A sad decision

The decision of the Christchurch Anglican diocese to reinstate the old cathedral seems tragic to me.

The synod by a very slim majority voted reinstatement, knowing that they could then inherit a generous government subsidy – but also that, as the Mayor kept saying, any other decision would result in “endless litigation”.

The government subsidy is not on offer, as far as I know, to other churches or denominations.  Some would say they wouldn’t want to be compromised as Christian churches by taking state money, the more so when it is conditional on deciding to do what the government wants.

I was not there and am no part of it, but to me it looks very much as though the synod, with a gun to its head, submitted meekly to demands from people well beyond the church.  How do the synod members and Christchurch Anglican actual churchgoers feel about the fact that almost 50% of the synod voted otherwise?

I am an unstinted admirer of Bishop Victoria Matthews.  Dignified and wise, and clearly a fine pastor, she told the synod that whatever they decided she would support 100%.  I don’t know what her personal views are, but she comes through as a true bishop.  Ten years, she said, is about what it will take for the reinstatement to be complete.  I wonder whether she sees herself then as officiating at the reconsecration… or as far away by that time.  Meanwhile she intends to care for her parishes and people, and do her episcopal job, as she has done through all the earthquake recovery. 

So now, for the next decade, we will see the old place rising again with interspersed Te Deums, but this time earthquake-strengthened and made to stand there for ever.  As we all know, costs will end up rather more than predicted now. 

It was, it seems to me, always an unexciting old church, unoriginal, a dusty monument to an inglorious past of Victorian propriety – and as a building quite unexceptional in the global cathedral stakes.  The sight of the Christchurch Wizard prancing and posturing in joy at the news of the reinstatement, there in front of the ruins, says it all.  I once long ago sat in that place for a special ecumenical service at which the preacher was the late James K Baxter.  He climbed barefoot into the pulpit, snuffled, and his first words were, “This place gives me hay fever.” 

They were given a priceless opportunity to fill that sad space with something fresh and forward looking, something new, inspiring and meaningful.  It could have been a wonderful gift to the future, rising from the rubble.  But no, they blew it.

Housing paedophiles

Here in Mahurangi we are blessed by two local newspapers, the “Rodney Times”, and “Mahurangi Matters”.  Neither speaks with the power and authority of, for instance, Trollope’s “Jupiter”, hurling terrible thunderbolts against the pompous and pretentious of the day.  But they are where you might go to be updated on golden weddings, Rotary awards, fishing stories and school sports. 

I recently sent to “Mahurangi Matters” what I thought was a useful contribution to the vexed question of housing paedophiles on their release from detention.  It seems MM was underwhelmed.  I think their editor saw legions of indignant geriatrics descending upon him from their moral high ground.  For what it is worth, this was what I sent:

Residents of Mangere are objecting to the official assumption that paedophiles and others on parole can be placed in their neighbourhoods but not in Remuera or Howick.  My wife has just come up with the perfect solution, and I agree with it.  House these people in the retirement villages – it’s a win/win scenario.

For a start, there are no children in the vicinity to be at risk.  There are no schools or preschools or parks with kiddies playing.  Thus, a major drawback about these places is turned seamlessly into an asset.

It could only be therapeutic, moreover, for the parolees to join in the healthy vibrant retirement village life – the weekly happy hour, the line dancing, bowls and croquet, they could even join the village choir.  As we all know, wholesome food and gentle exercise are inseparable from building moral tone. 

In return, the regular village inmates would have a range of options for conversation other than the weather and rheumatism. 

Neighbourhood Watch is a high art in these villages.  Nothing much happens unnoticed.  So surveillance, you might say, is inbuilt.  Stir outside and curtains flick. 

The villages typically feature fun-filled trips for the inmates into the countryside round about, or to the shops, in the village bus or wagon.  By this means the parolees could be steadily and gently introduced back into wider society, under unobtrusive supervision.  Some of them might offer to drive the bus or provide a running commentary on points of interest.

Finally, such a scheme would bestow a fresh and exciting raison d’être for the burgeoning retirement village gulag archipelago around the land.  It could infuse new life into the inmates, a reborn sense of purpose, a light in the eye and at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. 

