Thursday, December 27, 2012

On going to church at Christmas 2012


“My favorite season, actually, is Easter.”  These were the first words at Holy Communion, 8 am, Christmas Day, at the Anglican Church.  The celebrant was some elderly superannuated bloke.  The regular vicar preached.  So this celebrant thought it proper to kick off a major Christian liturgical feast by saying something banal and irrelevant about himself.  And of course it had to be something he thought mildly funny.  Otherwise in the service he stumbled through the liturgy, misquoting even the actual Consecration, and frequently fiddling with the radio transmitter he was supposed to keep in his pocket.  At the very end of the service he decided to tell us how, as a child, he had always thought the smoke from the extinguished candles was “the prayers going up to heaven”.

I was present as one of my rare materializations at church these days.  The 8 am at the Anglican seems best to me because it is supposed to be plain and simple, and the worshipper is likely to be left alone.  It seems proper to show up at the Anglican church because our weekly Friday morning Christian Meditation group meets there and a number of its members belong to Christ Church, Warkworth. 

But, oh my goodness…  Some worshippers behave as though they are at a national convocation of the chattering classes.  There are women who laugh uproariously at what they themselves have just said – in the middle of the service.  They turn the Pax in the liturgy into some extra general meeting of the Mothers’ Union.  Last Easter when I was there, one woman called to a friend two pews away, “How was your visit to the chiropodist, dear?”

The art of being reverent without being pompous, the intention to be humbly and attentively present, the courtesy of letting the great words speak for themselves, these things are now largely lost.  It seems compulsory now for lectors to elocute the words with dramatic effect, and even on occasion to tell us how we should be feeling when we hear them.  One woman however read the Lesson simply and clearly, and had made herself well acquainted beforehand with what she was going to read. 

God help us all when it comes to the churches that are currently booming.  Worship in these places starts from the presumption that no one must on any account be at risk of boredom, or left to their own devices and demons for a second.  Everyone must be relentlessly entertained at all times.  Ministers and priests become “pastors” – yet another example of a good word getting trivialized and violated by silly people.  Even prayer becomes an energetic, restless thing with everyone beseeching and making strange sounds.  There must be no perceived clericalism or dignity.  Everything must be loud, over-amplified and compulsorily joyous.  There must be songs, not hymns, of excruciating sentimentalism and banal nonsense, and soloists of the breathy, microphone-gripping variety, trained to scoop up to a note whose actual pitch is forever lost to them. 

I wonder how many people, and I am one, have been actually driven away by this stuff.  I am told the perpetrators “mean well”.  Well sorry… I should hope they do.  I still look for worship that has not become captive to the prevailing culture of excitement, idolatry and superstition.  Worship founded in humility and subjection to the word of God.  People who can preach and teach without placing themselves at centre stage, or trying to entertain.  Music worthy of its purpose rather than the mindless apeing of secular pop based on banging guitars and drums.  Worship open to mystery and reverence.  

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Pray it's Romney


I write as the sunrise marches west across the USA, and voters are choosing between Obama and Romney.  Any Kiwi who has ever been on a flight east to west chasing the dawn gets the drama.  Poll booths are opening like dominoes falling across the States, and Americans are making their choice.

One writer in the NZ Herald commented that if it were up to New Zealanders, Obama would romp in.  What is it, with these Americans?  Romney might be a very nice guy, rich and hospitable, exemplary family man and kind to animals.  But he manifestly doesn’t know much and, worse, he is surrounded and guided by serious right wing fanatics, oil interests, and religious loonies.  We had all that with George W Bush.  This would be worse.  Whatever faults Obama might have, Romney is simply not up to it. 

But we are told that the polls are close.  It’s neck and neck, evidently.  I for one have cold chills about this.  The President of the United States, despite all the ambivalences, which are many, still exercises power which affects us all.  What they call Democracy, which they think they invented and exemplify, is horrifyingly negotiable.  They use torture.  They run concentration camps.  They think it is OK to circumvent the law and human rights if it is America that is doing it.  They think American lives are somehow worth more than other lives when they are lost. 

Most of the free world is heartily tired of America.  There is something called the American Dream, which makes most of us fall about laughing. 

But still, these people could have made Romney president by tomorrow.  It’s chilling.  We are driven to resort to prayer. 

