Anglican Taonga Advent 2013

ADVENT 2013 // No.44

Taonga ANGLICAN

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

Te Harinui!

Preparing to celebrate 200 years of the Gospel SOCIAL SERVICE

House thy Neighbour Help for pensioners without means

E D U C AT I O N

Like father, like son Katene Eruera’s story

THE ABBEY : : CARDBOARD CATHEDRAL : : JOAN BAEZ

A D V E N T

2013 Page 1

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

PEOPLE

A new heart for waikato

E

arly this December the Rev Dr Helen-Ann Hartley drove onto Auckland’s motorway for a short, but life-changing journey south.

Those 90-minutes took her through Huntly, then down round the base of Mount Taupiri, past Turangawaewae, and on to Hamilton City, seat of the see of Waikato, where she will succeed Archbishop David Moxon as diocesan bishop.

She leaves behind her Auckland home, where since early 2012 she has served as Tikanga Pakeha Dean for St John’s College.

Dr Hartley will officially take up the crozier at her consecration in St Peter’s Cathedral on February 22 next year, making her the seventh Bishop of Waikato, and the first woman in the job. She will join Archbishop Philip Richardson in the unique episcopal partnership that joins the Waikato and Taranaki regions.

Helen-Ann gives the Waikato a new claim in Anglican history. With her, it will become the first diocese to elect as bishop a woman who was priested in the Church of England.

Of course, we know Waikato is always keen to get points onto the board early – before others can cross the line.

Despite all the talk of England, HelenAnn is at pains to point out that in fact she was born in Scotland. And later she returned there to complete a Master’s in Theology from St Andrew’s University.

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She did however grow up on English soil, in the Diocese of Durham – as the only child of Jim and Pat Francis. Her father Jim is a priest in the Church of England and the third generation in a line of clergymen.

Helen-Ann was ordained in the Diocese of Oxford in 2005, and in that same year gained her PhD in New Testament. She served curacies in Wheatley and Littlemore over the next four years.

It was during that time she acquired an insight into the “joys and challenges” of rural ministry, “I spent three years of a curacy in a team of fifteen rural parishes in Oxfordshire – and loved it.

“But there were – and are – significant challenges.”

So her Wellington boots might go by a different name in the Waikato, but it won’t be the first time she’s been in them.

As well as ministering in the field, HelenAnn served as Director of Biblical Studies at Ripon College, Cuddesden from 2005 to 2011 – minus a short sabbatical to St John’s in Auckland during 2010. At Cuddesden, she cared for 150 residential and part-time theology students, all at various ages and stages of ministry.

Helen-Ann is clear that as she moves away from the halls of academia, she will not be leaving her passion for ministry formation behind.

As she travels round her new diocese, she’ll be looking and listening with the eyes and ears of a practiced mentor in ministry.

From the outset, her intention is to listen, reflect and walk alongside.

Her first aim is to get to know each faith community, to hear their stories, and learn what makes their ministries tick.

That approach is essential for Helen-Ann, because, like her friend and episcopal rolemodel Bishop Stephen Pickard (Assistant Bishop in Canberra and Goulburn1), she is a firm believer in the whole body of Christ taking up the reins of ministry, “I really see the value of working together to enable a 'together-up' approach – rather than a 'top-down' style of leadership.”

She’s keen to embrace the bishop’s teaching and preaching roles too – with high hopes for a particular group in mind, “perhaps most of all I look forward to getting alongside young people, inspiring them to live in their faith – both in the present and into the future.”

Taonga will catch up with Helen-Ann again when she’s installed in Waikato in 2014.

– Julanne Clarke-Morris Note 1. The Rt Rev Dr Stephen Pickard is also Executive Director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, based in Canberra.

Anglican Taonga

Anglican Taonga ADVENT 2013

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18 Youth: Spanky Moore joins the throng at The Abbey 30 Children: Julie Hintz: Xmas pageants without the drama 32 Theology: Kelvin Wright on the vast reaches of space 34 Music: Brian Thomas on the heavenly sounds of Joan Baez 42 Environment: Phillip Donnell suggests the gifts that last 44 Film: John Bluck meets the nun who wowed the festivals 46 The Far Side: Imogen de la Bere peers into the pagan darkness

Anglican Taonga is published by the Commission on Communications and distributed to all ministry units and agencies of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia – Te Haahi Mihinare ki Aotearoa ki Niu Tireni ki nga Moutere o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.

Editor Julanne Clarke-Morris 786 Cumberland Street Otepoti - Dunedin 9016 Ph 03 477-1556 julanneclarkemorris@gmail.com Design Marcus Thomas Design marcust@orcon.net.nz Distribution Taonga Distribution, General Synod Office, PO Box 87 188, Meadowbank, Auckland 1742 Advertising Brian Watkins Ph 06 875-8488 Mob 021 072-9892 brian@grow.co.nz Media Officer Lloyd Ashton Ph 09 521-4439 021 348-470 mediaofficer@anglicanchurch.org.nz.

Features

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A lawyer Dean for Tikanga Maori

A parish taking initiative for pensioners without means

Like father, like son

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Social housing

Towards 2014

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An 11-page feature on the pilgrimage to the gospel bicentennial

Poetry as a vehicle for memory

Grief counselling

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How the cardboard cathedral came to be

Art historian and gentleman radical

Christchurch rebuild

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The Master’s money Discovering the talents of Gillian Robertson

Jonathon Mane-Wheoki

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Christmas cribs The theology of folk art nativities

Taonga Online Editor Brian Thomas Ph 03 351 4404 bjthomas@orcon.net.nz

For the latest on the Anglican world, check out our website: Cover: At the foot of the Marsden Cross – Anglican youth on pilgrimage in Rangihoua.

Picture: Karen Spoelstra.

http://anglicantaonga.org.nz Page 3

Anglican Taonga

WINTER ADVENT 2013 2013

E D U C AT I O N

The rock

from which he was hewn

When Katene Eruera stood to affirm his vows as the new Dean of Tikanga Maori at St John’s College, he was standing on the shoulders of others who have gone before him.

On his dad’s broad shoulders, first and foremost.

But also on the shoulders of a greater cloud of Maori witnesses.

As Lloyd Ashton has been finding out, Katene comes to his task carrying their stories, their faith and their hopes.

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W

hen the Waitangi Tribunal began hearing the Muriwhenua Land Claim, understanding the paper trail of land transactions between Maori and settlers in the far north in the 1830s – that was the key.

Panakareao was the rangatira up that way back then, and he’d signed his mark on all those transactions.

And as far as the Crown was concerned, that was proof of land sale contracts.

An open and shut case, surely.

Well, maybe. Back in 1996, when those Tribunal hearings took place, Rima Edwards was the Chairman of the Muriwhenua Runanga, and he felt the Tribunal could use some background on Panakareao.

He spoke entirely without notes.

It wasn’t until the second day that Rima actually got to Panakareao.

He’d begun this way, in Maori: “In

the beginning, the earth lay with the sky…”

Rima was making the point, in a subtle Maori way, that you had no show of understanding the Muriwhenua land claim unless you really knew the culture from which it sprang. His real message was this: Don’t judge Panakareao through Pakeha eyes.

The Tribunal, in a ground-breaking report, found in favour of Muriwhenua.

Those signed documents weren’t, as the Crown had claimed, land sale contracts. Instead, they were tukuwhenua, or traditional land transfer arrangements.

They were conditional.

The settlers had the use of the land, but relationship was key.

They were expected to contribute to the community as best they could – and the land transfer only lasted as long as the relationship did. The tribes had never surrendered their mana whenua.

According to Joe Williams, a lawyer

Anglican Taonga

acting for Muriwhenua then, “Rima’s narrative was decisive”.

He later wrote of the price Rima had paid to speak in the way that he had: “…Rima Edwards was not just recounting stories he had been told in the whare wananga of his youth.

“He had spent months preparing himself spiritually for the ordeal of giving evidence.”

“He was, during that preparation, in dialogue with Panakareao.

“For him, history and the present are not distinct.”

The Muriwhenua Land Claim wasn’t the only time that Rima Edwards paid a price, either.

For a quarter of a century he’d toiled away on fisheries, foreshore and seabed, broadcasting and forestry matters.

When Rima died in April 2011, Pita Sharples paid tribute to him: The iwi of Muriwhenua, he said, would be devastated by his loss. Throughout tumultuous times he’d remained unfailingly kind and polite, and his evidence on Maori custom had “helped to change the course of New Zealand’s history.”

Shane Jones paid tribute, too: “Everyone knew,” he said, “that (Rima’s) knowledge of the language, the culture, and in particular the genealogy and ancient history was peerless…”

So what’s all that generation-ago stuff got to do with us now?

Well, there is a connection.

Because the history that we’ve just quoted is the rock from which Katene Eruera, the new Dean of Tikanga Maori at St John’s College, was hewn.

Rima Edwards was Katene’s dad. *

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Katene, who is 45, was born and raised in Kaitaia. He’s the eldest of Rima and his wife Harriet’s (nee Norman) six children, and he has ties to Te Aupouri, Ngati Kuri, Ngati Hau and Ngati Kaharau.

Growing up in a provincial town in the seventies and eighties could give you mixed messages about the worth of being Maori, says Katene.

Yes, it seemed to say, to certain things.

To the exploits of the 28th Maori Battalion, for example.

But where other markers of Maori identity were concerned, well, ‘assimilation’ was giving a few dying kicks: “At school you’d often hear it said: ‘Oh, there’s no point in learning Maori. It won’t get you anywhere.’ ” Little things could leave an unpleasant

impression on a young fulla, too.

Like having your name butchered during the school roll call.

At home, things were very different.

In the first place, because Rima and Harriet’s home was an ideal launchpad for a young guy. It was loving and stable. And Rima and Harriet modelled the idea of trying to make the world a better place.

Then, there was the fact that Rima and Matiu Rata were best mates.

Brothers in arms.

Mat Rata was the man who became the catalyst for the Maori Renaissance and who, as Minister of Maori Affairs, founded the Waitangi Tribunal.

And Rima and his whanau were right behind that kaupapa.

At long last, Katene remembers, Maori were getting the chance to say how European settlement had affected them.

Katene was hearing a different history from the one he’d been taught in school – and for a young man, the power and poignancy of those stories was lifechanging.

But how come, then, if Rima was ‘Edwards’, that Katene is ‘Eruera’?

Well, as a teenager, Katene had wanted a passport, and he’d trooped off to the Kaitaia District Court to retrieve his birth certificate.

He couldn’t find it, and told his mum so.

Have a look under ‘Eruera’, she suggested.

Sure enough, there it was.

There, on his birth certificate, was the identity that his parents had chosen for him. *

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Katene was a good student – he sailed through Kaitaia College, then went on to get his BA. But gaining a good education for your own sake wasn’t the point. You got an education so that you could serve your people.

And the best way Katene could make his contribution, he figured, was to become a lawyer, working for his people.

So he headed to law school at Victoria, and was admitted to the bar in 1996.

He worked for a Wellington firm which specialised in tribunal work, but he also did criminal and family law.

After he’d been practising law for a few years, he found his legal work blending into social work. What’s more, he realised that he was enjoying the social work – grappling with WINZ or ACC on behalf of clients, for

ADVENT 2013

Brothers in arms. Katene serves the chalice to John Walsh, his brother-in-law.

example – more than the law.

He began to suspect, then, that he might have a call into ministry. *

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Where Katene comes from, church and marae were inseparable.

As to which church, well, they were less fussy about that.

“The joke was: the church you were baptised into depended on which minister turned up to take the Sunday service.

“Let’s say we went to a tangi.

“I’d be used to seeing an Anglican or Methodist minister there alongside a Ratana Apotoro, because the person who’d died had links to each. That’s how it was – different denominations alongside common kinship ties.”

And people’s trust in what the Treaty of Waitangi had promised bound them together, too.

Katene recalls morning prayer on his dad’s marae at Omanaia, in the Hokianga. They’d recite a psalm – and often, that would be followed by this chant: KAIHAUTU/LEADER Tenei te ata te takiri nei e The morning dawn rises TE KATOA/THE CONGREGATION Kia whakatapua Te Tiriti o Waitangi The Treaty of Waitangi is made sacred *

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Rima had been to Tipene (St Stephen’s School) and Harriet to Wikitoria (Queen Vic).

So they had Anglican credentials, no doubt.

And right from the day Kito Pikaahu was ordained a priest in 1987, Rima was his orator on the taumata. Rima was a peacemaker, too.

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Anglican Taonga

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E D U C AT I O N

When Kito was first ordained as bishop, he was copping attacks from all sides – and Rima would remind him not to react to those: E te Pihopa, ko te kakahu o te Pihopa, he kakahu manaaki Bishop: The cloak of a bishop is a cloak of blessing And if church and marae were inseparable for the Edwards crew, well, Katene says you couldn’t drive a wedge between the whanau and the way it worked out its salvation, either.

“Our involvement in the Waitangi Tribunal claims, for example, was simply an outworking of our faith.” *

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When Katene was a young man, he’d once sat in on some kaumatua who were discussing the notion of unconditional love.

Those kaumatua didn’t reach for an abstract theological doctrine to explore the concept.

Instead, they drew upon their oral tradition.

They reflected on the story of Kupe and how, after he’d discovered Aotearoa, he’d created Te Ara Wairua – the pathway for the souls of all departed Maori to find their way north back to their spiritual ‘home’, Hawaiki.

“To these kaumatua,” says Katene, “that story highlighted unconditional love. It said that no matter which iwi we come from, and no matter who we are, or what we’d done in our lives, we were so loved by our ancestor that he ensured we would always be able to return ‘home’ to Hawaiki.”

“The idea that agape love existed before Christianity arrived in this land fascinated me.”

Hearing those kaumatua unpack that Kupe story kindled Katene’s fascination with what he calls “our wisdom tradition” and with indigenous theology.

Such theology, he says, can offer an “alternative voice” that speaks to a modern Maori congregation.

He says Maori Christians are invariably shaped by their own iwi wisdom traditions, as well as by Maori experience since the settlers came.

He thinks indigenous theology can “identify and fill gaps in traditional western theology” so Maori can find “an alternative and constructive way to live in the light of the gospel.”

The ultimate aim of such theologies, he says, “is to offer a voice that seeks to improve society as a whole.”

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Katene, his bride-to-be, Wendy Knight, and other manuhiri at the powhiri for Katene’s installation at St John’s.

Katene’s call

S

o: was Katene Eruera being shoulder-tapped for ministry?

He decided to test that idea through Te Upoko o Te Ika – and in 2001, Bishop Muru Walters sent him to St John’s College.

He graduated with a BTheol (deaconed in 2002, priested in 2003) and then picked up his Master’s.

He returned to law in 2003 – there are no stipends in Tikanga Maori – only this time, he worked in community law centres in Whangarei, helping those who either couldn’t afford lawyers or couldn’t get legal aid.

At the same time, he was ministering as a priest and served for a time as Pihopatanga Chancellor.

In 2010 he changed tack and became a Defence Force chaplain.

That was quite a good move for him, too. Because after the February 2011 quake he found himself helping out in Christchurch – and that’s where he met Wendy Knight, who is an Air Force psychologist.

They became an item – and the day after Katene was installed at St John’s, they married.

For the first eight months of 2013, though, Katene and Wendy had conducted a long-distance romance.

Because at the start of this year Katene moved to Alice Springs, where he served as a locum priest.

Katene loved the Alice parish and the thought of tackling the dean’s job never entered his head. At least, not until the possibility arose.

But once it did, it felt right. It was time, he thought, to pass on what he’d learned.

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Katene told the interviewing bishops that he had a four-point scheme for training Tikanga Maori priests. They had to model faithfulness, service, and integrity, he said.

Then he told the story about Jesus meeting Peter and Andrew on the Galilee shore.

