Available Light

I didn't record this morning's sermon at Knox church, but this one, delivered while I was Vicar of St. John's Roslyn, covers much the same ground If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element

The following audio file is the third in a series of three talks given at Knox Church Dunedin in June 2017 on the subject of Contemplative Prayer. In this last of the series I speak, informally, for about half an hour, about how to begin a practice of meditation. If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element

The following is an address from Knox Church, Dunedin, given on Sunday June 25 2017 If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element Synopsis: We all have our strategies for happiness which give rise to most of the major choices we make. These strategies have a number of things in common: 1) most of us are looking for one of 3 things in an attempt to make ourselves happy. These three things are a) security, b) affection and esteem; c) power and control. 2. These strategies are so deeply ingrained in us that they have become part of us and we are generally unconscious of them. 3. These strategies don't work, because they can't possibly work. Security, affection and esteem, power and control are things we all need, and things our parents give to us, or not as the case may be, from childhood. We usually find ourselves with a felt deficiency in one or more of these areas, and faced with life's inevitable challenges and unhappin...

The following audio file is an address from Knox Church, Dunedin, given on Sunday Evening, June 18 2017. If you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio element Synopsis: Like many of my generation I entered the Christian faith by way of the Charismatic renewal in the 1970s. In the early 1990s the renewal and I were beginning to part company, and, while I was Vicar of All Saints Sumner, responding to the works of Gerard Hughes and Morton Kelsey, I began to walk the path of Contemplative Spirituality, which I have been following ever since. There is a common perception that the Contemplative path is some sort of modern add on to the Christian faith, but this is inaccurate. Modern contemplatives, such as Thomas Keating and Laurence Freeman trace their lineage back through Thomas Merton to the medieval work, The Cloud of Unknowing , and then, even further back to the great medieval mystics and the desert fathers. In fact, the Contemplative tradit...