Tui motu 2014 august

Tui Motu

InterIslands

monthly independent Catholic magazine

August 2014 | $7

Being a Better World Neighbour

. editorial

‘and who is my neighbour?’

‘B

eing a better world neighbour’ trips off the tongue so lightly. However, it asks us to think again about the basis of the wonderfully rich concept of the neighbour. Remember the lawyer at the beginning of the Parable of Good Samaritan (Luke 10). He sounds so self-righteous as he takes up Jesus’ clear statement, that to love God and neighbour will bring life: ‘Do that and life is yours’, Jesus says! The lawyer’s response is as crucial now as it was then: ‘And who is my neighbour?’

So simple, so direct and so tricky.

The Samaritan traveller, as Jesus portrays him, comes with compassion, steps in directly and ministers to the injured man. His service does not finish there — he bandages the wounds, takes him to an inn, and ensures that there is money to look after the wounded man with promises of more on his return — to give time for healing.

This relationship of care is a model for us, both at a personal level and beyond that. Love involves real risk, as Jesus risked his life for all of us. It involves ‘giving hospitality to

strangers’, as St Paul notes (Rom 12.13).

Neighbourliness is long-term; it cannot be otherwise if it is to be fruitful.

In what seems at first to be a story about migration and helping migrants, Dr Jim Ng takes us on a journey within the Presbyterian Church which reveals itself as a rich tale of neighbourliness.

The courage of Reverend Alexander Don who ministered to the Chinese migrants is remarkable. He learnt the Cantonese language and spent 20 years getting to know the culture of these people who had remained in New Zealand after the initial gold rushes in Central Otago. Then at the Church’s behest, Rev Don and another valiant minister go to rural China to begin what becomes a flourishing mission. This, as Dr Ng says, ‘was the first major New Zealand project in China.’ The article (pp 12-13) repays careful reading.

There are ripples of the same richness in the story of New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina and how a young man Parnell Wilson is given a new life (pp 14-15). As well, Fr Chrys McVey OP gives another twist to questions of openness to the other. He writes from

Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

contents

Focusing on neighbourliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Pauline McKay Letters to the editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Comment: Long-term salvage operation . . . . . 5 Michael Fitzsimons Being a better world neighbour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6–7 Beverley Turnbull Let’s not be paralysed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8–9 Marian Hobbs

a Pakistani perspective, having lived for so long among people of other faiths (pp 18-19).

Both Beverley Turnbull and Pauline McKay push us to see neighbourliness on a global level — where the questions are just as pressing and the answers similar: long term, risky, caring for human beings in community — something not to be morphed into trade or economic projects alone.

Beverley’s story of what is being done by aid agencies in Bamyan province, Afghanistan, in a variety of different projects gives hope of change, of healing, and of overcoming the universal blight of poverty.

We have another important theme within this month’s issue: that of peace and disarmament. Marion Hobbs’s clarion call for a new international movement on disarmament stands alongside articles by Michael Hill and Paul Oestreicher. And I cannot end without underlining the plea of Cecily McNeil for Palestine. No one can have been unmoved by the horrible events presently taking place. May Gaza go free now! KT

The theology and politics of peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20–21 Paul Oestreicher Hiroshima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22–23 Michael Hill Keeping the peasants in their place . . . . . . . . . . . . 24–25 Tony Watkins A heart broken open . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Wendy Kissel Return and reconciliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26–27 Kathleen Rushton Book and film reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28–29

Time to share the land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10–11 Cecily McNeill

Crosscurrents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Jim Elliston

The presbyterian church and chinese migrants 12–13 James Ng

Taking a new lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Peter Norris

Being ‘real solid’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14–15 Shaun Davison

A mother’s journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Theresa Vossen

The mystery of true relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16–17 Entertaining elephants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18–19 Chrys McVey

2 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

Cover illustration: by Donald Moorhead

. election 2014

focusing on neighbourliness Gospel Manifesto 2014: New Zealand as a better world neighbour.

T

he story Jesus told of the Good Samaritan is one of the most widely recognised in the Gospels. Helping a stranger in need is now happening across the planet in an effort to counteract a long history of poverty and exploitation, and respond to the increasing frequency of natural disasters. Another is the sharing of bread and fish which signals the gospel imperative to make sure everyone has enough to eat. Less often remembered is the story of Jesus defending the woman caught in adultery. It is a story of Jesus advocating for justice.

Taking these stories to a global level, they become a paradigm for living together on planet earth: sharing with those in need, caring for and redistributing resources, and speaking out for tolerance and justice. The obligation to help neighbours who experience earthquake, typhoons and cyclones is a given. Providing food, water, shelter, medical care and education to people caught up in conflicts like Syria is urgent. Funding good development programmes that help people out of poverty and situations of violence is an imperative.

New Zealand’s record in the past has been better than at present. The Official Development Assistance

(ODA) or aid budget has dropped to 0.26 percent of Gross National Income from a recent 0.3 percent high in 2008.

Funding that was used to eliminate poverty has been channelled to business interests under the guise of sustainable economic development. The most vulnerable people are missing out and are likely to lose the small livelihoods they eke out from home gardens, inshore fishing or day labouring to large-scale mechanised industry. Moving closer to the promised 0.7 percent for ODA could make a major difference if it was invested in people — 842 million of whom go hungry each day.

Instead of foreign policy that is about outcomes for real people, the government is focused on trade policy.

Keeping market access for New Zealand farm products is the priority — not a market in which all can participate. The New Zealand Government is vying for a seat on the United Nations Security Council saying it is fair-minded and focused on the future, but from a gospel perspective this is not true.

To focus on the future where everybody has what they need to live requires a different approach. In a world where inequalities are climbing, the damage and exploitation of the resources of the planet have reached life threatening

Tui Motu – InterIslands is an independent, Catholic, monthly magazine. It invites its readers to question, challenge and contribute to its discussion of spiritual and social issues in the light of gospel values, and in the interests of a more just and peaceful society. Inter-church and inter-faith dialogue is welcomed.

proportions; and where tensions within and between nations, religions and ethnic groups are rising, it is time to refocus our foreign policy.

The Scriptures speak repeatedly of an ethic where care for the orphan, the widow, the stranger and often the prisoner are the measure of justice.

New Zealand needs to pick up the challenge of the post-2015 United Nations Agenda to make sure ‘No One is Left Behind’. n Pauline McKay is the Director of Christian World Service, Christchurch.

Prayer for Aotearoa New Zealand in an election year God, give us a vision of our country As a land of tolerance where all races and creeds can live together in unity, A land of justice where basic human rights are respected, A land of compassion where poverty is unknown and oppression is ended, And a land of peace where order does not depend on force.

God, help us to make this vision our reality.

Amene.

— Ron O’Grady

address: Independent Catholic Magazine Ltd, 52 Union Street, Dunedin North, 9054 P O Box 6404, Dunedin North, 9059 phone: (03) 477 1449 fax: (03) 477 8149 email: tuimotu@earthlight.co.nz website: www.tuimotu.org TuiMotuInterIslands

ISSM 1174-8931 Issue number 185

The name Tui Motu was given by Pa Henare Tate.

It literally means “stitching the islands together...”, bringing the different races and peoples and faiths together to create one Pacific people of God. Divergence of opinion is expected and will normally be published, although that does not necessarily imply editorial commitment to the viewpoint expressed.

editor: Kevin Toomey OP assistant editor: Elizabeth Mackie OP illustrator: Donald Moorhead directors: Susan Brebner, Rita Cahill RSJ, Philip Casey (chair), Neil Darragh, Paul Ferris, Robin Kearns, Elizabeth Mackie OP and David Mullin honorary directors: Pauline O’Regan RSM, Frank Hoffmann typesetting and layout: Greg Hings printers: Southern Colour Print, 1 Turakina Road, Dunedin South, 9012

3 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

letters to the editor einstein’s humanity I enjoyed reading about Albert Einstein in Michael Hill’s article ‘To Bomb or not to Bomb?’ (TM, July 2014).

I’ve recently come across another aspect of Einstein’s humanity that is worth sharing, particularly for the insightful background it provides for today’s headlines. On April 9, 1948, over 100 men, women and children of the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin were massacred by two Zionist terrorist groups: Stern, headed by Yitzak Shamir, and Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin. Both of these men would later become Prime Ministers of Israel. The massacre of Deir Yassin was not the only 1948 slaughter, a period Palestinians remember as a nakba, a catastrophe, but it is the one most documented.

The very next day after the massacre, Zionist groups approached Einstein asking him to endorse a fund-raising campaign in America.

His reply was, ‘When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsibility for it would be the British and the second responsibility for it the Terrorist organisations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.’

Later Einstein was offered the Presidency of Israel; he refused that too.

Michael Hill’s article quotes

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4 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

Albert Einstein as saying ‘that scientists must foster internationalism’, as he did himself.

Lois Griffiths, Christchurch

the last straw By the time I got to the last article in July’s Tui Motu I felt I should do Penance! Robert Consedine’s was the last straw! Obviously he was born during or after WW2 like me, meaning we’ve had a very cushy life compared to our parents and grandparents.

I thought his article was totally disrespectful of all the men who fought long and hard so we weren’t overrun by Nazis. Even the Germans I know are happy. Going to Gallipoli is like going to church, one realises how petty and pathetic our so-called woes are, especially if one is fortunate enough to live in the western world.

Since the Big Bang the World has been awash with war, rape and pillage, nothing is new under the sun.

The most powerful and advanced tribe of an era has always won, that’s how people evolved.

Today people bang on and on about injustices, poverty, war, disease as though it’s a new phenomenon.

Common sense needs to lead the way like better education. Teachers, the force behind our children, need better pay, more teachers per classroom in low decile schools and encourage more young men to join up. I volunteer at a decile one school and the few young male teachers are very popular, which doesn’t need an Einstein brain to work out.

Anyway as my grandson would say, ‘I think Robert Consedine’s attitude sucks!’

Susan Lawrence, Auckland

what’s in a name?

Reading Jim Neilan’s article ‘To Spy or not to Spy’ (Tui Motu, June ’14) reminded me of a similar experience to that of Debbie Richards.

My sister lived for many years in California. After the passing of

letters to the editor We welcome comment, discussion, argument, debate.

But please keep letters under 200 words. The editor reserves the right to abridge, while not changing the meaning.

We do not publish anonymous letters otherwise than in exceptional circumstances.

Response articles (up to a page) are welcome — but please, by negotiation.

US Security laws during the years of George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’ she asked me not to email ‘controversial material’ as she was aware most US emails were monitored. I complied with this request and our emails were only about domestic matters.

However, eventually my emails to her were blocked completely, though she was still able to email me.

I can only assume that I was blacklisted because my email address contains the word ‘outlaw’. I must say in explanation, that my grandmother’s maiden name was ‘Outlaw’ which was why I adopted the name.

Plus there are way too many Smiths!

It does not unfortunately refer to my activities. Perhaps it should?

Currently I don’t seem to have a problem in Aotearoa/NZ, but who knows what the future holds with NZ a member of the ‘Five Eyes’ spying alliance.

As everything is done in secret I have no idea whether my emails are monitored because of my name, nor how to find out.

Bev Smith, Whangarei

comment

long-term salvage operation Michael Fitzsimons

T

he Glenn Inquiry Report into Addressing Child Abuse and Domestic Violence was visited upon us in June, reminding us that the rock star economy has yet to deliver a society we can be proud of.

To our collective shame, we live in a violent society, with rates of domestic assault and child abuse among the highest in the Western world.

It’s hard to believe this if you have a warm, supportive family, live in a leafy neighbourhood, holiday in the sun and enjoy a life your grandparents never dreamed of. But believe it we must because the facts tell the story. Police investigate about 87,000 family violence incidents a year. They respond to a family violence call every seven minutes. Last year Child Youth and Family dealt with 23,000 cases of child abuse. a catalogue of misery Five hundred people came forward to speak to the Glenn Inquiry, making its findings particularly authentic and significant. The 500 included victims, survivors, frontline workers, perpetrators and their families. The Report is their report, a catalogue of misery and despair for the most part, but offering a thread of hope from heroic survivors who show that it is possible to forge a new life against the odds.

Overall the stories are harrowing. Children of course are the most vulnerable, cast adrift in an uncaring universe where the torment is relentless and no-one believes them. The veil of secrecy surrounding domestic abuse means that the problem is surely a lot worse than the statistics suggest. Speaking out requires courage that victims seldom have.