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Whineray


 


 

New Zealand now has a pretty well-oiled rite and litany for when some major, usually sporting, icon dies.  Our secular culture is confused and frightened about death, so we dive rapidly, by reflex, into memory and sentimentalism and hagiography.  The death of heroes is easily marked because we simply relive past glories. 

And so it was that over this holiday weekend we have had multiple references to the suddenly late Sir Wilson Whineray, former captain of the All Blacks and more recent captain of commerce.  I have yet to hear any serious critical assessment of his character, but we have been incessantly reminded of his leadership qualities, business successes, rugby abilities and things he said:  “I always told the team, you will do exactly what I say on the field, no matter what you think.  I am the captain, and if it’s wrong I will take the rap.  If you don’t do what I say, you will take the rap.”  Great.  That’s the way to talk to the blokes. 

The other quotations I have so far heard have been unmemorable and unoriginal.

He went to Auckland Grammar.  He was roughly contemporary there with me – and on reflection I do remember hearing the name Whineray, whenever Littlejohn the headmaster was moved to identify anyone he thought had brought credit on the school lately.  Whineray must, back then, have been already rugby proficient and therefore very much visible.  I doubt that he ever heard or noted the name Miller. 

It really matters in these things that we do get some perceptive and sensitive journalism, to stand against all the blandishment and idolatry.  Perhaps that comes later.  John Kirwan eventually went public about his times of serious clinical depression.  Barry Crump beat his wife, or wives.  Our square-jawed, thick-necked icons, in sport and in business, need honest and perceptive journalism.  Lance Armstrong, for years at the top of world professional cycling, is now seen as a druggie, a cheat and a humbug.  But for most of those years we were hearing mainly about successive Tour de Frances and his fight back from testicular cancer.

Now we have the cartoon in Granny Herald.  It epitomises for me all the inconsequence and utter shallowness of the sporting icon culture – and the way it suits so many now to mindlessly caricature religion and faith, about which never have so many known so little.  Deceased All Blacks seem to be all in heaven somehow – where else would they be? -- sitting around looking like tired and wounded heroes.  Well, actually they look like simpletons, village idiots.  They have wings, so I assume they have become angels, which must be bizarre and boring for them.  Their celestial captain informs them that Whineray is about to pass by, and they should rise and salute.  “Your captain and our colonel...” I don’t get that. 

It’s hideous.  Shallow sentimental claptrap.  Plain embarrassing is what it is.  The Herald once had a cartoonist called Minhinnick, as many of my generation will remember.  Gordon Minhinnick was genuinely talented.  He could draw.  He knew about subtle allusion.  He also knew what was important, and what was not, in human affairs.  That depth and quality of journalism is rare now, at least around New Zealand.    

Whineray was clearly an exceptional person, sportsman and leader.  I have lived long enough to know that he was also broken and fallible in places, and that he sometimes lay awake at nights. 

 

 

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Inking


Why…? Oh Why…?  I mean, Why…? would anyone get tattooed?  It’s trendy.  How pathetic is that.  It’s cool.  Ye gods. 

It’s mutilation.  That’s what it is.  Samoan men tattooed from thigh to buttock to waist… Simply unnecessary, aggressive and silly.  Women with butterflies and other stuff everywhere – it’s like bad graffiti on toilet walls. 

Maori facial tattoos, Maori women with moko.  Well, I don’t know what effect they think it has on me, but I am unimpressed, and find it all somewhat distasteful and tedious.

There are all manner of professional surveys and reports on tattooing, by dermatologists, sociologists and others.  I have read some of them.  But none of it alters the fact that tattooing means hacking into human skin, which is a major and essential organ of our bodies, injecting ink, and leaving permanent damage. 

It may look pretty.  Mostly it doesn’t.  But it is very difficult and costly to remove.  The removal is at best partial. 

And the reports show that most of the more perceptive who have ever, for whatever reason at the time, had tattoos, later profoundly regret it. 

I guess some people live in families, clans, hapu, where everyone is already tattooed.  It has become a rite of passage… and a big joke at some drunken party.  The main streets of provincial towns have grubby looking tattoo shops along with liquor outlets, loan agencies and social welfare depots. 

You may have the impression from this entry that I am opposed to tattoos.  You bet I am.  It’s silly, entirely unnecessary bodily mutilation, and it adds nothing to life.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

A new Apple iPad


I have got a new Apple iPad.  I do not need a new Apple iPad.  It cost just over $1000.  Mary said get it.  I think she feels, among other stuff, that here on the western slopes of life, as it were, we might as well indulge ourselves a little. 

