Sea of Faith — Dunedin

Sea of Faith – Dunedin

Fr Lachlan Paterson

 Māori Newspapers and

Religious Discourses

Thursday, 28th MAY

Highgate Church buildings,

Maori Hill

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We Start With…

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From the ‘Chair’

Gretchen is in Fuzhou, Fujian province, China for almost four weeks (10 million people in the city) and sends best wishes to us from there. Her friends have arranged an energetic itinerary to see some sights and I think she will be glad of a rest when she gets home. Meanwhile she is having a wonderful time and I’ve no doubt we shall see and hear more about it later.

 Dr Lachy Paterson 

Lachy is a senior lecturer at Te Tumu – the School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies at Otago.

His web presence reveals… 

Much of Lachy’s primary research has involved niupepa ( Māori-language newspapers) of the mid nineteenth and early twentieth century, from which he explores the social, political and religious discourses promulgated within these publications. He has published on this topic, and is currently engaged in collaborating with other Otago scholars in a history of the “book” and print culture in New Zealand.

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I am sure that there will be several of you well versed in the material that Lachy is researching and so we can be sure of a fascinating address with the chance to ask lots of questions. It seems to me that as we reflect on the century that has passed since the Gallipoli campaign, we hear voices from an earlier time and my sense is that those voices need to be heard.

White Poppies 

So far as is known, white poppies were first produced by the Co-operative Women’s Guild in Britain in 1933, and later the Peace Pledge Union undertook their annual distribution. In subsequent years, white poppies spread to other countries around the globe, and the white poppy became an international symbol of remembrance and peace.

How and when white poppies first came to Aotearoa New Zealand is unknown, but certainly they have been worn around ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day in the past.

They are sold by Peace Movement Aotearoa with proceeds going to White Poppy Peace Scholarships.

The White Poppy Peace Scholarships were launched by Professor Cynthia Enloe at her public lecture in Wellington on 30 October 2009. (Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts).

Principled nonviolence 

Prof Clements has written an article on this for the March edition of Tui Motu. I am circulating (with permission) the digital version with this newsletter. Here is an extract… 

Principled nonviolence is based on a rejection of all physical violence. It rests on a willingness to suffer instead of inflicting suffering; a concern to end violence and a celebration of the transformative power of love and compassion. Nonviolence is seen as an outward manifestation of a loving spirit within each one of us. Principled nonviolence seeks to love potential enemies rather than destroy them and promotes nonviolent peaceful means to peaceful ends. Its preferred processes are persuasion, cooperation and nonviolent resistance to forceful coercion for political purposes.

This principled nonviolent tradition has over the years given rise to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and fuelled many of the principled nonviolent political movements of the 21st century. It has been successful, for example, in places like Poland, the Philippines and many countries in the former Soviet Union.

Future Energy 

We have heard much about the need to move away from fossil fuels, and divesting investment by DCC has been a hot topic recently.

In New Zealand we produce most of our energy from hydro and geothermal – both ‘clean’ and renewable in the sense that we are using the water cycle and the energy in the hot core of the earth. Suppose we took a look at the energy in the sun and harnessed that. The sun shines during the day and peak power use is at breakfast and teatime – so what is needed is a good battery to store that sun energy for when we want to use it.

Enter a Tesla Powerwall battery. That is a flat panel, which will hang on the wall of the house (inside the garage or on an outside wall) to store the energy from the photo-voltaic generators on the roof.

These batteries are well within the reach of many home owners and with increased production will get cheaper. The photo-voltaic power units on the roof have come down in price by about $5000 since I talked to a Sea of Faith member at a conference about his home installation.

The future of energy must be for the use of the sun. It is clean and abundant. We all know about selling surplus power to the grid when we get a long sunny spell and our home units produce more than we can use, but if we also had an electric car, and that acted as an additional energy storage unit then the problem is reduced still further.

A pipe dream? No – the batteries are in full production in USA – the snag – sales to mid-2016 are sold out.

Take 18 minutes to have a look at this and you will be much encouraged about Future Earth.