Equally alarming is the extreme difficulty of seeking help, says the

Report. When victims do summon the courage to speak out, they enter a justice system where they regularly face judgmental attitudes, racist and discriminatory behaviour, and are often not believed by services meant to help.

The test of a civilised society is how well it treats its most vulnerable members.

That’s not only enlightened public policy, it’s also our Christian faith. It’s the litmus test of Christian belief. turning the titanic around Child abuse and domestic violence are major national problems in New Zealand, with an inter-generational impact on families. The reasons are many and complex. We now have a sizeable section of New Zealand society who bear the scars of having grown up in abusive homes and violent communities. We have a binge-drinking culture. We have routine failure at school. We have a shameful tolerance of long-term unemployment. We have a disproportionately large prison population

whom we regularly fail to reintegrate into our communities.

We have legions of young people with a shattered sense of cultural identity. We have spiraling inequalities that breed anger and division. Addressing these and other root causes is like trying to turn around the Titanic.

The Glenn Inquiry report seems to have sparked a flurry of new policy from the major political parties. The government is proposing the use of GPS safetyenabled alarms, similar to medic-alert bracelets, to allow victims to notify Police of an emergency. The Labour Party says it will spend $60 million to support front-line services, primary prevention and education.

These measures are laudable but far more is required. A long-term salvage operation is essential, using all means available to sow the seeds of recovery for future generations.

The test of a civilised society is how well it treats its most vulnerable members. That’s not only enlightened public policy, it’s also our Christian faith. It’s the litmus test of Christian belief.

In a society where victims often become perpetrators and perpetrators were frequently victims themselves, let us not delude ourselves that we can stamp our domestic abuse with easy solutions or a belligerent ‘tough on crime’ attitude. In the coming election, let’s listen for a more intelligent and compassionate voice that acknowledges the scale of the problem and is determined to take action, on all fronts, whatever the cost. It’s hard to think of a more important election issue. n Michael Fitzsimons is a freelance journalist and writer, living in Wellington.

5 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

election 2014

being a better world neighbour – how do I see that in 2014?

Being a better world neighbour is about taking into account the fullest dimensions of the human person, not just their economic development.

That will mean helping financially, as well as speaking out for those who are marginalised and discriminated against, and challenging government authority to rethink and change their policies.

Beverley Turnbull

A

bout 30 years ago, when I first became involved with the organisation now known as Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, a priest-friend who had known me since I was a teenager commented ‘Well, I am not surprised — you always wanted to change the world.’

I have never let go of that dream, Pat, but changing the world is a big ask and being a better world neighbour seems more manageable. what I mean?

But what do I mean when I talk of ‘being a better world neighbour’? If my vision of a better world was measured only by ever-increasing economic growth, then being a better world neighbour would require me to focus only on increased buying, selling, and consuming of products. It wouldn’t necessarily require me to consider how this economic growth was impacting on the poor and vulnerable, on individual and collective rights, on political and cultural conditions, on all dimensions of society and the people within it. But I share a wider vision for the future. As Pope Francis said in his recent message for the World Day for Refugees and Migrants: ‘A better world cannot come about while some people are neglected, or left out of the progress around them; nor if the focus of “development” fails to take account of all dimensions of the human person.’

(Pope Francis, ‘Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2014’).

Being a better world neighbour is not just something to be pursued as an individual. Families, communities, 6 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

organisations and nation-states all have responsibilities to be better neighbours — close to home and more widely. This responsibility comes with many challenges but it doesn’t mean we can shut our eyes, close our doors, and pretend there is nothing we can or should do! what I’ve done I have chosen to try to be a better world neighbour through being involved in aid and development organisations. I’ve had the privilege to be able to do this for a number of organisations including Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, the Catholic agency for justice, peace and development — first as a programmes staff member and now as Chair of the Board. In doing this I am well aware of the debates about whether aid really makes a difference to anyone, either in the short or longer term.

But my experiences and visits have convinced me that this is the way I can be a better world neighbour.

In the Mid-and-Far-West regions of Nepal, Caritas is supporting 17 cooperatives in some of the hardest and most remote farming areas to enable families, particularly single mothers and other vulnerable and marginalised groups, to improve basic household well-being. Training, and participation in savings groups, help members develop their skills to set up successful small businesses such as a teashop or chicken-rearing, and increases their access to credit. Recognising the dependency of Nepali farmers on the natural environment, participants are

trained in organic farming processes and communities’ engagement in reforestation and forest protection is supported. As well as protecting the environment, this ensures enough fodder to feed their animals and adequate firewood for cooking. Access to health is a serious concern, particularly for women, in remote areas; the project is expanding the reach of medical centres and helping those most in need of healthcare to receive it. Women’s leadership is developed within the cooperatives, empowering them to address social concerns in their communities.

Tangible measures of improvement in income, health and family well-being, plus participants’ stories and case studies confirm that this programme, like many others around the world, is making a difference. the scandal of poverty As Pope Francis recently explained, while encouraging the development of a better world we cannot remain silent about the scandal of poverty in its various forms. ‘Violence, exploitation, discrimination, marginalisation, restrictive approaches to fundamental freedoms, whether of individuals or of groups; these are some of the chief elements of poverty which need to be overcome.’ (Pope Francis, ‘Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2014’) changing marginalisation Marginalisation, which is one example of injustice, is often more acute for rural youth, women, and persons with physical impairments. In the

Mud-wall greenhouse under construction in Ladu village, Afghanistan.

[Photo courtesy of Catholic Relief Services, Afghanistan]

Solomon Islands there is a vocational training centre working with young deaf people. In addition to technical and vocational training across a range of skills, there are literacy and numeracy classes, and students and staff are taught sign language. At the end of their four-year course, young men and women are leaving the Centre with the skills and basic equipment they need to support themselves and their families. But of equal importance: they return home to a marked shift in their relationship with their community, and with the self-confidence to play an active role in the future. extent of self-interest?

Injustice is often at the heart of conflict and wars; efforts to find and provide just responses to the needs of individuals and families within and across societies will reduce domestic and transnational insecurity and violence. Sometimes being a better world neighbour is also in one’s own interest, as we live in a world of increasing interaction and interdependence.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade acknowledges that good development outcomes are good for New Zealand, the Pacific, Asia and further afield. ‘New Zealand’s assistance for international development is integral to New Zealand’s wider international engagement. It is a vital pillar of our foreign policy that draws together and helps reinforce

our development, diplomatic and trade objectives.’ [MFAT website] Taking account of one’s own national or organisational interests doesn’t stop one being a better world neighbour; it depends on the extent to which selfinterest determines the priorities and levels of support. sharing government focus?

Non-Government Organisations do not always share the Government’s focus on national interest but there are times when priorities coincide. New Zealand Defence Force personnel stationed in Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan, as part of the international peace keeping force, also engaged with civil reconstruction work supported by NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Some New Zealand NGOs are also supporting development programmes in the Province. attending multiple challenges Families in rural Bamiyan in Afghanistan face multiple challenges — degradation of natural resources, low agricultural productivity, and few opportunities for income generation in the rugged mountains of their homeland. Since 2011, Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand has worked in partnership with NZ MFAT and Catholic Relief Services (the equivalent of Caritas USA) in remote villages in Bamiyan Province.

So far, 160 hectares of land have

been protected and soil and water conservation techniques are being used, which has increased vegetation density by 86 percent on these formerly barren hillside slopes. This is vital for the livestock that families rely on for food and income throughout the year. Vegetable production activities provide families living far from markets with a previously unavailable supply of vegetables. Farmers have formed enterprise groups which work together to develop business plans based on market demand and profit analysis, and now collectively produce and sell potato, garlic and handicrafts, which has led to increased income for group members.

The programme also supports education (particularly for girls and young women) which is a real challenge because of the terrain, insecurity and distance to the government schools.

Teachers have been trained, and 23 classes have been established in 15 remote rural communities.

When an emergency happens, such as a cyclone or famine, media stories and photographs draw our attention, emotions and donations to being a better world neighbour; when needs are long-term and less newsworthy, such as in the examples above, they can slip from our minds.

But being a better world neighbour goes further than simply giving time or money to support programmes.

It is also about speaking out with and for those who are marginalised, or living in poverty, or suffering violence, discrimination or repression. It is about challenging those ‘in authority’ to look again at what they are doing and why. It is about knowing what sort of world one wants to be part of; and then taking personal and collective responsibility for helping this come to fruition. n Beverley Turnbull has been involved with a number of aid and development organisations including Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand – first as a programme’s staff member and now as Chair of the Board. She lives in Napier.

7 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

disarmament

let’s not be paralysed by big threats to life on earth In the light of recent conflicts, disarmament is an issue whose time has come again. The writer gives us a way forward to make this issue real and relevant for New Zealanders.

N

uclear war and the effects of climate change seem such big issues that it is common to feel powerless when faced with them.

But they will be resolved positively only by the actions of most of the people, not just the politicians and diplomats.

In terms of action for nuclear disarmament, New Zealand has shown that no matter how small a nation we are, we can make our voice heard. Remember the frigate sent by Norman Kirk into the Pacific, protesting against the testing of nuclear weapons there. Recall our world-first legislation declaring New Zealand to be free of nuclear weapons and banning them from our waters. They were important: the tests in the Pacific did stop as did the visits from nuclear submarines that may or may not have been armed with nuclear weapons.

My concern is that New Zealand has taken to resting on its disarmament laurels. We are playing only a minimal role in international fora, even though offered chances to say much more. We have let our message be diluted, even sidelined. a recent wake-up call We had a wake-up call recently when Angela Kane, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations visited New Zealand. She made five speeches, all of which are available on the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs website (UNODA).

While Angela Kane praised New Zealand for its work in disarmament, her message made me very much aware of how far we have to go.

In 1970 the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NNPT) entered 8 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

into force. By 1995, 190 nations had signed up to the Treaty, including the nuclear weapons countries of UK, USA, China, Russia and France. India, Pakistan, Israel and South Sudan did not sign the treaty and North Korea withdrew from the process. This was a brilliantly balanced treaty. Those nations without nuclear weapons gave up the right to develop their own nuclear weapons (non-proliferation), in return for the five nations with nuclear weapons agreeing to rid themselves of these weapons. balance with flaws But while there was a clear balance, there were two major flaws. No timeline was placed on the disarmament process and nor was there an ability for an independent body to verify what weapons had been destroyed and which developed.

Without verification it is difficult to find accurate facts on how many nuclear weapons actually exist. In 1987 it was estimated by researchers that there were about 62,000 nuclear

Marian Hobbs

Marian Hobbs

weapons in the world. Today that number is believed to be fewer than 20,000. That sounds positive, BUT this cannot be verified.

Yes, treaties have been signed between USA and Russia that set limits on the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons. These were the nuclear weapons that were essentially long range and aimed at targets continents away. But there has been no attempt to negotiate the reduction of the much more numerous non-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons. These are shorter in range and are delivered by planes, ships, submarines. The planes and nuclear weapons are stored in a range of countries throughout the world — the nuclear umbrella. So countries which do not have nuclear weapons host the weapons and their delivery mechanisms, of the five nuclear powers.

It is that nuclear umbrella that New Zealand opted to stay ‘unsheltered’ by. fewer modernised weapons There may well be fewer weapons, but they are being modernized at great cost.

In the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Obama administration indicated that the US Air Force would retain the capability to deliver both nuclear and conventional weapons as it replaced ageing F-16 aircraft with the new F-35 Joint Striker Fighter and a ‘full scope’ life extension for the B61 bomb, the weapon that is currently deployed in at least six European states, ‘to insure its functionality with the F-35’. These are not the plans of a nation preparing to disarm.

And neither are the expensive plans for the replacement of the UK Trident submarines, which carry the missiles and nuclear bombs. The cost

of replacing the Trident is estimated at $NZ50 billion, in a country where the Tory government has cut social spending, particularly in housing.

So we live in a world where there is no honest, strong attempt to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It is not just that those countries, Pakistan, India and Israel, who did not sign the NNP Treaty, have since developed nuclear weapons, but it is that the five nuclear powers, who all have permanent seats on the UN Security Council, have made no real steps to disarm. And so many others host their planes, bombs and ships in order to feel safe under a nuclear umbrella. strange logic And that ‘feeling safe because your ally has nuclear weapons’ is the strangest logic of all. The recent conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, hosted by the Norwegian government in March 2013, laid out clearly that ‘no state or international body could adequately address the humanitarian emergency caused by a nuclear weapon detonation; that nuclear weapons have a demonstrated devastating immediate and long-term effect; and that such effects will not be constrained by national borders and will have regional and global impacts.’