It has taken me 3 or 4 days to get it set up.  All by myself.  Blokes don’t read manuals.  There isn’t one anyway.  If you find one on the Web, it’s incomprehensible. The first day was the worst because I simply didn’t know what I’d bought or what it was for.

But my old friend MacCuish had got/been given one, which I think he uses mainly as an eReader, with books downloaded by his wife Robin.  Barrie was seriously cyberphobic… until now.  And then I learned that my son-in-law Simon had one, after informing me quite recently that these things added nothing to life and were unnecessary if you had an efficient laptop, which I have.  Finally, in Brisbane last week, I found my son Rhys had an iPad.  He uses it constantly, amid all the other cyber gear with which he is surrounded.  He does Skype conferences with his London colleagues, holding it in his hands out on the deck.

Mary perhaps realized I was already a goner. 

On the 4th day I realized most things were now running and more or less clear to me.  There has been endless hassle with codes, passwords and whatnot, hitting the wrong buttons, getting out of silly situations, losing all the data I had entered…  The Wi-Fi modem plays up – or else simply reacts to the wireless environment around here – but we win through.  The iPad is solid state, no moving parts, and so it’s quick, and does exactly what I say, mistakenly or otherwise. 

I love its portability.  The house modem has to be kept on.  But the only way all this can be justified, since I am not running a corporation or researching for a PhD, is that it amuses and occupies an old bloke.

Word processing (ie. writing) still needs to be done on the laptop, perhaps, because its keyboard is better and the whole thing is a bit slower.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Drop – Cover – Hold


This is the mantra for Operation Shakeout on 26 September, at 9.26 am.  Or as we more militarily minded like to say, 0926 hrs.  It is a National Civil Defence earthquake exercise.  On that day and at that hour each person in the nation is expected to

DROP

COVER

HOLD

I am happy to comply, being of a generally compliant nature, as is widely recognised.  Withal, I do have some concerns about the initial DROP.  At age 78, of uncertain balance at times, and with bones and joints some eight years past their biblical use-by date (4 August 2004 at about 0230 hrs), it all sounds a bit perilous to me.  And that is to say nothing of the considerable task of getting up again. 

There should be a generous provision that Senior Cits may gently lower themselves to the floor, holding on to a chair or some more stable object.  Hand-over-hand down a doorpost might be a good idea, since some think that situating oneself in a doorway is a smart thing to do.  I doubt that.  People have got themselves killed in doorways and under desks.  You can’t get under the modern bed.  So that’s a problem, and it does cast some doubt on the order to COVER. 

HOLD, I have no problems with.  HOLD, I for one do quite well.  I look forward to that. 

They will have great fun in all the nation’s schools. 

But what will they do in the Warkworth supermarket?  There is nothing to get under.  So luckless customers will die in any real 0926 hrs earthquake under a mountain of cans of baked beans, or sconed by flying Pinot Noir.   We have had multiple pictures of the situation in supermarkets immediately post-earthquake.  It is a gloomy prospect for survival unscathed.  And in places like Pak’n’Save or The Warehouse, where they seem to have all their bulk storage way up above head height – actually, in such a place, it might be really smart to scramble up one of their large ladders, the ones on wheels with a chain across the bottom stairs and a notice reading “Staff Only”, and perch amid the large cartons of toilet rolls.  My advice is to be in Pak’n’Save at 0926 hrs that day. 

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Marriage


Marriage is between a man and a woman.  It is not compulsory.  No one has to get married. 

It is between a man and a woman because human physiology says so.  That is how it seems to me.

A sexual relationship between two men or two women is perfectly alright with me, if that is their choice, but it is not marriage.  I do not understand why anyone wants to call it marriage. 

Commitment, in the sense of stability and permanence, ought to apply to marriage.  But it never has in practice.  “Till death do us part” has always been contingent and negotiable, and this has provided a humane solution in some cases.  If people want commitment in any sense of permanency, whether in heterosexual or homosexual relationships, it is entirely up to them.  Calling it marriage doesn’t change anything. 

Marriage as an institution seems to me now to have become a lost cause.  I can think of couples I married who remain together in love and happiness.  I think also of those who do not.  I officiated at the weddings of people whose relationships were hopeless from the outset.  Why…?  Because all that mattered at the time was the Wedding, the Bride, the Day, the Event.  It was cultural suffocation.  And that eloquently expressed their attitude to life and to each other.  It is a façade.  Reality comes later.

