Tuesday, November 29, 2011

God will take care of you

Be not dismayed whate’er betide,
God will take care of you.
Beneath his wings of love abide,
God will take care of you.


This was the theme song of Uncle Tom’s Choir on Radio 1ZB back in the 1940s. It was at least as familiar as the Coronation Street theme is today. There were actually three Uncle Tom choirs broadcasting on Friday evenings, Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. We all sang:

God will take care of you,
Through every day, o’er all the way.
He will take care of you,
God will take care of you.


Those were war years. There was all manner of anxiety, loss, distress, grief. I as a small boy was only marginally aware of it, but I certainly realise now how comforting it must have been to some when we sang this thing repeatedly.

It was sung the other day at the funeral of 92-year-old Mollie, Uncle Tom’s daughter, whom I clearly remember from those days, well over 60 years ago, in the choir. And a hall full of both her generation and mine joined in fervently.

Through days of toil when heart doth fail,
God will take care of you.
When dangers fierce your path assail,
God will take care of you.


Mollie’s generation and mine, by and large, don’t seem to question this faith. They believe it has been their experience through hardship and toil. God has taken care of them.

But what do they think God has done? God clearly has not shielded them from loss and sorrow. They seem not to ask questions about others along the way who plunged into the abyss of depression or suicide, or whose lives succumbed to poverty, disease, despair or atrocity. Did God take care of them? They mean, I daresay, that God offered them support, strength, comfort... Even so, I have this uncomfortable feeling that their God does not conspicuously comfort people. There are mysteries here, and there are plenty of people not in the church for more or less this reason. A God of love, mercy and comfort seems to others to be a wistful dream.

Lonely or sad, from friends apart,
God will take care of you.
He will give peace to your aching heart,
God will take care of you.


It’s a sad and selective philosophy and it embarrasses me, I have to say. It posits a very western, domesticated God, who pats us on the head and says never mind. Yet it nourishes most of the seniors who remain in the parish culture, and they sing its confident hymns and they live again in days when it all seemed so clear to them.

Others in the parish churches know it’s not like that, and wonder how much longer they can hang on. They are a diminishing number. They strongly suspect God is being misrepresented. They wonder why the minister/pastor/priest/vicar doesn’t identify aspects of popular faith which are manifestly dishonest about God. They wonder about the integrity of prayer which simply asks God for things we want, and assumes that they happened because we asked in prayer, or didn’t because we didn’t... what kind of God is that? A sentimentalist idol.

Not the God Jesus called Father.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

It’s blatantly obvious

No it’s not. It’s obvious or it’s not. Learn some logic and grammar. The same applies to patently obvious. Then we have ad nauseam: Don’t get me wrong...to be perfectly frank / candid... I’ll be honest with you... Ye gods, were they not previously? I would be the first to... I am a great believer in... Our old pal Bob McCroskrie of Family First NZ wrote in Granny Herald only this morning: Don't get me wrong - I would be the first in line to condemn violence against women… Good on y’ Bob, hang in there…!

The need for a major grizzle is upon me. I have a brother who thinks I should lighten up. Well, he has his major grizzles when it suits him. I am aged 77 and I will say what I choose.

Six female teenagers at Fairfield College in Hamilton were taken to hospital spaced out and behaving violently from taking ecstasy pills. They had to be restrained and subdued. These pills, which seem to have been available at their homes, were actually low grade and contaminated. The girls’ ages ranged from 13 to 15.

How come our astute investigative and intrusive media don’t find access to the homes and parents of these children to find out what is going on, what constitutes their culture, what these kids are having to survive if they can...? One student who brought the pills to school said she had taken them from her father's stash. So where in the media coverage is the father? Or the mother? Or whoever actually does currently have custody of these juveniles? Anyone?

Next day a couple of these girls showed up back at the school from which they have been suspended, evidently hoping to see friends. But they fled in tears when their mates turned on them with gross abuse. Their mates turned feral. What is this culture?

