with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 21 November 2021

As your minister one of the riskier things I do is to offer choosing a sermon title to bid on at the Service Auction. Perhaps one of the more challenging ones I have been given was concocted by Paul Henriques. He wants me to muse on “Unitarian Universalism and Philanthropy: Past, Present and Future.” I confess I would never have come up with this topic on my own. Even if it had crossed my mind I would have quickly discovered very little has been written about it, and what has been written is in scholarly articles I am unable to access without enrolling in an academic institution. So thanks Paul for a mission impossible.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 14 November 2021

After some of my recent musings confronting the disintegration of social cohesion due to Delta and how little COP26 in Glasgow will achieve in reducing greenhouse gases, you might think I’m channelling Henny Penny AKA Chicken Little. You remember the story. After an acorn falls on her head, she panics, running around the barnyard yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling.” Of course, Henny is mistaken, much to the amusement of the other farm animals as they point out the sky is fine.

In my defence, I can’t be a Unitarian Universalist and channel Henny Penny.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 31 October 2021

When I read the Centre for Informed Futures’ summary of Social Cohesion in a post-covid world I wondered how they could get it so wrong. It did not describe the Aotearoa New Zealand I was experiencing. Then I noticed the date of publication. A lot has happened in the 17 months since its publication. Remembering back, its description of the high level of social cohesion was accurate. The team of five million seemed to be a fair description. Our Prime Minister was trusted. When her 1.00pm briefings were aired on Facebook the country had her back against the few trolls who dared to malign Auntie Jacinda. The comments were a flurry of hearts, smiley faces and thumbs up. Her party was elected in numbers not seen since MMP was introduced. The vast majority followed the rules and we were well on our way to eliminating Covid from the community.

– social divisions on issues like the vaccine and te reo…

with Derek Handley

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Derek Handley © 24th October 2021.

No text this week.

Meditation / Conversation starter:

When division confronts us and we are ready to quickly judge or react:-

• How can each of us serve to unite rather than divide,
• in our conversations,
• in our deeds,
• in our acts,
• and in our thoughts?

Links

First Reading from “The Importance Of Living” by Lin YuTang

Chalice Lighting is from “Chalice Lighting for Challenging Times” By Lisa Doege

and from “Chalice Lighting” By Oberlin UU Fellowship, OH, USA

Second Reading:- “Uriel” by Ralph Waldo Emerson – 1803-1882

Third Reading features wise words from Marcus Aurelius, Heraclitus

Closing words include:- “As We Go Forward” By Cheryl Block

with John DiLeo

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John DiLeo © 17th October 2021.

Well, it finally happened. On the 17^th of August, New Zealand joined the rest of the world in dealing with an outbreak of the Delta COVID variant in the community. Our government’s “short, sharp” response announced that afternoon turned out not to be all that short…and, recently, has lost a great deal of its sharpness, as well.

with David Hines,

Sally Mabelle, Nina Khouri.

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David Hines © 10th October 2021.

Intro

When I agreed to preach at this service a couple of weeks ago, I had to pick a topic off the cuff, so I said I’d talk about how we can help people who are especially hard hit by the lockdown. In our Prime Minister’s words “Be kind”.

But eight days ago that story was overtaken by Brian Tamaki running his protest against the lockdown ….

So I’ve changed the topic a little: Be kind, most of the time.

with David Hines,

Sally Mabelle, Nina Khouri.

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David Hines © 3rd October 2021.

In July I was surprised to get a call from a member of the Association of Rationalists and Humanists asking if I had written a submission on the government’s new hate speech proposal. I hadn’t, but I was grateful for the suggestion.

I had written a a similar article a couple of years ago – taking a free speech approach, and found my thoughts had shifted a little in between.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 26 September 2021

Before Mohammed, before Jesus, before Buddha, there was Zoroaster. Some 3,500 years ago, in Bronze Age Iran, he had a vision of the one supreme God. A thousand years later, Zoroastrianism, the world’s first great monotheistic religion, was the official faith of the mighty Persian Empire, its fire temples attended by millions of adherents. A thousand years after that, the empire collapsed, and the followers of Zoroaster were persecuted and converted to the new faith of their conquerors, Islam.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 19 September 2021

In a letter to Robert Hooke in 1675, Isaac Newton wrote: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”.

The phrase is understood to mean that if Newton had been able to discover more about the universe than others, then it was because he was working in the light of discoveries made by fellow scientists, either in his own time or earlier.

I stand on the shoulders of John Shelby Spong and he stood on the shoulders of John A T Robinson, an English New Testament scholar, author and the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, his friend and mentor. Robinson stood on the shoulders of Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and situational ethicist Joseph Fletcher, when he published a highly controversial book in 1963, Honest to God.