with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 27 February 2022

I have been musing this week on a quote by Heraclitus that has long intrigued me: “It is impossible to step in the same river twice.” It has brought to mind an attractive, fresh-faced, twenty-something woman with a huge smile who visited me at St Matthew-in-the-city. At the time a list MP, Jacinda was laying the groundwork to contest the seat in the church’s electorate. You would be justified in wondering how I made the 26-century leap from a Persian philosopher to our prime minister.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 20 February 2022

Like the vast majority of Kiwis I have been unimpressed by the behaviour of the anti-maskers, anti-vaccinators, anti-mandators, Trump wannabes, neo-Nazis, Jacinda haters, and miscellaneous malcontents creating chaos in Wellington for nearly two weeks. Protesting is a justifiable activity in a democracy. Sometimes that protesting leads to civil disobedience, which is an essential force for bending the arc of justice. The question I have been mulling over is: can what is happening in Wellington be considered civil disobedience or uncivil disruption of the peace?

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 13 February 2022

The future has a history. My guess is that humans have always been obsessed with predicting the future. It doesn’t matter if they were using tea leaves, animal entrails, numerology, bumps on the head, palmistry, tarot cards, or dreams interpreted by oracles, shamans, prophets, priests or spiritualists, they craved to know what was going to happen next.

with Rev. Clay Nelson

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Clay Nelson © 6 February 2022

I find water to be not only a miraculous source of life, but also a rich metaphor for who we are.

I recently bought a new scale because the mirror says my health would benefit by losing a few kilograms. OK, maybe more than a few. The scale I bought is high-tech. You know me. What other kind would I buy. It reminds me of cell phones. Remember when a phone’s sole purpose was to call someone. How 2005. Well, my new scale does tell me my weight, but it also tells me my BMI, muscle and bone mass, and what percentage of my body weight is water. For those who are curious, it was 48.6% this morning. Wow! I had no idea. It also tells me a few other things like what the weather will be and records it all on my phone. No, I can’t call anyone with it.

What I have been musing about this week is how water is within, between and beyond us, much like the sacred.

with John DiLeo

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John DiLeo © 30 January 2022

For much of my life, my conscious perspective on ‘freedom’ was always in terms of “freedom to.” As a child enjoying nearly every privilege one could – an able-bodied White, Christian, cis, hetero male of European descent, born to a reasonably stable two-parent household, and living in a quiet, small, lily-white town in rural Connecticut – “freedom from” wasn’t something I ever thought about.

with Rev. Sally Mabelle

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Sally Mabelle © 23 January 2022

When I was preparing today, I googled ‘Unitarian Mysticism’ and to my surprise and delight, up came an inspiring 10-week Adult Religious Education course on the Unitarian Universalist Association website (uua.org) called ‘Spirit in Practice’ by Rev. Erik Wikstrom Walker. This morning, I’ll be weaving together some of the stories he tells on that course with readings and quotes from other inspiring authors.

with David Hines

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David Hines © 16 January 2022

Introduction

My sermon today says Let’s stop making apologies for God. She’s a total nuisance.

In the Christian circles I grew up in, people were constantly saying how good God was.

They blindly ignored all the grief and harm in the world, and if anybody drew attention to it, they’d come up with excuses. Like: God sent this to test you.

If you pointed out that God did nothing whatever to help you through these troubles – after you prayed for help and nothing happened, they’d say: God aways answers your prayers: Sometimes the answer is Yes. Sometimes it’s no, and sometimes it’s wait.

I was not very old before I realised this too was crap, because that means absolutely any thing can be called God, and in practice that’s the same as there being no God at all.

So I’d like to talk about the claims religious people make for God, and the major excuses they make when she doesn’t deliver.

with John DiLeo

No recording this week

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John DiLeo © 2 January 2022

Since I mentioned it at the beginning of our time together, let me start my musings with a bit more background on my hospital stay. As I mentioned when I last led our service, in October, I’ve found myself during this lockdown eating less well, gaining back weight I’d thought I was long rid of, and becoming more and more sedentary. My workdays have gotten really long, resulting in my spending as much as 15 hours a day sitting in this very chair.