Marriage is something very special, and different.  It is a bonding to each other, man and woman, and the couple seek that it is known and blessed by God.  The bond expects to be tested and tried, but is held by God.  It is a humble and good thing, and it models for children something they will not see in the culture around. 

But as I said, marriage is not compulsory.  Most relationships are not marriage, and that’s OK.  I do not understand why anyone wants to call them that, when they are not. 

Bonds between two men or two women may be entirely admirable, and to be celebrated.

They are not marriage – as it seems to me. 

But I am distressed that saying these things puts me in company with Christian and other fundamentalists who really want to say that all homosexual relationships are sinful.  Certainly I do not believe that.  No one should. 

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Coronation Street for Dummies

Here in New Zealand we get to watch Coronation Street some 18 months later than in the UK. So what I have to complain about now may be very old hat to the British. Life on the Street may, for all I know, have improved, or very much worsened – I would need to ask someone Over There. My guess is that it’s not a lot better. We have just gone through the spectacular tram (or train – various factors such as accent make it unsure) crash off the viaduct on to the Street. This has happened once before to Coronation Street. It was a long time ago, and only a few of us geriatrics remember. But now you do have to wonder why they feel so secure down there beside the viaduct. You would think Locality, Locality might have started to seem somewhat suspect. This time there was much fire and devastation. Ashley was killed, and Molly too, but leaving her baby thriving. However charming babies may be, this one has problems. His name is Jack, after Jack Duckworth, the lovable old bloke who quietly expired a little while back, sitting in an armchair and fantasizing about his beloved Vera. So far, so good. But little Jack is not the offspring of Tyrone, his mother’s lawful husband, but of Kevin, her former jogging mate, Sally’s spouse. This has been confirmed by DNA tests, for heaven’s sake. I always thought jogging was hazardous. Moreover, you don’t mess with Sally. Just two or three episodes on, you wouldn’t believe how calamitous all this has got. Peter survived but in a wheelchair. Nick survived more or less unhurt, and as the hero whose intrepid actions saved Peter’s life. Ashley, who also helped save Peter, as we know died. Devout Coronation Street watchers have all this, and much much more, more or less straight in our minds, although at times it is a delicate balance of memory and sanity. It is difficult indeed to elucidate it here, and I hope the reader is grateful. The new bar being run by Nick and Leanne was wiped out on its opening night, along with the Cabin, Rita’s flat, and the butcher shop of Fred Elliot and Son. Now the seriously evil Tracy has got out of prison (don’t ask) and returned to the drooping bosom of Deidre Barlow her mother – Traceeee, luv…! She flowed out of a taxi, net stockings and all, in the Street, in the middle of their commemorative Christmas Carol Service (Ken Barlow I think singing bass), loudly and blasphemously announcing herself as an even better incarnation. Tracy Barlow redefines original sin. She has a small daughter, Amy, and I think the father is the terminally pathetic Steve of the Rovers Return, but with Tracy that could never be more than provisional. She now maintains that in prison she thought of nothing else but resuming her maternal care of Amy. Like smoke. However, she is busy reclaiming her daughter from the care of Steve and his current wife, the incomparable Becky. It will end in tears. It is being done not so much by fair means or foul, as by an overwhelming preference for foul. Meanwhile Steve and Becky are caring for another kid, Max, the little blond son of Becky’s execrable sister Kylie. The Execrable Sister has found she can blackmail Steve and Becky for money if they want to keep Max. They have already paid a couple of ruinous instalments, the second being funds Becky lifted from the premises of Dev Allahan and Co during the turmoil of the viaduct crash and fire. This too will end in tears. At the moment Steve and Becky are guilty of theft, probably kidnapping, and (however the charge would be framed) buying a child. I personally hope Becky stays in the show and goes as we say from strength to strength. She is lovely and colourful. She does everything wrong, she shoots from the lip, and she gets into some delicious punch-ups. Roy and Hayley did her a lot of good and she responded to their love and care. Her personal relationships could be best described as volatile and pyrotechnic, and that’s on a good day, but her heart is where it should be. Becky is one of their best characters at present. I lack the available energy to unravel the matter of John and Fiz. John and Fiz, also, have a new baby. This one is premature but now apparently making progress. John is a teacher, dismissed for something or other bad and unprofessional, resumed teaching for a while under a false identity, spent time in prison after kidnapping Sally and Kevin’s older daughter Rosie, whom no one in their right mind would want five minutes with, was eventually released, managed to murder a lunatic teaching colleague named Charlotte who had been stalking him, and this got passed off as a casualty of the train crash… I do hope you are keeping up with me. We expend a lot of energy simply coming to terms with how stupid John is. Ashley (remember Ashley…?) being now deceased, he no longer has to go with his current wife, the slightly unhinged Clare, to live in France. I can’t say whether Ashley would have preferred France with Clare and seriously unEnglish meat cuts, or Eternal Life. He was always a little thick. Nowhere with Clare is what I say. There are little pockets