What was it, Katene asked the bishops, that compelled Peter and Andrew to drop everything to follow Jesus?

“Because that’s what our ministry formation here at St John’s College needs to be about.

“Capturing that same sense of call – so that, like Peter and Andrew, we drop everything to follow.”

For Katene, that means following Him wherever He leads.

“I said to my students the other day – which one of you will be the first Maori Dean of a cathedral?

“I have a vision that you serve with the same energy and vitality as those first disciples – and that you can serve in any tikanga, any context you feel called to.”

Katene has been shaped in his thinking here, he says, by his dad.

He’d showed Katene that Tikanga Maori was a blessing that can enrich faith, and, at its best, “is like a transferable skill.”

You look after your whanau – and if you see inequality, that’s a sacred calling to work for change.

Wherever that’s needed.

– Lloyd Ashton

Anglican Taonga

The Anglican Schools ditch their annual conference for a visit to the cradle of this Church.

ADVENT 2013

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

Schools return to their roots Photo: Sandy Robertson

I

f we don’t do this now, Ali Ballantyne thought, it’ll never happen.

Not on my watch, anyway.

That’s why, this penultimate year before the 2014 bicentenary, Ali decided to abandon the format of the annual Anglican School’s Conference.

Instead, she organised an August pilgrimage around the historic Bay of Islands sites – all so pivotal to the founding of this church, and to the founding of modern New Zealand.

Ali has been fascinated with the area for a long time. And her study of New Zealand

history at varsity, back in the 1970s, had just ramped up her appetite to share her fascination.

And this year – the year she steps down – she decided the time was ripe to do something about that. To organise the pilgrimage, in other words.

Ali didn’t stop there, either.

This year, for the first time, 36 senior students from various Anglican schools came along and joined that pilgrimage.

Phil Trotter, the Tikanga Pakeha National Youth Advisor, came along as their ‘main man’, so for the first time, the youth

In all sorts of ways, that changed the dynamic.

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Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

Horsing around in period dress outside Christ Church Russell are: (L-R) Grace Stumbles, Elenoa Tabudravu, Briar Linn, Maddy Carpenter, Lydia Poole and Emily Barnsley.

leaders were working in tandem with the schools.

In all sorts of ways, those students and the youth leaders changed the dynamic, too.

Good omens The first morning, when the three buses trundled out from Paihia for the 45 minute drive along the Purerua Peninsula to Oihi Bay it was warm and still – and the fog was lifting to reveal a perfect late winter’s day.

The pilgrims walked down from the road through the parting mist to the water’s edge, where the Active had stood offshore in 1814 – then hiked 50 metres up the hill, past the Marsden Cross to the site of the school that Thomas Kendall opened two years later.

“This,” Ali said, pointing to a terrace not much larger than a cricket pitch, “was the first school in New Zealand. “And you can stand proud. Because it was an Anglican school.”

Ali urged her listeners to imagine that

December day in 1814 when the Active had hove into sight around the headland, and how it must have felt when the new arrivals set foot on the beach.

And then, on cue – entirely spontaneous, but with split-second-perfect timing – five Dilworth School boys lit into a thunderous rendition of Ko Titiko-pure, their school haka.

With the echo of that haka still ringing the bay, as it must have done in 1814, another voice launched forth: Kororiatia ki te atua I runga rawa, kia mau te runga ki te whenua, kia pai te whakaaro, ki nga tangata katoa…

That was Archbishop Philip, acknowledging in karakia the sacredness of the land, those who lie there, acknowledging Ruatara and his people, and their invitation to the missionaries and settlers “with both thanksgiving and deep regret that this offer of partnership, has both been fulfilled and rejected…”

Before leaving Oihi Bay, the students were each given a slate and a writing stick to commemorate that first Pakeha school, those first students.

Off to Kerikeri

This offer of partnership… has been both fulfilled and rejected.

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Then it was on to Kerikeri, the site of the second mission station, and the 115 pilgrims inspected Kemp House, the Stone Store museum and St James Church.

In the afternoon, Waimate, site of the fourth mission settlement, was the convoy's first port of call, before it stopped at the picture-perfect old church in Pakaraka, where Archdeacon Henry and Marianne Williams rest.

On the Friday, the pilgrims spent time at the memorial church in Paihia – site of

the third mission station, founded by Henry Williams in 1823 – and then ferried to Russell to inspect Christ Church, to climb to the flagpole which Hone Heke had four times chopped down, and to visit Pompallier House.

There were other highlights, too – such as the briefings each morning from Ali and Caroline Fitzgerald, who is the great, great granddaughter of Henry and Marianne Williams, and their biographer.

Caroline painted a picture of a couple who had extraordinary perseverance – and who were, in many ways, locked in a struggle with the New Zealand Company for the soul of the country.

For instance, in late 1839 Henry took Octavius Hadfield (later Bishop Hadfield) to Wellington.

Henry was appalled to discover that New Zealand Company agents had already bought up some 20 million acres. For the past decade, CMS missionaries and rangatira had been imploring the king of England not to let that happen.

Henry slogged back to the Bay of Islands in late January 1840 – he walked much of the way – and no sooner had he sagged across his Pakaraka doorway than he learned that Captain Hobson had arrived, and that he was needed urgently in Paihia.

Late in the afternoon of February the 4th Captain Hobson asked Henry to translate the draft Treaty of Waitangi into Maori. He did so, overnight, with the help of his son and, as we know, the chiefs signed Te Tiriti on February the 6th.

Stepping down Ali Ballantyne, who started as the first Anglican Schools Office Director in 2001, is retiring at the end of this school year.

Ali Ballantyne, who started as the first Anglican Schools Office Director in 2001, is retiring at the end of this school year. In his final night tribute to her, Archbishop Philip marvelled at the organisation of the pilgrimage. He said its success – and the success of the schools network itself “is all down to you, Ali. “This reality, this network of Anglican schools, just simply wouldn’t be there without you.”

– Lloyd Ashton Note: The Rev Anne van Gend will succeed Ali as head of the Anglican Schools' Office. There’s a story about Anne’s appointment on http://anglicantaonga.org.nz under ‘Common Life’.

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

Touching down at

I

s this a stealth bomber, coming into land?

Or a cloud perhaps, floating above some ancient earth ramparts?

No. What you’re looking at here, in fact, is the Welcome Centre of a new heritage park being built at the Marsden Cross precinct at Rangihoua, in the Bay of Islands.

And these are scenes from a special day – Monday, November 4 – when the 4500kg fibreglass roof was swung from its jig and lowered onto nine steel poles that forever anchor it in space, hovering above those curved rammed-earth walls.

The architect, Pip Cheshire, says he had no particular metaphor in mind when he designed the structure.

“I’m a great believer in the abstract form,” he says. “Something that leaves room for the visitor to occupy the structure with their own thoughts, their own history, expectations and faith.”

The open end of the centre is oriented

Rangihoua

directly at the Marsden Cross at Oihi Bay, where Marsden preached his Christmas Day 1814 sermon. That cross, erected in 1907, is an orienting point for all who arrive by boat.

The new Welcome Centre is a landward anchor, which marks the entrance to the park from the road, on the ridge above.

Mike Taylor, who is the Project Manager for the nearby Mountain Landing development, is also the builder in charge of this Marsden Cross heritage project.

He’s been on the job here since March this year, and he says 120 cubic metres of loose clay were trucked in make those rammed earth walls.

It took a month to create formwork strong enough withstand the compacting process, and six weeks to ram the clay into shape.

Hard yakka, that was.

But seeing what’s now taking shape, says Mike, makes that all worthwhile.

And that roof? Talk about space-age.

It was constructed in Warkworth by

Core Composite Builders – the specialist boatbuilders who built Oracle. Core fabricated the roof, then sent a team of eight up to Rangihoua to help Mike and his men fix it in place.

The roof consists of a number of triangulated panels, each folded at an angle to the other. Those panels are an ultra-hightech sandwich of a fibreglass skin, encasing a PET foam resin-infused core.

“We’ve needed people,” says Pip Cheshire, “who are at the very leading edge of understanding new technologies to achieve what we have here.

“And it’s a tribute to people’s abilities, and to their co-ordination and co-operation, that we’ve been able to get to this point.”

Speaking of which, Lloyd Ashton has been speaking with four people without whose co-ordination, co-operation, and dogged hard work the Marsden Cross project wouldn’t have happened either.

Their stories follow.

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Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

John King has illustrious ancestors.

He’s the great great grandson of the John King who came out with Samuel Marsden on the Active in December 1814 – and that’s partly why he’s at the helm of the mission now to deliver a worthy bicentennial heritage project at Rangihoua.

Reclaiming a forgott

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efore May 2005, the story of what had taken place at Rangihoua in 1814 – frankly, John King didn’t have much time to dwell on all that.

With his dad, Arnold, things had been different – perhaps because he could remember talking with his grandmother, Charlotte, who was the widow of Philip King. Philip was the son of the missionary John King, and he’d arrived on the Active as a 15-month-old baby.

“Our” John King, on the other hand, had his hands full dealing with the challenges of leading Russell McVeagh, one of the country’s biggest law firms, and of meeting his responsibilities as a director of corporations such as Westpac and Telecom.

But by 2005, John was at the stage of stepping back from his hectic working life.

I didn’t think I could walk away from it all and say: 'It hasn’t worked.'

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And there were a couple of folk on the Marsden Cross Trust Board (MCTB) who knew that having a man with those family connections, that skill set and that experience… that was just what the Board needed.

So in May 2005 the Board invited John to join, and because of his family connection, he did.

That year, the MCTB bought the 20 hectare block that leads down from Oihi Road to the Marsden Cross reserve. Buying that land – for $1.6 million – meant the site was secured for a heritage project.

Back in those days the MCTB, which is an ecumenical body, had plans drawn up for a church and a curator’s cottage to be built on its newly-acquired land.

The MCTB hired a professional fundraising outfit to come up with the cash to fund that – and a model of that development was wheeled out at a big fundraising launch in January 2006.

About then, things began to go wrong.

In the first place, because that year-long fundraising effort failed.

It didn’t come within a bull’s roar of raising the money that was needed.

In the second place, because Maori were ambivalent about the project itself.

And if you couldn’t show that Maori were behind a supposedly bicultural project, well, you wouldn’t have much show of the Government coming to the fundraising party, would you?

And you wouldn’t want to apply for resource consents without Maori on your side, either, would you?

By mid-2007 the tribal elders confirmed that they weren’t happy with the scheme.

They were OK for a bicultural commemoration – but they didn’t see a church and cottage as being bicultural.

At that stage, then, the Board had a problem.

A big problem.

But John wasn’t for quitting, though.

“I didn’t think I could walk away from it all and say: ‘It hasn’t worked.’ Because I knew people who, on my account, had given money for the project.”

One of the problems the Board faced was that it had nobody on the ground. No-one to get kanohi-ki-te-kanohi – face to face – with Maori.

John King could see that.

“You’ve got to talk to people,” he says.

“You’ve got to be able to talk to them regularly.

You’ve got to be around, and to be seen.”

So John offered to be that man on the ground. He headed north, met one-on-one with Hugh Rihari, of Ngati Torehina, and tried to get a handle on his hapu’s concerns.

“And if you want to hear about a significant event,” says John, “that was significant for me.

“Hugh was related to Ruatara, and I was part of the missionary John King family. We had a connection. We did have that history working for us.

“I was not there to try and sell Hugh a

Anglican Taonga

Left: John King and Hugh Rihari break new ground in January 23. And that’s John above.

en past project if it didn’t do anything for Maori.

“I listened, and absorbed what was being said. I could understand where they were coming from.

“Eventually, we agreed we needed to start again with a clean sheet of paper.”

Their first meeting was in November 2007. The following January, John and his wife Janet spent more time with Hugh and his wife Raewyn. John and Hugh developed a trust in one another.

Meanwhile, John had become convinced that the MCTB had to be reconfigured.

It needed to be slimmed down, and as well as the church reps, it needed folk with serious commercial experience.

The MCTB agreed. So its constitution was changed, and that change was ratified by the High Court. The MCTB now has eight members – rather than 14 – and it has its own Church Advisory Board.

John also knew that if he was going to continue being the point man, he needed to be the chairman.

“By early 2008 I had moved, I suppose, from just saying: ‘I’ll go up and get to know the people, and try to understand the problems.’

“It was now a question of restarting the project – and I needed to have authority.

“I needed to have that mana when I spoke with Hugh.

“He was the rangatira, and I needed to be the chairman.

“And becoming the chairman did make a difference. Maori knew that when they spoke to me, they were talking to someone with authority – and that things would happen.” *

*

*

*

*

And happen they have.

That’s why, when hundreds of people turn up at Rangihoua on Christmas Day next year, they’ll see developments worthy of the significance of the place and its history: an imaginative ‘interpretive centre’ by a new roadside carpark, and a ‘walk through

ADVENT 2013

history’ – a new pathway that gently wends its way down to the Marsden Cross, with way stations and plaques that will tell the story of what was happening at Rangihoua during that early contact period.

Plans have also been drawn up for a second stage to the development – an enclosed ‘gathering place’.

That won’t be built before the bicentenary. But in John’s mind, because the heritage park will happen, there’s a much better chance of stage two coming to pass, sooner or later.

“What this project is doing,” he says, “is bringing a focus on the forgotten period of New Zealand’s history.

“We know from our fundraising, and from just talking to people – that no-one has a clue about New Zealand before 1840.

“New Zealand didn’t start in 1840. It started in 1814.

“Basically, the public don’t know that.

“That’s appalling. That’s like the Americans forgetting the Pilgrim Fathers.

“There was no conquest here. We’ve got a beginning based on trust – and the accord between Marsden and Ruatara – and that led to the arrival of the first European families and the introduction of Christianity to New Zealand.

“It’s a warm story, built on the rapport between Marsden and Ruatara.”

Just as the rapport between John King and Hugh Rihari now is helping us to celebrate that story.

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Page 11

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

Our family has been here One of the other key players at Rangihoua is Ngati Torehina kaumatua Hugh Rihari.

Hugh led his people in negotiations with the Marsden Cross Trust Board – and he took a responsibility for making the heritage project happen.

They were going home.

To their ancestral home.

Page 12

H

Hugh Rihari at the January 2013 ground breaking ceremony at Rangihoua.

forever

ugh Rihari and his family live just a couple of kilometres around the water’s edge from Rangihoua, at a place called Wharengaere.

They moved there ten years ago, when Hugh had finished up in Auckland, and retired from his job managing a North Shore electrical engineering firm.

They weren’t moving to one of the exclusive developments that you find up that way these days.

No. They were going home. To their ancestral home.

“Our family,” says Hugh, “has been here forever.”

By ‘family’, Hugh means Ngati Torehina ki Mataka. Back in the days when the missionaries came, he says, his people would migrate back and forth along the coastline, depending on the weather and the month, and the birds, berries and fish.

When Hugh retired – he was 60, then – he didn’t expect to be pushed out in the front of his people.

But he’d gained all sorts of world experience, and “a lot of our elders had died young, and all of a sudden you’re playing the kaumatua role.

“It’s a little bit different,” he says, “from

a management role in a European-type environment.”

On behalf of his people, he went back to school again, learning resource management skills. He’s now head of the Resource Management unit of Ngati Torehina ki Mataka, and chair of the Rangihoua Native Reserve.

That’s where the pa was, of course, where Ruatara had come to live. He was Ngati Hikutu himself, but he was living among his wife Rahu’s Ngati Torehina people.

When Marsden was going back to Australia in February 1815, he’d asked Ruatara to sell him the land on which the missionary shanties stood.

Ruatara had told him that he’d need to be talking to his uncle, Te Uri o Kana, and to his teina (younger brother) Wharemokaikai about that. The land wasn’t his to sell.