Winter Rants (August 2015)

Windows 10 is dreadful. This was to be the free, seamless, hassle-free download. The downloading took me almost five hours. Then installation… about two to three hours. That was just the start. Finding out and setting up to my requirements, which of course I expected to take a while… well, it is still happening a week later. Windows 10 Mail is a mess, it seems to me. I am still unable to send email. Receiving email appears to be a question of whether the program feels like it or not. Creating files and subfiles for proper email storage remains a total mystery. I can’t get rid of Bing. Syncing just doesn’t happen, seems totally locked up. Mind you, I have less than the vaguest idea what syncing is or why it matters.

…and so on. Seeking help on what is billed as Microsoft Community or some such is useless. I would have thought that Microsoft would have quickly found out where customers are having problems, and send out fixes. Forget it. The free option seems now to have created a convenient global guinea-pig community on which Microsoft can experiment. I am so far seriously regretting ever replacing my Windows 8.1 which was working just fine. Moral: If it’s not bust don’t fix it.

Unbeknownst is a truly hideous word. The Shorter Oxford recognises it, although it prefers unbeknown (to). Unbeknownst might be OK if it precedes a vowel (eg. Unbeknownst among…) I suppose the word has been available for ever, but it has sidled into regular usage and conversation quite recently. My dislike of it is simply that it is such affectation, unnecessary, ugly.

Jack Tame wrote today in The Herald On Sunday about a Northland woman Kelly van Gaalen. Here are extracts:

"Last December she was one of 15 recipients of Northland's Local Hero medal, acknowledging her efforts in a community that has had more than its share of tough times. She's a former member of the Kaikohe-Hokianga Community Board, the former chair of the Kaikohe Community Arts Council and the former promotions manager for the Kaikohe Business Association.

"But van Gaalen is in prison. Last year her family was the victim of a home invasion. Three men broke in and beat up her husband. In the aftermath, police officers discovered a plump bag of dried marijuana in the van Gaalens' home. It was a big bag and van Gaalen acknowledged it was hers — all 684g, 24 times the limit for personal use. Her explanation was she had two marijuana plants and one grew especially well. She had smoked the drug daily since her teens and shared her supply with as many as 20 friends.

"Don't forget, the police had only been called to her house out of happenstance. No one had laid a complaint about the marijuana and the police found no evidence of money-for-drugs dealing. There were no incriminating texts on van Gaalen's phone, no wads of cash under the floorboards and no sawn-off shotguns on the kitchen bench.

"So what happened? Did the 32 character references provided in court allow for a discharge without conviction or a community sentence? Nope. Despite her "extremely worthwhile contribution" to Kaikohe, in the words of the presiding judge, the 38-year-old's plight ended in lunacy.

"Van Gaalen, home invasion victim, mother of three, Local Hero medal recipient and general menace of Kaikohe, was sentenced to two years in prison."

Yes, this makes me angry. What in heaven’s name is the point of putting this woman in prison? I have little patience with cannabis, but this woman is not only no danger to anyone, she seems an admirable person in the community. Where’s old Garth of Sensible Sentencing this time?

Nehalal Siddur Shabbat

A book I had ordered on the web about ten days ago arrived today – from Jerusalem.  That is at least as efficient as would have happened with books ordered from NZ or Australia, let alone USA or the UK.  The book is called Nehalal Siddur Shabbat.  It is a Jewish prayer book.  It is in both Hebrew and English, it is beautifully illustrated, it is full of instructions and explanations, and like any good Hebrew book it starts at the other end.  I am delighted with it.

Some years ago when I was with Mary at one of her medical conferences, this one in Sydney I think, a colleague of Mary’s invited us to her home for dinner.  They were a couple in late middle age with no children.  We had not realised in coming that it was Sabbath Eve, Friday, and it was with awe and delight that we sat at table while our hostess lit the candles and said the Hebrew prayers which welcome the Sabbat.  It is the loveliest of moments, the quiet prayers of gratitude, the gentle candlelight.  It is a special moment for the woman who presides -- her hands moving to scoop the light into her eyes.

