Feb 11 2012
February 2012 Newsletter
Newsletter
February 2012
Dunedin
Our good friend and Newsletter Editor, Don Feist, is having a brief respite for some bodily repairs. Please accept apologies for any errors or omission in this publication.
(Alan Jackson)
Programme: The Spirit Level (led by Alan Jackson)
1. Do you remember when… (New Zealand was a more equal place)? (Discussion)
2. Is there an improvement for everyone when growth happens? (Discussion)
3a. The Spirit Level – video interview with the authors of the book.
3b. The evidence from the book that inequality breeds unwellness in a Society.
4. What does The Parable of the Talents have to say about the situation? (Discussion)
5. Does the state of the economy have any bearing on the health of Society? (Discussion – if time)
News about… Our Library …
has just added three little books by Lloyd Geering in the ‘St Andrew’s Trust” series. They’re not new, but even if you’ve read them, well worth re-reading.
“Relativity” starts with astronomy and physics and moved through cultures (from tribalism to globalism) and moral relativity to religion, where acknowledging human creativity has replaced divine revelation.
“In Praise of the Secular” sums up in 50-odd pages a lot of what Lloyd has been saying and writing about for a long time.
“2100: A Faith Odyssey” traces the “changing face of New Zealand religion, from the “Christianising” 19th Century, through the secularising 20th Century, to the signs of what is happening in “the Globalising Century”.
“…Please to remember the fifth of November…”
At our final meeting for 2011 we were invited: “… to share two or three of your favourite sayings, with a brief comment on where you read or heard them and why they are favourites.”
Here are those that were collected:
Bloom where you’re planted
Use what you’ve got,
Play the cards you’re dealt.
“Equality is everywhere noble; excess and deficiency do not to me seem so.”
[Democritus 470 BC]
The manner of my dying distresses me Lord,
I would come quietly, clear-minded and alone.
Please, no tube-hung and drug-softened hospital bed,
Artificial throb and whisper – life by machine.
Please, no neck-craning eye-straining crowd in the street –
Shattered glass and crumpled metal, Blood in the dust.
Please, Lord, I would come quietly, clear-minded and alone.
The manner of my dying distresses me.
[Rosemary Britten]
“Do it now!”
[Boys Life Magazine, Feb.1929]
“While some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to fifty words in correct context – no human being has been reported to have learned dolphins.”
[Carl Sagan – an example of a paraprosdokian]
I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.
[Oliver Cromwell, writing to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland]
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wilderness and wet.
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
[Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”]
Work like you don’t need money,
Love like you’ve never been hurt,
Dance like nobody’s watching.
Shared simplicity with enough is much more satisfying than more of the unnecessary.
The eternal God is thy refuge,
And underneath are the everlasting arms.
[Deuteronomy 33;27]
It’s not the hours you put in that count,
It’s what you put into the hours.
Sapere Aude (= “Dare to be wise” or “Think for yourself”)
[University of Otago]
All great truths began as blasphemies.
Now abide faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.
“Holy Sparks”
[From an ancient Jewish mystical story/metaphor]
The holy sparks represent the ‘light of divine consciousness’ and the ‘potential of creation’ which has become scattered extensively and deeply buried within our physical universe. Our task is to raise these sparks by acts of loving kindness, being in harmony with the universe, and through higher awareness.
Taken from God is a Verb by David A. Cooper (That’s how he spells it on the cover)
Chair: Marjorie Spittle – Phone 481 1418 – Email: Marjorie
Newsletter Editor: Donald Feist – Phone 476-3268 – Email: Don
or: 16 Pioneer Crescent, Helensburgh, Dunedin 9010