This report entitled Reaching Critical Will is available on the site of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

There is nowhere on earth to shelter from a nuclear weapon detonation; and the weapons are much more powerful than those dropped on Japan in 1945.

But can we do anything? YES! New Zealand citizens supported two Prime Ministers, Kirk and Lange, in their strong stands against nuclear

warfare. They did not leave it with the politicians. Up and down the country communities declared themselves nuclear-free. There were kayaks against submarines in Auckland Harbour. The stand against nuclear weapons became part of our NZ identity. Without that buy-in and support from communities, the policy and legislation could well have been overturned. Brash tried, but he came up against community strength and this led to his downfall.

We all need, however, to make this a live issue again. New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has downsized its disarmament division. Look at their website and you will observe that there have been no updates to disarmament speeches since 2010! John Key has had several opportunities at UN meetings to focus on disarmament.

He has shown an understanding of the horrors of nuclear bomb detonation, but has not taken the opportunity to raise the issue of a timetable for universal nuclear weapon disarmament.

Maybe he was nervous of effects on trade or on our campaign for a seat on the Security Council.

We as citizens need to push this issue to the forefront of the political agenda. Trading with US or China will be irrelevant in a world damaged by nuclear war. election issue Invite Members of Parliament/candidates to state how they would advance this goal of a nuclear weapon free world. Ask them if they are members of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) As Angela Kane observed in Dunedin, the notion of disarmament has become a taboo. Instead nations, including New Zealand, have focused

on non-proliferation: that is, no more states or groups gaining access to nuclear weapons, while ignoring the other part of the bargain, disarmament. We have done this because we do not want to annoy those with the nuclear weapons!

But sometimes there are little surprises in the world! The referendum in Scotland about its independence has some interesting consequences!

The Scottish National Party (SNP) wants to go nuclear-free and therefore does not want to continue to host the British nuclear fleet at Faslane. At the same time, activist citizens in the port towns of the south of England have made it clear that they too do not want to host these fleets near their homes.

There could be a serious problem for this nuclear fleet!

No one wants to be too close to the weapons — so our story must be that nowhere can we shelter from the effects of nuclear detonation. keep pushing and supporting We have wonderful NZers working throughout the world on these issues: Alyn Ware, General Secretary of PNND and Mary Wareham, who worked so effectively against cluster bombs.

They need our support. Our politicians need to know that this is still a real issue for us in New Zealand. We must not rest on past actions, but keep pushing for a world free of such weapons of mass destruction. New Zealand has the credibility to lead the opposition: all we need are the will and energy to make this a major priority in our diplomatic work. n Marian Hobbs is a former Minister of Disarmament and Arms Control in the Clark Government (2002-2005). She has recently returned from living in the United Kingdom.

9 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

palestine - israel

time to share the land?

Out of a short history of the Palestinian people and their land, the dominance of Israel in so many ways over this people is clear. The writer asks pertinent questions about the future of the Palestinian people.

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he world has watched in horror in the past month as another Israeli bombardment of Gaza takes the lives of many hundreds of Palestinians and injures so many more with no truce in sight, much less a ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was reported as ruling out ‘full Palestinian sovereignty’ and ‘deriding the US approach to Israeli security’ in a speech in Hebrew on 11 July that was not widely reported. The Times of Israel editor David Horowitz said ‘it should have been’ as the PM spoke with ‘unprecedented candour’ [www. timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-finallyspeaks-his-mind/#ixzz37MwCAeGF].

Today’s racially-fuelled violence can almost certainly be traced to the Zionists’ mission early last century to ethnically cleanse Palestine — to clear the land for Jews.

Just 70 years ago, the State of Israel did not exist, unlike the nation it sought to obliterate. Occupancy of Palestine goes back some 20 generations for some Palestinian and a few Jewish families yet the idea of a nation state for Jews was formulated in the late 1800s in the minds of a small group of Zionists who were looking for a home for those Jews persecuted in their home countries — in biblical terms the Zionists were given a ‘promised land’ as Britain enshrined Lord Balfour’s declaration in 1917 promising the establishment of ‘a Jewish national home in Palestine’. This ‘most notorious document in the history of the Middle East caused nearly 90 years of death and disruption … yet it was issued as calmly as if it were granting planning permission for a new bus shelter …’ [Karl Sabbagh Palestine: a Personal History 2006, pp107–108].

10 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

Cecily McNeill Balfour paved the way for the British Mandate which gave the British control of the territory, once the Ottoman Empire relinquished it, until its hasty withdrawal in May, 1948.

It is important to see the current conflict in Gaza and, arguably, in the whole of the Middle East, in this context. In the 1920s when Britain, under pressure from the Zionists, was pondering the issue of Palestine, Palestinians comprised 90 percent of the population yet they were prepared to set aside democratic principles of majoritarian politics to allow parity with the newcomers who, instead, wanted still more land. This desire resulted in half the indigenous people being driven out and half their villages and towns destroyed — just a few managed to return [Ilan Paape, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, p.9].

Palestinian uprisings in 1929 and 1936 reflected anger at Britain’s failure to honour promises of parity in the face of Zionist demands for, by 1942, an exclusively Jewish presence in Palestine [Paape, 2006, pp 14-15]. terrorism The Israeli government claims to be protecting its citizens from ‘Arab terrorism’ and the Gazans have indisputably retaliated with rocket fire.

Theologian Lloyd Geering, in his booklet Who Owns the Holy Land (2001), gives three main ingredients behind more serious acts of terrorism, • ‘A long-term grievance in which people believe they have moral right on their side; • People finding themselves to be relatively powerless in the face of an overpowering enemy; • Finding that the world at large, including international

organisations like the UN, ignores their grievance or is unable to do anything effective about it’ [p 56].

Describing a beating he received from Israeli soldiers one night, one of many meted out to inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza, a Palestinian man asked, ‘Is it any wonder people throw stones at soldiers?’

In the 1940s, with the Jewish population still only around five percent, the man who has become revered by Israelis as the architect of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, was clearly thinking of boosting Jewish settlements in UN-designated Arab territory. In 1948 there were 30 such enclaves and Paape says an extended meeting with his consultants discussed building more settlements between them and Jewish-designated areas.

In his diary, Ben-Gurion reveals his hard-line thinking in a summary of the January 1948 meeting, ‘There is a need now for strong and brutal reaction [in response to ‘Arab military action’]. We need to be accurate about timing, place and those we hit. If we accuse a family — we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this is not an effective reaction. During the operation there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty.’ [Paape, p 69]. united states support Israel’s actions in Palestine in the past half century have had the full weight of the US behind them — Israel has received the largest annual portion of US military aid since 1976 (almost $US3 billion a year since 1985). This has enabled Israel to develop sophisticated weaponry while Gaza must rely on relatively crude rockets with no targeting mechanism.

settlements There has been widespread mourning throughout the country for the three Israeli settler teenagers kidnapped and killed on 12 June and the Palestinian teen burned alive in retaliation a fortnight later. The families on both sides have condoled with each other which shows that not everyone agrees with Netanyahu’s crackdown on ‘terrorists’.

But Israel’s building of settlements which encroach on Palestinian territory on the West Bank, to where it has encouraged Jewish immigration from Russia in particular, must be seen as provocative. Palestinians can look up to the settlements on the hills around Bethlehem and see the lush greenery denied to them because Israel cuts the water supply to Palestinian towns for half of every month.

Smooth roads lead up to the settlements but cars with green (Palestinian) number plates are restricted to substandard roads peppered with all kinds of road blocks and subject to flying checkpoints.

Gaza’s 1.6 million people have been imprisoned on this narrow strip since 2006.

Since the middle of June when a rampaging hunt for the kidnappers of the three Israeli teens began, the whole of the West Bank has been in lockdown.

Nursing director at the Caritas Baby Hospital Sr Erika Nobs wrote in an email on 4 July, ‘Today, the first Friday in Ramadan, is usually hectic because hundreds, if not thousands, of Muslims from Hebron and Bethlehem pass through the checkpoint near us. Today there is no movement, all is dangerously calm, because Israel has locked us all in … Hebron is closed in since the bodies of the three young Israelis were found somewhere nearby. As a result we have fewer patients and staff from that area cannot come to work.’ genetic consequences Today the families of the West Bank and Gaza are paying dearly for exposure to the metals contained in armaments. Earlier this year (January 2014) a report in the Lancet gave results of a survey of babies

Manar Shomaly who has just graduated with a Masters in International Cooperation and Development says the university is widely respected for the quality of its graduates and its strong masters programmes.

The Gaza Strip: 1.6 million people in 360 square kms

born in Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital in 2011, showing an abnormal number with genetic deformities that can be traced to their mothers’ exposure to high levels of the metals found in explosives in the atmosphere. Scientists have found a direct correlation between parents’ exposure to metals from explosives and the likelihood of giving birth to a malformed child. palestinian horizons Meanwhile, there are numerous signs of hope on the West Bank in the ‘oasis of peace’ Bethlehem University is creating for its students and the support the Caritas Baby Hospital gives to mothers as well as to its patients. This is the only hospital on the West Bank where mothers can stay and be involved in the care and recovery of their children.

The hospital has 40 beds for mothers and they can learn life skills in classes around food, nutrition, child care, women’s diseases and related issues.

Sr Erika says the overwhelming concern is genetic diseases that arise from marriage between close relatives.

Children with metabolic diseases become chronically ill and need to return to the hospital often. higher learning Despite the Israeli checkpoints which can turn a 20-minute journey into two hours, Bethlehem University students are determined to pursue their education and show great pride in the university’s reputation.

university extension Sydney-based New Zealander Chris Faisandier has been projectmanaging the development of a newly-acquired building near the university campus. With an eye on a future when Palestinians will have self-determination in a land free of conflict, the university is focusing on tourism and hospitality skills.

He says the new complex will become a teaching restaurant — four-star with five-star service — a cultural centre with a focus on indigenous cuisine.

‘What we really started doing well before this came out was to look at the connect between teaching, research and service … There’s no point in teaching graduates if they don’t work.

‘In the wider Palestinian economy there’s nothing — no manufacture, no fisheries, there’s very little research, no water management … because Israel’s got the lot. The economic hegemony this occupation has brought about is worse than the military presence.’

On the West Bank just before the latest conflict, I found Palestinians unfailingly courteous and welcoming.

Even in 66-year-old refugee camps where bathrooms are scarce, I saw none of the ‘dirty Arabs’ Israel is trying to control. The firing of rockets from Gaza has been labelled a crime against humanity but many times Israel has violated accords. Is it not time for the rest of the world to insist on a diplomatic solution, such as Egypt proposed on 15 July? Palestinian-US intellectual the late Edward Saïd was an advocate of the twostate solution. Isn’t it time Israel learned to share its new-found territory? n Cecily McNeill visited Bethlehem University on the West Bank in early June. Further reading: wel-com.org.nz/ wel-com-articles/4019-dominated-by -the-separation-wall.

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church solidarity

the presbyterian church and early chinese migrants to new zealand The writer portrays the deep and long-term relationships which the Church developed with chinese migrants and how these relationships flourished in unexpected ways.

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he Chinese were the first non-European people to come to nineteenth century New Zealand. In 1865, the Otago Provincial Council twice invited Chinese in Victoria, Australia, to come and rework the Otago goldfields.

The Otago goldrush had begun in 1861, and three years later, there were estimated to be nearly 19,000 miners in Otago. Virtually all were European. But these goldfields were small, and by 1864, the miners were already returning to Australia or rushing to the Wakamarina — West Coast goldfields. By late 1865, there remained 6,000 miners in Otago.

Consequently Otago finances were severely affected, largely dependent upon the gold export tax. Infrastructure and commerce had expanded with the opening up of the goldfields. With many miners departing, the provincial outlook was becoming grim. To recruit more European miners quickly was an uncertain prospect, hence the Provincial Council looked to the 25,000 Chinese miners in Victoria.

The Dunedin Chamber of Commerce reported that the Chinese there had good citizenship qualities.

Nearly all the Chinese in Victoria were part of the remarkable Cantonese stream of goldseekers who went to California, British Columbia and Australia. Those who came to Otago were a much smaller influx, peaking around 4,000. Nationwide, Chinese reached a peak of 5,000 in nineteenth century New Zealand. Goldmining remained their chief occupation till 1901, when 46 percent were still goldmining, mostly in Otago.