The brothers did sell Marsden the land – that was the first land transaction in New Zealand – and it’s to Wharemokaikai that Hugh traces his ancestry. *

*

*

*

*

Ngati Torehina first became seriously involved with the Marsden Cross land in early 2000.

Anglican Taonga

I suppose – the MCTB with us, and we with them.

“I had a completely naïve idea of what the Trust was about – and I was trying to see whereabouts we fitted in with the MCTB. “The problem that I was having was that it was almost like we were being showed the way, rather than working together in partnership.

“And the classic example was the first building. We were saying that if we’re going to have this relationship, if we’re going to have this building – then we need to be talking about how your culture and my culture fit into the building. I’m not talking so much about the design of the building, but the spirit of the building.”

When John King took over the reins at the MCTB, says Hugh, the difficulties got ironed out.

“He came up here one Christmas, and

together we discussed a way forward.

“We identified where the blockages were, and we decided to start again with a clear sheet of paper.

“From that day to this, the proposal has gone forward in leaps and bounds.

“I guess that if I were to single out something that has particularly impressed me – it has to be the relationships fostered as the project has progressed.

“I’m fond of the photo that was taken at earth-turning ceremony earlier this year because of the relationship-building that it represents.

“There was John King, the great, great grandson of the first John King, who came out with Samuel Marsden – and there was this other fellow, who’s the direct descendant of Te Uri o Kana’s brother, Wharemokaikai, who made the land available for the use of Marsden and the missionary settlers.”

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That’s when Mataka Station Ltd subdivided their lands to create 30 Lots.

“Lot 28, the land which the MCTB later purchased, had already been identified as one of the more sensitive blocks,” says Hugh, “not only because it’s so close to Rangihoua Pa, but because of the impact any excavation might have on the archaeology of the site.”

So Ngati Torehina asked the sellers, Mataka Station Ltd, to make sure that the house site would be as far away from the Pa as possible.

Three years later, the MCTB bought Lot 28.

In theory, that was good news too, as far as Ngati Torehina was concerned, because the MCTB had declared themselves as guardians of the site.

But there were some teething troubles, says Hugh.

“We had some struggles with each other,

ADVENT 2013

info@laidlaw.ac.nz

Looking for a creative way to celebrate the bicentennial of the gospel in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Make a pilgrimage to a significant site and discover the extraordinary stories that shaped our nation. The New Zealand Church Missionary Society has identified key historical sites across the country and invites you to take part in a pilgrimage.

Visit www.nzcms.org.nz/2014-pilgrimage to find out more.

Page 13

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4 Left: Pat Bawden at Rangihoua, January 2013.

Her vision burns still

A

sk the Rev Patricia Bawden why she got involved in the Marsden Cross project and you get a direct answer.

“Because God called me to it,” she says.

That was no airy-fairy call, either.

No. It came on August 26, 1965, while she was praying in the chapel at Grandchamp Community on Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland.

And for the 48 years since then, in fair weather and foul, Pat Bawden has stayed faithful to that vision.

She’s shaped her life around it and, at critical points, she’s supplied momentum to carry it forward.

She traces her awareness of Marsden Cross to 1961. The ecumenical movement was in full swing back then, and had caught fire among young people.

Pat was a teacher in Hamilton, and Youth Committee Secretary of the National Council of Churches there.

She recalls a street parade of 800 young Christians, a service at Rugby Park with 1000 teens and 20s – and weekly ecumenical prayer meetings in the city.

And as far as Pat was concerned, “we touched heaven each time we met.”

She began to ask herself: couldn’t this be

done on a permanent basis? Couldn’t there be a centre where it could happen?

In her time with the NCC, they’d often spoken of Iona, the ecumenical community Lord George McLeod had founded in the abbey he’d restored, on the island of Iona off the West Coast of Scotland.

In December 1964, Pat travelled to the Marsden Cross site for the first time. She began to yearn for that place to somehow have its significance restored – just as Iona had regained its significance in Scotland.

A few weeks later, at an early morning church service, she felt prompted by God to up stakes and go to Iona.

So in March 1965, she set off on an eightmonth pilgrimage around the world, visiting Christian sites, “searching for answers to my questions about church unity, prayer and the healing ministry.”

And on the second day of her stay at Grandchamp, she says “in the quiet peace of the chapel, it all came together.”

She felt the Lord say to her: ‘There would be a centre in the Marsden Cross area of the Bay of Islands. It would be a Centre of Light for the Nations, at earth’s farthest shores’. To this place, God would bring people from the four winds – especially young people.’

And from that day to this, Pat has laboured

to make that happen.

In 1976, she was ordained as the first permanent vocational deacon in New Zealand.

The year before, the land at the peninsula had been sold – and effectively locked away.

Pat had to bide her time for 20 years until the critical portion of the land became available – and, partly because of her prompting, the Marsden Cross Trust Board was founded to buy it.

During those locked-out years, Pat gained her MA (Hons) and Dip Ed, studying every paper at Auckland University she could find that was relevant to the Marsden Cross area.

And in 1987 she published the book: The Years before Waitangi – a story of early Maori/European contact in New Zealand.

So now we’re on the cusp of the Heritage Park being opened.

But if you came away from reading this piece thinking that the Heritage Park will be the fulfilment of Pat Bawden’s dreams for the place… we’d have mislead you.

No. There’d have to be accommodation, and the place would have to be a pilgrimage centre – much like Iona is now – for that to be the case.

But Pat says she’s “immensely grateful” to all the members of the MCTB for their prayers and friendship along the way.

She sees the need now is to concentrate on delivering the public facilities – the Interpretive Centre and the ‘walk through history’ – in time for the bicentennary.

And she takes comfort, too, from the fact that this is a long-term project.

“This area,” she says, “so full of beauty and peace, will go on developing over many years to come.”

Pat is in her eighties now. She realises that she may not see her vision fulfilled.

Moses didn’t get to enter the Promised Land, either.

But others did.

Note: Pat Bawden has published an account of her 1960’s pilgrimage, entitled: Amazing Adventure – a journey of faith. That’s available for $30.00 (inc postage) from DayStar Books: http://www.daystarbooks.org/, Box 65275, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 0754. Or from the author: pmbawden@xtra.co.nz

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Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

Richard Randerson looks back on his ten-year journey to the gospel bicentenary at Oihi.

Back to the beginning

I

n 2003, when I was Dean and Assistant Bishop of Auckland, the Rev Patricia Bawden and Diane Paterson came to me with a proposal.

They wanted my support to further their vision of Marsden Cross, that along with the land where it stands, it could become a tangible sign of past and future witness to Christian pilgrimage in Aotearoa New Zealand.

For over 50 years, Patricia had been a historian and passionate advocate for the significance of the Marsden Cross and over those same years, Diane had lived in sight of the Cross, farming on adjacent land.

After talking with with Bishop John Paterson, I was appointed to set up the ecumenical Marsden Cross Trust Board to further their vision.

As Board Chair, I was privileged to work with Moses Cherrington, Bishop Te Kitohi Pikaahu, Rob Smellie and ecumenical partners, such as Rob Yule and Terry Wall.

With their support, we had our first major breakthrough in 2005, when with the support of Allan Hubbard, the Board acquired the 20

hectares of land adjoining the Cross.

Discussions began immediately with local iwi Ngati Torehina, including a full-day consultation on their marae. This began the crucial bicultural conversation that continued later under John King’s leadership.

Ten years of planning and fundraising will see the Welcome Centre and Pilgrimage Pathway completed in the first half of next year, well in time for the bicentennial commemorations of Christmas 2014.

It is significant that this project marks not only our Christian heritage and future, but is also a sign of founding partnerships between Maori and settler.

In January this year, it was moving to see Hugh Rihari, direct descendant of Ruatara, and Board Chair John King, direct descendant of missionary John King, turning the first sod at Oihi – on the Welcome Centre’s construction site.

Equally moving have been recent reports of young people on pilgrimage to the Cross.

Some of their responses to that experience reflect the dream of the whole project. That

Bishop Richard Randerson at Rangihoua, January 2013.

is, for Oihi to become a place where people can come to stand on holy ground, and a place where they can reflect on the roots of Christian faith in Aotearoa New Zealand.

It remains our vision that this place will be one where personal faith is strengthened and a deeper vision for lives of Christian vocation will be found.

Bishop Richard Randerson is a writer on theology and social ethics. randersonjr@paradise.net.nz

Help complete the Marsden Cross pilgrim path The final cost of the pilgrim path to the Marsden Cross is now close to being achieved.

Please help to reach the goal by sending a cheque to The Marsden Cross Trust Board PO Box 37 944, Parnell, Auckland 1151, or email mctb@xtra.co.nz for bank transfer details.

All contributions are tax deductible.

Page 15

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

Gospel on the run This October two young teenagers took to the road to retrace the gospel’s first journeys through the Tairāwhiti region. Along the way, they were joined by a posse of runners that tallied up to 70 – drawn from all three Tikanga.

Michael Tamihere caught up wth them for Taonga.

W

hen 13-year olds Carlos Paenga and Walton Tangaere were asked how they’d like to celebrate the 150th of Waiapu’s first parish, the answer was easy.

“Me and Walton, we like running. So when they asked us… we thought: we should run”, said Carlos.

And that is exactly what they did.

During six days in early October, they ran 100 kilometres. Along Highway 35 – from Hicks Bay, near the northern boundary of Nga-ti Porou – through to Tokomaru, the first formally constituted parish in Waiapu.

For Te Taira-whiti youth enabler Ruihana Paenga, the run helped young people piece together their love of running with their love of God.

Page 16

While they did that, it reconnected them with their whakapapa in faith. That faith has deep roots in this region, where Rota Waitoa – the first Maori to be ordained, had once lived. Next year, in Aotearoa’s gospel bicentenary year, Taira-whiti celebrates 180 years since Piripi Taumataa-kura returned the gospel to Nga-ti Porou – to be proclaimed by local Ma-ori evangelists.

As well as being an act of worship in itself, the run took rangatahi from church to church, to learn their history, their own story in the Haahi – from the local people who have ministered there.

Dubbing it Kawea Te Rongopai (to carry the gospel) or The Gospel Relay, the event drew support from all three Tikanga.

70 others joined the run throughout its course, as the runners ‘carried the gospel’ to a dozen churches and as many communities and marae.

Walton was joined by his younger brother, Morehu (11) who kept pace with the older rangatahi the length of the relay.

He got tuned in to the history, “It was cool following in our tipuna’s footsteps and hearing about Taumataa-kura and how we still fight about where his first sermon was.”

For Bishop David Rice, Bishop of Waiapu, Youth Liaison Bishop and fellow runner, it was a powerful reminder of the connection between living the faith and physical movement, “’Running the gospel is about how we

embody and reflect the gospel with each stride, regardless of our pace.”

For Mele Prescott from Tikanga Polynesia in Auckland, the relay and its genesis was inspirational.

“At times we underestimate our young peoples’ gifts and talents – and miss the message that each young person holds.”

At the closing Eucharist at St Mary’s in Tokomaru Bay, Carlos and Walton tearfully thanked everyone for making the mustard seed of their idea a reality.

Ruihana finished the relay proud of what they had achieved together.

“Seeing three Tikanga running together was amazing,” she said. For her it was great to see communities come out to support one another – and to see their interest sparked by the historic and evangelical kaupapa of the run.

For Coralie Kepa (16) the relay proved that children can lead the way, “So don't be afraid to share your ideas,because you could make a big impact in someone’s life, just like this run did in mine.”

The Rev Michael Tamihere is Tikanga Toru Youth Commissioner. michael@t3.org.nz Above: Keeping pace, with Bishop David Rice and Morehu Tangaere.

Left: The think tank – Walton Tangaere and Carlos Paenga.

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TO WA R D S 2 0 1 4

without each other, it will be easy to forget the utter dependence of the missionaries on their hosts, not only for their physical survival, but equally for their spiritual and evangelising achievements.

In 2014, today’s churches will speak with little sense of the bedrock bicultural partnership that shaped the first forty years of Christian life in Aotearoa.

If we are foolish enough to think we can bypass that partnership next year, then the story of Marsden and Ruatara will hold us to account.

celebrate

Something to really John Bluck can hear a triumphant solo rising as the voice of our 2014 gospel bicentennial.

a many-headed creature, compared to its one size fits all evangelical origins.

But he's looking forward to a different kind of song.

That lack of focus might also have something to do with the unanswered question, what exactly are we celebrating, remembering and hoping for, from this bicentennial of the missionary beginnings?

T

he America's Cup races proved to be as much a battle of tacticians, as it was of boats and technology.

By the end of the series, Davies and Ainsley were household names.

It’s hard to find the tactician who will steer us through the bicentennial of Marsden and Ruatara’s first Christmas on the beach at Oihi.

My guess is that there’s a whole boat load of them at work, some eager to celebrate the event, others more inclined toward rueful “if only’s”.

Certainly the leadership is ecumenical, which means in the absence of any established ecumenical structures for the last decade, no single group is trusted enough to set the course for the rest of us.

Imagine what the bicentennial of Christian mission in Aotearoa might have been if we had (as we nearly did) a united church, or even a strong conference of churches in place to drive it ?

So the first lesson of the bicentenary is that Christian mission in Aotearoa has become

Getting a consensus for anything about 2014 has been an uphill struggle, so let’s thank those who have worked so hard.

There are several agendas at work. From the Pakeha side of the partnership, a major driver is accentuate the positive.

There are heroic dimensions to the missionary story that began here, and some voices are already wanting to use the bicentenary as a platform for a new mission crusade.

My plea to the tacticians driving next year’s events is to invite the broadest bicultural range of voices to speak about their experience of our missionary legacy.

It’s the most undervalued part of our national story, and the most distorted and lopsided in its limited exposure to a wider public.

2014 could be the year where that neglect, imbalance and ignorance is addressed. But it will need to be done by Maori and Pakeha voices together: wondering, remembering , regretting – and yes, celebrating as well.

And not only talking to each other, but walking with each other. People who set out on a journey with a spiritual agenda of rediscovery, repentance and renewal, are entitled to call themselves pilgrims.

Physically, the journey to Oihi and the dozens of other pilgrimage sites in the far North, is demanding.

Maybe 2014 will prove to be a year where we limped toward Oihi together. That would be the best way to set ourselves up for the next 200 years of being Christian in Aotearoa.

The Rt Rev John Bluck lives in Pakari, north of Auckland. blucksbooks@gmail.com

It would be a great pity to see next year’s events rewrite the history, to avoid the disappointments that marked the missionary story in the Bay of Islands for at least its first decade.

Dennis Glover wrote a poem about an earlier centennial (the 1940 marking of the Treaty of Waitangi) which begins: “There were fireworks and decorated cars And pungas drooping from verandahs But no one remembered our failures.”

It would be a pity to see next year’s events rewrite the history.

In the midst of a party, there is little appetite for looking back and asking what didn’t work and why.

And 200 years on when Maori and Pakeha often act as though they can get along Page 17

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ADVENT 2013

YO U T H

Get ye to The Abbey Tikanga Pakeha youth leaders are raving about The Abbey– a new phenomenon that’s hit the national ministry scene.

It’s New Zealand’s biggest Anglican youth training event in decades – and one that is completely dedicated to mission with youth.

Spanky Moore reports from the frontline.

We set out to prove Anglicans can deliver the goods for youth

Page 18

I

f you have a youth worker at your parish, you’ll know first hand they are a wonderfully strange and unique breed of human.

They use youth lingo that can be hard to understand, work strange hours in the company of teenagers, and actually enjoy playing bizarre games – that most of us wouldn’t be caught dead attempting.

Indeed, the homo youthleaderus, while still relatively rare, has evolved to thrive in its environment.

So imagine what it must have been like to have hundreds of these creatures in one place, together, for 48 hours.

For the first time in decades, last August, that’s exactly what happened, as over 180 Anglican youth workers and youth group leaders descended on El Rancho in Waikanae, for The Abbey – a weekend of training, networking, and naturally, very strange games.

