For musicians among us, may you find space to play and pray. May we all encounter the divine.

Rev Jennifer Hughes
CMLA Board Member

My connection with Bob was through children’s ministry in my home state of Queensland, through the young UCA’s formative-for-so-many camping ministry.  My ministry journey down the decades, including the songwriting aspect of that, owes Bob such a huge sense of gratitude.

Bob would always conclude his letters (and PC’s and Mac’s were just emerging) with the sign-off of shalom. It’s the Hebrew word narrowly understood as peace, but more broadly; denoting wholeness, harmony, well-being. Bob just lived shalom. We may well know people who have that effect on others.   Bob certainly did, and I’m the better for it. The Arabic of shalom is the similar salaam.

My wife Dale and I were invited to sing and share at Bob’s service. None of my songs written down over the years quite seemed to suit.

In memory of Bob, but mindful that amid the horror and angst and so much more of the ongoing Israel-Hamas-Palestine dilemma, I was impacted how Jew, Christian and Arab alike, all speak and sing of peace.  They all understand this peace-salaam-shalom as a seeking and a blessing of wholeness, harmony and well-being.

My prayer, as daily I/we/the world ponders, prays, weeps over the Israel-Hamas-Palestine dilemma, praying for peace; we too will be people of wholeness, harmony and well-being. So, as is my want, I wrote a blessing song for the occasion called Peace, Salaam, Shalom in honour of Bob.     https://youtu.be/4DbX5UVjFjs

God’s peace be yours
salaam, shalom
No matter what the road you’re on
God’s peace be yours
salaam, shalom
We dare look up and carry on

God’s peace be yours,
salaam, shalom
God’s peace be yours,
salaam, shalom
A peace that God as love can give
So, peace be yours,
salaam, shalom

On Bob’s shoulders. Sunshine Coast, Qld 1978

Peace be yours
salaam, shalom                                  David MacGregor © 2025 Willow Publishing

Shalom,
David
MacGregor (Rev)
CMLA Board Member

“Desert Dance” by Karan Hudson

Did you celebrate Trinity Sunday at your Church this week? The doctrine of the Trinity is mysterious, mind bending and challenging! Yet, it can also be life-giving and inspirational and help shape who we are as God’s people. Thinking about the Trinity has inspired liturgists, song-writers, poets and artists in their creative imagination.

The Trinity is a sign that our God wants to be known.
In his blog, English poet, Anglican priest and academic, Malcolm Guite said: “By coming to us as the Son, revealing to us the Father, and sending to us the Spirit, Jesus revealed the deepest mystery; that God is not distant and alone, but is three in one, a communion of love who comes to make His home with us.”

The Trinity depicts for us a God who is relational.
You may have heard of the term ‘perichoresis’. Theologians of the early Church adopted this term which reminded them of a Greek wedding dance – where there are three or more dancers who begin in circles, weaving in and out and then move faster and faster, all in perfect timing.

Feminist Catholic theologian Catherine LaCugna, speaks of perichoresis as the ‘Divine Dance’. The dance includes the inner weavings of the persons of the Trinity but also moves out to include others – with the circle drawing wider and wider – or even forming a spiral movement drawing in all of humanity and all of creation.

If you look, you can see this kind of spiral pattern in art, in architecture and in nature. (Look up the Fibonacci spiral!)

We worship a God who is deeply relational and invites us to join the dance.

In addition to or even alongside God as Trinity, there are other ways that God reveals God’s self to us. One helpful example is through the Uniting Church’s covenant with the UAICC (Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress). It is 31 years since we entered into a Covenant with the UAICC. Through this relationship we have been encouraged to think differently about how God makes God’s self known to us. By walking together we have been challenged in our own understandings of God.

This is reflected in the Revised Preamble to the Uniting Church’s constitution, where it says:

“When the churches that formed the Uniting Church arrived in Australia they entered a land that had been created and sustained by the Triune God they knew in Jesus Christ.

The First Peoples had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of the colonisers; the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony. The same love and grace that was finally and fully revealed in Jesus Christ sustained the First Peoples and gave them particular insights into God’s ways.”

Currently on display in the Uniting Church SA Synod Office, the beautiful artwork, ‘Desert Dance’ is by Karan Hudson. Quoting Karan, “The red desert pea is the Spirit of God, which was already here before European settlement. The figures are the others in the Trinity, locked in a spiral eternal dance, joyfully and equally.”

I wonder where else you might see signs of God’ invitation for you to join in the Divine Dance?