The Otago Chinese added value to their presence. Although the remaining 12 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

European miners had the best claims and water rights, the Chinese soon achieved about one third of gold production.

Besides, they were important in road and railway construction, and particularly as farm labour. There was little animosity towards them till the end of the 1870s, when the shallow gold showed signs of exhaustion and the severe so-called ‘Long Depression’ of 1879 to 1896 occurred. Then the Chinese were increasingly cast as undesirable foreign competitors, both in the tired goldfields, and outside too, as they endeavoured to establish other occupations.

. . . it is not surprising that Don required about 20 years to better understand and get closer to his foreign flock, who as sojourners retained their culture.

The Chinese were vulnerable to negative feelings, because they were sojourners (or transnationals), and as such, had not developed firm bonding with the host society. As well, they did not have diplomatic protection till 1909 because of a weak China, enabling the new Liberal Government to reject a Chinese Consulate in 1891.

The agitation against the Chinese became nationwide, initially based on actual or potential competition during hard times. This social situation resembles the present feelings and measures against New Zealanders in Australia, again from adherence to another home

James Ng

and national loyalty, and perceived competition during harder times. But, in the case of the early New Zealand Chinese, the agitation assumed a much greater momentum that fed upon itself and plunged into racism. The telling statistic is that the Chinese population in New Zealand did not reach 5,000 again till 1950. role of presbyterian church In this sad saga, the Presbyterian Church of Otago and Southland (PCOS), followed by the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, played an honourable role. Soon after the Chinese came to Otago, Knox Church in Dunedin raised the vision of a mission to the Chinese. Rev James Copland, head of the Missions Committee, responded favourably and in 1869, the local Synod agreed to form the new mission. This church had already established a Maori Mission and the New Hebrides Mission. Its belief was that the Church should proclaim the Gospel to less advantaged peoples. ‘Such missionary zeal cannot fail to exercise a beneficial influence upon ourselves.’

When the first Chinese catechist from Victoria left in 1877, the Church had difficulty in finding a Chinese replacement. So in 1879, a young school teacher from Victoria named Alexander Don was sent to Canton for two years to learn the language and then undertook theological study, before beginning work among Chinese miners in 1882. He remained the sole missionary to the Otago Chinese till 1913. During this period, he went on extensive inland Otago tours in summer, and he

founded what is now the Dunedin Presbyterian Chinese Church. don’s slow methodical work For comparison purposes, it could take 20 years for a Chinese newcomer to New Zealand to integrate fully into the wider community — to understand fully our language, customs, and way of doing things so as to form strong social networks. Therefore, it is not surprising that Don required about 20 years to better understand and get closer to his foreign flock, who as sojourners retained their culture. Their goal was to save money and repatriate capital to their Chinese homes — like our New Zealanders who go temporarily to the Middle East to work. Most Chinese were not inclined to learn a different religion, just as our New Zealanders do not convert to Islam.

Don, however, gave a great gift to the Chinese namely his meticulous descriptions of their ways. His surviving diaries, his prolific printed articles and books and booklets, and his collection of photographs, are unmatched in any of the gold rush countries of the Pacific rim for their information on the Chinese goldseekers, how early urban Chinese lived in New Zealand, and their Cantonese origins.

Don himself felt that his great achievement was his founding of the Canton Villages Mission (CVM) in 1898. By then it was obvious that New Zealand’s prejudice and discrimination towards its Chinese population would adversely affect any possible conversions among them. So, Don advanced a plan, which, while retaining the current Chinese Mission, would create another mission, the Canton Villages Mission, in the Canton region in China. There, he postulated, Presbyterian missionaries from New Zealand could reside and preach the gospel in the home villages of the Chinese who had come to this country. Don’s persuasive point was that he had already prepared the way by getting to know numerous Chinese here, who would extend goodwill to the CVM missionaries because of knowing him.

Alexander Don [Photo: Presbyterian Research Centre (Archives)]

the panyu mission proposal The Church agreed to Don’s proposal, and the upper Panyu district of Panyu county was chosen as the specific mission area. This was where most of the New Zealand Chinese goldseekers had originated. The pioneer CVM missionary, the young Rev G H McNeur of Inchclutha, went there in 1901.

Don’s plan had envisaged two missionaries but the CVM grew and eventually established a large mission compound in upper Panyu which included a 100-bed hospital, a nursing school and staff residences, separate boarding schools for boys and girls, a missionary centre and missionary homes. Indeed, the CVM was the first major New Zealand project in China. Most of its first generation of men and women were from Otago and Southland. Altogether, 54 men and women served as CVM missionaries.

They were ministers, teachers, nurses and doctors and individuals, like a building supervisor. Four doctors died in service or as a result of it, two ministers became Moderators of the Presbyterian Church of Aoteoroa New Zealand. Significant help was given to the Chinese Christian Church.

In 1901, PCOS united with the northern Presbyterian Church to become the Presbyterian Church of Aoteoroa New Zealand (PCANZ), and all the overseas missions were

continued. For many years, the CVM was the principal overseas mission but taken as a whole, overseas missions absorbed nearly half of the income of the PCANZ, and additional sums went to the Maori and Home missions.

Presbyterian women in New Zealand became closely involved in missions through the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union, and even children were mobilized in mission outreach.

An extensive literature was written on the CVM, authored by CVM members and others. This literature informed the local Church and also, I believe, helped to soften New Zealand attitudes to its Chinese population.

Don, the CVM founder, became the Foreign Missions Secretary from 1914 to 1923, and missionaries wrote how they felt ‘safe’ with him at the helm.

The CVM missionaries stayed with their Chinese collegues at their posts in World War 2, and were interned by the Japanese. After the war, the CVM and other missions in China were banned by the communist government in 1951. But there was one last great service the CVM did for Chinese. During the war, Cantonese families had fled to New Zealand as refugees, but they were bonded to leave after the conflict ended. Two retired CVM missionaries, Revs G H McNeur and H Davies, led the Presbyterian Church and the InterChurch Council to plead with government to let them stay. With visible European support of the refugees’ case, the New Zealand Government concurred. Further, the government went on to formulate a policy to allow more Cantonese families to reunite here, and to encourage them to assimilate and settle as a New Zealand people.

We can see with pride how the Presbyterian Church of Otago and Southland and Aoteoroa New Zealand had responded with honour to a major Christian challenge concerning the early New Zealand Chinese. n James Ng is a Dunedin medical doctor who is an expert in the history of the Chinese people in New Zealand.

13 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

social justice

being ‘real solid’

Shaun Davison

A

visit to New Orleans immediately reveals a vibrant city, with music on every corner and people who are prepared to take time to talk. What is harder to uncover is the systemic poverty and racism that plague many of its inhabitants. That was until Hurricane Katrina exposed these realities to the world. While I was in New Orleans last year, I heard that the Catholic Church was involved in some ground breaking social justice work and had played a major role in the post-Katrina cleanup. I interviewed Tom Costanza from the Office of Justice and Peace about their work and his experiences of working after the Katrina catastrophe. In his soft Louisiana drawl Tom explained:

‘These days my main work is in Catholic parishes developing lay leadership to act on the social mission of the Church. We have a Just Faith programme — an intensive 30-week programme — and over 200 have graduated in the last 4 years.

‘On the social action front we administer a programme called the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

It was started in the 70s by the bishops, in response to the turmoil in the cities.

They wanted to get to the systemic causes of problems and started with the principle that most people in lowincome areas know how to solve their own problems — they just don’t have the resources to solve them. In that way Café Reconcile was developed into what is now a national model. It is a wonderful restaurant. [see interview below]

‘We are also involved in congregational organizing. We work across Catholic, Jewish, Protestant and Muslim congregations on common issues like drug problems, housing, unemployment — that sort of thing.

In fact just last night we had a big meeting, about 500 people from different religious groups and we signed a covenant with the city administration to reduce violence, murder and racism.

‘We also do a bunch of other programmes. We are the prison capital of the world. In Louisiana we incarcerate more people per capita than any place in the world — especially African Americans. So we have programmes aimed at preventing young people ending up in the criminal justice system — restorative justice is a big concept for us. We also work with

Café Reconcile, New Orleans – Interview with Parnell Wilson Café Reconcile is a nonprofit restaurant that provides life skills and job training to youth from at-risk communities in New Orleans. Begun in 1996, it addresses the system of generational poverty that affected many youth. Since opening in 2000 more than 1,000 young people (ages 16–22) have completed the programme and got permanent jobs.

Central to the work at Reconcile is the overriding understanding that while the students arrive facing a vast array of challenges, nonetheless, these young people possess a deep desire to break the cycle and become productive, contributing members of society.

As soon as we walked into Café Reconcile, we were greeted with an extra warm welcome from a young 14 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

woman at the door. We then met our waiter Parnell, a man whose sincerity shone through as he made sure that everything was just right. After the meal I asked Parnell about his life and his role in assisting others in his community. In his calm considered way he replied: ‘Actually, I was a gang member before this programme. I was mainly selling drugs, smoking weed, in and out of jail. This programme has changed my life a lot. If it weren’t for this programme I don’t know where I’d be. They gave me a chance and I stuck with it. After the programme they hired me here and they hired me at another place — Antoine’s* — as a pastry chef.

‘I always wanted to get out of that lifestyle but I had no one to give me a chance. No one would hire me — I

had two convictions, a mouth full of gold, tattoos. They don’t want to give no one like that a job. But that was all that I knew so it was kind of hard to stop.

‘Then when my cousin died in 2011 — that woke me up a lot.

We hung around together everyday.

When he got shot we were in a car together. He was like sitting next to me. I got grazed but he got killed.

Somebody rolled up and it happened so fast. I looked at him — he was dead. That truly got me thinkin’.

‘But I still needed someone to give me a chance. That’s what the programme did, it gave me a chance and I didn’t let go. The programme is for people who can’t find a job or who want to change their life round basically.

adult men and women reentering the community. Recidivism is usually 30 40 percent. Ours is 5 percent.

‘Anyway we were chugging along pretty well in 2005 when this catastrophic event happens. One day we had 800 staff in the field and the next day we woke up and we didn’t know where anybody was. It was pretty surreal. Everybody was displaced. We had to morph into something totally different for about two years.

‘It’s at times like this that the social teaching of the Church is so important. When you saw this devastating picture of the Superdome, people on the interstate, the elderly — who do you serve first? Do you respond? Do you not respond? We applied the principles of Catholic Social Teaching and tried first to look after those who were most vulnerable. We decided it was the elderly. So our first rebuilding programme was for elderly people who didn’t have money to rebuild. We ploughed about 5 million into that.

‘We decided to get into housing development because that was needed.

We had a housing focus for 5 years but our principles were different from other developers. We had a one for one replacement. Disasters bring out the good and

bad. The good brought out a solidarity between all these denominations. It was amazing to see every major denomination working side by side. Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopal, Muslims, everyone — we all came together for about two years solid. Doctrinal differences weren’t important anymore. We had to recover the community.

‘Everybody brought their talents and gifts. You would bring a case and the Mennonites would say, “We can give you free labour.” The Red Cross would say, “Well, we can give you materials.” The Lutherans would say, “We can do the estimates.” It was a nonprofit faith-based response. We created a partnership of all denominations.

‘Those were the good years in terms of building relationships across faiths. We still have the organization.

So when Hurricane Isaac struck — we were present right away.

‘After Katrina some pastors had to decide — do I open the church first or should I help my people first? I think those that said, “I want to help my people first,” they came out better in the end. You get your people back, then you can fix your church. You can have your church in a tent but you can’t do anything if you don’t have your people back.

‘I still hang around with my friends who are doing drugs but I’m not a follower. Some people when they get a job they change up and they don’t go to the same spots. But me I’m still in the same places with the same partners. I still hang with ‘em. They do their thing but I’m not gonna judge them. Still I’m telling them the good stuff — in time I’m taking them with me. That’s my plan, I’m gonna take them up with me! So I have two jobs — here and at Antoine’s. I bake cakes and brownies.

I do that and I look after my daughter too, her name is Paris, she’s three.

It’s a lot of responsibilities. I call in on my mum and dad each day to see that they are alright but I’m not staying with them.