of sanity in this place. Rita spreads sense, compassion and wisdom. Emily also, sometimes. Betty the aged barmaid actually related the devastated Street to the state of things in her childhood in the London Blitz. I wondered whether that really set it in context, but her point was, we’ve seen it all before. And of course, Roy and Hayley. Roy entered the Street years ago as a spookily intelligent single bloke with a little unmanly kitbag and a fixed almost emotionless expression. Hayley arrived as an unhappy transsexual. This, one might have thought, was unpromising material. They are now an oasis of simple sense and sanity amid the morass of strife, stupidity and pain. Coronation Street seems to eschew strong and sensible men. It wasn’t always so. It is now. Ken Barlow is infuriatingly weak and compliant, a moral wimp. I am devoutly opposed to violence in the home, but Ken’s Deidre does need a sharp smack across the chops at weekly intervals. Steve too is weak. Kevin, relegated by the stupid Sally to pariah status in his own home, seems unable to say to wife and daughters, “This is my home, my property – if you don’t like living with me, you leave…” Strong men on Coro do appear occasionally and ephemerally, but they tend to be obnoxious, and merely passing through. Tyrone routinely reverts to child. I haven’t mentioned Gail. Gail is a bloke’s most frightening nightmare. She believes she is the ultimate Mother Hen, totally devoted to her children, now all adults – well, at any rate, in the physiological sense. True adulthood is a rare and precious commodity on Coronation Street. At present, what they mainly have is fertility and scattered homicidal traits. Gail has a kind of descending face. There is no chin. She is supremely self-righteous, and seems sublimely able to set aside her own history. (This is a feature of the women on Coronation Street.) Nick is Gail’s son. There is nothing anyone can do about that. Gail had a daughter, Sarah Louise, who got pregnant to someone at age 13 or thereabouts… There is much more I wanted to know about that, but they have faded from the plot. David is Gail’s youngest. David has no redeeming features except that he seems to sense when to be afraid. He is a manipulating, amoral prat. Gail still tries, futilely, to bind it all together. She too has spent time in jail, convicted of the murder of her latest husband… I am too tired to recall what happened about all that. She lost her job as the local GP’s receptionist because she was caught opening confidential patient files. She said, “I would do anything for my children…” So that’s alright then. Now, I am really beginning to wonder whether the reader is keeping up. But you still don’t know about Gary. Gary is the wayward son of some couple I have not yet come to terms with. His father is a kind of loose-limbed begger of free drinks, a career welfare beneficiary, and his mother is a reasonably capable woman who copes with all this and hopes the best for her son. But Gary, having just been rescued from criminal conviction by the false testimony of one of his mates, enlists in the army and gets sent to Afghanistan. We have much anxiety and wailing about that. And of course, Gary eventually gets home wounded, and with the memory of a couple of his mates killed. So this is now about post traumatic stress, war neurosis, shell shock, and it did have possibilities for insightful social commentary. When the big disaster hit Coronation Street, Gary immediately saw himself back on the battlefield in a fire fight, and he assumed the foetal position and shivered. His training and experience might have made him invaluable in that crisis, but instead he simply hid. I guess the facts of PTS are well known and documented – there was a very moving sequence on just this near the end of the M*A*S*H series, when Hawkeye Pierce succumbs to war neurosis – but Coronation Street really failed to see this important theme well developed. Barefaced lying is a fundamental of the transactions of Coronation Street. They all lie. It is a kind of reflex. And it entails a constant thread of utter stupidity. Their lies routinely get found out. Then they fight. Simple candour is never seen, except perhaps in Rita or Emily. Events are interpreted to children by means of lies. I wonder whether this is unexceptional culture in and around Manchester. Another really tedious thing is how they speak to each other. I mean, their cruelty in speech and action. Tracy thinks nothing of deliberately hurting just-bereaved Clare with talk of her “late thick-headed husband”. In the Rovers, in their homes, out in the street, wherever they meet, they say unforgiveable things to each other, accurately hit out at tender spots, react with cruel vengeance. Is this really reflecting that culture? Verbal cruelty happens in NZ families too, of course, but what we encounter on Coronation Street is much worse in both intensity and frequency. And the hypocrisy… Most of them have what might be described as adventurous marital and extra-marital histories. Long-time watchers know this. But given, for instance, the fact that Kevin has fathered the late Molly’s baby, Kevin’s wife Sally is immediately afflicted with amnesia about her own story. Kevin is assailed by the most rancorous hypocrisy – and he seems simply to take it. I do not understand these things. Very few of the Street’s characters are in any position to cast stones. And so it goes on. 50 years, now. They must have something right. And of course the show changes. What entertained us in the days of Ena Sharples would possibly bore us now. But would it…? I am not so sure. I remain as fascinated by the characters of Trollope or Hardy as ever. Perhaps it’s that Coronation Street always has to attract new viewers and make money. Back in the early 1960s, Tracy Barlow would have been inconceivable and incomprehensible. Now everyone recognizes her.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Interviewing the Dalai Lama