Tikanga Pakeha’s Youth Advisor, Phil Trotter, says that from the outset The Abbey set out to be a quality event. It needed to prove to our youth leaders that Anglicans can deliver the goods when it comes to youth ministry.

“We wanted to equip youth leaders with practical skills for youth ministry on the ground and to inspire them to engage with young people, and to make space for them, in their neighbourhoods and schools.”

“To be honest, The Abbey went way better than I'd imagined. We had a huge response. I’d hoped for 100 people, dreamed of 150. But we ended up having to cut off our registrations at 180 due to our space limitations.”

The Abbey team certainly pulled out all the stops to make sure the event debuted with its best foot forward, roping in keynote speakers Bishop Justin Duckworth, Rev Darryl Gardiner, Carolyn Robertson and Josh Taylor, as well as a theological torrent of workshops from some of Aotearoa’s top youth experts, and music from Nelson worship band ‘City of Light’.

Saturday afternoon featured a literal bench of bishops turned out for the “Ask a Bishop Anything” session.

50 youth workers crowded round the purple shirts for their chance to pose direct questions for once, including this curly one from one seasoned youth leader: “If we’re really serious about ministry to

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

From left: Daniel and Rebecca Connolly, Shaping up for Body-Pictionary, Bishop Justin, I think that verse is…

Cheering on the Penuckle Olympics, Coffees all round in workshop mode.

Photos: Grant Bennett

the under 40’s, why don’t we redo all of our budgets and put youth ministry first?”

“I just don’t think it’s really about the money,” responded Bishop Justin.

“The Kingdom of God has always spread by the blood of the martyrs.

“What the Anglican Church really needs are youth workers who are willing to sacrifice their lives so more young people can experience Jesus.”

The key theme for this year’s gathering was the parable of The Lost Sheep, and from that, the challenge of connecting with youth who are outside our normal youth group boundaries.

Ukarau Ropiha, a youth worker based in Foxton, connected deeply with the theme.

Bishop Justin's story of “the actual lost sheep he and a mate had found with maggots dropping from its tail,” was memorable for Ukarau, especially “his analogy that ministering to lost sheep isn’t always nice and pleasant.”

Ukarau also found the thrill of just being together, a powerful experience.

“Coming from Tikanga Maori it was good being at The Abbey, not as part

of a separate group, but together in unity, under the banner of one God, one people.”

Cameron Thorpe, Youth Pastor for St Georges Epsom in Auckland, appreciated the analysis of social trends he heard at The Abbey, “There were some great seminars looking into the big cultural shifts … especially looking at the issues of discipleship and what that could look like in our time and place.

“It was so good to realise I’m not the only one wrestling with these kinds of challenges, that others are on the same page, looking and searching for new ways of doing things that will be more effective in today’s culture.”

Bishop Victoria’s workshop on Centring Prayer was a highlight for Monique Richardson, a youth leader from St Christopher’s Avonhead in Christchurch.

“There's nothing greater than sitting in a chapel full of followers of Christ and partaking in a ‘loud silence’ dedicated to experiencing our divine Father.

“I can't say I've put much thought into

we need youth workers who are willing to sacrifice their lives

the way I pray before, but sitting there, … concentrating on surrendering myself and genuinely asking to hear from God, was an experience I won't forget in the near future.”

Looking to pick up on this year’s momentum, the Tikanga Pakeha youth team have pencilled The Abbey back in for August 2014.

Anchoring next year’s line up will be international speaker and youth theologian, Dr Andrew Root, author of the book Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry.

The Rev Spanky Moore is Young Adults Ministry Developer for the Diocese of Christchurch. spankymoore@gmail.com

Page 19

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

CHRISTCHURCH REBUILD

Shigeru Ban and Yoshie Naramatsu at the September 1 civic service of thanksgiving.

Love, beauty…

and a cardboard cathedral

In the Japanese language, the word ‘kami’ means ‘paper’.

But here’s a twist – ‘kami’ is also a Japanese word for ‘God’.

So when you take a celebrated Japanese architect who is famous for his paper buildings, and add in a Christchurch cleric who was inspired by what he saw on paper…

Whichever language you choose, you’ll get a House Quote here... of God. Lloyd Ashton has been finding out more.

Page 20

I

n May 2011, Kate Matthews gave her husband Craig Dixon a flash architectural magazine for his birthday.

Her gift was an inspired choice.

More inspired than she could have dreamed.

Because out of that paper magazine has unfolded… a cardboard cathedral, no less.

At the time, Craig was the Events Manager for Christchurch Cathedral – which had been wrecked a couple of months earlier by the February 22 earthquake.

A few days after his birthday, Craig was sitting up in bed leafing through that mag when he came to a story about sustainable buildings.

And there was a postage stamp-sized photograph in that story of a small church in Kobe, Japan, which the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban had designed.

He’d done that after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which had destroyed 150,000 buildings in that city, including the church that had once stood on the site.

That Ban-designed church was only

ever intended to be a temporary place for shaken Kobe Christians to gather for worship.

It was dead simple, built around 58 cardboard tubes. Shigeru Ban had designed it for free, and church and architecture student volunteers had put it together under his supervision.

But it had the spark of architectural genius, and it became a landmark in the evolution of architectural thinking.

That tiny photograph of the Kobe church was enough to fire Craig’s imagination, too.

What if, he mused, such a church could be built in Christchurch? Cathedral-sized?

There’d already been some talk in the Diocese of Christchurch about the possibility of building a temporary cathedral in the Square.

But Craig is the kind of guy who has 15 bright ideas before breakfast – some of them great, even – and it’s fair to say that his colleagues were a tad sceptical about this one.

They were happy, nonetheless, for him to shoot off an email to Shigeru Ban. “I honestly didn’t even expect a reply,”

Anglican Taonga

If people love a building…

That will determine how long it stays.

says Craig.

After all, he points out, less than two weeks after the Christchurch quake, Japan itself had been hit by the quake and tsunami which killed almost 16,000 people, and destroyed or damaged more than 1 million buildings. He suspected Shigeru Ban Architects would be in the thick of the recovery work there.

They were.

Nevertheless, Ban-san came back to Craig. And within six weeks he was in Christchurch with his project architect, Yoshie Narimatsu.

Twenty-six such trips later, on 1 September 2013, Shigeru Ban and Yoshie Narimatsu were both sitting in the front row of the new cathedral, taking part in a civic service of thanksgiving for its opening.

Buying that mag for Craig – Kate couldn’t have chosen a better present. *

*

*

*

*

As Bruce Springsteen is to popular music – a rock star with a social conscience – so Shigeru Ban is to the world of international architecture.

That’s how Andrew Barrie sees it.

“He’s one of the most important figures of his generation – and probably the most

important architect ever to have worked in New Zealand.”

Andrew is well placed to make that judgement. He’s Professor of Design at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland1.

Ban is held in such regard in international architecture circles, says Andrew, that he believes the cardboard cathedral will have a Lord of the Rings effect.

It’ll draw architects and the international architectural press to New Zealand in a way that no other building here has ever done.

Andrew – whose wife Clare Barrie is the Vicar of St Luke’s, Mt Albert – says Ban has become celebrated not just because of the distinctiveness of his designs, but because of his contributions to key themes in modern architecture.

Sustainable architecture, for one – witness his use of ordinary, overlooked materials, such as the paper tubes – and because he’s underlined what Andrew calls “the social responsibility of the architect.”

Ever since the Kobe quake, Shigeru Ban has done his “emergency architecture” for free – in disaster zones from Haiti to Rwanda, Turkey to Christchurch –

ADVENT 2013

subsidised by the fees he makes designing iconic public buildings, such as the Centre Pompidou Metz in France.

What’s more, he’s also striven to make his disaster buildings uplifting, not just utilitarian.

He believes, for example, that because refugees are inevitably traumatised, they need to find shelter in nice places. Whether or not those structures are permanent fixtures on the landscape.

At a recent TED talk in Tokyo,2 Shigeru Ban told his audience that he thinks architects have lost their way: “We are working for privileged people, for rich people, for government and developers. They have money and power, and those are invisible – so they hire us to visualize their power and money by making monuments of architecture.”

Ban-san, on the other hand, has striven to make architecture that’s attainable, within reach of ordinary people.3 Because of these things, Andrew Barrie thinks Shigeru Ban has tilted the architectural world on its axis.

After the 1995 Kobe quake, says Andrew, only a few big name architects got stuck in there – Shigeru Ban being the most notable among them.

But after the Great East Japan earthquake of 2011, says Andrew, “almost every important Japanese architect became involved in the recovery work.”

“There’d been a major shift, within the space of a generation.”

And Shigeru Ban had led that change. *

*

*

*

*

At the civic service of thanksgiving at the opening of the Transitional Cathedral Page 21

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ADVENT 2013

Shigeru Ban's iconic Pompidou Metz.

on September 1, Shigeru Ban spoke of how all that work in disaster zones had caused him to blur the distinction between ‘temporary’ and ‘permanent’.

“Even if a building is made of concrete,” he said, “this can be destroyed in an earthquake.

“But if people love a building that is made of paper, it can become permanent.

“The key is love.

“Whether people love the building or not will determine how long it stays.”

Love, he said, was why the people in Kobe had kept their temporary church for 10 years, when it was designed to stand for just three.

The Christchurch cathedral is a good deal larger than that Kobe church was (the nave is exactly the same size and height as the old cathedral in the Square) and much more substantial.

But Ban-san told the congregation that evening that he hoped it would draw

the same response from them and from their city that the Kobe church did in Japan.

“I hope this building will be loved by the people – and that it will continue here for many years.”

He noted, too, that the Japanese word for paper, kami, is also the Japanese word for God. And as he gestured to the 98 cardboard columns of the Cathedral, he acknowledged that this was, indeed, “A house of God”. *

*

*

*

*

In that September 1 thanksgiving service, Bishop Victoria gave her reasons why she believed the new cathedral is important.

The first of these, she said, is that it is beautiful.

“In a city that is full of detours and demolished buildings; vacant lots and construction sites, beauty is incredibly important.”

Beauty, she said, also reminds us that “whatever we achieve, it is but a step on the journey to a new heaven and a new earth, our final destiny.”

In the Easter edition of Taonga, she reflected on the evangelical aspect of such beauty in a cathedral.

Without a word being preached, she reflected, or a hymn being sung, the building itself should exercise a ministry.

“It should be that the minute you see a cathedral, or even as you anticipate seeing

it, you feel an active invitation to come and engage. That’s why cathedrals are often places of pilgrimage.”

She hoped the same ministry would become apparent, she said then, with the Transitional Cathedral.

“People may seek that building out,’ she says, “Because it’s a Shigeru Ban disaster build.

“As opposed to it being a house of God. “But if we do it right, when they go there, they’ll find God.” Immediately after that September 1 service, she told me that where the architecture is concerned, her hopes had been realised: “This space,” she said, “is better than my wildest imaginings.”

The rest, it seems, is in God’s hands.

Lloyd Ashton is Media Officer for the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

Notes 1. In fact, Andrew is writing a book about it: Shigeru Ban: Cardboard Cathedral will be published by the Auckland University Press early next year.

2. Shigeru Ban’s TED talk on emergency architecture is at http://www.ted.com/talks/shigeru_ban_emergency_ shelters_made_from_paper.html 3. Consider this: the “contemporary” option favoured

by Church Property Trustees as a permanent replacement for the Cathedral in the Square – by far the least expensive of the three options considered – will cost between $56million and $74 million. The cardboard cathedral cost about 10 percent of that.

We love it! You will too.

Discover the St Margaret's difference For enrolment enquiries please contact: Tina Cartwright on 03 353 2563 or email tina.c@stmargarets.school.nz

JUNIOR, MIDDLE & SENIOR SCHOOL 12 Winchester St | Merivale | Christchurch 8014 | www.stmargarets.school.nz

Page 22

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

OVERSEAS AID

O little town of

Bethlehem

A

midst our Christmas cheer, a silent tragedy continues in Bethlehem this year.

In 2013, the Israelibuilt security wall will stop just short of surrounding Bethlehem. This huge concrete barrier impedes and restricts the lives of thousands of ordinary Palestinian families every day.

Along the wall’s tightly controlled borders the threat of violence is in the air.

Hope no longer glitters for many in the Holy Land. But there is a hopeful story to be found here still.

It is one of persistence – of people holding on to the dream of peace against all odds.

Through Christian World Service’s partner, the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees (DSPR) many struggling Palestinians have survived another year. With our help, they have grown gardens to earn income, built water systems, and provided much needed vocational training and care to their young people.

But what hasn’t changed are the underlying conditions, which make it ever harder for Palestinians to live in the land where Jesus was born.

One part of that story is told by Ramzi Zananiri, the local leader of DSPR. “There is not enough water. The (Israeli) settlements take all the water. The World Health Organisation says humans need at least 100 litres per person per day for everything – drinking, washing, agriculture, industry … but Palestinians here (in the West Bank) have only 70 litres.”

Ramzi worries it will get worse as more Israeli settlements are built. More than 200 settlements are already pressuring the water supply – so they take more.

In March 2012, the UN reported that Israeli settlements had taken control of 56 springs once used by Palestinians.

“They have swimming pools, gardens, commercial farms - and they must be

really thirsty people,” jokes Ramzi.

In fact, only 0.5 million Israeli settlers consume around six times the water that the 2.5 million Palestinians do.

Though the river Jordan runs by the West Bank, Palestinians cannot draw water from it. They may only draw 20% of the main underground aquifer, and 113 more Palestinian communities are dependent on water delivered by truck, costing up to 500% more.

Last year, with help from CWS, DSPR replaced leaky old pipes in the municipality of Burkin and connected 53 new households to its supply. For some families, DSPR was able to build water tanks and supply bottled water.

In the end dogged determination is the real story. Ramzi, like the other staff of DSPR, will never give in, but to do what they do, they need others’ help.

This story and many others like it, are why the Christmas Appeal theme for this year is Share Water, Share Life.

Hope no longer glitters for many in the Holy Land.

Please support the 68th CWS Christmas Appeal generously.

For more info, phone 0800 74 73 72, or go to http://christmasappeal.org.nz Gillian Southey is Communications Coordinator for Christian World Service (CWS). gillian.southey@cws.org.nz

Water For all christmasappeal.org.nz 0800 747 372 member of the

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ADVENT 2013

MONEY

After serving for 28 years as General Manager of the Anglican Church Pension Board, Gillian Robertson is stepping down.

Lloyd Ashton has been finding out about some of the challenges that the Board has faced on her watch.

Investing her talents

G

illian Robertson started with the Pension Board in 1985, not long after the Lange Government had come to power – and the country was reeling from the impact of Rogernomics.

There was an instant devaluation, floating of the Kiwi dollar, an end to farm subsidies – one economic shock after another.

The church wasn’t immune from those

The more you can do… the more money is available for ministry

Page 24

shocks, either.

Like when the Fringe Benefit Tax was being brought in.

The Rogernomes were claiming that clergy were bound to be deriving a private benefit from their cars – so there was FBT to pay there.

Well, the Catholic Church managed to swat that one away. They argued that their priests and nuns were on call 24/7. They could be called to the bedside of the dying, for example, at any hour of the day or night.

The next cab off the Rogernomics rank was GST. That was serious, too.

Because, as it was first proposed, donations to churches would have been treated as income.

Churches would have had to pay 10 percent tax on every dollar they were given.

So Gillian rang Gordon Copeland (later, an MP) who had orchestrated the Catholic campaign against FBT. She persuaded him to join forces to push

back that GST proposal, and together, they helped overturn GST on charities.

The Rogernomes were just warming to their task, though.

In 1987 Roger Douglas proposed his famous flat tax, payable by everyone, including the churches.

