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A year ago, on September 1st, I set off from my temporary home between homes to “rediscover wonder and awe”. I travelled exactly 3300 km around NSW to visit country towns that I’ve always heard about and never seen.  I wanted to discover them. I was curious. After a year of downsizing, tough change, & grief in my life I needed to restore my soul, and the trip was how I chose to do so. 

As I travelled I posted on Fb my discoveries, observations and …. shared the wonder and awe that I sought and found as much by accident as by design.  Some people ignored the posts from my trip, some read every word.  It was a journey of discovery.  The posts were more or less “postcards from the Universe” that I shared. There was no theme other than what I personally delighted in, things that gave me the wonder and awe that I sought.

This reflection by Gina Hastings on the capacity for wonder and awe by humans can be read here.

(by Gina Hastings presented at SoL on 25/08/2024).

by Rev Geoff Usher

In our Unitarian tradition, theology is important, but our Unitarian study is natural theology.  It is “the study of God by the light of human reason”.  It is a continuing study which brings about change of theological understanding in every generation.

The text if this talk can be read here.

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This is a talk by the Rev Daniel jantos, given on the 30th of June, 2024.

The full text can be read here.

by Rev Geoff Usher

The Lawrence Lectures on Religion and Society were established to inquire into the nature and relevance of religion as it relates to personal meaning and fulfillment, to formulation of values and ethical commitment. The Lectures were associated with the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, California, where I gave the annual Earl Morse Wilbur Lecture in January 1986.
On 17 October 1980, Theodore Roszak gave the Lawrence Lecture entitled “The Personal and the Planetary” .My sermon today is based on Roszak’s Lecture, for which he took as a text a couple of lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

And what is Earth’s eye, tongue, or heart else, where
Else, but in dear and dogged man?
And what is Earth’s eye, tongue, or heart else, where
Else, but in dear and dogged man?

We begin by going back some three centuries to the period when the ideal of democratic equality first entered the political consciousness of the modern world.
Few of us today would question the great transformation in moral identity which first taught people to think of themselves as equals:- equal in dignity, equal in their access to the rights and goods of the commonwealth. That conviction holds an axiomatic position in our lives.
And yet, it was once a shocking and disruptive new idea.

These sermons were given on two days, and are presented here as Part 1 and Part 2.

By Rev Rex A E Hunt

During the first days of winter last year Dylis and I were in Canberra and decided to visit the National Gallery. I particularly wanted to view and experience the Indigenous Art Triennial display called ‘Ceremony’. Featured were the works of 38 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across Australia, which revealed how ceremony sits at the nexus of Country, culture, and community.
But just before we entered the first of several ‘Ceremony’ display areas we passed some other paintings also on display. And among that display were several by the late Australian artist, Margaret Preston (1875–1963).

The compltete talk can be read here.