Sea of Faith — Dunedin

Sea of Faith – Dunedin

Next meeting

Judith Anne O’Sullivan

Meditation 

Judith Anne O’Sullivan is a Dominican Sister who has practised Meditation in a Dominican Community for the past 50 years and still considers she is a Novice. Judith Anne spent many years in leadership within different countries of Asia and the Pacific and was then gifted with a time of Sabbatical. This was spent in an Ashram in the United States where she learnt the true value of Meditation. 

Judith Anne will share with us her belief that meditation can bring our distracted minds to stillness, silence and simplicity where we can experience the Divine. This profound spiritual practice enables us to live in the present and can thus transform us into people of peace.

For our world to become a place of peace each of us needs to know and experience an inner peace. The journey of Meditation is a Pilgrimage into our hearts, a journey away from egoism into a transcendent love, a love of and for the ‘Other’. It is only then that we will discover the fullness of Life, the harmony of all being and that all is connected, all is One.

 Our Last Meeting 

Jim Veitch kindly gave his permission for us to circulate his paper amongst those who requested it, and that has been done. Further hard copies of the paper are available for loan via our library.

Thanks to Janet and Peter Wishart for arranging this excellent meeting and for hosting Jim.

You will remember that Jim talked about the next step in the task… after the meeting, over a scrummy supper, we persuaded Jim to start writing and return next September with Part 2 of his theme, “How did the historical Jesus become God – or God incarnate?” 

Faith and Reason 

We can always rely on Ian Harris (one of our Life Members) for sane comment in the ODT. I wonder how many of you clip Ian’s columns out of the Friday paper and re-read them later? I know I’m not alone in doing that.

Recently (14th September) Ian made a plea for tolerance and respect for others as a core value from all religions. He noted cases of extremism in Russia, Pakistan and on other occasions has included USA as well. We can add to this list, many places where extremism has resulted in violence and acts which seem totally lacking in any form of common sense or humanity. One of the reasons why I am a fan of Richard Dawkins is that he has been brave enough to leave the comfort of his ivory tower and say that if people wish to be violent towards another section of society they should not use “their” God as an excuse. People act violently because they are violent people, not because they are acting on God’s behalf.

When we look at what Jesus taught, I am sure he would be horrified to read the newspaper reports of the mindless and senseless cruelty exhibited in the name of so called religion. It is valuable to study where the followers of Jesus and Mohammed gained their power and how they have used or abused it subsequently for the improvement of society or just for their own political ends.

I think Jim Veitch’s next step is going to give us some valuable insights into that.

Also In the News 

Geoff Neilson earned a half page (and a very smart photo) in the ODT, 10th September for his work in the eradication of hydatids. I remember a film shown to schoolboys in 1971 of a patient with a hydatid cyst as big as a soccer ball. Good that that is a rare event now thanks to good people like Geoff.

Lloyd Geering 

As you know, our library holds a set of DVDs of four lectures that Lloyd delivered in 2011 about Carl Jung. Locally, one house group has met to watch and discuss those lectures. There is always an opportunity for another house group to start up. They would run for four weeks and last for two hours per week (a bit like U3A). If anyone is interested, please raise the issue at our next meeting.

Lloyd’s 2012 lecture series is on Evolution – the True Genesis. I have seen the first two lectures and can only marvel at how much Lloyd has packed into them – they start with the origin of the universe insofar as we are able to envisage it, and go through to the formation of the earth, the moon (and why we only ever see one face of the moon).

I have watched several of Prof Brian Cox’s programmes on The Wonders of the Solar System (on much lamented TV7) and Lloyd manages to cover much of the same ground from a podium in a church instead of on location in all sorts of exciting places around the globe. What a remarkable achievement.

I’m looking forward to watching lectures three and four.

*****

Newsletter Editor:

Alan Jackson

55 Evans Street

Opoho

DUNEDIN 9010

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