‘Working here in the café I like to give back to the community. I like to serve tables and talk a lot. I tell others of my experiences. Some of my stories I tell — it’s so it will help them get a job too. I am one of the trainers of the other students. You got to give the right example ‘cos they are gonna follow you. I’m helping the others pretty much all the time. I guess I have always been helping people.

‘They have a lot of stuff here for people. Whatever you need you just gotta let them know. It may be help with housing or paying the rent. You just gotta ask and be willing to do what you need to do. It’s like a family.’ n *Antoine’s’ is one of New Orleans’s oldest and most famous restaurants.

‘When people are faced with tragic losses the Church needs to be visibly present because more than anything they need to see a sign of hope. They need the food but they also need to see the church there. So we would set up these food distribution places, usually on the Church grounds. We would give the food, people would meet and talk and share. They would see their Church as visible in a time of tragedy when they most needed some kind of solace or hope for the journey ahead.

‘You know when I heard that you wanted this interview, I wasn’t looking forward to reliving some of those memories. I remember speaking to a triage nurse who said that she had been in disasters all over the world and she had never seen anything like this — never — it overwhelmed every system that we had. But I also remember saying to my colleagues — “this may be catastrophic, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world, at this point of time — than right here.” There was a sense of this was where you should be — real solid. On this day, I should be here. It was surreal and contradictory. We all felt the same way and we will never forget that experience.’ n

Parnell

15 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

16 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

The mystery of true relationship This icon tells a mysterious story where Abraham receives three visitors as he camps by the oak of Mamre. He serves them a meal. As the conversation progresses he seems to be talking straight to God, as if these ‘angels’ were in some way a metaphor for the three persons of the Trinity. In Rublev’s representation of the scene, the three gold-winged figures are seated around a white table on which a golden, chalice-like bowl contains a roasted lamb. The composition is a great circle around the table, focusing the attention on the chalice-bowl at the centre, which reminds the viewer inescapably of an altar at Communion.

On one level this picture shows three angels seated under Abraham’s tree, but at a deeper level it is a visual expression of what the Trinity means. The sense of love and respect in their gaze, the open circle welcoming us in. These individual yet profoundly connected figures invite us to enter the circle and abide with them. We receive the hope of a life of peace, and of a people fully reconciled and in deep relationship one with another.

In the midst of the present conflict and suffering in the world, this image is a consoling promise of what can be if we too relate in the global community with respect, mutuality, openness and compassion.

17 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

spirituality

entertaining elephants Chrys McVey toured New Zealand in 2008. From his 40 years’ experience of living in Pakistan engaging deeply with inter-religious dialogue, he had profound things to say about love for the Other, and how to be a true neighbour. Chrys died suddenly in 2009, but his message lives on and is perhaps never more needed than in the present crisis.

Chrys McVey

I

n Pakistan, almost every farmer will speak of ‘my wife, my village, my land, my children, my buffalo — and my enemy,’ to describe who he is. The one who is different, and often dangerous, is part of his identity. This can, of course, take over, and result in a paranoid society.

But the truth is that the other does enter into our self-definition, and does determine how we act. The other comes to us in different guises: guest, friend, stranger, sometimes enemy (and all linked in their root meaning!). Each meeting is important because in each is — in the thought of the philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas — the ethical challenge to

Chrys McVey at the international meeting of the Dominican family in Prouilhe, 2006.

18 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

embrace responsibility and, ‘by being for others, to be oneself.’

This carries with it risk, daring and surprise. Ancient Persian wisdom advises: ‘Do not welcome elephant trainers into your tent unless you are prepared to entertain elephants!’

The scriptural criterion for good action, according to the Books of the Law and the message of the Prophets was always dependent on how the orphan, the widow and the stranger were treated. Thus, in Deuteronomy: ‘The Lord your God ... is not partial. God executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the stranger, therefore, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (10.17–19). Leviticus is even more specific: ‘When a stranger sojourns with you in the land, you shall do him no wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (19.33–34). And Exodus gives as the reason for not oppressing the stranger, this: ‘You know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (23.9).

Just as the appeal in the Book of Exodus (about knowing the heart of the stranger) is to a shared human experience as providing common ground for relationship, so is Paul’s vision of strangers becoming community rooted in the experience of what God did in Jesus: ‘In Christ, God was making friends with the world ... and entrust[ed] to us the task of making friends’ (2 Cor 5.19).

This is why he entreats the Romans to ‘practice hospitality’ (12.13). But to be ‘hospitable,’ to welcome them as guests, strangers have to be looked at as ‘like us’ in needs, experiences and expectations. ‘It was not sufficient that strangers be vulnerable; hosts had to identify with their experiences of vulnerability and suffering before they welcomed them.’ Perhaps linked to this obligation to hospitality is the awareness of our own culpability as part of a social system that produces strangers, displaced and vulnerable. the promise of dialogue One commentator on the horrific events of September 2001 saw them as a failure of imagination: had the terrorists been able to imagine themselves as passengers on those planes, they would never have done as they did. It is useful to think about what causes a failure of imagination.

Timothy Radcliffe, in an address at Yale University in 1996, saw the university as a place ‘where one learned to talk to strangers.’ He quotes the poet William Blake to expose what he believes to be one of the blocks to communication: ‘May God keep us / from single vision ...’

Singleness of vision leads to delusion, with, as we see from Iraq, bloody consequences. There is a huge difference between imagination and delusion. There is a story from Central Asia about Mullah Nasiruddin, whom a friend came across one night in the middle of the road, under a bright shining moon.

Mullah was on his hands and knees.

The friend asked, ‘Mullah, what are

you doing?’ ‘I’m looking for my key,’ said Mullah. ‘I’ll help you,’ said the friend, and he too got down on his hands and knees and began looking through the dust. After an hour searching, the friend said, ‘Mullah, where did you lose it?’ ‘Over there, by the door,’ said Nasiruddin. ‘Then, why don’t you look over there?’ said the friend. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Mullah (or you can substitute George W Bush), ‘there’s more light here!’

The moral, of course, is that ideal conditions are never there in the search for keys or anything else.

Maybe a laboratory, with controlled experiments, might yield results that could be trusted, but life is much messier and less predictable. And attempts to impose order result in totalitarian violence and the obliteration of individual differences by ethnic cleansing. To break the cycle of violence and vengeance, the scriptural remedy is uncompromisingly clear: ‘Love your enemies’ (Mt 5.43), ‘Extend hospitality to strangers’ (Rom 12.13). ‘the world of the flesh’ The prophet Isaiah (58.6–8) says we are all ‘kin,’ of one flesh and blood, and perhaps never more than now.

While listening drowsily to the BBC one night, I discovered that it can be statistically established that any one of us, at any given time, is only ‘six lengths away’ from any other person: the pope, the president of the US, the queen of England, a peasant in Thailand— because we all know someone who knows someone who knows someone else. Human networking is fascinating but it only makes what is happening now all the more painful and difficult to understand. We have to search for meaning together, for without acknowledging our kinship with those who are different, we will remain with but half an answer.

We are presented today with a disturbing reality. Otherness, the simple fact of being different in some way — Muslim or migrant — has come

to be defined as in and of itself evil.

Miroslav Volf is a native Croatian, who, in his ‘theological exploration of identity, otherness, and reconciliation,’ writes from his own experience of teaching in Croatia during the war.

He contends that if the healing word of the Gospel is to be heard today, theology must find ways of speaking that address the hatred of the other.

He proposes the idea of embrace as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. Increasingly we see that exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality and causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our ever-narrowing circle.

Auden reminds us just how big our circle must be: ‘He is the Life. / Love Him in the World of the Flesh; / And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.’

In light of this, Christians must learn that salvation comes, not only as we are reconciled to God, and not only as we ‘learn to live with one another,’ but as we take the dangerous and costly step of opening ourselves to the other — in Volf ’s words — ‘of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.’ And dancing for joy.

This is not easy, but, as St John Chrysostom reminds us, it is necessary: ‘It might be possible,’ he writes, ‘for a person to love without risking danger — but this is not the case with us!’ Not the case with us, not the case for the 13th century Sufi mystic and poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, who also speaks to the risk involved: I am a man who is not afraid of love; I am a moth who is not afraid of burning!’

Jesus calls us ‘friends,’ tells us to ‘befriend’ and ‘love one another,’ (Jn 15.14–17) in a risky and dangerous embrace which mirrors his own.

Only then can Cardinal Poupard’s speaking of religions as ‘open houses’ that ‘can teach and practise dialogue’ become a description of reality.

When there is ‘respect for the difference and dignity of the whole

person, the love of the truth,’ and ‘the awareness of belonging to the one great family of peoples wanted

by God and called to live under his watch in shared love’ — only then can the dream become reality. n He is the Way. Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness; You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.

Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety.

You will come to a great city that has expected you for years.

He is the Life.

Love Him in the World of the Flesh; And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

You are invited to

THE GOSPEL OF OUR LIVES An interactive Retreat Day led by

JOY COWLEY

to be held 20 September 2014 9.30 am—4 pm at the McFaddens Centre 64 McFaddens Road, Papanui, Christchurch (entry and parking off Redwood Place)

Cost: $40.00 Lunch, morning & afternoon tea provided Registration Form Name: ………………………………………...

Address: ………………………………………. …………………………………………………...

Email: …………………………………………...

Phone: ……………………………...

I require a billet

I can offer a billet 



(please return this form with a cheque for $40.00 to Catholic Women’s Movement P O Box 2184 , Christchurch by Friday 15 August 2014)

19 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

theology and politics of peace

the theology and politics of peace The writer looks at our present situation and contends that realism, not idealism, should lead to a universal rejection of war. It’s a tough call, but one that our globe must face.

Paul Oestreicher

‘...nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’ [Micah 4:3]

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possess and I treasure, not for sentimental reasons but for its powerful message, the belt-buckle of the uniform that my father wore from 1914-1918. He was an officer in the 9th Artillery Regiment of the Imperial German Army, having volunteered to serve his country at the tender age of 18.

GOTT MIT UNS — God With Us — are the words inscribed on that belt-buckle. My father did not for a moment doubt the truth of those words. He was fighting in a just cause, so God must have been on the side of his nation.

Patriotism, love of the Fatherland, and godliness went hand in hand.

The war sermons of the bishops of the Church of England at that time eloquently testify to the fact that they fervently believed in the same message. God, King and Country were in total harmony.

I grew up as the child of German refugee parents who had fled to New Zealand from Hitler’s Germany. I was seven when the Second World War began, the only foreign child in my school and a German one at that.

So, at an early age I had to think hard about war. I had that belt-buckle.

German military belt from WWII

20 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

dealing with contradictions In church, a local branch of the Church of Scotland, the national anthem was sung. Once more, of course, God was on the Allied side, while, as before, the German sermons were encouraging their young men that to die for Hitler and the Fatherland was heroic. By the time I was ten, I’d begun to see the contradiction between what was being preached and what the Bible said.

A lifetime and a Doctor of Divinity later, my childlike insight has not fundamentally changed. From an early age I could not fathom how you could both love your enemies and be prepared to kill them. Theology — as I was to learn much later — is not just for so-called experts. ‘Out of the mouth of babes...’

I was destined, almost by force of circumstance, to be a young pacifist — of sorts. There was a lot of thinking and praying and testing to be done. Why did most Christians not agree with my simplistic conclusions? Was the obvious, that war is by definition diabolical, not necessarily true? I kept asking questions. Was it ok to let Hitler win?

At university I did two things, I started to study politics and I joined the Student Christian Movement, a liberal ecumenical group of young seekers for truth who questioned everything. Jesus remained at the centre of my thinking, but Karl Marx was not far off. I left the Quakers (though not really in spirit) and became an Anglican, a much more down-market and ordinary kind of church as I saw it, and not too dogmatic either.

Not theology alone but also my study of politics helped me to

recognise why the pacifism of the early Church did not or could not survive in mainstream Christendom after the conversion of the Roman Emperor. The faith had become an imperial religion. In hoc signo vincet: it was now possible and indeed necessary, in the sign of the cross, to serve in the emperor’s legions and in God’s name to win. The theologians would have to find a way of justifying the apparently unjustifiable. The ‘just war doctrine’ has held sway ever since Constantine. In practice every war, on every side, has of necessity been held by rulers to be just, from the most bloody crusades to Hitler’s equally bloody conquests. grounds for pacifism What now are the theological grounds for my surviving pacifism?

Not biblical texts. I am no fundamentalist (though I wonder how most biblical literalists manage to be unquestioning patriots in the light of the words of Jesus on this subject).

