A Brave and Startling Truth: Solidarity after Helen Kelly

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Rachel Mackintosh

Vice-president, New Zealand Council of Trade Unions – Te Kauae Kaimahi,
National Director of Organising Etū, New Zealand’s largest private sector union.

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Opening Words are Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Peace and Social Justice Group, Article in Quest (scroll to P4) re Samoan Dyslexia Aid Project.

Rachel Mackintosh © 20 November 2016

“Nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness.”

This is a quote from the Barbara Kingsolver novel, The Lacuna. The context is Leon Trotsky’s last day, in Mexico City, where he was living in exile, studying, writing and being part of a local community. Continue reading A Brave and Startling Truth: Solidarity after Helen Kelly →

The Waiting Place according to the Gospel of Dr Seuss

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Rev. Clay Nelson

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Rev. Clay Nelson © 6 November 2016

Twenty-six years ago Dr Seuss published his last book and it became an instant success as a graduation gift — Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

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Reflections on the Sea of Faith

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Rev. Clay Nelson

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Reflections on the Sea of Faith
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Rev. Clay Nelson © 16 October 2016

I gave up having a Plan A or B or even C a long time ago. The old joke is they just make God laugh anyway. But the real reason is repeatedly in my life I have watched myself travel from point to point without benefit of an itinerary and yet get to some fascinating and unexpected places that seem unrelated on the surface, but which, in retrospect, were all connected. With the advantage of hindsight, they looked like a well-thought out plan or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. In truth, each place led to a new place I could not have booked in advance. None were foreseen or could have been planned for.

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Being Grounded

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Rev. Clay Nelson

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Rev. Clay Nelson © 2 October 2016

Being grounded doesn’t always have the best connotation, especially if you are a teenager being restricted after misbehaviour, but in religious terms it captures the spiritual revolution that is transforming religion. Last week, in discussing the evolution of Unitarianism, I touched on this revolution when I said many of today’s Unitarians are rejecting Kant’s “religion within the bounds of reason alone” as lacking any mystical or spiritual dimension. They are embracing what has been described as “ecstatic naturalism.” They seek an experience that is beyond the capacity of words to describe, except perhaps in poetry and music. Continue reading Being Grounded →

Who knew? Unitarians Evolve!

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Rev. Clay Nelson

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To read Clay’s sermon from July 2006 referred to in his opening words, follow this link to the St Matthew-in-the-City website.

Rev. Clay Nelson © 25 September 2016

Two weeks ago I shared the story of my evolution from an orthodox theistic liberal Christian to a heterodox non-theistic progressive Christian to simply a follower of Jesus. That is a lot of evolving in a short time. It is like evolving from being a Neanderthal to a Homo sapiens in one 67-year lifetime. Social Philosopher William Irwin Thompson has said, “For the first time in human evolution, the individual life is long enough, and the cultural transformation swift enough, that the individual mind is now a constituent player in the global transformation of human culture.” I’m not sure how much my mind has transformed Christianity, but lots of folk thinking like I do have. Continue reading Who knew? Unitarians Evolve! →