The Weekend Herald “Canvas” supplement (21 July) had a report by Camilla Long on an interview she was granted with the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala. Camilla Long usually writes for the Sunday Times in the UK. But she fits seamlessly into the NZ Herald’s preferred template for interviewers of great and complex people – that is to say, trite, silly and shallow. Unfortunately, and as un-PC as it may be to identify the fact, these interviewers tend to be of the feminine persuasion. Iain Dale, someone I don’t know, posted this blog under the heading, “The menace that is Camilla Long”:
Could someone explain to me why the Sunday Times employs Camilla Long as an interviewer? Can anyone explain to me why she won interviewer of the year at the British Press Awards? A month ago she interviewed Nigel Farage and started the interview by poking fun at the fact that having had cancer he has only one testicle. Yeah, really funny that, Camilla. Wonder if you'd poke fun at a woman who had lost a breast. Thought not. It was a truly terrible interview, mainly because she had broken the interviewers' code by going into the interview with her mind made up. She was determined to write a hatchet job on Farage and succeeded. Then last week she devoted a whole column to how she failed in her quest to interview Gloria de Piero. Gloria had the good sense to avoid her. This week Long did another hatchet job on Tory candidate Joanne Cash. The moral of this story is this. If any politician gets a call from Camilla Long in the next couple of weeks, asking for an interview, they should tell her to sling her hook. The woman is a menace. Her interviewing style is appalling, she knows bugger all about politics and is determined to be negative.
Someone called Michelle Hewitson is accorded by the Herald a weekly page. This seems to me extraordinarily generous, since there are far better journalists who clearly have to bargain for space. Hewitson interviews prominent personages here and there, each week. But in fact she normally interviews herself in their presence, and that is different. I am not interested in Michelle Hewitson’s feelings and reactions to Winston Peters or Sonny Bill Williams. I may, perhaps, be interested in the interviewees’ thoughts about various matters. But that depends on the interviewer’s ability and willingness to subordinate herself and her own ego to the reader’s need for facts, perspective and wisdom. But the fact is at present, although the Herald does have a few expert and lucid writers, they also employ some truly embarrassing substitutes for journalists. These people reflect one culture that still apparently buys the Herald, the “Me” generation, those ruled by hormones and feelings. These readers require their feelings and needs to be replicated and affirmed in others, especially in the great and newsworthy. So now we come to Camilla Long and her encounter with the Dalai Lama. She missed every signal he gave of deeper and better issues. She was clearly mystified by his laughter, and could depict it only as some kind of clowning. She mentioned his appearance on Master Chef, an experience he manifestly loathed, as would others of us – and she missed the point about that by a mile. Nowhere does she engage seriously with Buddhism or with the agony of Tibet. She doesn’t even realise what obviously happened – that the Dalai Lama had felt obliged to give a bit of time to this British journalist and was kind to her shallowness, as of course he would be. He didn’t gain anything from her because there was nothing to gain, and she gained nothing from him because she was too dim and shallow to see any need, and her own egoism was completely in the way.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

A chance to be generous, perhaps

Some ten Chinese asylum seekers have arrived in Darwin, hoping to sail onward across the Tasman to New Zealand. They are members of the Falun Gong cult and would certainly meet persecution if they returned to China. Their boat seems to be a reasonably seaworthy Malaysian fishing vessel, but it is unsuitable for crossing the Tasman in safety.