However, it is the life and death of Jesus that seem to leave me no choice.

He consciously departs from Jewish tradition which in most respects he honours. Yet in this context he firmly declares: ‘You have heard it said, but I say unto you...’ He does what he says. He puts his own life at risk in a classic example, to use a modern concept, of non-violent direct action in the forecourt of the Temple itself.

Jesus is the only victim of this challenge to the corruption of his day and he does pay the price, reprimanding the disciple who wants to defend him with a sword. His model is a lamb, not a lion. The Passion says it all, with forgiveness for his killers.

I could assemble more theological tools. They are unnecessary. following einstein At this point I put aside for a moment my pacifism as an individual act of Christian discipleship, a sacramental sign of the Kingdom of God which both is and is not yet, a position which I held for much of my life, and put on the mantle of a secular political scientist. Political science, though more of an art than a science, is my only academic discipline. If Jesus is my spiritual guru, my chief political mentor is the secular Jew, pre-eminent scientist and wise human being Albert Einstein. A prophet as early as the 1920s, he lectured credibly and with passion that if the human community did not find a way of effectively outlawing war (as individual murder is outlawed), war defined as state or quasi-state organised killing, then, given the development of the technology of killing, whether nuclear, chemical or bacteriological, the human race and nature as we know it would not survive for very long.

From the bow and arrow to the bullet to the hydrogen bomb has been a relatively rapid progression.

Vast resources have gone into the art and craft of killing, fortunes spent and huge profits made. The world’s universities and best brains are up to their necks in this process. Einstein was at the heart of it all and warned that the world might blindly and all too readily go the way of the gadarene swine, the way to self destruction.

Technological progression is going hand in hand with intellectual and moral regression.

Given the will, the abolition of war as an acceptable instrument of policy is as possible as the abolition of slavery. The United Nations Charter already pays lip service to it. To implement it would mean a radical change in public opinion the world over. And it would mean defeating the world’s most powerful lobby, the military-industrial complex. Astonishingly, shortly before

Paul Oestreicher [Photo courtesy Otago Daily Times]

his death, Dwight Eisenhower, first America’s top soldier and then its president, warned the American people of the colossal danger of that complex. He had been at its heart and had the moral insight to blow the whistle while he still lived ... a dying president’s ‘still small voice’.

Maybe, when he’s lost power, Obama will add his. Maybe. mainstream peace movement At the edges, the world’s peace movement exists everywhere. The churches, were they to embrace a post-constantinian world, could be at the heart of that movement.

Then Jesus would feel less of an exile from those who claim to speak in his name. That may be too much to hope for. The secular world is a little more promising. Even NATO has established a peacekeeping academy.

The military might well be ahead of the politicians. They will need to transform their existence into a world supra-national police force, equipped to prevent and end wars but not to fight them. Academic peace research institutes, with less than 5 percent of the resources for war studies, are at work on all these issues. There are no easy answers, but finding them is well within human possibility. At one level this is a deeply spiritual issue, at another it is a huge task for the social

psychologists. We need not be wired, as we still are, to solve conflicts by violence. universal peacekeepers My contention now is that realism, not idealism, should lead to a universal rejection of war. My personal conscience is no longer my primary concern. Unlike some of my pacifist friends I now see a future role for minimally armed peacekeepers, part of a non-partisan world police force. UN blue helmets are a very modest first step in this direction.

Their intention will not be to take but to save lives. Complicated and imperfect, of course, but possible and necessary. This is a human, not a Christian task, though it does enable me to believe that the Sermon on the Mount is the last word in realpolitik.

Many hurdles remain. The psalmist who looked forward to the day when righteousness and peace kiss each other was not wrong.

But that day is not yet. Within the greater peace of God, the lesser political peace, the rejection of war, imperfect though it will be, is necessary and possible. n Canon Paul Oestreicher is a former Director of the Centre for International Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral, England.

21 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

social justice

hiroshima The editor emeritus of Tui Motu traces the development of the atomic bomb, and then asks questions about war, and the place of such weapons of mass destruction in our present society. Should we not be seeking to eliminate such weapons completely and developing international bodies that have the teeth to enforce this complete ban?

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n the first article (July14, Tui Motu) we traced the origins of nuclear fission and the progress of atomic physics under Hitler in the 1930s.

In 1939 just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, a team of scientists in Berlin led by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner had discovered a way of splitting the uranium atom, thus releasing unprecedented quantities of energy. Meitner was Jewish, and in early 1939 she was forced to escape to Sweden from Nazi Germany. En route she called on the celebrated Danish physicist Niels Bohr and spoke to him of this new discovery. Bohr was on his way to visit the United States, where he spread this news to physicists.

Amongst those who heard about it was the Hungarian Leo Szilard, another Jewish refugee and close friend of Einstein. Szilard had been the discoverer of the ‘chain reaction’, whereby the splitting of one atom releases neutrons to split other neighbouring atoms, thus producing an escalating reaction or explosion. Szilard was alarmed at the thought of Hitler being the first to develop an atomic weapon. He at once contacted Einstein, thinking that Einstein’s fame and authority might influence the American government to respond to this appalling threat.

Together they framed a letter, which they sent to President Roosevelt.

The Americans were not at war in 1939, and even though Roosevelt was strongly influenced by Einstein’s letter there was no immediate plan to reply to the German threat. This situation changed in 1941 when America was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbour, and America also entered the European war against Hitler. The fear of the Germans 22 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

Michael Hill developing an atomic weapon loomed as an immediate threat. the technical challenge Why did it take so long to develop a bomb if the key science was already known in 1939? There were two major difficulties. Uranium as dug out of the ground contains more than one isotope.

The commonest form is Uranium 238, but that is not the radioactive variety.

The splittable form is another isotope Uranium 235, but that forms only 0.5 percent of the natural ore.

Isotopes are varieties of the atom of an element containing differing numbers of neutrons but the same number of protons.

Uranium 238 has 92 protons and 146 neutrons, while U235 has three fewer neutrons, which makes it slightly lighter.

Separating out the fissile component U235 from U238 proved to be enormously difficult and costly, because the two atoms are so similar in their properties.

The second difficulty is that once a chain reaction has been triggered, how do you control it and prevent it prematurely blowing everyone to smithereens? Moderators had to be developed to mop up surplus neutrons, and the most effective of these was found to be heavy water (D20).

The actual process of making a bomb is relatively simple. Sufficient uranium 235 has to be isolated from other isotopes of the element to create what is called a ‘critical mass’. This is the least quantity needed to produce enough neutrons by spontaneous splitting to accelerate the chain reaction into an explosion. For pure U235, this mass is about 50 kgs. Once you get to critical mass the problem is to stop the bomb exploding spontaneously,

and this is achieved through the moderators which absorb neutrons. The first bombs consisted simply of two subcritical masses of U235 which were suddenly brought together. the manhattan project By 1941 a close alliance had been formed between the USA under Roosevelt and Britain under Churchill. Churchill sent all his leading atomic physicists to America to join an American team, and this brought about the launch of the Manhattan Project. Producing atomic weapons is difficult and time-consuming.

America poured massive resources into it. Two vast laboratory and factory complexes were constructed: one at Oakridge, Tennessee and a larger one at Los Alamos in the New Mexican desert. Eventually over 100,000 people were employed.

The war in Europe was over before these bombs were perfected, so a decision was made to use them to finish off the war against Japan. That would save the Allies having to launch an invasion of the Japanese islands, very costly in human lives. By July 1945 only three atomic bombs existed. The first was exploded in the New Mexico desert as a test. It proved to be even more successful than expected, producing an explosion the equivalent of 18,000 tons of TNT, enough to destroy a city of half a million people.

Two such cities were selected in southern Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were totally destroyed in early August with the loss of nearly 200,000 lives each, many more than brought about by the notorious fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo. Japan sued for peace, and the war was over. The effects on the Japanese population soon to

Replica of the ‘Little Boy’ (Hiroshima) atomic bomb displayed outside the American Museum of Atomic Energy in the 1960s.

become public were so horrifying that it was piously hoped that this horrendous weapon would prove to be the ultimate deterrent of any future war. the scientists Many of the scientists involved had recurrent misgivings about the whole process, but were persuaded to cooperate by the threat that the Germans or Japanese might develop an atomic bomb first. Moreover the Manhattan project was enveloped in a cloud of total secrecy disturbing to many scientists, who were used to a climate of unhindered publication of all new discoveries.

However, it was wartime, so loyalty to the Allied cause came first.

Two of their leaders, Niels Bohr and Leo Szilard, looked ahead to what would happen after the war was over, as indeed did Einstein. They were convinced that Russia should be informed straightaway about progress being made on the atomic bomb, and that after the war the whole process should be made public. Its control would thus become an international problem. Bohr succeeded in getting an interview with Roosevelt and Roosevelt listened to him. He encouraged Bohr to go to London and talk with Churchill.

Churchill was up to his ears in planning the Normandy invasion and was in no mood to listen to this apparent dreamer. Poor Bohr received a flea in his ear. What Bohr was saying was very far-sighted. The Bomb, he maintained, changed everything: it could be the ultimate disaster or the greatest opportunity.

It was inevitable that the knowledge of how to construct an atomic weapon

would quickly spread, and therefore it was imperative to start planning immediately for international control.

But for Churchill this new weapon was simply a bigger version of what was already being used by Bomber Command. By 1944 Churchill had ceased to trust Stalin, and he suspected that after the war Russia would become as big a threat to world peace as Germany had been. A strong alliance with America was his answer, and together they would have exclusive control over the Bomb.

Szilard pursued a slightly different agenda. He was aware by 1944 that the Bomb would be made. At the same time he realised that the Germans had failed to develop an atomic weapon, otherwise they would have used it. He concluded that the need to complete it had ceased.

So he wrote to Roosevelt imploring him to stop the Project altogether. The letter was found on Roosevelt’s desk after his sudden death in April 1945. It was never acted upon.

The scientist in charge of Los Alamos was the highly gifted American Robert Oppenheimer. He was a supreme organiser, but he was also a man with a conscience. When Bohr visited Los Alamos, Oppenheimer was deeply impressed by what he said.

He too realised that the weapon they were developing would change history forever. The destruction of the Japanese cities deeply distressed him, and he resigned from Los Alamos immediately following the cessation of hostilities.

Later he wrote: ‘… the safety of this nation cannot lie (simply) on its scientific or technological prowess. It

can be based only on making future wars impossible’. This refrain was also taken up by Einstein, and he should be allowed the final word.

Einstein’s first public statement after Hiroshima was in the New York Times (September 15, 1945). ‘The only salvation for civilisation and the human race,’ he said, ‘lies in the creation of world government. As long as sovereign states continue to have armaments and armament secrets, new world wars will be inevitable.’

In 1946 Einstein became the first chairman of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, with Szilard as secretary. Needless to say, in the intensifying climate of the Cold War they were dismissed as starry-eyed idealists, much as Bohr had been. Instead, the world’s precious resources were poured into an armaments race, which no one nation could ever win. working for world peace The alternative to Einstein, is known as MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction: it is what we have lived under for the past 70 years. Is Einstein’s gloomy 1947 prophecy inevitable: ‘As long as there will be man (sic), there will be war?’ We have to ask ourselves whether the threat of total destruction is the only road to world peace.

Is not the ultimate answer for all to work towards the total banning of all weapons of mass destruction and the development of strong international bodies to ensure this happens?

Today’s scientists need to take full responsibility for how their discoveries are used. We, the people and our political leaders, have to listen to the scientists and respect their authority, whether on environmental matters or nuclear weapons. May the spirit of Albert Einstein live on! n Father Michael Hill IC is the editor emeritus of Tui Motu and the author of the recently published biography of the founder of the religious congregation to which he belongs, Blessed Antonio Rosmini. It is entitled, The Persecuted Prophet (Gracewing, 2014).

23 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

the people of god

keeping the peasants in their place The writer looks at our political system, and the possibilities of our forthcoming election. He suggests that the most important thing we can do is to take our dreams and work now to bring them about, rather than waiting for government to do so.

Tony Watkins

The gleaners – now and then

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n these tough economic times, with costs constantly rising, we all need, at the end of the day, to give a brutally frank answer to the difficult question. Can we still afford to be Catholic? Absolutely, you know.

