The forming of Porirua Church and the Tawa Healing Group

Actually the healing group came first and they consisted of Trixie ?, Cliff Schofield, Eric D?, Jack and Muriel Clapton, all of whom were healers and members of the Petone Spiritualist Church.

We had to find somewhere to hold the healing. We went to the Scout Hall in Oxford Street, Tawa, a place where I used to have to clean the kitchen and the hall toilets before we started as well as carry all the paraphernalia (tea cups, tea pot, stools for patients to sit on, etc). We paid $5 for two hours. We were there a few months and when it came to Christmas we decided that in the New Year we would hold the healing at my home in Sunrise Boulevard. At this time Trixie had been to New Plymouth and attended a spiritual seminar. She brought the programme back, showed it to us and we all got very excited. We asked Warwick and Mary Fry to come and give us some advice, and then at Queens Birthday weekend 1981 we put on a two-day seminar at the Linden Community Centre. We did a great deal of advertising and I spoke on 2ZB. We had speakers from various parts of New Zealand and the weekend was a great success. The weather was good and the hall was full both days, 10am to 9pm on the Saturday, 10am to 5pm on the Sunday.

The following year we put on another one at the Pipitea Marae in Wellington which again was a great success. At this time, Jack and I held psychometry evenings on Tuesday nights. One week with Warwick and Mary Fry, the next with Wai McGregor and again these were very successful. That year we gave Petone Church $700 from those evenings in one year. Through these activities we were getting known and it was decided that we should hold an evening in Linden, saying we had the thought to open a spiritualist church in the area. We were surprised at the number who attended, including several policemen in civvies. Carole Beachen, Margaret Hobley and Jenny Bullas attended that meeting. Carole and Margaret are still members of Porirua Church.

All this time we still had healing every Saturday. Anne Duncan was with us and then for a time Wai McGregor who gave private readings on Saturday mornings with Anne giving readings on Friday nights. One night I double booked every appointment and Anne valiantly saw them all. All this money gave us a base to open the church and because we could only get a hall in Porirua the church was called the Spiritualist Church of Porirua. We were very fortunate in having great people to serve our platform, including Warwick and Mary Fry, Wai McGregor, Norm Stark, Joyce and Gary Williams. The hall was packed every service, people queued to have healing.

We had to be running 12 months before we could become part of the SCNZ. We applied to become an associated church in October 1984. We had been running for a year as the Spiritual and Psychic Awareness Group and before that as the Tawa Healing Group for four years. We were ratified as an associated church in 1986 at the Easter SCNZ national council meeting. In September that year I became a Minister of the church.

We moved into the rooms at 139 Main Road, Tawa, in May 1985. We were in the smaller room for a few years and then moved across the corridor to the larger room in 1993. The church put on many workshops and healer days. One year we went to Marton and had a two-day workshop. We stayed at what was then a Girl Guides house.

We have never been a church to hold on to money. The first year we opened, Anne Duncan and I went and saw the matron at Kenepuru Hospital. She really didn’t know what to think of us as we asked her what she really needed in the children’s part of the hospital. She told us a set of very delicate scales that a baby could be weighed on and then given an exact dose of medicine. Also, two pushchairs so the children could be walked outside. We asked her to tell us the total cost and we gave her a cheque for $1,500 – she was staggered when we didn’t want our photos in the paper to advertise what we had done. For years we adopted a ward at Porirua Hospital. I belonged to a craft group and with Peg Grant they would come and knit and make presents for a ward of 40. They all received presents at Christmas. After that we used to buy boxes of chocolates and biscuits. We gave money to two or three kidney and heart transplant patients, about $500-$600. If people were in need and if we had the money, we gave to help.

For myself, this has been a journey with lots of emotion, remembering the children that were no more than babes when we started and have grown up and married, the lovely members who have left us to go home to the Father, the people who were with us at the beginning who also have gone home or are in nursing homes, the love that supported me when Jack went – Peg and Charles Grant who were my strength, Anne who rang me from Niue, Joanne who came and brought me flowers – all the people who came to my Monday afternoon meditation sessions, the glorious afternoon teas, who gave me so much.

The journey goes on with others at the helm, and with love and commitment it will go on for many more years.

– Muriel Clapton