Well, I’m sitting here above Kawau Bay, awaiting the tsunami. Still waiting... Turned on the radio as usual at breakfast, and behold, the interesting Sunday morning programmes had been abandoned for what they keep calling a Radio One News Special.
The “massive” earthquake off the coast of Chile has generated a “massive” tsunami, which is “racing” across the Pacific in our direction at “the speed of a jet aircraft”. There are vague reports from the Marquesas, as though they are farewelling the world and gurgling in an unseemly manner as they sink. Then it seems the Chathams are getting a series of waves, but they don’t seem too big to me. It’s about now I learn something new, about “negative” waves – that’s when the bay empties before a big one comes in.
Ah yes, I remember that. Old Ron Connolly from Fiji once told of standing on the wharf in Suva when the whole lagoon suddenly emptied. Fish were flapping on the seabed. He was a silly twit to keep standing there – but being Ron, he survived.
There’s a long reef jutting out from the south end of Algies Bay, and I figure that it will be my marker. If a negative wave happens I will see the whole reef. It hasn’t happened yet.
Radio One News Special is grinding on, interviewing mayors, a variety of Sunday morning activists and blearily on-duty civil defence type persons, and copious vox populi. There is a certain amount of bureaucratic indignation about Members of the Public who presume to defy orders not to venture on to the beaches. How could they...? The worst offenders, it seems, are dog owners. That figures.
At 1045 hrs Kawau Bay does seem to be shallower. The reef is more visible than I would have expected. Maybe some of the boats at their moorings will be aground soon. Up north at Tutukaka, I hear, the boaties have put to sea thinking that’s safer. It sounds like a cast-iron excuse for a day’s fishing, to me.
Many years ago when I was a journalist on the Auckland Star there was a standard journalists’ joke about boring headlines. One such was Small Earthquake in Chile – Not Many Hurt. Well, this one was a big one. We have yet to hear about casualties. Organisations such as Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontieres will be stretched to the limit. It tends to give perspective to the NZ obsession this morning with the safety of people on our beaches.
At 1400 hrs all is well in Kawau Bay. The south-end reef is more exposed than I have ever seen it. Everyone seems to be coping. Nothing has come roaring in from the Pacific.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Going to the barber
We used to have barbers. Remember that? They were strictly for blokes. The barber at the Remuera shopping village – this is in the 1940s -- had all manner of stuff going on. Cutting blokes’ hair was part of it. He sold cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, pipes, cigarette papers, matches, walking sticks... and, I now realise, c-nd-ms. I got sent up there with 1/- or maybe 1/6d for a haircut whenever my mother thought I was starting to look terrible.
The shop had a sign which said, “We post to Tasmania.” Well, we all did if we wanted to. But that was code for Tatts. Gambling was illegal in NZ except for the government-sponsored Art Union, but Tattersalls operated in Australia. People bought Tatts tickets in hushed tones at the barber’s.
The place also seemed to have a lot to do with horse racing. The senior blokes hanging around knew everything, all had copies of Best Bets in their pockets, and the walls were replete with pictures of horses and jockeys. The barber took bets, which was seriously illegal. A 9-penny haircut kid sitting in the chair just had to wait, frequently, while these things were fixed up.
No one had ever heard of styling. The only kind of cut was off. The Remuera barber ran his fingers through my hair, hard against my scalp, and amputated everything above them. It’s actually not a bad style, and all the boys at the local primary schools looked the same.
The Warkworth hairdresser in 2010 differs from this in certain important respects. First, she is seriously female. There is no nonsense about suspect activities. Just when I have come to the time of life when I have an alarming paucity of hair left, she talks to me about styling. Styling...? I simply don’t want it in my eyes or ears any more. Off remains the stylistic criterion.
Blokes still turn up, however, with that old blokey awareness of who’s first, who’s next... Girls would never do it that way. The hairdresser, Julie, conducts an incessant banter with everyone within earshot. She knows just how to engage each bloke, more or less, although she does have some difficulties with me.
Norman Rockwell has a wonderful painting of Shuffleton’s Barber Shop (Saturday Evening Post, April 29, 1950). The shop’s actually empty and in semi darkness. But light is streaming through from the back room, and you can just see three blokes playing violin, flute and cello. Nothing like that in Remuera, in my memory. But at Shuffleton’s in the gloom of the barber’s shop the coal fire still glows, the hair is swept up from the floor and the large broom rests against the wall. Life is all as it should be. There is a large poster of the American flag.