Election year brings another round of clichés, platitudes and promises. The powerless are deluded into putting questions to politicians, and imagining solutions. The powerful have no delusions. It is all about the vote. Unfortunately the vote has nothing to do with democracy. It is simply a mechanism for giving power away. Instead of getting on with doing whatever you think needs to be done, you hope that someone else will do it all for you, while you sit and read a magazine, just as you are now.

This is known as the ‘cargo cult’. The idea that you can sit in the sun and do nothing, because one day a great white ship will come across the ocean and bring you everything you need. This is familiar territory for Catholics. Suffer now in a wretched world, and heaven will come along later to set the balance right.

Rather than finding your own way to God now, the institutional church will tell you how to get there a little later.

24 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

No one is going to vote for a party that confronts the real issues facing the world today. Why should they? Our culture has been successfully built on the exploitation and destruction of the wonderful world God has given us. Dig it up, cut it down, sell it. Our consumer society assumes endless growth in a finite world. We are promised growth as the panacea, when growth is just another name for cancer.

We have invented ‘the economy’, and ‘the economy’ delivers. Affluence in its turn breeds complacency. Everyone is having such a good time destroying the planet that they would have to be mad to vote for anything else. Everyone cherishes their cancer. Every politician knows that.

A few brave individuals bleat on during election year about helping the poor, or justice, or leading an ethically responsible life, but those with power know that the right political promises will reduce them to ineffective silence. Defusing revolutions before they get underway can be easily achieved by giving everyone a voice, but not listening. If you can take power away manifestos can be reduced to talk-back radio.

We now live in a society where voicing personal opinions has become more important than anything else.

Even National Radio is rapidly descending to the sound-bite. Our news focuses on comment rather than fact.

Who will speak for the fish? Who will speak for the forests? In an election year tokenism is the political tool for dealing with any issues that refuse to go away. By getting DoC to save a few high-profile media-savvy birds, or build a few mansion-huts for tourists to shelter from the reality of wilderness, you do not need to admit that the extinction of species is now greater than at any time since human beings have been around. We are on the extinction list. Who is going to vote for God or her creation? That box is not on the ballot paper.

The great advantage of election year is that we can postpone doing anything while we are listening to what everyone else is going to do for us. Instead of going outside and just building a house we can listen to how the profit-driven building industry is going to give us ‘affordable houses’. They will leave us crippled by a hefty mortgage for the rest of our lives, but this is just a price to pay if we want an investment rather than a home. We get the chance to become part of an economic system that is devoted to stopping everyone else from getting a house. That

pushes values up, and keeps that tax-free 14 percent return rolling in. In contrast the ‘right to build’ and ‘owner-building’ feature regularly in English media, even in reputable publications such as the Guardian or the RIBA Journal.

Where does God fit into all this? The Second Vatican Council saw the church as the people of God rather than the institutional church. It was a radical move. Power was moved down to the people. The institution, of course, fought back. The jury is still out.

Beyond election year we should look forward to post-election depression. The realisation that your vote has gone and nothing has changed, even if the government has. You will still be powerless, and someone else will be running your life for you.

Stopping you from building a house.

In these tough economic times no political party can tell you how to find God. You need to do that on your own. Now. Absolutely. You know. n Tony Watkins is an architect and retired teacher of town planning. He lives by the sea in Auckland.

A Heart Broken Open A simple greeting, ‘How are you?’

‘OK thanks,’ come the words in reply. The face tells a different story. A grey face, a bleak face, a face bereft of light.

With little prompting, his story and his tears tumble out. Two sons taken into care, a partner with bipolar disorder now hospitalised, health so broken he can hardly walk. He’s waiting for a hip replacement, four years down the list. The list goes on. Earthquake-broken house, broken TV – his solace in life – broken man, broken-hearted.

The flotsam and jetsam of life. Flotsam: floating wreckage from a ship.

Jetsam: cargo thrown overboard, jettisoned, to lighten a ship’s load during a storm. A broken wreckage sinking, a ship in a storm, a man broken by loss.

How to respond? I recall words by retreat guide, Fr Michael Gormly, “We are called to be the compassion of God.” Compassion: to suffer with, vulnerable enough to have our hearts broken open . . .

— Wendy Kissel

25 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

scripture

return and reconciliation Matthew 16:13-20 and 16:21-27 21st and 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time – 24 and 31 August 2014

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n his early ministry in Galilee, Jesus was interpreter, healer and reconciler on behalf of burdened humanity (4:12-10:42). Later, he encountered misunderstanding and opposition (11:1-16:12). Jesus is not the Messiah they were expecting. A turning point comes in Matthew’s gospel. Jesus moved away from Galilee to focus on the formation of disciples who will become the new people of God, the Church. This new direction will lead to Jerusalem.

From the Sea of Galilee, Jesus and the disciples walked about 32 kilometres north to Caesarea Philippi near the headwater of the River Jordan on the southern slope of Mt Hermon.

Sovereignty underlies this scene.

Caesarea was named after the Roman emperor. Its buildings, activities and history were associated with imperial claims and power. In a large rock-faced cliff was a shrine to Pan, god of shepherds and flocks. Now a very different shepherd-ruler comes to shepherd and govern God’s people. God’s purposes for Jesus and his disciples are affirmed and contest the purposes of the Empire. to build Throughout the Scriptures, ‘to build’ speaks of establishing a people (Jer 12:16; 31:4) especially in the sense of restoring God’s people after their exile in Babylon. Jesus, son of David (Mt 15:22), whose reign is about lifting burdens from the marginalised, has been building a community since he called the disciples (4:18-22; 10:1-4), through his teaching (chs 5-7, 10, 13) and his actions (chs 8-9). ‘My church’ is the community built by Jesus and committed to him. In this tradition, Pope Francis took the name of Francis of Assisi whom God instructed ‘to rebuild my church.’

26 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

Icon of Peter and Paul by Michael Galovic (Private collection, used with permission. Photo: Peter Fleming)

The word, ‘church’ (ekklesia cf 18:18) was used for the assembly or congregation of the people of God (Deut 9:10; Josh 8:35; 1 Kings 8:65).

This term was also used in politics. In Greek cities, the ekklesia was a duly summoned civic and political assembly of citizens along with a council. Its political, cultural and social role was to gather, to administer and reinforce the status quo of the reign (basileia)

of Rome. ‘My church,’ then, suggests an alternative, a counter society, the people of God who under God’s guidance throughout their history in Israel, continues in the reign (basileia) of God. rock Frequently, Peter acts as spokesperson. Here in this blessing, (Mt 16:17-19) found only in Matthew, his change of name is explained.

Petros in Greek (the rock) and Cephas in Aramaic are a play upon words. ‘You are the rock’ (petros, v 18) contrasts with the rock who became a stumbling block later: ‘You are a stumbling stone (skandalon) to me’ (v 23). Peter objects because Jesus must go to Jerusalem to suffer, die and be raised (v 21). Peter became an obstacle causing one to trip and fall (18:6, 7). keys In the popular imagination, the image of ‘the keys of the kingdom of heaven’ is not related to its biblical origin. ‘The keys of the house of David’ were placed on the shoulders of Eliakim (Is 22:20-25) as they had been on the one whom he replaced. Eliakim was delegated authority in the royal household. Peter in being given the keys is given delegated authority in the household of God. Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, who by their interpretation of the Torah, locked people out of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 23:13).

The Church is being given the teaching authority for when Jesus will be absent, to interpret the Torah as he did on the Mount of the Beatitudes (chs 5-7). that they may be one In his desire for the unity of his Church, Jesus does not compose a sermon or give a commandment. He prayed that they may be one (John 17:22-23). As diverging interpretations of Peter, the rock, have developed over the centuries, it is increasingly recognised that the rock has been indeed a stumbling stone. Fifty years ago on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Pope Paul VI met Athenagoras, the Patriarch of Constantinople. No such meeting had happened since 1054 when, for complex reasons, Eastern and Western Christianity went their separate ways. Dialogue has followed, to seek to unite what John Paul II called ‘the two lungs of the Church.’ The 2007 Ravenna document of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church called for ‘the role of the bishop of Rome in the communion of all the Churches to be studied at greater depth.’ They affirmed that ‘the fact of primacy at the universal level is accepted by both West and East.’

In his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, John Paul II invited all Christian communities to help ‘find a way of exercising primacy which, in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation.’ In 1976, the then Cardinal Ratzinger admitted that the form that the primacy developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is not the only possible way of operating and therefore is not binding on all Christians. He stated: ‘Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium.’ The way Pope Francis is shaping the primacy would not seem to be new but a return to an

earlier form of the ministry of primacy.

And speaking of return and reconciliation, what are the implications of the claim of Raymond Brown, the great scholar of John’s gospel, that the Church would be very different today if the way that the Church is portrayed in that gospel had been given more attention?

In John’s gospel, for example, Peter made no confession of Jesus’ messiahship. Instead, it is Martha who professes: ‘Yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world’ (11:27).

Michael Galovic’s icon of the reconciliation of Peter and Paul is a treasure in the home of a friend of mine who has both these names. My friend was drawn to this icon because it expresses what he tries to do in his work and communities — bring people together, reconciling for wellbeing. Peter and Paul had disagreed rigorously in word and action, and even bitterly, in their search for truth. The art form of the icon invites the viewer into the mystery of God. The moment of Peter and Paul’s leaning towards each other and embracing is captured poignantly in the icon. The viewer is drawn to leaning towards and embracing sisters or brothers individually and communally as faith communities and as separated Church. n Kathleen Rushton is a Sister of Mercy working in adult education in the Diocese of Christchurch.

Author’s note: the material on papal primacy is inspired by Paul McPartlan’s little book: A Service of Love: Papal Primacy, the Eucharist, and Church Unity (Catholic University of America Press, ISBN 0813221358, Paperback, 100 pp).

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book review

expanding our minds Book: The Stardust Revolution: The New Story of Our Origin in the Stars Jacob Berkowitz Prometheus NY, 2012 Reviewer: Trish McBride

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his book broadened my horizons — or more accurately blew them to smithereens! A literal horizon is the boundary line between earth and the heavens, and this book is the story of the dismantling of that boundary by astronomer-scientists of the last half century or so. That complex science can be an enthralling read to someone who only did it to fourthform level is an astonishing feat of narration. Berkowitz calls his story extreme genealogy: the primary question is ‘where did we come from?’

I was attracted by the subtitle: the New Story of Our Origins in the Stars. When one comes from a scriptural/ theological perspective, such a theme has to be relevant. Most 21st century Christians, in Aotearoa New Zealand anyway, have no trouble integrating evolution as propounded by Darwin into their theology, or the Big Bang that preceded the theory by a few billion years.

The same events or processes can be variously described by poems or newspaper reports or scientific treatises.

Syrian refugees in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. Photo: Cordaid/Evert-Jan Daniels.

“We Want to go home” say syrian refugees living in lebanon

More than one million people added to a population the size of New Zealand, in a land area less than that of Northland. While they wait and pray for peace to come, they need our solidarity and support.

Donate to the Syria Regional Crisis:

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Online at www.caritas.org.nz Phone 0800 22 10 22 (office hours) to donate by credit card Phone 0900 4 11 11 to automatically donate $20 from your phone account Post a cheque to Caritas, PO Box 12-193, Thorndon, Wellington, 6144.

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28 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

So I’d thought of Earth as a hunk of rock, where life mysteriously began in a soup, perhaps with Divine intervention at some crucial points.

But Jacob Berkowitz and his gallery of star-gazing scientists have caused another big bang in my awareness (I looked for Kiwi Beatrice Tinsley, but she doesn’t get a mention). He traces the discoveries that in their birthings and dyings the stars manufacture the basic chemical elements of which absolutely everything is made; that the universe is expanding; that the space between the stars is filled with cosmic dust; that in that dust is water, all our elements and organic traces; that life was probably seeded on to primeval earth by this dust; that we are thus literally made of this stardust; that other solar systems have planets, and the hunt is on for one or more in their ‘Goldilocks’ (not too hot, not too cold) zones for an earth-like one where life is possible; that there are now speciality disciplines of astrophysics, astrochemistry, astrobiology and astrogeology.

So what does all this mean in theological terms?

God gets a respectful mention or two along the way.

