Standing up to speak I felt tentative, but it wasn’t the slight stomach turning before a speaking gig or worry about whether the technological wizardry would work. Instead, it was an awareness that the ground of my being was shifting,…
Category: Church
There’ll be no return to church, said The Analyst in reflective mode, ‘until they get rid of the homily.’ He was musing, not on the lapsed art of stylish rhetoric, but the tendency to use a pulpit to tell people…
A workshop at Common Ground Conference Progressive Christianity Aotearoa Saturday 8th September 2018 Abstract Blogging about spirituality drew sharp criticism from church authorities who determined my theology ‘not Christian’. I responded by destroying my website, home to myriad articles that…
The Illness The We Are: A Jungian Critique of Christianity by John P. Dourley A creative reading group for explorers Dates and times Thursday evenings, 7-8.30pm. 4, 11, 18, 25 Oct & 1, 8 November 2018. Venue A café in…
When I was at theological college I was fascinated by how it was perfectly acceptable to see the first chapters of Genesis as mythology but not necessarily the Gospel of Mark, an action-packed narrative that forms the bare bones of…
‘You’re not boss of me,’ could be the petulant response from a junior God not yet clear of its identity, to the Episcopalian Church’s intention to change their prayer book. Quite! If God continues to live and breathe, then Godde…
The giant creature Seraphina went up in flames on Wellington harbour. Within her maternal belly were notes holding the secret desires, dreams, yearnings, and concerns of the locals. A form of confession if you like. The whole thing was cathartic,…
In 1969 when singer Peggy Lee released, Is that all there is, she posed an intense existential question. She wasn’t searching for an after-life but musing about the disappointment that life can be, even when faced with the unbridled energy…
Musician Moana Maniapoto found her beliefs challenged when the ashes of Headless Chicken’s founder Grant Fell were sprinkled on stage during an award ceremony by his wife Rachael. But one of Fell’s colleagues said, ‘I felt like he was there.…
Lindsay van Dijk, a humanist, has been appointed by the Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust to lead a chaplaincy team that includes Christian, Buddhist, and Bahai members. As Lindsay told the Guardian, ‘A lot of people don’t have an organised faith,…