Now I am so glad to have this book.  For one thing it helps me refresh my Hebrew.  We always felt somewhat guilty as students in Hebrew or Greek, using any book with the text and translation on the same page.  I think these were called diglots – or cribs.  But never mind… I still have handy in my study my hefty Biblia Hebraica, the formidable Kittel edition, in which whatever is not in Hebrew is in Latin.  They gave it to me when I was awarded the Cameron-Muir Scholarship in Hebrew.  The Biblia Hebraica still delights me for all its austere authority.  And in any case when you turn 80 years of age, I have decided, you can use a diglot any time you want.

But It is much more than language study.  This book, Nehalal Siddur Shabbat, squarely relates Jewish prayer with Jewish history.  On page 484 is a photo of the relentless, day-long humiliation of Rabbi Moshe Ben-Yitzchak Hagerman, of Olkusz, Poland, on Black Wednesday, 31 July 1940 (25 Tamuz 5700).  The Nazis herded all male Jews to the town square at 5 am, where they were abused, beaten, terrified, until 7 pm.  The photo shows Rabbi Hagerman, among his people, dressed as he had been for morning prayer, clearly exhausted, being ridiculed and harassed. 

I do not know how you continue to give praise and thanks to God in such circumstances.  But the Jews do.  They have always done – and like the best of the Psalms their prayer is expected to be said with sorrow and anger at times, even despair.  So we have the Hebrew inscription on a wall in Auschwitz, from the Book of Job:

 

O Earth, cover not my blood,

May my cry find no resting place.

 

Walter Brueggemann points out that even in the abyss it is God with whom we have to deal.  Hebrew prayer and the Hebrew Psalms help me to understand and do that, for myself or for others.  There is nothing in these prayers in denial of reality.  Reality is all too present. 

God is present also, in the heart of the reality and the heart of the prayer.  All Jewish prayer can be seen as yearning, hoping, in the presence of God – yearning for a restored humanity, for peace and shalom, for prosperity and enjoyment of creation, for forgiveness, for justice upon all… 

Lately I have been fascinated by the Chasidim, the ultra-orthodox Jews of Mea Shearim and other parts of Jerusalem and around the world.  They seem to be a thorn in the side of the government of Israel with their rigid defence of Ha ‘Aretz, the Land, against the Palestinians and anyone else who threatens it, their insistence on both inward and outward piety and adherence to religious customs.  They certainly look strange.  There are over 30,000 Chasidim in the area of Stamford Hill in London.  I remember well seeing groups of men in Jerusalem with their curious circular fur hats, long coats and white gaiters.  At least some of them are exempt from military service in Israel.

They fascinate me in their courage, living this way in a secular milieu in which cynical and bitter opposition to any religion, especially an overtly pious one, is pretty well a reflex.  Their reward must be the strength and peace of prayer and discipline. 

Whatever…  I incline far more to the Chasidim than to the numbing superficiality of the sport and entertainment culture.  At 80 years, I decide that it’s not that there is anything wrong with me – but that I might be on to something.

 

Blind and barbaric

I have to write something, however brief, about the killing of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.  These two men were part of the Bali Nine arrested over ten years ago for drug offences, put on trial in Indonesian courts and eventually sentenced to death.

Over the decade, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran had welcomed help and had reformed themselves.  Andrew Chan had become a Christian, a leader and a peacemaker in the prison.  Myuran Sukumaran had become an artist and a man of good counsel, teaching and producing meaningful art works.  They were Australian citizens.

By the end of the decade there was no sensible reason left to execute them, if there ever was.  They had become good citizens.  They had deeply regretted their crimes and had amended their lives.  Much media coverage of them showed clearly that they had taken leave of criminality. 

There never was any sensible reason to judicially execute them, or anyone – except that the president and the government of Indonesia needed above all to demonstrate a hard line on drugs.  You deal in drugs, you get caught, we will kill you.  So these two, along with six others, were this morning taken out and put to death by firing squads.  (The ninth, a woman, got a reprieve at the last minute because her evidence may be needed against someone else.  How appalling is that.)  This was all done in the face of widespread international protest including pleas from several governments, and intense media coverage, right up to the sound of the gunshots. 

