Letter to Andrew Little, Minister of Justice, & Reply from the Ministry

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Go straight to the reply.

Auckland Unitarian Church
1a Ponsonby Road
Grey Lynn
AUCKLAND 1011
www.aucklandunitarian.org.nz

13 August 2019

The Rt Honourable Andrew Little
Minister of Justice
Freepost Parliament
Private Bag 18 888
Parliament Buildings
WELLINGTON 6160

Email copy sent to
a.little@ministers.govt.nz.

Email Copy sent to
The Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern
Prime Minister
jacinda.ardern@parliament.govt.nz.

Dear Minister,

We are writing to express our deep concern after hearing of the distress experienced by many of the victims and their supporters at the first hearing of the alleged perpetrator of the March 15 2019 Mosque attacks.

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Early Childhood Teacher Wanted

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The Auckland Unitarian Church is an open, progressive and welcoming faith community. To learn more about our community and values, please look around this website, or follow Auckland Unitarians on Facebook.

We are seeking a motivated, compassionate early childhood teacher to help us build our preschool children’s programme. We are looking for someone to provide safe, welcoming, developmentally appropriate care for infants and toddlers (up to age 5) during Sunday morning services, to ensure a safe environment for children and allow parents to participate fully in church life.

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What happened to compassion?

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With Rev. Clay Nelson

What happened to compassion?
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Clay Nelson © 11 August 2019

We are living in a time I find exceedingly painful. It seems that all too many feel it is okay to treat others as if they are less than human. Part of the problem is I spend too much time following what is happening in my home country. This past week the mass gun shooting in El Paso where over 22 died and 48 were wounded was the 250th this year. According to the shooter’s manifesto posted online he was inspired by the shooter in Christchurch. The difference was he was seeking to kill Mexicans instead of Muslims. Just a few hours later the 251st mass shooting happened in Dayton Ohio. Police were able to stop the shooter in Dayton in less than one minute but he was still able to kill 9 including his own sister and wound 27 others.

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Store up Your Treasures in Heaven

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With John DiLeo

Store up Your Treasures in Heaven
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John DiLeo © 28 July 2019

Before I begin my talk, I want to give you a brief rundown of my history, with regard to religion and church.

Although my parents were both active in their respective churches as children and teens, they remained largely unchurched after they married, and never did much to encourage my siblings or me in that regard. I would occasionally go to church with various relatives, but really didn’t have any sort of a religious upbringing.

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Living with contradictions

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with Rev. Clay Nelson

Living with contradictions
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Clay Nelson © 21 July 2019

I confess to being cursed. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m definitely not swimming in the mainstream. It may explain why I’ve ended up a Unitarian, where atheists go to church. Contradictions, which lead me to paradoxes, mesmerise me. What could be more exciting than when two opposing, irreconcilable truths seek to occupy the same space? What could possibly go wrong when an unstoppable force meets an immoveable object? While sometimes a clear right or wrong answer to life’s immutable questions would be comforting, they smell to me like a bottle of snake oil to cure all my ills that has passed its use by date. The rising hair on the back of my neck warns me that life is just not that simple.

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Art on a spiritual theme…

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Interactive Station: The Tree of Life or the Tree of Enlightenment.

Finished mandala with exhibition visitor’s names on leaves and attributes of a nurturing community on the flowers.

The Tree of Life appears in almost every faith, but it could be the Jewish Old Testament tree in Eden, the Christian, Mormon or Baha’i Tree of Life, the Bodhi Tree of Enlightenment of the Buddhist, The Norse tree of Yggdrasill, the Oak tree of the Druid or the Fig tree of Hinduism.

All are pictures of the archetypal Sacred Tree, a metaphor for the source of life and connecting all forms of creation.

One-day-only exhibition: Saturday 6th July, 12.00 noon to 4.00pm.

A variety of artists with different influences and views on a common theme of spirituality, illustrating the very many ways art can be spiritual.

Plant a tree

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with Rev. Clay Nelson

Plant a tree
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Clay Nelson © 23 June 2019

There is a story in the Jewish Talmud about planting trees. A sage is walking along the road and sees someone planting a carob tree. The sage asks the person, “How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?”

“Seventy years,” replies the gardener.

The sage then asks: “Are you so healthy a person that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?”

The gardener answers: “I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children.” (Talmud Ta’anit 23a)

This simple story is about hope and stewardship of the world gifted to us by those who came before, but it raises a question for me. If I went out this afternoon and planted a fruit tree, would there be anyone around to eat the fruit in seventy years? It may seem a long time away to the young, but to someone who is seventy it is the blink of an eye.

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The gift of not knowing

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with Rev. Clay Nelson

The gift of not knowing
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Clay Nelson © 16 June 2019

The first time I remember reflecting on the counter intuitive idea that not knowing is a gift was while visiting my father in the hospital. He had been there for a while suffering from kidney disease. It had been difficult to watch his decline. He had lost his appetite, but I convinced him to put in a feeding tube over his reservations to give the doctors time to work out an effective treatment. On a visit one evening he was more alert and engaged than he had been for some time. We had an amazing conversation about the past, present and future. I left that evening full of hope that we had turned a corner. I returned early in the morning only to learn he had died an hour before my arrival. I was devastated and full of guilt that I had not stayed through the night with him if I had only known. It would take a while but I eventually came to understand not knowing had been a gift. That last conversation would have been very different if I had known. It would have been shaped by death. Instead it was full of life and one of my most treasured memories.

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Courageous Creativity

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with Rev. Clay Nelson

Courageous Creativity
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Clay Nelson © 9 June 2019

I wonder how many of you think like I have done for too much of my life that you are not creative. I’m not sure where I got the idea I wasn’t. After all, when I was in fifth grade Mrs Stapleton took her class to a clay pit. We had to dig up a shovelful. Grind it with a pestle and mortar. Filter it through ever finer wire screens until we had a pile of clay powder. Then we took our efforts back to the class room where she had set up a potter’s wheel. After we soaked our clay to make it malleable, she demonstrated how to use the wheel. Looked easy, but as we tried to turn our lump of clay into art, we learned it wasn’t, at least for me. My attempt at a vase was hardly a thing of beauty. It had no symmetry and a noticeable lean to the left. Then we had to glaze it. My lack of skill did little to turn it into a Grecian urn. I couldn’t help but compare it to those of my classmates. I was embarrassed by my efforts compared to theirs. After glazing them, Mrs Stapleton took them to be fired in a pottery kiln. When she returned the final products to us, she apologised that mine had been left in the kiln too long. The glaze had burned and curled. But she then praised the vase for its distinctive beauty. She would later submit it to the county fair art competition. It received a ribbon. Upon its return from the fair, it resided on the family mantlepiece for years, no longer a vase, but an objet d’art.

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