Auckland Unitarians

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 30th April 2023. I was intrigued by excerpts of  Diane Miller’s reflections on the proposed changes to the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Bylaws  to be voted on in June at the General Assembly. Dianne was a young pregnant feminist invited to be on the committee charged with revising our purposes. Her son was born during the com...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 23rd April 2023. Last week we explored the many challenges of being a living tradition, the biggest being finding a consensus when we don’t have a creed, holy book of revelation or ecclesiastical authority. This morning our focus is on the Seven Principles. How they came to be? Their role in our faith. Have they passed their use by date?...

With Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded 16th April 2023 by Auckland Unitarian Church This morning I would like to focus on what it means to be a living tradition. As Unitarian Universalists we sing about it. We proudly proclaim it as what we are. But what does it mean? Most simply put our beliefs are etched in pencil and not carved in stone. But there are consequences. Like being green, being a living tra...

with Rachel Mackintosh Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 9th April 2023 At the risk of being grandiose, I begin this sermon a bit like the person who wrote the gospel of Mark. It’s more than 40 years since I read Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time. I have thought about it and talked about it since, but I haven’t relived it. (I didn’t watch the film because I didn’t want to...

Speaker:- Martin Lewis Worship Leader:- John DiLeo Recorded @ Auckland Unitarian Church, 2nd April 2023 Gratitude and its ability to uplift and enrich our lives is as extremely important and relevant today as it ever was. As we are constantly bombarded with negative news and dramatic spin; dire messages through various forms of media, we might descend into feelings of anxiety, depression, hopeless...

with John DiLeo Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 26th March 2023 For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/dealing-with-grief/ 'Spirit of Life' can be found at https://youtu.be/sdnr4fNuR74 The 'Time for All Ages' can be found at https://fliphtml5.com/cdscw/fmux/basic The TED talk can be found at https://www.ted.com/talks/lucy_kalanithi_what_makes_life_worth_liv...

Speaker:-  Dan Te Whenua Walker , Worship Leader:- Ted Zorn. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 19th March 2023 For more information see:- https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/walking-together-in-relationship-a-personal-journey-of-integrating-te-tiriti-values/

 Speaker & Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 12th March 2023 A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the father. The eight-year-old son is rushed to hospital in critical condition. ED staff prep him rapidly and take him to an operating theatre where the surgical team is waiting. Just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon sa...

Speaker & Worship Leader:- Vivienne Allen Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 5th March 2023 have always been drawn to trees. Until I turned 10 I spent most of my spare time climbing trees on our farm. Back then I divided all trees into two categories; good and bad; the good ones were those great for climbing such as Pohutukawa, some Lawsons, oaks and others with wide low branches. The bad o...

With Ruby Johnson Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 26th February 2023 I think that a lot of people are attracted to Unitarianism because they were cast out by, or have left, other faith-based communities. The fourth principle of Unitarian Universalism is that we engage in “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”. Those of us who have come to this church as cast-offs from other fa...

with Alix Geard Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 19th February 2023 Sometimes you choose a theme for a service and then life throws you complications. I had planned to take my text today from that most varied and human of sources, the microblogging site Tumblr. Every so often in my craft or philosophy groups some words turn up from the person known on Tumblr as higgsboshark: FROM < HTTPS:/...

with Jonathan Mason Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 12th February 2023 The question of whether there is life in the universe is one of the big questions of the 20th and 21st century. Movies such as ET, Contact, Arrival and Interstellar have explored these issues along with alien invasion movies such as Independence Day. I remember growing up watching the night sky with a sense of wonder, In...

with Tunisia Set Ārena,  Worship leader:- Nina Khouri Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 5th February 2023 For more information see   https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/decolonising-decolonisation/

with John DiLeo Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 29th January 2023 Todays sermon is a reading of “ Getting Through the Night ” By Mary Wellemeyer For more information see   https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/getting-through-the-night/

with David Hines  Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 22nd January 2023 My original subject for today was Gonna lay down my sword and shield, which was about concentration camps in World War 2, and how this appalling story was the background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it was such a complicated story I couldn’t get my head around it. And I was looking for a new topic. And then J...

With Rachel Mackintosh Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 15th January 2023 If you think about the vastness of space, and how enormous our galaxy is, and how big our planet is, and how small we are, I’m not really eating all that much cheese. Thanks to Kay for finding and sharing that. For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/thats-how-the-light-gets-in/

with David Hines. David Hines and panelists © 11th December 2022 A panel of leading religious and non-religious leaders discuss the government’s new religion in schools programme. The panel:- Paul Morris , Emeritus Professor, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington / Te Herenga Waka. Secular Education Network chair  Penny Ehrhardt,  and New Zealand Associ...

With Ted Zorn. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 8th January 2023 Today, I want to talk about finding our humanity in a technologized world and the dangers of relying too heavily on technology to do tasks that we expect to be done by humans. Specifically, I want to delve into the questions raised by the fact that a machine like ChatGPT can write a speech, a personal letter, or your child’s ess...

With Alix Geard, Ted Zorn. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 1st January 2023 On this first day of the year, I want to talk about meaning. Specifically, I want to talk about how we take our small blue planet’s gravitationally-bound sweep around its star and turn one point on that circuit into a time for parties and new year’s resolutions and setting up a calendar for the year to come. About ho...

With Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 18th December 2022 I don’t consider it Christmas until I have watched It’s a Wonderful Life . I ticked that off last Sunday. So, for me, it’s now Christmas. I don’t know when it became one of my treasured Christmas traditions, but I can’t remember when it wasn’t. When my kids were teenagers, there was lots of eye-rolling when I insisted t...

With Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 4th December 2022 Shakespeare had it wrong. When Juliet tells Romeo, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” she is arguing that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family’s rival house Montague. The reference states that the names of things do not affect what they really are. I disagree. Nothing could be further from the t...

With Dr. Rebecca Stafford Worship Leader:- Rev. Sally Mabelle Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 27th November 2022 For more information see https://aucklandunitarian.org.nz/the-why-what-and-how-of-gratitude/

With Distinguished Professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley Worship Leader: Ted Zorn Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 20th November 2022 Kia ora tatou katoa. Nga mihi na mihi nui. Nga mihi kia koe, Ted. Thanks for the introduction, and te whare e tu nei. Tena koe. I acknowledged the house in which we are standing, sitting. Ted has kindly mentioned the book, Histories of Hate . And so I’ve got a long,...

With Lyn Farhi Worship Leader: David Hines Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 13th November 2022 Morena Everyone. I am Lynn Farhi. It is great to be here this morning. As some of you know I have a love of art and creativity in all its forms. Today for brevity’s sake I will just speak about Art and its therapeutic uses. I have used Art therapeutically for the last 14 years in hospice volunteer w...

Worship Leader: David Hines Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 6th November 2022 The image of an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is a common one in politics. Left-wing and right wing politicians both use it for different policies. Left wing politicians use it to say: let’s not be tough on criminals, let’s spend money on fixing the social background that made them that way. Right wing polit...