Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet, and peace activist, living in the Plum Village Monastery in the Dordogne region in the South of France, last week experienced a severe brain haemorrhage and was brought to hospital where he remains in critical but stable condition. A litany for peace of his is
On Christmas Day this year we celebrate the bicentennial of the first Christian service in Aotearoa New Zealand. I have written about this here: Samuel Marsden Christmas Day 1814. And quoted from Samuel Marsden’s journal. I was asked to write a proper preface for the celebration, and have done so here: Marsden Ruatara Proper Preface.
Saint Ignatius Loyola (ca. October 23, 1491 – July 31, 1556) teaches a method of prayer in which one starts with the first word of the Lord’s Prayer, mulling over it, meditating on it, approaching it in the sense of lectio divina, resting in God’s presence with it, and then in time moving on to
People are, more and more, telling me about experiences with clergy who understand themselves as functioning as priests during a specified time period. There are clergy who keep office hours. They are present in their church office from the period X to Y, and essentially unreachable outside those times. There are some who go to
Part-time Priests? Read More »
I recently read a thought-provoking article on “the most overlooked characteristic of who you want to marry“. Kevin Thompson wrote about “In sickness and in health”. Few people consider sickness and suffering when picking a mate. They consider how the other person might look in the morning or what bad habits they might have. They
Praying With Your Partner Read More »
The New Zealand Lectionary booklet for 2015 has been for sale for a while and is available online now. You can download it from here (1.46 MB). A lot of the lectionary booklet is unchanged in its format from this year. As previously, a wide variety of options are provided, some authorised by our church,
New Zealand Lectionary 2015 Read More »
In an effort to strengthen unity among Christians, Pope Francis welcomed a delegation of the Bishops Conference of the Union of Utrecht, also known as ‘Old Catholics.’ The division between the two came about in 1870 during the First Vatican Council, when a group of bishops rejected the notion of papal infallibility. Today, there are