The shop had a sign which said, “We post to Tasmania.” Well, we all did if we wanted to. But that was code for Tatts. Gambling was illegal in NZ except for the government-sponsored Art Union, but Tattersalls operated in Australia. People bought Tatts tickets in hushed tones at the barber’s.
The place also seemed to have a lot to do with horse racing. The senior blokes hanging around knew everything, all had copies of Best Bets in their pockets, and the walls were replete with pictures of horses and jockeys. The barber took bets, which was seriously illegal. A 9-penny haircut kid sitting in the chair just had to wait, frequently, while these things were fixed up.
No one had ever heard of styling. The only kind of cut was off. The Remuera barber ran his fingers through my hair, hard against my scalp, and amputated everything above them. It’s actually not a bad style, and all the boys at the local primary schools looked the same.
The Warkworth hairdresser in 2010 differs from this in certain important respects. First, she is seriously female. There is no nonsense about suspect activities. Just when I have come to the time of life when I have an alarming paucity of hair left, she talks to me about styling. Styling...? I simply don’t want it in my eyes or ears any more. Off remains the stylistic criterion.
Blokes still turn up, however, with that old blokey awareness of who’s first, who’s next... Girls would never do it that way. The hairdresser, Julie, conducts an incessant banter with everyone within earshot. She knows just how to engage each bloke, more or less, although she does have some difficulties with me.
Norman Rockwell has a wonderful painting of Shuffleton’s Barber Shop (Saturday Evening Post, April 29, 1950). The shop’s actually empty and in semi darkness. But light is streaming through from the back room, and you can just see three blokes playing violin, flute and cello. Nothing like that in Remuera, in my memory. But at Shuffleton’s in the gloom of the barber’s shop the coal fire still glows, the hair is swept up from the floor and the large broom rests against the wall. Life is all as it should be. There is a large poster of the American flag.
The PCANZ - gently sliding from sight
I am in the curious position, having altogether departed from the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, of watching from a distance as it dies. It is something like, having been rescued from a torpedoed boat, sitting in safety at a distance and seeing it ever so slowly upend, teeter, struggle for buoyancy, and slide from sight.
The PCANZ was torpedoed when the forces of biblical literalism, fundamentalism and moralism, and people who simply want safety among their own kind and all the familiar ancestral noises, and think that is what the church is for, eventually achieved the majority vote in the General Assembly and presbyteries of the church. In 2006 they were finally able to force through legislation which severely proscribed gay and lesbian ministers and officebearers. Very serious injustice was done to a lot of people. The new alpha males began to fashion a church in their own image. A lot of intelligent and sensitive members had been sidling out of the PCANZ for some years past. Others remain, some because it is still their livelihood. Many feel alienated and persecuted.
The PC(A)NZ in which I trained and was ordained was very different. It doesn’t exist any more. Ministers were seriously trained – you were expected to have a tertiary degree before you began theological studies – and Elders knew themselves to be part of a long tradition of thoughtful if conservative lay leadership. Zealots and charismatics were discouraged. The church was far from perfect, but it had some wise and good leaders. It was moreover a church in which necessary change tended to happen from within, by processes of prayer and theological reflection, rather than by revolution. That is the way the PC(A)NZ came to accept women in both the Eldership and the Ministry, ahead of many other denominations.
I don’t know what they have now. The ruling class in the PCANZ doesn’t share its thoughts with me. I occasionally get echoes of programs and projects supposed to put fire in your nostrils, and all more or less pathetic to this elderly bloke. Then there is the sector that doesn’t seem to believe in anything much, always plagued by doubts and provisos, generally devoted to the current trendy causes. These are the post-modern brigade, if anyone knows what that means. And we have the angry and alienated sector, the gays and lesbians – and the people always trying to agonise about what is Christlike in this or that situation... The whole show is sad, neurotic and dying. I guess it doesn’t matter. The PC(A)NZ served its purpose in its time and space, and often did very well indeed. I remember numbers of its great leaders with affection and awe.
Of course it will hang on for a while yet, propped up and temporarily resuscitated, in the recovery position.
But the trick these days is to make some simple but firm decisions about personal allegiance to Christ and his people. For me that means contemplative prayer and life in the Benedictine mode – which antedates most things in the Christian spectrum and history. It actually does mean general adherence to the faith of the great creeds, more as songs of praise and wonder than of norms of belief which include some and exclude others. I am very happy with all that. There is no longer any patience with denominationalism – I can’t be bothered with it. Inwardness is all – at any rate, in the sense that without it there is nothing else.