One scientist is quoted as saying if God didn’t do it like that, God missed a good bet. But for me the profound moment comes when the author asks a scientist if he could define life. The reply: ‘Life is love.’ The impulse to connect and combine is ‘built into’ the components of atoms, and thereby into everything else including us. All in all, an incredibly more awesome Creation story than Adam and Eve! But then what? How does this new knowledge get incorporated into the on-going Christian story? How does it modify or affirm the language used to transmit this story? If the life of Jesus is pivotal to the human story, he must be an evolutionary turning point. He revealed our essential one-ness with each other and with God. Now science is providing the hard-wiring for all that.

Thank you to the patient, methodical men and women, past and present, who study stars. And thank you to Jacob Berkowitz for one of the most exciting bits of learning I’ve had for years! It has left me, two readings later, with a high of cosmic proportions! n

film review

the cross without redemption

Film: Calvary Director: John Michael McDonagh Reviewer: Paul Sorrell

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he mainspring of the plot is laid out for us in the first few minutes of the film: a man enters the confessional of Fr James Lavelle, a priest in rural County Sligo, and tells him his terrible story of sexual abuse at the hands of a cleric. As the offender is now dead, he promises that he will meet Fr James the following Sunday on a local beach, where he will kill him. ‘Nobody would care if I killed a bad priest, but to kill a good priest like you would really be noticed.’

From this point, Fr James assumes the role — reluctantly yet freely — of the sacrificial victim who will atone for the sins of his Church.

Fr James (Brendan Gleeson) is indeed a good priest — wise, compassionate, nonjudgmental, fully focussed on the needs of his people. However, his personal world swiftly descends into a maelstrom of suffering and evil. Everyone around him is either deeply troubled or living vicious, self-centred, empty — or simply bizarre — lives. Although the film is billed as a black comedy (as well as a whodunnit), any laughs are few and far between. Calvary is Father Ted

meets Northern Exposure, with a dash of Tarentino for good measure.

As each day ticks away in what Fr James imagines to be his last week on earth, one disturbing encounter succeeds another. Calling on the local police chief to borrow a revolver, he is met by the local male prostitute, a young man reduced to a state of embittered depravity as the result of clerical abuse as a child. He visits Michael, an arrogant young businessman (Dylan Moran), who demonstrates his detachment from his wealth by urinating on a Holbein painting. Fr James’s daughter — he is a widower — is deeply disturbed by the loss of both her parents — one to an

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early grave, the other to the Church — and is a suicide survivor.

These are not everyday parishioners, even if the northwest of Ireland setting is beautiful and haunting: Ben Bulben looms over the action, suggesting how the Catholic Church and its sins lie heavy on the landscape. The only way I could make any sense of this disturbing but brilliant film was to see its procession of Boschian grotesques as an emanation from Fr James’s tormented mind. (Significantly, we only see the other characters when he is present.)

As this good priest moves inexorably towards his personal calvary, redemption is still a long way off. n AUCKLAND Saturday, 14 February 2015 Mothers, Sisters, Daughters – Standing on Their Shoulders $65 Early-bird, Latecomers $80 Mercy Spirituality Centre (09) 638-6238 info@mercyspiritualitycentre.org.nz www.mercyspiritualitycentre.org.nz

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29 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

comment

Crosscurrents Jim Elliston the mind boggles It is commonplace to emphasise the importance of increasing our country’s wealth. Also important is the measurement of that wealth through statistical analysis in a manner that is both consistent year to year, and comparable with the method used by other countries. A Business Herald report notes that the UK is aligning its method to conform to EU requirements; this will mean a substantial increase in reported wealth. About $NZ19 billion of this increase will result from the first-time inclusion of productivity generated by those two significant business activities known as prostitution and drug-dealing.

magic meals Can we expect that it will be possible to order a device to prepare a meal from scratch? Maybe. Sort of.

Eventually. Professor Richard Archer, head of Massey University food, nutrition and health, in a recent piece in the NZ Herald about preparing for the future, mentioned 3D printing: ‘One day inevitably yes … but don’t expect that within 100 years you can make a good analogue of a familiar food. Instead the printer will make foods that don’t exist yet.’

‘In a generation or two there will be billions of people … largely living in cities … food will need to be processed and delivered to them … protein, so inefficient to produce, will be expensive as agricultural land and water become scarce. NZ will be selling the means by which others can extend their vegetable proteins. We will sell them nutrition and flavour and binding properties.’ two eyes and a smile . . .

Saint John XXIII has gone down in history as the ordinary man who astonished the world by launching the Catholic Church into one of its 30 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

most momentous epochs by calling the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. But according to Cardinal Capovilla to describe Pope John all you need to say is: ‘Two eyes and a smile, innocence and goodness’.

Pope John’s personal secretary has often highlighted how, rather than cultivate nostalgia, our new Saint was wont to look towards the future. He explained: ‘We are not custodians of a shrine, a reliquary or a museum.’ synod opportunity A significant Vatican II achievement was the affirmation of ‘collegiality’ — the early Church’s recognition that all the bishops shared with the Pope the responsibility for government of the whole Church. In recent times this was neglected in practice. There was strong resistance from the Curia and many local bishops to formalising the concept. Some of the latter no doubt realised that logic demands a modified form should exist at diocesan level. In the event, room was left for the Pope to decide whether this participation should be in the form of advice or actual decision-making.

Subsequent history shows the former won out.

Pope Francis has made it clear that he wants there to be true participation. There is a Vatican department established to organize synods.

In a formal communication to its Secretary General, Cardinal Parolin (who is also Secretary of State and has just been appointed the ninth member of the group of Cardinals working closely with Francis on reform of Church governance), Francis wrote ‘there is urgent need to strengthen the structure of synods so they can be effective in ensuring real collegiality.’ He has taken a personal interest in progress regarding this year’s synod. He placed Parolin’s name second on the list of new cardinals he

recently appointed, with the prefect of the CDF at number three. This changed a Curial pecking-order that stretches back to the 16th century.

The recently issued working document (Instrumentum laboris) for this year’s synod is meant to highlight real life situations of people whom the Church is called to evangelize. It not only reveals that the crisis in the family is profound, complex and global, but also that the Catholic Church itself is in serious difficulty, even crisis, as it realizes that much of its teaching is neither understood nor accepted, and that it currently lacks an adequate pastoral response to this situation.

This year’s synod aims to propose solutions for next year’s follow-up synod to determine the Church’s response.

The two-pronged approach allows for much greater preparation and participation by the faithful at large.

There are several points in the document that allow the opportunity to undertake a serious examination of some major issues. One (No 875) highlights the enormous damage arising from clerical failures such as paedophilia, lavish life-styles, clericalism etc — something that many in leadership positions don’t appear to recognize. Another (No 20ff) highlights the inadequacy of the ‘natural law’ theory as a foundation for doctrinal statements on human sexuality. The synod bishops have the opportunity to instigate a thorough re-working of the theology of sexuality in the light of evolution. (cf St John Paul II’s June 1988 letter to George Coyne SJ Director of the Vatican Observatory, on the need to examine the effect of evolutionary theory on Church teaching, TM, July 2013). These items would not have appeared on previous synod agendas for examination. n

comment

taking a new lens

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ometimes life seems like one thing following another with no variety. When this happens it is time to widen our perspective a little or to daydream.

During my recent sabbatical I spent the last two weeks in Rome.

To my surprise I found this Roman time energising with many interesting things to do. I have always had a great relationship with the leadership of the Anglican Church and was looking forward to staying with Archbishop David Moxon, who is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Catholic Church.

David was his normal gracious self but I was surprised to find out how ecumenical many of the Roman clergy were. For instance, it thrilled me to hear priests during the canon of the Mass praying for ‘Francis our Pope and Bishop, Justin the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ as well as for one of the Orthodox Patriarchs. I heard this ecumenical embellishment at the Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday Masses at a Jesuit-run English-speaking Catholic church in Rome. That widened my perspective somewhat.

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Peter Norris I was in Rome when the canonisation ceremonies for John XXIII and John Paul II took place. Since it was John Paul II who had stopped the proceedings for John XXIII’s canonisation, it was ironical to see them being canonised together.

I was part of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s delegation to the ceremony, along with a Jesuit priest, an English diocesan priest, and two Anglican Bishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury did not know that he was so thoroughly represented! Our Jesuit friend was not happy with the seats we had been given saying that ‘the Archbishop of Canterbury will not be happy with this place.’

Finally we ended up being placed close to the Pope, and able to take part fully in the ceremonies. The Archbishop of Canterbury would have have been proud of his hitherto unknown representatives. Such ecumenical co-operation at the ground level is great.

One Roman day I went to visit the Norbertine Abbot General who was a German. I had been encouraged to visit him by my friends in Philadelphia. He was charming and

invited me to stay for lunch. I stayed and was rewarded with a sumptuous meal and great company. Another day was a Benedictine day. I visited the monastery that Gregory left to go to England. I was intrigued by the Abbot. He joined the Abbey as an Anglican priest and after a while became the number two in the Abbey. He was asked to accept election as Abbot but was told he had to be ordained a Catholic priest to be elected. He accepted on condition that he kept his Anglican orders.

They agreed, so at his ordination he made a public statement that he was being ordained a Catholic priest but that he still remained an Anglican priest. Ecumenism is alive and well in Rome.

So, sometimes we can be bored but to view the world from a different perspective can do wonders for all of us. n Father Peter Norris is the Master of St Margaret’s College on the campus of the University of Otago.

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31 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

a mother’s journal

by Theresa Vossen

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have been sifting through memories this year. Memories: simple and sweet, like the play date where I ate my first toasted sandwich; my Nana pouring warm milk over my weetbix; Dad taking me for Khmer Satay to cheer me; running with Mum along Leith Valley road. Others more complex — like the mentor I loved yet barely thanked; the anguish of a high-school child wishing someone to tell her what to study; the crossroads, farewells, tears and always a deep sense of being loved and valued. I am accepting the tapestry of my life and discovering the ‘slow work of God’.

As a child, I wanted to be a ‘roller coaster connoisseur’ and later, to study clouds. I enrolled at university in Earth Sciences, but at the last minute, changed to the more employable and broad Health Sciences instead. At times I felt alone in these decisions, but looking back, was I? Every experience has its lessons and blessings. A career in Physiotherapy followed, then I embraced motherhood, with two children teaching me much about unconditional love; a move to Australia, and more decisions.

Last year, for A Mother’s Journal (August), I reflected on Community and the parish playgroup I had started. Well, this year it is all about interior work. I have been delighted to tick an item off my ‘bucket list’ doing the full Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius.

32 Tui Motu InterIslands August 2014

I learnt through the Faber Centre in Brisbane, that this classic 30-day retreat can be stretched over 30 weeks. Five days a week, one hour a day of structured prayer.

Seventeen weeks on, the four ways of Ignatian spirituality that James Martin SJ describes as ‘finding God in all things,’ ‘contemplation in action,’ ‘incarnational spirituality’ and ‘freedom and detatchment’ are becoming real to me. This retreat takes discipline, patience and trust, just like physical exercise.

A prayer, by Père Teilhard de Chardin SJ, sheds light on this slow work. ‘Above all trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. Only God could say what this new Spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you.’

I have learnt so much. It’s easy to dwell on bad habits, especially in times of stress (this year for us: first house buying) but when a good habit such as regular conversation with God

is scheduled in — it is enlightening!

Despite obvious fruits of peace and wisdom in my life from the Exercises, I can still be found delaying this time of prayer! To switch off the phone and computer, pause the busyness, light a candle, sit and pray, seems very hard to prioritise.

I have gained an awareness of the depths inside us, as infinite as the mystery of God herself. I have understood deeply that we are marvelous creations, with our spiritual self often forgotten in a physical culture; and that God weeps at this divide. My life is the material for the prayer. Nothing is irrelevant, and all is connected. Although I don’t yet see where it ends, I trust this journey I am on.

Talking to my wonderful spiritual director weekly helps me articulate where I see God. I notice and speak often of the clouds.

When I see a commanding sky, I see a giant reminder of God’s closeness. A very real electric-shock presence of the Creator God: surprising me, loving me, communicating with me!

As I pull the car over and photograph another awesome sky, I wonder — was this why as a child I wanted to be a ‘cloud scientist’?

And here I am, by chance, living on the Gold Coast, where I ride the roller coasters with my children. In our busy world, let’s appreciate the tapestry of our lives and the slow work of God. Here’s to fantastic cloud watching and thrilling roller coaster rides! n Theresa Vossen, with her husband Caleb and two children, live on the Gold Coast. Theresa is the dedicated editor of the Tui Motu facebook page.

Kaaren Mathias is on holiday this month.