We hosted a ‘Bread and Roses High Tea’ as a fundraising event for this movement, with the cost of admission at $19.25 equal to the hourly rate currently (October 2015) considered to be a reasonable minimum Living Wage. The event raised over $1,000.
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Rev. Clay Nelson © 4 October 2015
Before tackling what is wrong with the Living Wage I should make a full disclosure as we often hear journalists do when they have a connection to the story on which they are reporting. In early 2012 I attended the second meeting of unions, churches, and community NGOs exploring the initiation of a Living Wage Movement in Aotearoa New Zealand. I attended its kick-off later that year on May 21st. I became active in a faith network to support the movement and later became its convenor. Continue reading What’s Wrong with the Living Wage?
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Rev. Clay Nelson © 27 September 2015
This past Thursday, the day Muslims around the world celebrated one of their two solemn feasts, Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, 769 pilgrims making their Hajj were tragically killed and 863 were injured in a stampede.
I offer this prayer from a Muslim funeral service for them out of compassion for our shared humanity and respect for their faithfulness to their beliefs. It is a way of expressing in the words of Pope Francis “our closeness” with them and their grieving families. I invite you to stand if you are able and face the back doors, the direction to Mecca. Continue reading Why Celebrate Sacrifice?
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John Maindonald © 20 September 2015
The religious atmosphere of the family in which I was nurtured, and of the churches that I attended, now seems to me resonant, in many ways, of English Christianity in the early 1800s, 200 years ago. Religious belief was taken very seriously, doubt was a sin, and those lively minds who did finally reject the old belief systems found the process traumatic. To the trauma of abandoning a way of thinking that had become deeply part of them was often added the trauma of parting ways with a community to which they had been strongly committed. I, from my own experience, feel a strong sense of kinship with those 19th C figures who found the dogmatic Christian belief system in which they had been nurtured too much of a prison of the mind.
Unitarian churches were, in many or most places just as orthodox as the rest, albeit they did reject a few orthodox doctrines. The old is rejected, but the new hardens all too easily into a new orthodoxy. Even without a creed, the freedom of belief that we in Unitarian and UU churches enjoy today was not always a feature of the Unitarian movement. There were, in the 19th C and later, some hard-fought controversies that led up to this point. Ultimately, it came to be accepted that once that process of challenge has started, it is impossible, in advance, to set limits to that process, to say where it might stop.
Continue reading A Home for My Spirit When it Was HomelessListen
https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/podcast/20150913RevClayNelson_NewBeginnings.mp3″]
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Clay Nelson © 13 September 2015
Tonight at sundown the shofar will sound wherever Jews gather to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a new year. The shofar, a ram’s horn, makes a sharp sound, not like any other, that is intended to pierce the armour around our heart. Where it is heard in the heart, it calls a quiet moment out from our busy day. Where it is heard in the mind, it calls us to pay attention. Where it is heard in the spirit, it beseeches us to return to ourselves: slow down and turn inward, become at one with ourselves. Continue reading New Beginnings: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
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Clay Nelson © 6 September 2015
When John Shelby Spong was my bishop, he visited Japan. When he returned he met with clergy in his diocese to discuss what he learned about Shintoism and Taoism. I remember him saying that the best way to understand one’s own beliefs is to look at them through the lens of someone else’s.
Yesterday, many Hindus around the world celebrated one of their major feasts, Janmashtami, sometimes referred to as the Birth of Krishna. Continue reading Who is Krishna and Why Should We Care?
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No audio available this week.
Clay Nelson © 30 August 2015
Did you know God is real and is a domineering white-trash bastard in a wife-beater T-shirt and ratty bathrobe who never gets off his computer? You already know about his son, but did you know about his daughter Ea? Neither did we until Rachel and I on a whim attended The Brand New Testament at the Auckland International Film Festival. This film by Belgian director Jaco van Dormael was made for Unitarians who like their Bible stories with a thick coat of satire. Continue reading A “Brand New” Testament: What if Jesus got a Do-over?
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Clay Nelson © 23 August 2015
One of the problems with publicising a sermon topic a month before writing it is life does not stand still until you compose it. My published title, “Why what and whom we love is important,” was challenged almost immediately by my remembering John Lennon’s observation, “It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love, it matters only that you love.” He’s right…mostly and I’m wrong…mostly. What he doesn’t mention is we can love badly. But I get ahead of myself. Continue reading Why Who and What We Love Matters
Guest speaker Niki Harre, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Auckland, taught us the Infinite Game. The object is to understand current social structures that limit progress towards human and ecological flourishing and the vital role that organisations, individuals and communities can play in creating a better world.
As this was a live participatory event, no audio or text available this week.