Capital punishment is unsupportable and has been wiped off the statute books of many countries for years.  There are better ways to deal with gross criminal guilt.  But for many the need for vengeance prevails.  What Indonesia did was unnecessary, blind, barbaric. 

Mortlock

Intelligent, sensitive, Christlike Christianity took yet another hit in a video I chanced upon the other day.  Tuning in as usual soon after 5 am to Al Jazeera for some informative and accurate world news, my attention was caught on another channel by a smiling, fresh-faced couple being interviewed about their recent escape from somewhere.  Over about five minutes it turned out to be Mexico.  This peripatetic missionary couple and their kids were in some town or city that had been ransacked – drug wars? earthquake?  I had missed the beginning and was never quite sure.  But the terminal building at the local airport was destroyed.  Queues of hundreds were becoming desperate to get out.  The only aircraft movements were military. 

This couple had four young children with them.  It emerged that they were all from Auckland’s City Impact Church, a sort of fundamentalist cultic excrescence which has excited a lot of gullible people since the early 1980s.  The CIC is “pastored” by Peter and Bev Mortlock, complete with perfect whitened teeth.  Peter and Bev began in some small church hall, and now run a large operation which seems to be everywhere from Tonga to Canada.  (I have read too much 19^th century gothic ever to be comfortable with the name Mortlock.)

But to the story…  Trapped in this place, needing to find a way out fast, these parents were starting to assume they would just have to join the interminable and not-moving airport queues.  It was hopeless.  But God intervened for them.  At this point I find myself switching to Jaundiced View.  God is conjuring up miracles so that these lovely Christian people, Mum, Dad, two boys and two girls, can reach safety. 

Never mind about the hundreds, maybe thousands of others stranded at the airport.  God reaches out for our City Impact family because they are righteous, I presume, and they have been engaged on the Lord’s Business – I couldn’t see any other reason for their election to favour above others. 


First miracle:  Someone from Alaska Air hands them a voucher for the local Sheraton, lido, swimming pool, family room and all.  Alaska Air...?  It seems only God knows why this happened -- let alone why it happened to these folk but not to the others thronging the airport.

Then after some serious righteous enjoyment of the facilities of the Sheraton, Dad manages to make contact with a local airforce crew, one of whom speaks English.  He says get your family immediately and come round the back.  They sprint, packing as they go, and find themselves on an airforce plane.

The Mum does show momentary concern for the many others around the front of the airport, waiting.  She hands over all the cash she has on her to a woman.  In the interview this Mum stresses, several times, not only that she did that, but that it was all OK because there is a spiritual rule that God gives back to you what you have given away.  One or two things grated here, where I am, somewhat further down the spiritual pecking order.  One was her determination to let her right hand know what her left was doing.  I think Jesus said you shouldn't do that.  The other was that charity and compassion tend to get diluted if you are expecting to get back what you gave away… it seems to me.

“Where is this plane headed?” asks the Dad of a crewman, once they are all on board.  “San Diego…”  Well! God has just arranged another miracle.  San Diego, USA, is precisely where they would like to go.  It’s all working out just as it should for the righteous.

Pastor Peter Mortlock touts this video as shining evidence of God’s Love and Provision.  Miracles prevail for the Upright.  Never mind the rest of us, still waiting hopelessly at the airport.

Well sorry, Pete brother, but it’s unbiblical, unChristlike, unchristian, unlikely, untrue. 

On not going to church

On Sunday mornings as I take a leisurely drive to the library, usually, or perhaps to the supermarket in Warkworth, I see all these people towing their boats or otherwise enjoying themselves who, I think by some ancient reflex, should really be at church.  The church carparks around here are still reasonably full but not overflowing except at very popular funerals.  Weddings don’t seem to happen in church any more – they have to be at a beach or a winery with marquees, wind and rain, purple wedding decor and endless sentimental kitsch. 