The churches knew then that it was a case of ‘united we stand – or divided we fall.’ So they got together and formed the Inter Church Working Party on Taxation (ICWPT), and together, managed to preserve the churches’ tax-free status.

But the thing is, those tax threats didn’t stop coming when Rogernomics ended.

Around 1990 there was another proposal, to impose a tax on clergy housing, based on the market rental of each vicarage.

Such a tax, Gillian reported to the General Synod way back in 1990 “would cost the Province approximately $4 million per annum” – in increased stipends, probably, to compensate clergy for the tax imposed.

Anglican Taonga

That got beaten back, then.

Some things have definitely changed since 1985.

When Gillian started, for instance, the Pension and Welfare Fund was worth $16 million, and she more or less ran it on her own.

Now, 28 years later, under Gillian’s leadership, the Pension Board’s funds have grown to $150 million and there are 16 Pension Board staff, including Gordon Copeland.

But some things have remained the same.

In February this year, for example, we had Groundhog Day – the IRD announcing its decision to tax clergy housing, based on market rental.

That’s being reviewed – thanks to concerted church protest.

Gillian warns of the consequences if it does come to pass.

“I’ve always said: the worst thing would be if the housing concession were to go.”

But in the mind of Pension Board Chair Merv Gaskin, who has been on the Board almost as long as Gillian has managed it, the advocacy work on just that single housing issue has already saved the churches millions.

And for that alone, says Merv, the churches of New Zealand owe Gillian a vast debt of gratitude. *

*

*

*

*

One of the things about the work that we’ve just described is that it is not the Pension Board’s core business.

That’s to look after the Pension Fund for clergy, as well as the Board’s other superannuation schemes and trusts.

There’s no doubt about that, either, in Gillian’s mind.

But on her watch, the Pension Board’s attitude has always been: if there are other related needs going unmet, and the Board could help meet those needs – it should put its hand up.

That’s why it provides full secretarial support for the ICWPT and the Anglican Tax Unit.

And why it provides admin for the Anglican Insurance Board, and coordination of service to the All Churches Bureau, the interdenominational churches’ insurance body.

“Dare I say it,” says Gillian, “for the Board to be prepared to support what are effectively outside groups… that shows a big agenda to advance the interests of the

church.

“Some of these activities…they’re not actually designed to earn money.

“They’re designed to bring down costs for the church.

“And we’ve always said that the more you can do these things …the more money is available for ministry.

“It’s also ideal if the church units on the ground, including the dioceses, aren’t worrying about that too much.

“Otherwise you start reinventing the wheel, and distracting yourself from much more Christ-centred activities you could and perhaps should be doing.” *

*

*

*

*

Under Gillian’s leadership, two other superannuation schemes are up and running, too.

In 1992, the Retire Fund was set up to help non-clergy church workers plan for their retirement.

Then, when KiwiSaver came along, the Pension Board launched the Koinonia Fund – KiwiSaver for Christians. It’s the growth area of the Pension Board’s work, and to some degree, has superseded the Retire Fund.

Then, in 1988, the Pension Board took over the trusteeship of the Widows and Orphans Endowment Fund.

That’s a separate fund, set up by Bishop Selwyn. He’d wanted the income generated by land he’d bought in Auckland to go towards the welfare of retired clergy, and to clergy in need.

The St John’s College Trust Board had been the original trustee of that endowment – but it felt that the Pension Board would be a better fit as trustee.

Since 1992, the income from the Widows and Orphans Endowment has met financial needs not only of stipended clergy and pensioners, but also of nonstipendiary clergy – minita-a-iwi, for instance, are often beneficiaries.

Diocese of Polynesia priests can also get help to pay for children’s school fees, and there’s money available, too, to pay for private medical procedures for retired clergy.

About 20 years ago, Gillian hired Bruce Dutton to manage that Superannuation and Trusts work.

That freed her up to concentrate on investment management and to deal with the monitoring and political outfall of government decisions. *

*

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*

*

ADVENT 2013

As a Pension Board trustee for 12 years Archbishop Philip Richardson has been well placed to observe Gillian’s work.

In his mind, she is one of the great characters of this church.

Not only as manager the Pension Board, but on Wellington’s Diocesan Trust Board and as a member of General Synod.

“Her knowledge of investment and what’s happening across all of the funds that the Pension Board manages, both on shore and offshore, is quite remarkable.

“She has a complete handle on the most complex detail.

“She has the ability to give an hour-long verbal dissertation on the most obscure idiosyncrasies of what is happening in the markets, and where they are likely to go – because she lives and breathes and studies and monitors that stuff.

“And her motivation was always about getting the best possible return and benefit for the pensioners.

“We have been incredibly well served over all the time she’s been with us.” *

*

*

*

*

Merv Gaskin, who chairs the Pension Board, is another fan of Gillian’s work, too.

“There’s just no doubt,” he says, “that Gillian has been a huge stalwart for the church.

“I’ve called it, and I constantly call it, her ministry.

“The thing is, Gillian is passionate about serving the church. She’s passionate for the wellbeing of the pensioners, she’s passionate about the church succeeding, and about the church not being ripped off.

“Her skills are in money, and that’s what she’s made work.

“She isn’t somebody who dug a hole and buried her talents in the ground.”

Gillian believes in that parable of the talents, too, “If you’ve got a skill,” she says, “you’re going to be accountable to God for how you use it.”

STOP PRESS: The Government has just announced the tax formula for clergy housing will remain as it has been since 1957 – and be enshrined in legislation.

The Pension Board has appointed Mark Wilcox, 51, to succeed Gillian as its General Manager.

There’s a story about Mark at: http://anglicantaonga.org.nz/News/GeneralSynod/Pension.

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social S E R V I C E

House thy neighbour Older people without savings are missing out in NZ’s housing market. With high rentals and low incomes, they’re left out in the cold.

Chris Gardner investigates how one parish is changing that equation.

Page 26

W

est Hamilton Anglican Parish has joined forces with Habitat For Humanity to rescue the sub-standard home of a dozen Hamilton pensioners from developers.

The twelve $85-a-week bedsits, in the west Hamilton suburb of Frankton, were sold by the Hamilton City Council in September 2012 for $610,000, to a partnership of the parish’s community outreach organization, the Crosslight Trust, and the not-for-profit Christian housing

organization, Habitat for Humanity.

A year later, the partnership is well on the way to giving the flats a new lease of life, with extensive renovations almost finished.

"What needed doing?” asks Habitat for Humanity's Central North Island general manager, Nic Greene. “Everything.

The units were not in very good shape.

Regibbing, repainting, recarpeting."

While some of the specialist work was done by tradespeople, most of it was done by volunteers. Habitat and Crosslight drew in students from Melville High

Anglican Taonga

School, Hamilton Boys' High School, Waikato Diocesan School for Girls, and volunteers from Fonterra and Prolife Foods, who between them completed the sorely needed 500 hours of work.

The project not only returns a spruced-up flat to each pensioner, but is providing new skills for young people - and a place where their time and efforts are valued right now.

Bailey Tebutt, 17, spent one day a week working at the flats, for six weeks. "I want to get into a building career," he said, as he helped volunteer Kieran Scott, 19, hang curtains. "I am unemployed, have a lot of free time, like to help people and enjoy hands-on work," said Kieran.

Nic Greene said these flats are a high profile example of a story that’s being repeated in dozens of places around the country. Habitat for Humanity needed to get involved at the Johnson St flats, because so few rental properties are affordable for elderly people with no assets.

“From my theological perspective, support for the elderly is a fundamental calling directly from scripture,” Nic said.

"I am reminded of The Good Samaritan story. People don’t need our pity they need our help. We can show the love of Christ every day as we stop, listen, and then work with people in need.”

Musician Mina Motu, 60, has lived in one of the units for three years and will move a few doors down in a couple of months to let the renovators into his unit.

"It's fantastic. These people listen to you," Mina said of his new landlords. "You can sit down and talk to them, which is different from the council. I think it’s because the council had so many units and they had far better things to worry about than personal details.

"If they are going to move more people in here, more females please."

Nic says the challenge of housing affordability is now acute.

"Households that once would have transitioned from renting into home ownership cannot afford to buy a modest home, and rental affordability is becoming an issue for those in the $50,000 to $70,000 income range.

And that affects everyone, not just the people without a roof over their heads.

Habitat research shows that stable housing is important for overall social cohesion and wellbeing.

Integral to the project has been West Hamilton Anglican Parish’s Crosslight Trust, which grew out of a calling felt by the Rev Terry Ellis, as parish curate, 30 years ago. It was his strong drive to see the church meet the community’s practical needs, that led

ADVENT 2013

People don’t need our pity they need our help.

Above from left: Resident Mina Motu, volunteers Kieran Scott and Bailey Tebbutt. Opposite page: West Hamilton parish turns out for the Johnson St flats’ blessing early in 2013.

Photo: Above: Bruce Mercer / Fairfax NZ. Left : www.barkerphotography.co.nz

towards the Trust being set up.

In a similar vein, Crosslight Trust manager Chris Wright sees his work for the Trust as core ministry business.

“What a privilege it is to serve the Lord in this way – to be there to help the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan; to show mercy; to be salt and light; to show the love and hope of Christ.

“There, but for the grace of God go I... is something that often comes to mind. “ The Crosslight Trust was registered as a Charitable Trust in 1990 after a survey of residents revealed the community’s needs.

Large numbers of parishioners were swept up in the excitement of the new project, and an op shop was established to help fund the Trust’s ongoing work. Nowadays the op shop provides around 40 per cent of the Trust’s income, which is topped up with grants, donations and fees for services.

Crosslight didn’t start out with a focus on older people or housing. At first, they set up before and after school care programmes for children at the local Aberdeen and Frankton primary schools, with a trained

teacher helped by ‘nanas’ from the parish.

Later that ministry grew into offering food parcels and social work type help.

These days the Crosslight Trust runs a foodbank, provides counselling services, offers support for deaf and hearing impaired people, basic NZ sign language courses; two “over 60s” social groups; and C.A.F.E. – a programme of creative activities for over 70s.

A high percentage of the congregation are connected to the work of the Trust. Chris Wright reckons that’s because there is a strong understanding at West Hamilton that being Christian isn’t just about worshipping on Sundays, or building up the church itself.

“We are called to live out the gospel message,” he says, “to be the very hands, feet and voice of Jesus Christ, to both our fellow Christian brothers and sisters, and probably more importantly, to those who often have no idea who God is.”

Chris Gardner is Technology Editor for the Waikato Times and a member of West Hamilton Anglican Parish.

Chris.Gardner@waikatotimes.co.nz

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ADVENT 2013

COUNSELLING

Sarah Penwarden is looking for the poetry in our stories of loved ones who have passed away.

Echoes

beyond the grave

S

uzanne’s mother was a great listener. Always there when her seven children came home from school, she would listen to their day as she spun.

Three years since her mother’s death, Suzanne often senses her mother’s presence and feels they are “very much aligned.”

She speaks of the ongoing connection she feels with her mother, which is so strong she has a physical sense of it in her body.

Often people who’ve lost a loved one want to continue talking about the person, not just about their absence, but about their presence, in whatever way they experience this.

Yet, bereaved people can also feel social pressure not to talk about their lost loved one, to keep quiet, or to “move on”.

But rather than simply breaking with the memory of the deceased, some recognition is now being given to the psychological importance of maintaining a continuing bond.

Poems reveal, they distil fresh meanings of the world.

Page 28

Many researchers now believe that “maintaining an inner representation of the deceased”, and holding them in loving memory, “is normal rather than abnormal.”

Australian narrative therapist Michael White, suggests it is possible for people to see themselves as having a Club to which they grant membership, for all those who are important to them. This Club can be revised, and a person brought back into membership of their life, even after death.

In this way, a lost loved one can be re-membered (White, 2007). We can remember people by weaving their values back into our life, by noticing their imprint on our lives, and by retelling their stories.

Through stories, the lost loved one lives on.

As a counsellor for years, I’ve heard many stories and I’ve come to appreciate what stories do. They invite us to connect with a person’s world, so we see it through their eyes.

In my doctoral research in counselling, I’m hearing people’s stories about their lost loved partner, and how that person is still contributing to their life.

I’m approaching my listening to their stories of loss in a particular way this time – listening to hear the poetry in their speech.

All counsellors aim to listen carefully to their clients. But narrative therapists, inspired by the work of Michael White and David Epston, go beyond just listening to people’s stories. They take the listening and reflect it back on paper, by writing a letter or a poem to a client, capturing their exact words, as a record.

As I interview people who have lost loved ones, I tune my ear to the most descriptive moments in their stories, to parts of the conversation that are

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ADVENT 2013

Frying pan “unforeseen, evocative and resonant” (Speedy, 2005, p. 286).

Afterwards, I write a number of poems in different forms: haiku, long narrative poems, metaphor or symbol poems. In these poems, I arrange selected words spoken by the person in poetic form on the page. The aim is that the person can hear their own voice in the poems, and that their stories are not forgotten. I then interview people about their responses to this poetry, as part of the process of researching how this kind of poetry can be used in counselling.

In this, I’m seeing conversation as a form of found art, where for example, an artist sees something of beauty in the ordinary world around them. Some poets already write in this way, picking up pieces of overheard conversation and composing from it: “The found poem invites us to look for wisdom in the ordinary world” (Manhire, 2000, p. 186).

I have chosen to research the use of poetry in therapy, rather than other forms of writing, as poetry can do many things that prose often fails to do.

Poetry is brief, but it can move us.

It is like “stored magic”(Graves, 1975).

Poetry clarifies, it emphasizes.

Poetry as grief can be stark.

Poems reveal; they distil fresh meanings of the world.

Poetry provides a pause, and as a reader, we can inhabit poetry.

We slow down and breathe as we read it.

For the bereaved person, hearing their stories of their lost loved one in poetry can crystallize the experience.

As a reader, poetry can move us closer to another’s experience and can begin to create some order.

There may be beauty in this, in noticing our stories, in seeing how the scenes of our life are threaded together in a sequence, into a kind of meaning.

Suzanne reported that when she received the poems, she “just devoured” them, experiencing them as “a real gift.”

She liked their simplicity, and found it powerful to read her own words back.

To Suzanne, as she read the poems, she built a new thread of connection to her mother, to her mother’s influence on her life, from the past, into the present and looking ahead to the future.

Auckland Anglican Sarah Penwarden is a counsellor and writer of poetry and short stories. She currently works as Practicum Co-ordinator for Laidlaw College’s School of Counselling in Auckland.

If you would like to speak with Sarah about a lost loved

We never went on any holidays but we’d go to the river.

Mum had a black frying pan, and on a hot summer’s day, she would pack up a picnic and we’d go to the river.

We’d swim and sing songs and cook sausages.

And then, when my kids were children, that’s what she would do as a grandmother.

In the holidays we’d ring up, and we’d all go off to the river.

With me I kind of believe in angels.

Mum and I have a bit of a chat down by the water.

She loves the water.

I actually believe Mum was looking out for me in getting this place.

She’s always with me; she’s a part of me she lives in my belly.

partner as part of her doctoral research, please contact her via the email address or phone number below.

Phone: 09 8379733 sarah.penwarden.research@gmail.com References Graves, R. (1975). The white goddess: A historical grammar of poetic myth. New York: Creative Age Press.

Manhire, B. (2000). Doubtful sounds: Essays and interviews. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press.

Silverman, P., & Nickman, S. (1996). Concluding thoughts. In D. Klass, P. Silverman & S. Nickman (Eds.), Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief (pp. 349354). New York: Routledge Speedy, J. (2005). Using poetic documents: An exploration of poststructuralist ideas and poetic practices in narrative therapy. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 33(3), 283-298.

White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: W. W. Norton.

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ADVENT ADVENT2013 2013

CHILDREN

angels!

Sweet Baby

Christmas pageants without the usual drama Julie Hintz knows what it means to throw herself headlong into the vortex of a nativity play.

