Spiritual Shenanigans

This was the first time to a Spiritual Church for me, and I had no idea what to expect. The service started at 6pm on a Sunday, at their own facility in South Dunedin. When I arrived, I found a small room that could probably seat 50, along with a small tearoom that opened out to the main part of the church. It was clean and tidy, and looked very much like any other church - apart from the absence of any Christian paraphernalia.

This weekend my kids and I picked up a 5 pack of face masks from KMart - a bargain (I think) at $12. My family, who were coming on this journey of discovery with me, each picked a mask that suited their personalities, or star signs, or something - Mermaid Feels, Super Star, Magic Mask and Radiant Glow. I chose Pearl Princess; after all, who doesn't want to feel like a princess on a Sunday night.

I've done a lot of book shopping recently, while working on our plagiarism project - and in this time I've found some real gems. And, by gems, I mean god-awful books. Thankfully my shopping has been done in charity shops and at book fairs, so these bad books have cost me just a dollar or two each - with the added twin bonuses that a) the money I've spent has gone to charity, and b) I've removed at least one copy of these books from circulation.

We last left the story of Colin Amery at the precipice of his 2nd attempt at immigration to the Pacific, this time following his pregnant girlfriend back to her home country of New Zealand. Before he departed the UK, he decided to stage a UFO 'talk-down' on Hampstead Heath. Amery fails to provide any further detail on what a UFO talk-down is exactly, but boy did it deliver.

When I first became interested in skepticism back in the 90s, I started finding communities on the internet (little did I know that we had our own skeptical organisation here in Aotearoa/New Zealand), and one of the prominent people I encountered was Michael Shermer.