James Joseph Ruhe Lawrence, known as JJ, was found dead about 11.15am last Monday at the Orakei house where he lived (and seemingly died) with his mother and her boyfriend. He was two years old. JJ died from injuries suffered as the result of blunt-force trauma to his abdomen. This toddler was struck so hard in the stomach that one of his internal organs split in half. JJ depended entirely on the protection of his mother (his father is in prison). That protection failed, lethally. I can’t bear to think what this little child suffered. We are informed that JJ’s mother is pregnant again.

Now that Demi Moore has announced the demise of her six-year marriage, headlines are burning up over what really nuked her union with Ashton Kutcher. Moore, 49, issued a carefully-worded statement last week, ending months of tabloid speculation… Super broody and pregnant? "Hell, no!" says Katy Perry . While she's made no secret of her desire to start a family with husband Russell Brand , the 27-year-old pop singer has trashed tabloid talk she's expecting her first child. Rumours have been…

This is now what passes for news. I have no idea who those people are.

Surreal… incredible… miracle… carnage… The silver lining is bright going forward… that last was in the radio business news this morning.

We have abused language, logic, grammar, ethics. Everything is invaded, raped and set aside.

Last night the General Election campaign ended. It is a merciful deliverance. This morning I voted for the Labour candidate for Rodney, Christine Rose, and my party vote was Green. The Greens it seems do have principles beyond people’s self-interest. I also voted for the MMP electoral system to be retained, although it needs to be reformed somewhat.

TVNZ went to the Whangarei electorate for their final once-over-lightly wrap up of voter wisdom. It was less than edifying. The mums of Ngunguru seem to be clustering around smiling rich John Key. One woman actually informed us that “he hasn’t done anything naughty, yet.” She thought that was hugely witty and wise. Her husband or boyfriend stood there loyally nodding and poised to run any errand she might decree. They were gathered at the local school’s annual Pets Day. We got to see one of the pupils at the microphone lay down the rules for Pets Day. You are responsible for the behaviour of your own pet, she warned us, and you must pick up all droppings. We need that little lass on the beachfront here at Snells.

So New Zealand is flocking to the polls. I was a little alarmed at the few young or middle-aged faces I saw queuing up to vote. Maybe they were not out of bed yet at 9.30 of a Saturday morning. Too many think it’s cool not to vote -- they can’t be bothered, they’re not interested, they don’t even begin to understand the issues, they never read anything and some of them can’t read anyway. In NZ it is compulsory to enroll, although it is never enforced, but it is not compulsory to vote. Well, if you don’t, it seems to me, you forfeit any right to grizzle about the government.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

A noisy cafe

Waipu is slightly off the main highway south of Whangarei. It is a settlement in European terms begun by a couple of shiploads of Scottish settlers led by a toxic bigot named Norman McLeod, who came via Nova Scotia. These days Waipu seems to exist mainly as a gateway to the coast at Waipu Cove.

We called in there for coffee. I remembered the cafe from years before when I used to escape from my parish to a parishioner’s caravan at Waipu Cove, once a year in February/March, and study German. Now, fascinatingly, the cafe had acquired a neighbour, a real live apothecary. I am not making this up. He has a modern, ordered, attractive shop, in welcoming colours, and he advertises herbal remedies for just about everything. He describes himself as apothecary. So that’s great. Warkworth does not have an apothecary, so far as I know.

But now, in the coffee place, wall to wall noise. Noise seemed to be essential. All the rest of Waipu and surroundings was quiet. In the cafe, however, something that passes these days for music was playing, relentlessly. I suspect no one in the last ten years has asked why. They always play music. Everyone does. Their coffee machine was steaming and roaring. The barrista-girl regularly, every 20 seconds, shatteringly bashed something down, I presume to clear an accumulation of coffee grounds. Locals visiting seemed to feel a need to shout to each other. None of the staff seemed remotely perturbed by this din.

We had recently had lunch in a Thai cafe in Paihia where, although the food was magnificent, the constant din was not. Concrete floor, and metal-legged chairs being scraped across the floor. No one seems able to lift chairs these days. Someone out the back, building something, was hammering...

Well, life tends to be a noisy place. It doesn’t need to be, but it is. I suspect that this level of noise is essential to our culture now. Being at home, for a few of us, means escape from all that. I wrote about silence in this blog once before. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif href="http://">