Are” by K E Cummins
The talk:- is an address from a Flower Communion service by John Midgley, an English Unitarian minister.
Opening Words:- “Flowers” a poem by Albert Laighton
Chalice Lighting:- is from a UUA service “Day of Religious Freedom – 13th January”
The talk:- is an address from a Flower Communion service by John Midgley, an English Unitarian minister.
Closing Words:- Just before he was put to death in Dachau, Dr. Capek wrote this prayer, reflecting on his own life and the state of his spirit.
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John Maindonald © 8 October 2023
John Donne (1572-1631), who wrote the words that I want to ponder today, lived in England in troubled times. He was born to a staunchly Roman Catholic family at a time when it was illegal to be a practicing Catholic.
Continue reading No person is an island unto themselvesRead below or download the PDF
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Peter Lineham © 1 October 2023
I was very struck by an article in the Washington Post on 21 August of this year by Perry Bacon jnr.
Continue reading Finding Your Home in the Church CommunityVideo to come
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Rachel Mackintosh, Betsy Marshall © 24 September 2023
Betsy: In early 2014, our Unitarian community was coming to terms with the fact that after only eight months, due to visa issues, we’d lost the American minister we’d contracted for two years. Fortunately the Ministerial Search Committee wasted no time in resurrecting itself to identify what we might do to support our Church’s dual strategy of working towards a full-time ministry and strengthening lay leadership.
Continue reading Cornucopia — a tribute to Clay NelsonRead below or download the PDF
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Clay Nelson © 17 September 2023
Here is a factoid about your minister I hope to have kept from you for nine years. In secondary school, I was a band nerd. I wasn’t the cool one playing the sexy alto sax like I wanted. Instead, I was consigned over my objections to playing the tuba. It was even more humiliating as I was one of the smallest in the band.
Continue reading Pomp and circumstance:Read below or download the PDF
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I would like to introduce our speaker for today, who is my friend, Paul Watson. I first met Paul when I decided – on the recommendation of several men in this congregation – to participate in a weekend experiential workshop put on by an organisation called Essentially Men, which some of you know well and some have heard me mention two weeks ago in my talk. Paul was one of the facilitators of that weekend. Over the last 2 years, I have gotten to know Paul much better and have grown to love and respect him — and learn from him, as I hope you will today. Paul also happens to be Chair of the Board of Trustees of Essentially Men.
Paul Watson © 10 September 2023
Kia ora everyone, and a heartfelt thanks to Ted for that beautiful introduction. When I first met you Ted around 20 months ago I instantly liked you, and I think one of the reasons is because as you presented last week ‘You’ve always had a thing for language’. I think our brains connected quickly, my Auckland spelling, speaking and debating days came flooding back as an articulate American shared his recent struggles, learnings, and pain with me.
Continue reading A new way of being: Men being realSorry, no recordings this week due to technical issues.
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Ruby Johnson © 3 September 2023
Christianity has a lot to say about fathers. Taking just Catholicism as the most extreme example, we have a God in heaven who is like a father. Then we have his representative on earth, the Pope, whose title derives from the ancient Greek word for father. Then under him, we have individual priests, who are also referred to as “Father”. Admittedly, this is balanced out slightly by the fact that Catholics venerate the virgin Mary as a holy mother, but even so, this view of religion presents us with a veritable “Russian nesting doll” of fathers.
Continue reading Made In His Image: What is a Father in 2023?Read below or download the PDF
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Ted Zorn © 27 August 2023
I’ve always had a thing for language. I think I inherited this from my dad. Dad wasn’t highly educated, nor widely read – the only magazines he ever subscribed to were Reader’s Digest and TV Guide, and I never knew him to read a novel — but he loved to play with language.
He often used words that were either made up or some version of a word he’d learned while serving overseas in the military. He would latch on to words and phrases that were new to him.
When he came to New Zealand for the first time, the term flatmate caught his eye – it’s not a term used in the USA — so for his remaining years, he referred to my daughter, his granddaughter, as “my little Kiwi American flatmate”.
In fact, he had nicknames for just about everyone – or at least everyone he liked. They were not all flattering.
Continue reading A rose by any other name is not a rose, part 2