Rev Linda Driver
Chair, CMLA Board
Trinity Sunday 2025

10.00am – 4.00pm (two sessions)

The Corner Uniting Church

After a very successful retreat in January, we are giving you another opportunity to give yourself the gift of expressive ‘time out’ in winter with time to explore the connections between life, creativity and spirituality with art or writing. Images and words are two ways in which we seek to give voice to our inner and outer human experience. This is a retreat time for exploring place and presence in relation to your life journey.

These two half-day guided workshops are an opportunity for you to be centred and stretched as you reflect on recent experiences and express these in some way. We aim to provide a space that is inclusive, reflective and prayerful, where you can spend time with others and also have your own time for focus and discernment.

Timetable

10.00 am – 12.30 pm Painting Workshop

12.30 – 1.30pm Lunch (BYO)

1.30 – 4.00pm Continuing Painting Workshop or Poetry Workshop

Morning and afternoon tea provided

Painting Workshop

Karan Hudson is an experienced artist and art teacher. She will provide the environment and guidance for both beginners and painters at any level to engage in visual journalling using watercolours.

Explore simple watercolour painting of places for the purposes of slow travel or spiritual reflection.

In the morning session we will focus on watercolour techniques, different papers, journal formats and composition. This session will be suitable for beginners.

Bring any pens, paints and journals you already employ. Some paints and papers supplied.

If you wish to attend all day, the afternoon will offer more individual tuition around the room considering your purposes for painting and level of experience. People who attended a previous painting workshop in January may like to choose to attend just the afternoon session unless they would like the morning refresher on technical aspects.

Equipment and Costs

Karan will provide artist quality watercolours and brushes.

One session (morning or afternoon) $40

Two sessions (morning and afternoon) $80

Poetry Workshop

Paul Turley is a Uniting Church minister and writer of poetry, prose, drama scripts, songs and prayers. Paul will provide the environment and encouragement for you to reflect on your life experience and to express this in whatever form of words you choose. There will be time and space for solitude and interaction as you wish.

This workshop is only offered in the afternoon.

Equipment and Costs

Please bring your own paper or journal and pen/s.

Afternoon session $30

Make a Booking

Venue

The Corner UC is situated at 93 Oaklands Road (Cnr Oaklands & Diagonal Roads), Warradale SA 5046. There is plenty of parking onsite.

There is a Subway, Chicken Shop, Pizza shop and IGA very close by for lunch options.

More information

Call Belinda on 0452 314 869 or email admin@cmla.org.au

Probably my most frequent prayer is one for wisdom. When I’m faced with a personal decision, walking into a difficult conversation or about to embark on a challenging task, I find myself so often needing wisdom. Now to be honest, that prayer might be as short and sweet as “Help!”. At other times, it might be more wordy. But often it feels like I’m just asking for a one-off solution to the problem, the right words to say, or an extra dose of gumption or strength for the moment…..and I need it now, Lord (if you don’t mind)! 

Dictionary definitions for wisdom use words like experience, knowledge, good judgement, sensible thinking, insight, discernment…all of these applied to life. I recently heard the following definition for wisdom: Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do, at the right time and in the right way. That’s an easy definition to remember but may be not so easy to apply. 

Throughout its pages, the book of Proverbs has a lot to say about wisdom, especially about godly wisdom. But perhaps the most memorable verse is found in Proverbs 9:10 – The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. 

Although we don’t use the phrase, “the fear of the Lord” much these days, the biblical phrase is about reverence, worshipping God and regarding God as truly awesome. This is the beginning and the essence of wisdom. Tim Keller wrote that, “To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love….. That is why the more we experience God’s grace and forgiveness, the more we experience a trembling awe and wonder before the greatness of all that he is and has done for us.” 

Godly wisdom begins and ends in worshipping, knowing and seeking God and then allowing God to transform our hearts and minds to be more aligned with His. Or as Romans 12 puts it, being “transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes]….” (Romans 12:2, Amplified Bible). 

So maybe my frequent pleas to be zapped with wisdom in particular situations should be replaced by a prayerful desire to worship, seek and know God, for that relationship to grow and flourish until I become more like Jesus, with my mind and heart renewed and transformed to be more in line with His. Then my attitudes, actions and words would spring from His wisdom in a natural, more instinctive way. Less quick prayers for help, more dwelling and abiding in Christ, drawing my life and wisdom from the Vine. 

Wendy Perkins (Board Member)