Easter Tree

 


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Matariki

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Cultures who came from the north brought their calendar with them, so the New Year which had been celebrated in the middle of winter became a summer celebration here in the Southern Hemisphere. BUT - the indigenous peoples also had a calendar. As with  the Europeans, the Māori New Year Festival fell in the middle of winter. From time immemorial humanity has used the stars to mark time and for navigation. Matarik i or Māori new year was signalled by the stars - in this case a cluster which rose in the winter. This cluster can be seen in many parts of the world at other times and other cultures have given it names in their languages. Did you know Matariki appears in the Bible? There it uses the Greek name, Pleiades.  “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?"  Job 38:31   We now know that Matariki contains hundreds of stars but there are only 9 visible to the naked eye and in Māori mātauranga each of those are named and have a signific...
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Peace Sunday - Dream, Pray, Act

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Micah 4:1-5 1 Tim 2:1-6 Matt 5:43-48 Nigh on a decade ago I was over in San Francisco and I attended Grace Cathedral for Sunday worship. In the basement of that Cathedral was a shop. It was there I purchased something I am wearing today. It is a small pendant and it is made from the metal of decommissioned nuclear missiles. This for me embodied that phrase “you shall beat your swords into ploughshares” for us in the 21st century.   We read today from the prophet Micah. The exact same passage is found in the prophet Isaiah’s book. Later in Isaiah we read the famous passage sometimes called the Peaceable Kingdom. It is linked with Israel’s hopes and dreams for a messiah and then goes on “The wolf shall live with the lamb;     the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together,     and a little child shall lead them.” It pictures an ideal world where there is no harm to any creature. One of the titles of the h...
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God Friended Me

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Matthew 1:18-2 “God friended me” is the name of a recent tv programme. On facebook one can receive “friend requests” and our hero receives a friend request from God. After he accepts this friend request, he receives “friend suggestions” from God and they turn out to be people in need, people that he can help.  In the 90s, the pop song “What if God was one of us?”  inspired a tv programme called “Joan of Arcadia”; in it a teenage Joan experiences strangers talking to her as God’s voice, giving her messages about her life, family and friends.  Wouldn’t that be great? If God could “friend us” on facebook and send us messages? We could respond with the “like” button and give a thumbs up, heart, laughing face, a sad face or angry face. It would be so much easier to understand what I should do and how I should live. Or if, as in Joan of Arcadia, a stranger would turn to me and say “Sue that conversation you had with Joy was important - make sure you phone her and...
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