with David Hines
Text to come.
Swan Song
with David Rohe
Worship Associate:- Kurt Payne
Read below or download the PDF
©2019 David Rohe
Opening Words
As usual, I did a little research for this talk today, very little, and started with investigating what sounds a swan makes so I could comment on them here. Guess what. Swans are mute. Irony is great.
Undeterred, I pressed on since I believe I have something worthwhile to say to this community, and besides, I like y’all. My tendency, wherever I land is to try to make something a bit better. Due to my previous experiences at UU churches I think I see a way to offer ideas for this church to get where it seems to want to go. So, muteness aside, this talk is about what I want to leave you with as Sharon and I head out on a new adventure, or adventures, beginning this winter.
Dances of Universal Peace
Pick and Mix Religion
Is it OK to pick and choose religious beliefs and practices?
with Viv Allen.
Also, here is today’s ‘Time for all ages’.
© 2019 Vivienne Allen
I start with a Unitarian joke – apologies if you’ve heard it before.
At a great international interfaith gathering at a major convention hotel, five delegates found themselves waiting and waiting for the elevator following one of the sessions. To break the monotony and silence, one of delegates suggested they play a little game: “Let’s see if we can explain our faith in the time it takes the elevator to go from here to the first floor!” Although they would have to travel up and down several times, the delegates agreed.
Continue reading Pick and Mix ReligionWhen the Truth becomes your enemy
Marching for love? or marching for hate?
with David Hines
Read below or download the PDF
©2018 David Hines
Intro
I had a rather difficult experience two weeks ago (14 December), when I received an invitation to join a protest in favour of having non-racist immigration. The protest was to be outside Jacinda’s Mt Albert Electorate office. I was invited because other unitarians are also on their mailing list. And I support non-racist immigration, so I went along to the Unite Office a few minutes walk from Jacinda’s office where we were to assemble and start marching.
Continue reading Marching for love? or marching for hate?Christmas Eve Candlelight Service 2018
Christmas Memories
Christmas: A Subversive Holiday
Watch
No separate audio this week due to poor quality audio recording, watching the video with subtitles – hit the Subtitles/Closed Captions’ button once you’ve started the video – should improve intelligibility.
Read below or download the PDF.
Clay Nelson © 16 December 2018
I find it ironic that many Unitarians struggle with celebrating Christmas. They love to regale us with tales about how the church took a lot of pagan traditions and repurposed them. Which is true. They scoff at Virgin births, moving stars, the birth of Saviours of the World, divine babies in human form, and challenge any of it as history. And of course, they are right — none of this historically happened. They find Christmas fit only for children and gag at how it has been sentimentalised. And once again they are right. The delight and wonder in a child’s eyes on Christmas morning is worth all the hassle of making it magical for them. Only through their eyes is the wonder available to us who are world-worn and weary. And yes, the sentimentalising of Christmas makes it easy to miss its offer of another way of seeing life and of living our lives.
Continue reading Christmas: A Subversive HolidayThree things I didn’t realise about global warming
with David Hines
Read below or download the PDF.
Intro
There are three things I didn’t realise about global warming, and they were all presented at the Sea of Faith Conference in Upper Hutt in October. The speaker was an engineer, Geoff Henderson, and I think that’s what gave it such a different angle.
He said there was a lot of optimism round the world in early 90s that the need to phase out fossil fuels would be picked up globally. That came to a head in the Kyoto protocol in 1997 – an international agreement to cut down on the emission of gases that lead to global warming. But unfortunately, he said, there has been little progress since then.
And he said there were three reasons for this, of which the first was most striking to me… I had wondered why global warming could be such a problem, when it was all about things like the world getting half a degree warmer.
Continue reading Three things I didn’t realise about global warming