Auckland Unitarians

with Rev. Clay Nelson  Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 24th April 2022  My Dad was a pretty smart guy. He had a lot of academic degrees after his name and when younger I thought of him as the only Renaissance man I knew. Why? He seemed to know the answer to every question I could throw at him. Later I figured out that he was conning me. When he didn’t know the answer, he still gave...

with Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 17th April 2022 Sherlock Holmes, the master of deductive reasoning, tells us in  The Sign of the Four : “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” His approach minutely analyses a clue, making huge claims about the information it must contain. From a stocking found in the...

with Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded 10th April 2022 by Auckland Unitarian Church The Christian world is beginning Holy Week this week. I know that because it always begins the Sunday before Easter with Palm Sunday, the celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. I know today is that day because all this week I’ve been inexplicably humming a song I used to teach the children of my parish on Pa...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 3rd April 2022 Kat Liu’s reflection on beating up on herself brought back a happier memory. It was a game my mother played with me when I was little older than a toddler. She would take my arms and force me to hit myself, not so it hurt but until I gleefully giggled when being scolded to stop hitting her baby. She meant no harm. How coul...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 27th March 2022 When I was a child I liked playing on the teeter-totter at the playground. Apparently, you call it a see-saw here. What I found challenging was finding the balance point with my partner at the other end. I was not a philosophy prodigy at the age of seven, so I had not the words to describe what I knew intuitively: balance...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 20th March 2022 The world is stuck. There is lots of evidence. This premise is supported by recent events in Aotearoa New Zealand. The once admired Prime Minister has been stripped of her beatification, not by anything she has done or failed to do, but by our anxiety displayed on Parliament’s lawn. The pandemic is still taking a toll, ne...

with Rachel Mackintosh. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 13th March 2022 What do you see when I show you this image? (Image of orange human figure used in advertising by the New Zealand Electoral Commission). Who do you see? Do you project yourself on to this person? Yes? I don’t. I see a neutral person, not me. Could it be a woman? Hard to imagine. I see a man. Could he be Māori? Doesn’t eve...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 6th March 2022 Ukraine national anthem - https://youtu.be/HJBdn_O1gwo I find myself in a conundrum. One of the chief reasons amongst many that drew me to live in Aotearoa New Zealand was its long history of nonviolence, beginning with the Moriori of the Chatham Islands. They once were warriors but chose to become warriors for peace. They...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 27th February 2022 I have been musing this week on a quote by Heraclitus that has long intrigued me: “It is impossible to step in the same river twice.” It has brought to mind an attractive, fresh-faced, twenty-something woman with a huge smile who visited me at St Matthew-in-the-city. At the time a list MP, Jacinda was laying the ground...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 20th February 2022 Like the vast majority of Kiwis I have been unimpressed by the behaviour of the anti-maskers, anti-vaccinators, anti-mandators, Trump wannabes, neo-Nazis, Jacinda haters, and miscellaneous malcontents creating chaos in Wellington for nearly two weeks. Protesting is a justifiable activity in a democracy. Sometimes that...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 13th February 2022 The future has a history. My guess is that humans have always been obsessed with predicting the future. It doesn’t matter if they were using tea leaves, animal entrails, numerology, bumps on the head, palmistry, tarot cards, or dreams interpreted by oracles, shamans, prophets, priests or spiritualists, they c...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 6th February 2022 I find water to be not only a miraculous source of life, but also a rich metaphor for who we are. I recently bought a new scale because the mirror says my health would benefit by losing a few kilograms. OK, maybe more than a few. The scale I bought is high-tech. You know me. What other kind would I buy. It reminds me of...

With John DiLeo. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 30th January 2022. John DiLeo © 30 January 2022. For much of my life, my conscious perspective on ‘freedom’ was always in terms of “freedom to.” As a child enjoying nearly every privilege one could – an able-bodied White, Christian, cis, hetero male of European descent, born to a reasonably stable two-parent household, and living in a quiet, s...

With Rev. Sally Mabelle, Nina Khouri. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 23rd January 2022. Sally Mabelle © 23 January 2022. When I was preparing today, I googled ‘Unitarian Mysticism’ and to my surprise and delight, up came an inspiring 10-week Adult Religious Education course on the Unitarian Universalist Association website (uua.org) called ‘Spirit in Practice’ by Rev. Erik Wikstrom Walker ....

With David Hines. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 16th January 2022. David Hines © 16 January 2022. My sermon today says Let’s stop making apologies for God. She’s a total nuisance. In the Christian circles I grew up in, people were constantly saying how good God was. They blindly ignored all the grief and harm in the world, and if anybody drew attention to it, they’d come up with excuses. L...

with Rehanna Ali, David Hines. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 9th January 2022. Rehanna Ali is head of the  Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ ‘s Islamic Awareness programme and joint convenor of their Education Sector Development; and was a founder of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ) . For more information, including video containing the slides used in this tal...

with Rehanna Ali, David Hines, Betsy Marshall. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 9th January 2022. Rehanna Ali is head of the  Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ ‘s Islamic Awareness programme and joint convenor of their Education Sector Development; and was a founder of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ) . For more information, including video containing the slides...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 19th December 2021 I need to begin this musing with a warning to those who might be triggered by words like Jesus or Christianity. On the Sunday before Christmas, I give myself permission to express some of my thoughts and ideas about progressive Christianity, which are the foundation of my faith. My justification is that both of the den...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 12th December 2021 ... her observations caused me to muse on anger and how much of it is fuelled by privilege. We all get angry. If we don’t think so we should schedule some time with a therapist. Everyone has felt antagonism towards someone or something we feel has deliberately done us wrong. For more information see https://aucklanduni...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 5th December 2021  Buddha told a parable: A man was travelling across a field when he encountered a tiger. He began to run, and the tiger chased after him. Coming to a precipice, he slipped and was able to catch hold of the root of a wild strawberry bush, hanging in the air. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man lo...

with Rev. Clay Nelson. Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 28th November 2021  We are hearing a lot about freedom these days. Brian Tamaki holding “freedom” rallies in the Domain, violating his bail conditions in the name of personal freedom. Protestors marching down Queen Street in Auckland and gathering on the steps around Parliament in Wellington, angry about lockdowns and vaccine mandat...

With Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded 21st November 2021 by Auckland Unitarian Church As your minister one of the riskier things I do is to offer choosing a sermon title to bid on at the Service Auction. Perhaps one of the more challenging ones I have been given was concocted by Paul Henriques. He wants me to muse on “Unitarian Universalism and Philanthropy: Past, Present and Future.” I confess I would n...

with Rev. Clay Nelson  Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 14th November 2021  After some of my recent musings confronting the disintegration of social cohesion due to Delta and how little COP26 in Glasgow will achieve in reducing greenhouse gases, you might think I’m channelling Henny Penny AKA Chicken Little. You remember the story. After an acorn falls on her head, she panics, runni...

with Rev. Clay Nelson  Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 7th November 2021  To introduce my musings this morning I am turning to an 18-year-old woman who, ever since she was a child, has been teaching us how to speak truth to power. Greta Thunberg has resisted being a token voice used by governments lacking political will and by global companies seeking to monetise efforts to stop ki...

With Rev. Clay Nelson Recorded by Auckland Unitarian Church 31st October 2021 When I read the Centre for Informed Futures ’ summary of Social Cohesion in a post-covid world I wondered how they could get it so wrong. It did not describe the Aotearoa New Zealand I was experiencing. Then I noticed the date of publication. A lot has happened in the 17 months since its publication. Remembering back, it...