She’s survived as Officer in Charge of a full-scale megapageant, as well as a host of humbler shows.

But no matter what a community can manage, she figures we still owe our children a share in telling this most beautiful of stories.

Remember that the cute factor tends to override any mistakes

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A

bout eight years ago, having experienced many wonderful, but fairly usual, children’s nativity plays, I decided to do something different, dramatic and really big – a 40-minute musical called Angels Aware.

Angels Aware is an amazing Christmas play that’s set in heaven before the birth of Jesus. I was blessed to have experienced it years before, so felt I had a grasp of what was involved.

Our Sunday children’s ministry groups spent the entire 4th term working on the production. Each week we focussed on different songs and scenes.

We had a wonderful team of leaders, pianists, soloists, speaking actors, dancers, committed parents, set makers and a large number of very cute dancing preschooler angels.

We created amazing costumes and since the story takes place in heaven, we decorated the church with hundreds of glittery homemade stars.

On production Sunday, about 400 people were in church, the regular congregation, plus friends and relatives. The children and leaders achieved something incredible that year – they came together and shared the hope, joy and excitement of Jesus’ birth.

I loved doing it, and loved seeing all the kids up front.

Though it was an exhausting experience

for everyone involved, it helped bring us all together: children, families and wider congregation.

The following year, with memories of Angels Aware still in my mind, I couldn’t face another large production. To be honest, I could hardly face any Christmas production at all, big or small.

After thinking and praying for a way forward, I asked my Sunday children’s group leaders to brainstorm with their kids and decide how each group would share the real meaning of Christmas.

I was happy to help them with what they needed, and to work with them, but didn’t want to “drive” it. I wanted the pageant to come from the hearts and minds of the children.

Each of our five school-aged groups and the preschoolers organised something different, with practices in late November - early December.

We ended up with a dance, a skit set in modern day, a short nativity play, a song and an artwork display.

The preschoolers sang a song with actions.

Our Christmas pageant wasn’t big or flash. We made it as good as we could, but it didn’t take all term to prepare, or involve massive numbers of helpers.

That show was the children’s own expression of their love for Jesus, their

Anglican Taonga

sharing of his story in a simple and heartfelt way.

And it worked.

Both pageants were very special. The children had wonderful opportunities to share the joy and excitement of Christmas, by being part of telling the story.

Those experiences, and many others, have helped me work out why sharing the Christmas story in this way is so important.

What Christmas pageants do ›› Bring people of all ages together around Jesus ›› Centre around hope and love – a message we all need ›› Entertain us as we have fun together ›› Are usually interactive as the congregation/audience sings along with the carols and often members of the congregation; are able to get involved by helping out or taking different roles ›› Can be intergenerational, as age is not an issue ›› Share the nativity story - which never gets old ›› Give our children the opportunity to share God’s love with other Christmas productions are really worth it.

So whether you’re new to children’s ministry or have been doing pageants for years, here are a few suggestions on how to make them really special.

Sort out your date early Churches get very busy in December and it’s no fun for the pageant to be in conflict with another important event. Plan to have your play before the school term ends.

Involvement and inclusion overrule perfection This doesn’t mean throwing something together the day before and hoping it will be good enough, but as the leader, you need

to realize things don’t always go according to plan. Sometimes children turn up who haven’t been to rehearsals, people get sick, technology fails and life happens. It’s OK.

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No matter how simple or complicated your nativity play is, there needs to be a commitment from families. Once the date is set, make a list of rehearsal dates and times, and encourage parents and children to sign it. That’s no guarantee, but it goes a long way towards keeping things organized.

different kinds of costumes, from oversized tee shirts in different colours, to glittery cowboy hats for the angels.

One year we’d made simple calico ponchos as our “Joseph coats” of many colours. For the pageant we turned them inside out and stapled coloured ribbon onto the back of the poncho depending on each part; yellow for angels, green for shepherds, purple for wise people.

Choose a script that suits your space, your ministry and your church style

Make the preschoolers’ performance short

How many children and young people do you have in your ministry? Do you want to include adults? Would your congregation be open to something new or different?

How much time will you have? Adjust your script to fit your congregation - if you have some exceptional talent there, use it - Who says that the shepherds can’t be playing the violin on the hillside?

Under fives can play a wonderful part in your pageant, but don’t expect them to sit on stage waiting. Bring them on for their scene, then let them go off to do something else.

Remember that their ‘cute factor’ tends to override any mistakes that may happen.

Get parental buy-in

Find something for every child Everybody has a special talent. Some love to be in costume up front. Others prefer behind the scenes, handling props, costumes or sound. Give extra thought to how you’ll involve every child in something productive and needed.

Start where you are and use what you have Whether you have a big stage, or have to push chairs out of the way, focus on the positives. It is great to have lighting, sound and a large budget, but a pageant is about so much more than a show. Sometimes we can spend so much time wishing we had more, we can miss the beauty that God wants to bring into our place with what we already have.

Offer your vicar a role Having a leader involved in the play boosts everyone’s morale and communicates that this is important.

Most adults and all children with speaking roles need a microphone There is nothing quite as frustrating as not hearing what people are saying. If you don’t have mikes, there are many wonderful nativity plays that don’t involve characters speaking. You may only need one narrator with a microphone or a booming voice.

Be creative with costumes We tend to think of angels in halos and shepherds in bathrobes, but feel free to try something new. I’ve used many

Plan for visiting families Christmas pageants are wonderful for the non-parishioners who are often present.

Provide extra costumes so that visiting children can join in the play. Plan to have extra helpers to buddy new children so they’ll know what to do.

Involve others in your church I love creating and directing plays, but can’t sew and don’t play a musical instrument. So I’ve learned I need to ask others with those skills.

And, it is better to build an intergenerational community using an all-age team.

Add food Rather than having people drift away after the service or have an ordinary morning tea, do something a bit different. Christmas biscuits or cake and other goodies can make things seem extra special.

Enjoy and have fun!

For most of us, December is a very busy time. Perhaps even the thought of putting on a simple Christmas pageant is a bit daunting.

But with a little preparation, a bunch of willing shepherds, angels, and wise people you can do something amazing! You’ve already got the perfect story. Start thinking and praying well before December about how you are going to share the story of Jesus’ birth each year.

There are so many wonderful Christmas resources online. A variety of Christmas dramas, crafts, games and activities are also on our StraNdZ website at www.strandz.org.nz > resources > seasonal.

Julie Hintz is the StrandZ Children’s Ministry Enabler for the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia. julie@strandz.org.nz

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T heology

Galaxies in his grasp Bishop Kelvin Wright marvels at the depth of space and the fullness of eternity – when held tight in a baby’s hands.

It faces me with the mind-tangling vastness of space, and therefore of God.

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B

ack in the old days, when the government was still feeding Christians to the lions and we hadn’t yet worked out how many books there should be in the Bible, there was a group of people we now call the Docetists, so named after the Greek dokein, to seem.

These people said that Jesus was God, and that because God is of such a different order of being than we are, Jesus couldn’t possibly be God and human at the same time.

Jesus, therefore, must have only seemed to be a human being, so they thought.

To the Docetists, Jesus went through life as a sort of very impressive hologram, looking like a man and acting like a man, but all the time having his true existence elsewhere.

This explains all those impressive miracles.

When Jesus was crucified, they said, he only seemed to die, because God is eternal and couldn’t possibly die, and therefore the resurrection was not a new

state, but the continuation of the old one.

In 325 AD, the Council of Nicea roundly rejected this belief, recognising that if Jesus wasn’t truly human, and didn’t really suffer and die, then his work of redemption was made null and void.

Even though Docetism has been regarded as a heresy for the last 1700 years, it is still alive and well, if people’s conversations about Jesus are anything to go by.

Often, as people speak of Jesus, they seem to assume that all the characteristics of divinity were at his disposal, and that the carpenter’s son from Nazareth wandered about the countryside exercising his powers of omniscience and omnipotence on a daily basis.

This, again, explains all of those impressive miracles. But, it undermines the whole notion of the incarnation and removes God’s audacious action of becoming human.

The writer of Hebrews says, “Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same

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things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil”(2:14).

This speaks of Jesus’ real death, and before that, his real human life.

And this is the bit that is so scarily difficult that we keep coming up with escape routes, like Docetism, so we won’t have to face it.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The one who is present in all places and in all times, lived on a small part of this globe at a particular time.

What was limitless, had become, for our sake, limited.

To be human is to be born helpless and to grow to maturity in a fairly welldocumented process.

To be human, is to be confined to a particular time and place, and to be subject to the instinctual needs and drives we all share.

It is hard to get our heads around the implications of this: that the one who knew all, became, for our sake, a first

century Jewish man, knowing no more than it is possible for a first century Jewish man to know.

This is the wonder, the beauty and the power of incarnation.

In Advent, this audacious belief is summed up for me in the paradox of two images.

The first is of the most expensive picture ever taken, Hubble Deep Field.

This is a 1995 photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It records a piece of sky about the size of a tennis ball as seen from 100 metres away, or approximately one 24-millionth of the whole sky.

Previously thought to be completely empty, this small patch of sky contains over 3,000 galaxies, each in turn being several hundred light years in diameter and containing billions of stars.

It’s a picture which faces me with the mind-tangling vastness of space, and therefore of God. The other image is my infant grandson.

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At the time of writing, Noah is 11 weeks old.

He cannot speak, can only just control his hands, cannot sit unaided and he hasn’t yet learned that he and his mother are separate entities.

This season of Advent tells us that the gulf between these two paradoxical poles has been removed.

That God became a child.

That at one time, the infinite, all powerful and omnipresent Lord of the Universe lay helplessly in a cradle.

That there was a time when the one who formed stars had no control of his hands, when the Word through whom all things were made, could not speak.

This is Advent.

And more mind numbingly huge than the far reaches of space, is the audacity of my Lord who would do this for me.

The Rt Rev Kelvin Wright is Bishop of Dunedin. kelvin@calledsouth.org.nz

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MUSIC

A new heaven and a new earth seemed curiously close when Brian Thomas caught Joan Baez in concert.

Lifted high

on angel wings

G This is meant to be a folk-fest, yet devotional songs slip through the repertoire like beads in a rosary.

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od put a smile upon our faces the night we drove up to see Joan Baez.

“What’s her repertoire?” a friend had grinned when told we had tickets to the 72-year-old’s Wellington concert. “Songs from a Zimmer Frame?”

No, just the same old catalogue of truth and justice – with the spirit of the original vagabond breathing over her shoulder, as always.

Of course, the long skirts and black tresses have long since blown in the wind. Today, Joan Baez presents as corporate chic: in slim, dark trouser-suit topped off by minimal necklaces and sculpted silver hair.

But the toothy smile is still as wide as Staten Island (her birthplace), she’s still a consummate guitar-

picker (on her signature Martin, of course), and the voice – well, the voice is pretty darn good for a woman who has hollered her heart out for civil rights through five decades and more.

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue… Forever Young… Seven Curses… There But For Fortune… House of the Rising Sun… Lily of the West… The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – the grand company of songs flows through the Michael Fowler Centre in a tide of nostalgia, for we are mostly boomers who spent too many of our uni days protesting instead of studying.

We’re mellower now, less demonstrative, but the speed-vibrato of Joan Baez still stirs the blood and flexes the toes.

She catches our mood by tapping into a jig with multi-accompanist Dirk Powell, then reminds us that she has tired feet from too many marches. Indeed.

And that’s surely what makes Joan Baez such an iconic figure. She doesn’t only sing great songs. She actually walked alongside Martin Luther King when he dreamed of a better America, climbed the mountain – and stopped a bullet from the other side.

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I’m blessed from top to toe after 90 minutes with her

From left to right; Joan Baez today – still on the road to truth and justice; As it was in the beginning: Joan Baez with her immortal vagabond, Bob Dylan.

One story, especially, tickles the hair on my neck.

Dr King had asked her to join a civil rights rally in Mississippi, hopefully to pacify white folk who were threatening to stone the marchers. Come the day, though, an exhausted King fell asleep and couldn’t be roused – until Joan sang Swing Low Sweet Chariot .

“I believe I hear the voice of an angel,” the preacher said. “Now let’s have another one, angel.”

She sings it for us in Wellington 50 years later, accompanied only by the rustle of angel wings, and a new heaven and a new earth don’t seem all that far off.

She should have been a preacher herself – or maybe she is, through the language of song. Certainly, we wear the hush of devotees as she introduces us to Mary Magdalene, a ballad by American Richard Shindell about the imagined love of the biblical heroine: “He was always faithful, he was always kind. But he walked away with this heart of mine.”

Hey, this is meant to be a folk-fest, not a religious rally, and yet a string of devotional songs – including Steve Earle’s God is God and Jerusalem – slip through the repertoire like beads in a rosary.

My Catholic friend, who would canonise Dylan if only the authority were vested in him, is not in the least surprised.

“Most folk music is spiritual,” he points out – and I sense him warming to another dissertation on the blues of Blind Willie McTell .

Joan springs a surprise of her own though. Guitar tech Grace Stomber comes from the wings with a sheaf of word-sheets, and the two then lead us in a Maori classic:

Purea nei e te hau / Horoia e te ua / Whitiwhitia e te ra / Mahea ake nga poraruraru / Makere ana nga here.

Scattered by the wind / washed by the rain / and transformed by the sun / all doubts are swept away / and all restraints are cast down.

They clearly have toiled at their Reo, which puts most of us Pakeha to shame.

But how can we not love them for it?

They’ve made the effort to speak the first language of our land, and that’s the first hallmark of grace.

Before all the hippie associations, Joan Baez imbibed the milk of Christian goodness from her immediate family.

Father Albert was the son of a Methodist clergyman and considered ordination himself before embracing physics and earning distinction as co-inventor of the x-ray microscope.

Joan’s mother, “Big Joan,” was the daughter of an Anglican priest in Edinburgh, and she and Albert converted to Quakerism soon after starting their family.

That explains the “barefoot madonna’s” life-long commitment to peace and justice.

It also makes sense of her devotion to family, nicely underpinned in Wellington by the presence of her son, Gabriel Harris, on a medley of drums.

The song I’ve been waiting for, Diamonds and Rust, shows up late in the programme and I weep silently, as always, because I’m a hopeless romantic and the lyrics are so sweet.

It’s about Dylan, of course – the unwashed phenomenon with eyes bluer than robin’s eggs, who strayed into her arms and found the madonna for free.

Now I see you standing / With brown leaves falling around / And snow in your

hair / Now you're smiling out the window / Of that crummy hotel / Over Washington Square / Our breath comes out white clouds / Mingles and hangs in the air / Speaking strictly for me / We both could have died then and there…

If you’re a Baez fan, you’ll know the original ending: Yes I loved you dearly / And if you're offering me diamonds and rust / I've already paid.

But age and experience have wearied the sentiment, and in Wellington we get a more pragmatic twist to the tale: And if you're offering me diamonds and rust / I’ll take the diamonds.

Given the choice, I’ll take Joan Baez, even at 72, because I’m blessed from top to toe after 90 minutes with her – and that’s more than I can say about many Sunday mornings in church.

And so it comes to pass that after three standing ovations (or is it four?) we file off the mountain into the wilderness of central Wellington, which is partying on empty, with little hope for tomorrow.

Blind Willie McTell sees it better than most: Well, God is in Heaven / And we all want what's His / But power and greed and corruptible seed / Seem to be all that there is.

All the more reason, I think, to dig out those Baez albums and revel again in the lyrics of age-old assurance – that even in the darkest of nights “my soul feels heavenly bound. Coming for to carry me home.”

Joan Baez in concert at the Michael Fowler Centre, Saturday, August 31.

The Rev Brian Thomas is Editor of Anglican Taonga online. bjthomas@orcon.net.nz

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C U LT U R E

Opening up to Jonathan Mane-Wheoki is one of the NZ art scene’s innovators and boundary breakers.

