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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Season of Creation - Partners with God

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Isaiah 43:14–44:5 The situation in which the Hebrew people found themselves is a timeless one, most of us have no experience of exile—but we all have experienced times where our vision is clouded, preventing us from seeing anything but darkness and despair.  Sometimes this is on a personal level where everything seems to be going wrong - tragedy, broken relationships, illness, bad news … sometimes on more of a community level, in the midst of disaster and sometimes these days on more of a global level when we see the effects of climate change, when we watch helplessly while politicians just seem not to care, when we see only war, war and more war.  All these things linger about us and hinder our ability both to see the future and to move into it. They also raise for us the most serious of theological questions, as they cause us to doubt the promises we have received in Jesus Christ: divine forgiveness, new life, and the love of God. Jesus said the Kingdom of God was at hand...
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Care for creation - all talk and no action?

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Ezek 18: 1-4, 25-32 Phil 2:1-13 Matt 21:23-32 Last week we read 'the parable of the workers in the vineyard' OR 'the parable of the generous landowner' depending on how you read it. One way of reading that parable is that the landowner was giving each worker what they needed to get by, a living wage in today’s terms. Every Sunday we pray the Lord’s prayer “give us today our daily bread.” Sometimes we have prayed Jim Cotter’s modern version of the Lord’s prayer.  This is the one that begins “Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver”; when it comes to the bread petition it reads “with the bread we need for today, feed us”. This acknowledges that God is the one who provides, and it is the bread we NEED not the bread we WANT, and it is sufficient for TODAY, not a huge surplus. Just as in the wilderness with the manna, God provided the daily needs for the people every day and they were to collect just enough for their needs for that day and no more and there was ...
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