It is a life and a discipline in which one is formed, mostly in silence and stillness, according to the pattern of Christ, just as St Paul taught. And one joins the company of those contemplatively formed by Christ.
The PCANZ was torpedoed when the forces of biblical literalism, fundamentalism and moralism, and people who simply want safety among their own kind and all the familiar ancestral noises, and think that is what the church is for, eventually achieved the majority vote in the General Assembly and presbyteries of the church. In 2006 they were finally able to force through legislation which severely proscribed gay and lesbian ministers and officebearers. Very serious injustice was done to a lot of people. The new alpha males began to fashion a church in their own image. A lot of intelligent and sensitive members had been sidling out of the PCANZ for some years past. Others remain, some because it is still their livelihood. Many feel alienated and persecuted.
The PC(A)NZ in which I trained and was ordained was very different. It doesn’t exist any more. Ministers were seriously trained – you were expected to have a tertiary degree before you began theological studies – and Elders knew themselves to be part of a long tradition of thoughtful if conservative lay leadership. Zealots and charismatics were discouraged. The church was far from perfect, but it had some wise and good leaders. It was moreover a church in which necessary change tended to happen from within, by processes of prayer and theological reflection, rather than by revolution. That is the way the PC(A)NZ came to accept women in both the Eldership and the Ministry, ahead of many other denominations.
I don’t know what they have now. The ruling class in the PCANZ doesn’t share its thoughts with me. I occasionally get echoes of programs and projects supposed to put fire in your nostrils, and all more or less pathetic to this elderly bloke. Then there is the sector that doesn’t seem to believe in anything much, always plagued by doubts and provisos, generally devoted to the current trendy causes. These are the post-modern brigade, if anyone knows what that means. And we have the angry and alienated sector, the gays and lesbians – and the people always trying to agonise about what is Christlike in this or that situation... The whole show is sad, neurotic and dying. I guess it doesn’t matter. The PC(A)NZ served its purpose in its time and space, and often did very well indeed. I remember numbers of its great leaders with affection and awe.
Of course it will hang on for a while yet, propped up and temporarily resuscitated, in the recovery position.
But the trick these days is to make some simple but firm decisions about personal allegiance to Christ and his people. For me that means contemplative prayer and life in the Benedictine mode – which antedates most things in the Christian spectrum and history. It actually does mean general adherence to the faith of the great creeds, more as songs of praise and wonder than of norms of belief which include some and exclude others. I am very happy with all that. There is no longer any patience with denominationalism – I can’t be bothered with it. Inwardness is all – at any rate, in the sense that without it there is nothing else.
It is a life and a discipline in which one is formed, mostly in silence and stillness, according to the pattern of Christ, just as St Paul taught. And one joins the company of those contemplatively formed by Christ.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
The Flag Debate
Suddenly the flag debate has heated up. A wide assortment of malcontents, of whom I am probably one, think it’s time to replace the official NZ flag, based on the Union Jack and the Southern Cross. It does refer to our history and to our situation in the Southern Hemisphere. But it’s also redolent to many of colonialism and the days when dear old England was still called Home. Since then Britain has become part of Europe and New Zealanders have to get in the queue for Aliens at the border. And there are apparently a lot of strange people who have difficulty distinguishing it from the Australian flag.
Now the Prime Minister has said he prefers the Silver Fern flag. Please, oh please, let this not prevail…! It’s black. The silver fern is nice, and it’s connected with sport – and that’s about all that can be said for it. I know that Canada adopted the simple maple leaf, and that seems to have worked. The silver fern won’t work for me. It’s not even halfway exciting. And we are not, repeat not, defined by our sporting reference.
One of the horrors of this debate is that everyone thinks this or that available choice would be perfect given just a little alteration, redesign, fine tuning, addition, twitching here or there. Some of the products that get suggested are… ye gods. And, it seems to me, the very last thing we want is something produced by an advertising agency or design school. I have enough experience of committees trying to finalise some report or official statement or creed, to know that this is never the way to achieve any good result.
We also have the Tino Rangatiratanga flag. I suspect this one is summarily dismissed by many because it is associated with Maori protest and aspirations – and even more because it gets disastrously called the Hone Harawira flag.
But it is a fine design. It is simple, dramatic, its colours are strong and restless, and it evokes for every Kiwi the meaning of the bush and the fern, and growth. Adopting this flag would also be a real gesture in our society right now. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world might think – this flag would be inalienably New Zealand and nowhere else.
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