He has challenged art history’s march-past of old European masters – by bringing Maori, Pacific and global artists to the fore.

And in this Church he has stood up for a culture of respect – on multiple occasions.

In Dunedin this October, he spoke with Julanne Clarke-Morris.

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new worlds W hen Jonathon Mane-Wheoki introduces an artist, he invites us on a journey.

That journey leads us into all that has given rise to their art. Not only ideas and influences, but also the bigger story of the artist’s culture, religion and era.

Jonathan knows that to really understand art, it takes a change in perspective. It means learning how to see, and feel – as the artist might have done.

For years, Jonathan has led his students and peers into new worlds of art. As a lecturer in art history, then Dean of Music and Fine Arts at Canterbury University; as

Director of Art and Collections at Te Papa Tongarewa; and as Head of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts.

Though he’s at home at the coalface of contemporary art, Jonathon has retained his passion for historic church architecture. He revels in the matchless beauty of churches that lift minds and hearts toward heaven.

This October, he lit up an Otago lecture hall with a parade of Pihopatanga church interiors, revealing architectural jewels such as St Mary’s Tikitiki and St Michael’s Chapel at Hukarere Girl’s College.

European architects get their share of

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attention too. Selwyn is there alongside Mountfort, Butterfield, Lawson and Scott.

His MA thesis from London University’s Courtald Institute is on High Victorian Gothic church architecture. Artists of all kinds come under his gaze: Constable, Holbein and Monet converse with Hotere, McCahon and Nin. As a bicultural educator for the Diocese of Christchurch, he’s invited his fellow Anglicans on journeys too. And has taken a lead at key moments in the life of our Church.

Perhaps part of his skill in bridging worlds might come from growing up in a family that traversed different worlds, within itself.

On his dad’s side, Jonathan is Nga Puhi, Te Aupouri and Ngati Kuri. His whakapapa starts with Puketi in the upper North Island.

Both his father’s parents were fluent Maori speakers, and his grandmother spoke nothing else. But Jonathan’s dad didn’t pass the reo on. Now Jonathan sees himself on a journey of discovery into te ao Maori1 and readily admits he has a long way to go.

His mother’s family was thoroughly English. She was the New Zealand-born daughter of immigrant parents, who’d wed across the English class divide. His cockney grandmother had married her upper class gentleman sweetheart.

So when it came to walking between worlds, Jonathan’s family already had a head start. *

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For years, Jonathan was a faithful parishioner of Christchurch’s pro-cathedral, St Michael and All Angels. But he hadn’t ventured out into diocesan life.

Then in the early 90s, the Rev John

Williamson asked him to attend a special synod on the “proposed bicultural constitution.”

Not knowing a soul there, Jonathan could see the synod was going to be a tough crowd. “…the diocese of Christchurch was very, very anti.” Jonathan recalls.

But he soon discovered a small group of people excited about this new idea, despite the opposition snowballing around them.

As they talked, a tremendous energy began to develop amongst the group.

Then, before he knew it, Jonathan found himself on his feet before the synod – and in a rush of adrenalin – he made the speech that caused the synod to completely flip over – from majority against, to sufficiently “for” so that they could move ahead.

As the pro-change camp quickly flung him a motion to second, they moved it, and synod promptly voted for its proposal – to at least give it a go.

Jonathan can’t remember what he said that day. He thinks it was something about respect and partnership, equality, and oneness in the family of God. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Marjorie Smart, who is still a diocesan bicultural educator, remembers the feeling that day, “It was wonderful. When we heard him speak, we all thought – we just couldn’t do better than that.”

She suspects it was not so much Jonathan’s words, as the way he put them.

“He didn’t rant at people or berate them.”

“He was calm and respectful, and made people feel comfortable. He talked about what was before us in a way that made it feel

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Above and left: Beneath the neo-gothic arches of St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin.

like a good thing for everyone.”

Over the years, Jonathan has come to recognise this skill as a gift. When it comes to winning over skeptical Pakeha, the voice that flows from his ATCL in speech probably lends a hand too. So will the erudite words that pepper his speech from years in academia.

But his gentle tone is also by intention.

Jonathan has copped his fair share of racism, on his own and others’ behalf. It’s not that he doesn’t hear it, but he’s found a way of not taking it personally.

What you might call his ‘gentlemanly manner’ is also very strategic.

He has watched others force people to concede a point, by barking at them, yelling and bullying. But Jonathan’s approach is different.

“I think the way to make more profound change is to do it very quietly and subversively. “ At one bicultural seminar, a woman claimed to have grown up without “any trouble from Maoris.” She complained to

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Page 37

Anglican Taonga

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C U LT U R E

Jonathan about “these awful Maori radicals.”

“And we look at you, and you’re not like them,” she said.

“Don’t you think they’re creating a lot of division, a lot of mischief?”

“Well you might think so,” he said, “but actually, I’m very grateful for them.”

“Because the louder they yell, and the more violently… the more it opens up a space for people like me – to undermine the foundations.”

Then, he said calmly, “Actually… I’m far more dangerous.”

As Jonathan speaks about culture, a real threat to the status quo is another message that comes through – that message is love.

He can’t hide his love of finding beauty and value in the works of different cultures.

Or his fundamental sense that it is God’s own handiwork that he encounters there.

There’s a clue to Jonathan’s sense of God’s presence in Aotearoa, when he talks of the first hymn sung on NZ soil.

Marsden and Ruatara’s flock sang it that Christmas day in 1814 – All people that on earth do dwell.

“I actually can’t sing that hymn, ... the lump rises in my throat.

I think of the enormity of that moment, my eyes just well up with tears and I choke on the words. I can’t sing it.”

“I think we should be receptive to those moments in the history and life of our church that are going to affect us very deeply – when we think about them.”

Waitangi Day and Aotearoa Sunday are moments we should make more of, Jonathan thinks. He urges us to better understand our church’s origins in Te Haahi Mihinare and the evangelical enterprise of the Church Missionary Society. We should realise we were never an established church, he says, and that Selwyn made sure we remained independent of the state.

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After the synod experience, when Jonathan came home to St Michael’s, he started looking for ways to bring a Maori identity into its life.

He knew there’d be resistance. His estimate of that faced a test when the parish took on their first woman curate.

It was exactly as he’d guessed. A small number were completely hostile, a sizeable number uncomfortable, and the rest, OK. But it wasn’t the conservatives that opposed the new English vicar’s next suggestion, – to install a tabernacle on the high altar. It was Jonathan who stalled, on historical grounds, “There’s no tradition of sacramental reservation on altars here,” he said. “If you want to reserve the sacrament in the centre of the church, why not go for a hanging pyx?” 2 That would place the body of Christ front and centre, without resorting to an

abnormality for NZ churches. But vicar Jonathan Kirkpatrick said no, that’s too expensive – and he was well unimpressed with a steel one he’d seen made. “Well, how about wood – for a wooden church?” suggested Jonathan MW, “And then I had this flash of inspiration.

– Why, wouldn’t you have a wakahuia?”

A wakahuia is literally a feather box, he explained, a vessel to store the chief’s treasures, raised to the rafters of the house – the building’s most sacred part.

It wasn’t long before Fr Jonathan was hooked on the idea.

But then there was the congregation to deal with.

“And sure enough, people kicked up bobsey-die. There was a lot of racism in it.”

But Kirkpatrick was determined.

Riki Manuel of Ngati Porou would be the carver. A graduate of the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua, Riki had the technical know-how and his Catholic background gave him a headstart on the

Anglican Taonga

Above: The wakahuia; Te Tapenakara o Te Ariki – The Tabernacle of the Lord.

Left: Down to earth since the quakes.

symbolism.

The kauri and rimu waka would be encircled with three figures in full moko, recalling Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Ears of wheat and grapevines would weave across the box’s surface, and round it would swim a band of fish.

The wakahuia was a bold move, and at first, Jonathan felt unsure. “Here we were doing something that no Anglican church, or any church, had ever done before.�

But when he saw the finished wakahuia, those fears vanished. â€œâ€Ś it was breathtaking.â€?

The waka wasn’t just to be an object of beauty. As well as a focus on the presence of Christ, it would help strengthen the connections between St Michael’s and the Pihopatanga.

1994 was the right moment to do that. It was a year of celebrations at Canterbury University to honour Sir Apirana Ngata – who’d been the first Maori university

graduate, 100 years earlier.

St Michael and All Angels would host a service in honour of Ngata, presided at by the Bishop of Aotearoa, Te Whakahuihui Vercoe.

Fitting, because back in the 1920s, Ngata had helped to found the Bishopric.

The service was largely conducted in Maori, and school pupils from Te Aute College, where Ngata had been a student, came down in force, others were there from Ngata College and Hukarere.

Isla Hunter, a stalwart parishioner (baptised at St Michael’s in 1906) was in the congregation. She formed another special connection. Not only had she known Sir Apirana Ngata personally, but she was an ex-principal of Hukarere. She and Sir Apirana had worked together on the design of the other St Michael’s – the exquisite chapel at the school.

So this was the day for the wakahuia to be raised. From chest height behind the altar, it rose up to the rafters after communion – with the consecrated elements on board – for the first time. “The congregation were absolutely thunderstruck.â€? “It‌ looked‌ amazing.

And all criticism – just evaporated.â€? “I remember Isla Hunter saying, “I can’t take my eyes off it.â€? “Instantly, the lowering and raising of the wakahuia became ‌part of the drama and beauty of the mass.â€?

Watching from across town, the Rev Brian Thomas remembers his incredulity that this had even happened. “Here was this conservative, spiky

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The congregation were absolutely thunderstruck.

parish, who’d leapfrogged everyone else to show their bicultural commitment.�

Now the earthquakes have brought the wakahuia down, and it waits for a safer raising system to be found. Its solid core is heavy and could cause serious injury.

Even with those challenges, St Michael’s people are desperate to get it back in place. “They’re clamouring for it. It’s become a part of their identity.� “It’s definitely not about tokenism.�

For Jonathan that’s the key to anything you might do when it comes to meeting another culture. Be careful. Get the concepts right. Don’t assume – and if it’s tokenism, don’t do it. “I think about all of these things it’s about showing that you care.

And you care because you are inspired by love. And it’s love dot, dot, dot isn’t it?â€? “It might be the love of God‌ or the love of your fellow travellers.â€?

Julanne Clarke-Morris is Editor of Taonga magazine.

1. The Maori world, the Maori cultural context.

2. From Google on Jonathan’s ipod, – “pyx: etymology" – late Middle English, “a box, especially the vessel in which the host or consecrated bread is preserved.�

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Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

FOLK ART

Rocked by the cradle Craufurd Murray reflects on the light of Christmas glowing in the heart of every crib scene

…our crib set shepherds could be on horseback, or quad bikes.

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A

n important part of our family’s Christmas preparation was to set up the crib in a prominent place in the house.

I knew from childhood that this was not just a local custom. The parish church in our village (Beetham, Westmorland) had a beautiful set of handcarved, painted crib figures, given by German inmates of the nearby prisoner-of-war camp.

The prisoners had made the wooden nativity as an expression of their gratitude for “the real spirit” of Christian friendliness they had found in the vicar and congregation.

“We are praying with you to the child of Bethlehem,” they’d said.

The custom of the Christmas crib dates from 1223, when, with the Pope’s permission and Giovanni di Velita’s assistance, Francis of Assisi created a ‘living crib’ at Greccio.

One of his companions records how a stable was specially built and stocked with hay, and how families from the neighbourhood gathered around it on Christmas Eve after dark, all holding lights.

In the crowd were shepherds with their sheep, a donkey and an ox were led in, and the

mass was celebrated – with Francis' preaching and much song.

This first reenactment may well have been inspired by stories Francis’ mother told of the Christmas customs in her native Provence.

One old Provencal tradition is the making of handcrafted ‘santons’ for the nativity scene.

These exquisitely-fashioned terracotta crib figures are either fully handpainted, or dressed in tailored clothing.

In Europe, cribs are mostly found under the Christmas trees in people’s homes, but in this country there is no common pattern.

Cribs may appear in bookshelves, on top of TV entertainment units, on dining tables, or window sills.

While travelling in France immediately after Christmas a few years ago, I was impressed to find large-scale nativity scenes filling the entire side-chapels of churches and cathedrals.

Invariably, these representations had been localised in some way, as a reminder that Christ had been born among them.

In one, the stable was set in a model of the nearby landscape, which featured a huge windmill – their distinctive local landmark.

The santons of Provence make the

Anglican Taonga

same kind of connections. Alongside the characters we’d expect to find round the infant Christ, these figures also represent facets of old Provencal life.

The santons often carry gift baskets whose contents reflect the region’s produce and crafts. This is an intentional acknowledgement that Christ is truly present in their community – as in every community.

Perhaps shepherds in our crib sets could be on horseback, on farm or quad bikes, distinguished by large-brimmed hats and oilskins or woollen Swanndri.

The Christmas crib provides a wonderful focus on this event we call the Incarnation – alongside other special aspects of the season such as carol singing, nativity plays, Christingle services and performances of the ‘Messiah’.

Writing on the incarnation, early 20th century Scottish philosopher A.S. PringlePattison1 said, “Whatever it may mean, it means at least this: that in the conditions of human life we have access, as nowhere else, to the inmost nature of the divine”.

This birth we celebrate at Christmas reveals that God is not remote, but is fully immersed in our human story.

Christmas may well challenge our ideas about God too. In Bethlehem’s stable we are invited to recognise the action of a God who never tries to impress us by demonstrations of importance, popularity or power, but who comes in simplicity, vulnerability and fragility.

The attraction of a newborn baby is hard to resist. Experience tells us how the desire to witness a new birth can cause people to set out on long journeys, regardless of disruption or hardship.

We are drawn by wonder and delight and often discover that a birth can be lifechanging, bringing with it new perspectives on what is valuable.

We may encounter an unthreatening innocence that embodies hope, promise, joy and trust – in the face of cynicism, corruption suspicion and unease.

Despite all this, we cannot help but be aware, that the world into which children are born is still a world of power politics.

Just as was when Jesus was born.

Families still flee as refugees, are beaten or killed for their beliefs. Intimidation is still used as a weapon to instil fear and exert control, and the sacredness of human life is too often ignored.

Teenage pregnancies may even cause

family members to distance themselves (just as no one close-by stepped forward for Mary).

But, as our gaze is drawn by the nativity scene to the child in the humble surroundings of the stable cave – regardless of how dressed-up its presentation is – our values and world-view come under scrutiny.

Here we meet a love that seeks to give, rather than to make demands, or impose conditions. This is a love that accepts both suffering and rejection; a love that is constant and doesn’t depend on the decisions we make.

Here the mystery of God is no longer elusive, for this baby opens us to God’s love in a way that we can comprehend.

In Jesus, generation after generation, God comes close.

This is the Christmas gift we all receive.

Through this child we discover how God’s love, with all its implications, can find room within the imperfect stables of our hearts and minds.

A Christmas crib in our homes is a visible reminder of this amazing truth: that love has the power to transform the way we see, and

ADVENT 2013

…this baby opens us to God’s love in a way that we can comprehend.

influence how we choose to live, which is nothing less than the birth of Christ in each of us.

The Rev Canon Craufurd Murray is Canon Emeritus of Christchurch Cathedral & President of St George’s Hospital Incorporated Society. craufurd@xtra.co.nz 1. A.S. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1917).

Picture: Figures made by Bruno Baumann and Gabriel Fabian, POWs at Bela River Camp.

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Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

ENVIRONMENT

As Christmas approaches, Phillip Donnell challenges us to invest in the gifts that will last.

Something nice

for the grandkids

B

efore I became a father, I could not take any event projected for the year 2050 very seriously.

I’d be dead before then, and even the date struck me as unreal.