I at least have honourable reasons for not being at church.  I went, for more than half a lifetime.  I led it, studied for it, was ordained to do it, planned its events, officiated at it, administrated it, celebrated it, defended it, thought it through, prayed for it, even loved it.  Then I stopped.  The “Why?” is another story.  Quite suddenly, not going to church seemed the right course to follow.

Absenting oneself thoughtfully from church eventually lends you perspective.  You look back on it all, having discovered that there is indeed life beyond.  It is not the life of those who have never been to church or cared for any of it.  It is the life of someone who has departed from the church, but never for an instant from Christ, his teachings, his presence.  In my case at any rate, taking leave of the church has been a vital enhancement to faith and to life.

Then why, sometimes, do I revisit briefly?  I show up at the local Anglican church at Christmas and Easter, drawn by the meanings of these high seasons – at their 8 am Eucharist, because I think I will be spared noise and chatter and identification… and a sermon.  But it turns out, I am denied all that.  Chatter reigns at 8 am.  And what passes for a sermon these days… ye gods.  Good people, no doubt, no pretensions, telling it as they see it.  I understand all that.  And I also realise that I sound elitist… but what I am looking for isn’t happening in the local parish church, and perhaps I shouldn’t expect it.

What is it?  A depth, a thoughtfulness, a silence.  An affinity with pain and with truth and love.  An absence of fear.  A scholarly and honest approach to the Bible.  An ability by teachers to approximate to the simplicity Jesus showed in teaching, yet without superstition and credulity.  I think it is entirely too much to hope for. 

So I don’t go.  If I do go, I come home wishing I hadn’t – yet always appreciating those who are still immersed in all this, doing their best, continuing to believe in it, thinking it only has to be reformed… somehow.

The usual route of reform seems to be via doing what the church does best, better.  Food, for instance.  In my day we had policies about providing simple food at parish eating occasions including Sunday morning teas.  That meant biscuits and tea and (execrable) coffee.  On high festivals or when some had a 90^th birthday we might have muffins or Easter buns.  People had homes to eat in.

Now the local church has committees planning the food.  There are grand food occasions, and orders of the day go out – who brings what, savouries, strawberries, salads… ye gods.  I don’t find much of this in the Sermon on the Mount.  This kind of church is hospitable, it is mildly (but not greatly) outgoing, it includes good people – and it is utterly not for me.  It is a worthy community with a list of good works, and the country and the suburbs would certainly be poorer without these local churches.  They have invented something called Messy Church which brings in children and their mums to hear and enact Bible truths. 

Writing it thus far has made me realise that I do have some personal guilt about having departed the church.  But the next thought always is that I know I couldn’t bear it any more. 

The local churches that are thriving are the ones with cringe-making music and doctrine, where nothing must ever be “boring”, where there is a clear and simple moral and doctrinal code to follow based on naïve biblicism.  They have “pastors” who have never had serious or rigorous biblical or theological training, who confuse leadership with power, drama and loud-mouthedness with honest teaching, in whom humility is either absent or scarcely believable.  Bluntly, I do not know how anyone with intelligence can survive such a context for worship and growth in faith.

Then there is the question whether I should still pitch in with one of the sensible local causes, of whatever denomination, and try to lend whatever I might have to offer…  Oh, no…!  I wouldn’t last three weeks.  I find myself wondering how many of us there are, here and there, who simply have no church they can cordially attend, look forward to each week, take part in, grow within…  How many?

Some people of my acquaintance have labelled themselves Progressive Christians.  They have websites and blogs, and teachers who have written some great stuff which I have read.   Am I a Progressive Christian?  I don’t know what that expression means.  These people are often greatly preoccupied with what they can’t believe.  They have a need to reinterpret resurrection and just about everything else mysterious.  No, I am not a Progressive Christian.  I am content with the apostolic faith and the creeds and the bible, receiving it all as a wonderful and mysterious vehicle of love and grace.  I am content to be the recipient of love, and the bearer of unanswered questions, and the child of grace.  Is that a lazy mind?  Perhaps.  But it sure beats puzzling and cogitating, battling and bloody arguing. 

No, I don’t go to church.  It is at the same time a loss and a gain, and a puzzle.  I am 80 years old.  At that age you can do what you choose.

(30.03.2015)