But once my children were born (between 1979 -1984) I realized with a jolt – 2050 is the year my kids will begin their old age. It’s not an imaginary year any more!

My complacency received another shock when my eight grandchildren began to arrive, from 2005 onwards.

As parents, securing our children’s future is a priority. We devote time and money to help our kids enjoy good lives, but how far do we really take it?

On the first page of his 2010 book “Judgement Day”, Paul Collins issues an extremely provocative statement about how little we’ve done to care for our descendents.

“Those of us whose lives have spanned the seven decades since the beginning of the Second World War will be among the most despised and cursed generations in the whole history of humankind.

“The reason why we will be hated by our own grandchildren and by those who come after them is simple: never before have human beings so exploited, damaged and degraded the earth to the extent that we have.”

According to environment writer Jared Diamond, that is no overstatement.

As he sees it, our global society is set on an unsustainable course. Environmental problems – that we could have avoided – are looming to limit our lives within the next few decades, “like time bombs with fuses of less than fifty years.”

In short, the results of our current environmental problems will be played out, one way or the other, within the lifetime of today’s children and young adults.

Page 42

So the question is this: Will they see a positive resolution to those problems, as a result of our choices? Or will they inherit the opposite?

The environmental impact of continuing our currently non-sustainable global lifestyles could put our descendents in the face of no less than “genocide, starvation, disease, epidemics, and the collapse of societies,” cites Diamond.

In June 2012, The UN Global Environmental Outlook Report (GEO5) reviewed the less than glowing global record of halting environmental harm over the previous five years.

“Neither the scope … nor …speed has abated in the past five years…Several critical global, regional and local thresholds are close, or have been exceeded.

“Once these have been passed, abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to the lifesupport functions of the planet are likely to occur.”

For example, in March 2013, CO2 reached 400ppm in the atmosphere – the highest level in several million years, a height never before reached, since humans have been on earth.

While Diamond and the UN reports both claim environmental degradation is not yet irretrievable, more recently some scientists, such as James Hansen, have begun to say just that.

The truth probably lies somewhere between the two perspectives.

When we look at our own environmental actions in this season of Advent, we must ask what are the real gifts we will bestow upon those we love, as they go into the future.

What kind of world will we bequeath?

What situation will they grow up into?

What are we doing to secure or

jeopardize their future?

Do those yet unborn warrant an effort or sacrifice on the part of us here now?

What’s the point of willing our property to our kids, while simultaneously doing things that undermine the world they will inhabit?

For my part, I have realized that to ignore environmental problems is actually to sleepwalk into a crisis, which my loved ones will have to bear. I need to get real about the challenge, and that means taking environmental stewardship seriously, as an integrated part of my Christian life.

Because the truth is we’re not alone in this. God is greatly concerned that his blessings should be experienced by one generation after another (Exodus 3:15, Psalm 89:1). Nowhere was this more strongly expressed than in his gift of a saviour.

That ultimate God-given gift would bless all peoples: past, present and future.

The created order is another means to this end.

God wants it to be a blessing, not a curse, to those downstream from us in time.

During Advent, why not take an active step towards ensuring that your loved ones do not inherit a dying planet? It would be one of the best gifts you can give them.

A Practical Idea: Have a chat to your children and grandchildren to find out how they feel about the intensifying environmental crisis. Discuss what actions you could take to alleviate it.

Maybe you could work together on some New Year's resolutions?

Phillip Donnell is the EnviroChurches Facilitator for A Rocha Aotearoa New Zealand and teaches for Bishopdale College in Tauranga. phillip.donnell@arocha.org

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

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Page 43

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

FILM

A faith for all seasons John Bluck discovers a new kiwi film that has taken film festival audiences by storm.

The plot: conversations with a 90 year-old, as she potters about the garden.

O

n a bad day when the wind and the tide are against us, a wingeing twang of despondency creeps into Christian voices in Aotearoa.

We’re not talking about winning boat races here, but the future of the church in these islands.

Church going and gospel story telling are not fashionable. So don’t be surprised to find the New Zealand Herald begin its review of “Gardening with soul”, the story of a 90 year old nun who works in the Home of Compassion garden at Island Bay, with this reassurance to readers: “Don’t worry, it’s far more interesting than it sounds.”

And so it is, even for those of us whose expectations are much higher than the bedrock cynicism of that newspaper about anything to do with church.

If this movie does nothing else, it challenges Christians to trust the power of our stories to transform the most secular and skeptical of audiences. Provided of course we tell the stories with imagination, courage and wit, and don’t take ourselves too seriously in the process.

Spending 90 minutes following an elderly gardener, who has lived most of her life inside a convent, when she’s not at work in the potting shed or the compost bin, is hardly a formula for captivating cinema.

But director Jess Feast makes Page 44

it work wonderfully by letting Sister Loyola Gavin and her garden speak for themselves, without an ounce of excessive piety, preaching or special pleading.

In the process we learn more about gospel truth than we’ve heard from the last hundred sermons.

As we wander round the autumn garden with Loyola, armed with secateurs and walking stick, she tells us that the dying leaves and flowers are getting ready for the next stage of life, “just like me”.

She takes us on a tour of her potting shed.

“If everyone had a shed like this there would be no domestic violence,” she suggests, before giving a kiss to her very reserved workmate David as he heads home.

Loyola hasn’t spent all her life in the garden or the convent. She worked for years as a nurse in the Home of Compassion caring for children with severe disabilities.

Her scorn of priests who abuse children is lacerating, as is her indifference to the hierarchy in Rome, which, she points out rather acidly, is a long way from Island Bay. And her time as a chaplain at Hutt Hospital adds eloquence and depth to the visit she takes us on to the cemetery for stillborn children. Briefly known, forever loved says the gravestone.

Though the film relies on Loyola’s monologue, there is still an economy of words. Images of the garden through all its seasons speak louder.

And while this is an intimate film, as we follow her throughout the day, from brushing her hair to saying her prayers, she remains a private and mysterious woman.

Her vocation, “my lucky break” she calls it, the sweetheart she lost in the war, the father she adored and who struggled with her becoming a nun, the young people in the local community garden who obviously adore her visits and advice, all these elements and a hundred more, remain tantalising touches that we’d love to know more about.

This is a film that wowed film festival audiences. It’s about as simple a piece of cinema as you could find, and about as beautiful – because the woman at its centre radiates faith.

You leave the theatre feeling privileged to have been in her company.

The Rt Rev John Bluck lives in Pakari, north of Auckland. blucksbooks@gmail.com

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

BOOKS

Not the sainted vicar IF YOU MEET GEORGE HERBERT ON THE ROAD, KILL HIM: RADICALLY RE-THINKING PRIESTLY MINISTRY

BY JUSTIN LEWIS-ANTHONY MOWBRAY : CONTINUUM, LONDON, 2009 KELVIN WRIGHT

T

his book takes its title from a famous Zen Koan, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

The Buddhist saying is a warning against idolatry. That is, whatever ideas the student of Zen has about the Buddha, are likely to be projections and fantasies, and will damage, rather than help, their spiritual progress.

In this book, Justin Lewis-Anthony is issuing a similar warning against the hagiographic standing the Rev George Herbert has had in English consciousness.

Since the 17th Century, Herbert has been held up as the model par excellence of the parish priest, with results that Lewis-Anthony sees as hugely damaging.

Ordinary mortals cannot but fail to live up to Herbert’s example of parish priest as mystical poet, hymn writer, church builder, feeder of the poor and universally-beloved pastor.

The book’s first section has a short biography of Herbert, in which I was staggered to learn that he was a parish priest for less than three years.

The author traces the rise and influence of Herbetism in shaping Anglican ordained life and spells out both the weaknesses of the model and the damage it has done to those who have tried to follow it.

He proposes in its place another model, based on Rowan William’s threefold analysis of priest as Witness, Watchman and Weaver.

This simple pattern is expanded into a framework of ministry based on knowledge: knowing who you are; what you are; who you are set over; how to make decisions; how to manage conflict.

He concludes with an appendix containing a suggested rule of life which displays the Dominican undergirding of the model.

Lewis Anthony is an experienced parish priest and a scholar. His style is chatty and the pace of the book is brisk, but it is nevertheless an academically robust piece.

Footnotes are extensive and he draws broadly on a range of data, writers and commentators, which did cause me one slight annoyance.

As he works through his sources, Lewis Anthony lays out the ideas using the original’s schema, so chapters are filled with the four points of this, or the five aspects of that, or the six phases of the other thing.

I suppose that repetitive as I sometimes found it, it does give a framework for organising the sheer volume of data the book contains.

I recognise my own call to parish

priesthood as one of the largest determinants of the direction of my life. During the early years of ministry the spectre of George Herbert, presented to me by various mentors, did loom large.

I suppose that for a generation of younger priests there are other icons and idols presented for emulation and injurious self comparison. Justin Lewis Anthony does us all a favour with this gentle piece of iconoclasm and its invitation to stop following chimaeras and start being real about what we are called to.

I am grateful for his useful road map for the way ahead, and only sorry that it wasn’t given to me 30 years ago.

The Rt Rev Kelvin Wright is Bishop of Dunedin kelvin@calledsouth.org.nz

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Page 45

Anglican Taonga

ADVENT 2013

T H E FA R S I D E

Out of darkness: Imogen de la Bere takes a journey into the pagan mindset of players on an ancient British battlefield, and finds a world of darkness and violence.

There’s a philosopher that says killing your dad is no worse than theft.

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I

light

have spent the last nine months bringing to birth a play. Like some of the more conventional products of nine months labour, this one started with a moment’s thoughtlessness, which brought on a mountain of grief and culminated in a burst of joy. And during the course of it, I learnt some extraordinary things, which seem worth sharing.

So back to the beginning.

I’m lucky enough to run a small theatre in England, on behalf of the St Albans Council. As a quid-pro-quo, our company can put on plays without really worrying about commercial appeal. We can go niche, which suits me, as most of my interests are, sadly, minority.

With this wonderful blank canvas, I texted our leading actress, a young woman of extraordinary range, and asked a foolhardy question: Who’s your favourite woman in literature or history? I will write a play about her, for you.

Boadicea/Boudicca came the reply, and my heart sank. How could I have been so foolish?

A subject in which I had no interest,

and for which I had no sympathy, an unstageable story – tragic, turgid, bloody.

As every British schoolchild knows, Boudicca rampaged across Britain, torching everything in her way, had a big pitched battle with the Romans, and then died, probably by her own hand. Fire, blood, battle, suicide – all nightmares to stage.

And no story.

I don’t know whether it was arrogance, embarrassment or stubbornness that made me stick with the project. But I did, and learnt more as a writer and a person than I have from anything else (bar child-birthing itself) I’ve undertaken.

The first problem was how to put Boudicca’s story on the stage.

I decided to go for the Greek model.

After all, the Greeks knew a thing or two about how to stage tragedies. Their scenes have two people debate the issues and recount the action, punctuated by chorus to lighten the mood. All the action is off stage.

It turned out to be a good model for depicting this tragic tale. I had a trio of Roman soldiers as my chorus who’d been captured by the British and kept alive for purposes of propaganda. Looking rather

Anglican Taonga

good in leather, they chatted, joshed, joked and sang. But then I drew them into the narrative and the Greek model got mixed up, and yes, you do get to see Boudicca die on stage and the Romans rape her daughter. *

*

*

*

*

In the course of writing the play I had to immerse myself in the period. I was mostly concerned with the opposing mindsets of the Britons and the Romans – how they thought, what they wanted, and why they would fight for it.

I wanted to present both from their own points of view. The civiliser, the bringer of peace, on one hand, and the rebel, the freedom fighter, who will sacrifice everything to be free. But I had to do this in the intellectual and emotional context of the time. And express it in language that would be entertaining, gripping and theatrically effective.

Getting the Romans right wasn’t too hard. Ploughing my way through years’ worth of Latin literature has finally paid off. They wrote so much, it’s possible to get a feel for how they thought and their preoccupations.

So my Romans, though they chat in modern English, talk about food, women, and philosophy. About the proper behaviour of the Roman soldier and Roman virtues and tradition – in a manner quite alien to us. They sound like us, but they think quite differently. It’s quicker to illustrate this with a quotation:

Gaius: We were always taught that rape was not proper behaviour for a Roman soldier.

Titus: You enslave the women and then ravage them.

Gaius: That’s not rape. They are your slaves.

Lucius: There are philosophers who say that makes no difference.

Titus: There are philosophers who say our souls fly into the nearest creature at the point of death. Doesn’t make it true.

Gaius: There’s a philosopher that says killing your Dad is no worse than theft...

Lucius: There’s no word in British for philosopher. Or school for that matter.

Or civilisation. But they have at least sixteen words for horse.

These men all own slaves – male and female – and regard them as property. They take their sexual use for granted. In this, they are inculcated with a different, pre-

Christian set of values.

They also believe that the gods observe them with interest, but with detachment.

A verse from one of the songs sums this up: The gods look down and see no cause for action/Their sport to watch us at our desperate play/They place their bets on this or that reaction/And cast the die – this dog has had his day.

This song, sung by an ethereal countertenor, accompanies the scene in which two of the Romans were strung up, like the two thieves at the crucifixion, this reference deliberately underlines that this was a preChristian world, where mankind is on his own, where stoicism and courage, not love and mercy, are the highest virtues.

To understand the minds and hearts of the Ancient Britons is harder. We have to deduce from legends and songs and the delicate archaeological trace. But we know that the sacred places and signs from the gods mattered in a way that we can barely comprehend. So when Boudicca held her great council to rally support for her cause, she used the people’s belief in divine signs as an accelerant – or so the cynical Roman chroniclers said. As one of the Britons says in the play:

...When you summoned the tribes to the great council, I heard the impassioned words pouring out of your mouth, a great song of defiance, and my heart turned over. And then that animal – that divine hare that ran across the meeting place – the sign from the goddess, you said, but you knew where the hare had been concealed, and when it had been let loose. I knew too, but watched it arch across the open ground, wild with freedom, beautiful symbol of our hopes and dreams. Doomed to be torn apart by the dogs, but oh, what a leap, what a run!

These are a people perpetually hampered by their gods. When the elements turn against them, the gods are angry. When a skirmish goes their way, the gods are with them. These gods are localised, fragmented.

Spending time in this world makes me vividly aware of how far we have travelled.

We are not subject to the whims of gods who have no affection for us. We are not driven by a code which demands an eye for an eye. We are not sanctioned to treat other human beings as property.

Down there in the pagan world it is dark and terrifying. We are so used to the liberalising and enlightened effect of Christianity on world ideas, that we forget what it was like without them. But I’ve spent

ADVENT 2013

...how cruel and bleak the world is without the guiding principle of divine love.

time there, and can attest how cruel and bleak the world is without the guiding principle of divine love.

I sometimes think Christianity has been too successful for the good of the church. The universal acceptance of human rights is effectively a global and secular working out of the Christian agenda, and consequently, what we have to offer is less startling.

Secular society has so completely embraced the Christian ethic that we have less to set us apart. It is commonly accepted that each individual is valuable and his or her personhood is sacrosanct.

Ironically the church now lags behind liberal society. It’s as if we laid down the path, showed it to the world, and they have sprinted ahead of us.

It is a salutary exercise to live imaginatively with peoples in darkness, people to whom other people were property, to whom violence and cruelty were the normal stuff of life, and then to imagine what the light of the Gospel meant, as it blasted its way into their lives.

Imogen de la Bere is a New Zealand writer living and working in St Albans, England. delaberi@googlemail.com

Page 47

GOT PLANS FOR 2014?

Two Bedroom

Information: This floor plan is correct as at April 2011. Minor changes may be made to the configuration and fit construction. Prospective residents should satisfy themselves as to the suitability of the final prod licences for units at the village are secured by a first-ranking encumbrance over the village land in