Alarm bells sound everywhere. We don’t want them to risk the Tasman passage in that boat. We don’t want them here. Australia, realising that they don’t wish to stay there, seem to have come over all helpful, and have given them temporary visas until they can be on their way. It’s all righteousness in Darwin.

John Banks, our Act Party resident bigot, simply wants to tell these people, “Don’t bother”. He omits to say what he thinks they should do. Simply disappear, presumably.

There are 10 of them, for heaven’s sake. My guess is that they would be good immigrants, certainly not lazy or unproductive.

What is happening to us? At various times we have had policies, official or not, to keep out Jews, to keep out Chinese... But now we know that both communities in New Zealand have been very much to NZ's benefit. The UK may be said to have a real immigration problem -- we do not.

NZ’s land area is about 268,021 sq km, population about 4.5 million, about 16.5 persons per square km. In the UK the land area is less, 243,610 sq km, and the population is about 62,262,000 -- some 255.6 per sq km. How does that seem to someone from China?

When do we learn to be generous and outgoing? I do not want to live in Fortress John Banks...! It is not beyond our wit to form laws and regulations to cover the possible consequences we are afraid of.

Teach English properly. Teach Asian languages in our schools. Get realistic about the way the world is becoming. Discourage knee-jerk suspicions and encourage people to embrace difference. After all, the death-knell of British and western primacy is sounding in the hills...

Friday, April 06, 2012

Win a vasectomy



That sign was outside a veterinarian’s premises. Clearly a one stop shop. Someone expressed the hope that they clean the knife between species. But would the blokes around here be prepared to admit, I had mine done at the vet’s…?

Mine was done long ago in Fiji. That was fun. Fijian and Indian men on the whole would never dream of sterilization. They would also forbid their women from using contraceptives, or from tubal ligation, unless perhaps they were better informed than usual, and life could be in danger.

The Indian surgeon at CWM (the Suva public) Hospital routinely asked each patient who came in, without looking up, “What are you complaining of?” I replied “Fertility” -- so he looked up at me. I imagine at that point he dimly tried to remember his textbook procedures for vasectomy.

A reasonably prominent parish minister in Suva, I would have appreciated a fair degree of anonymity in this. But that was beyond the large and ebullient Fijian theatre and ward nurses. “Ah, Reverend, you will won’t have much fun now…!”

Among the basic realities of life is the experience of being trundled to theatre, slightly sedated and silly and knowing there is nothing more you can do -- you can have a similar experience taking off on an international flight.

But that’s enough about all that.

Hang the blighters

Directors of Bridgecorp were yesterday convicted on multiple charges brought under the Securities Act, the Crimes Act and the Companies Act. They have been remanded in custody and the judge has signalled that they will go to prison. Granny Herald reports:

One investor, Rex Warren invested $1 million in the company and today said it was the right outcome but it brought little closure. “Of course they're guilty, but the punishment doesn't fit the crime. I would be willing to pull the lever or pull the trigger if they were hung,'' said the Katikati man. Warren believed his loss could have been avoided. "I can say we made mistakes, but in my case most of the (Bridgecorp) staff knew what was happening when we invested our money but they didn't say anything.''

Well it’s hanged, not hung -- but I guess this is not a good moment for quibbling. Is there anyone else who wonders why the Herald bothers printing such offensive ignorance? So Rex Warren of Katikati is angry. But do he and other investors accept no responsibility whatever for their choice to invest in Bridgecorp? Is it always someone else’s fault?

No doubt there is ample reason for anger with the Bridgecorp directors, but precisely what is achieved by putting these men in prison? Yes, yes, it’s to send a signal…etc, to make an example, to satisfy our somewhat barbaric need to see people punished and suffer pain. I know all that, but it does not answer the question. I would have thought that the public humiliation of months of trial and then conviction would have been enough. These men with whatever skills they have could be sent to work to earn whatever they can for reparation. They won’t achieve anything much in prison.

We are a punitive, retributive culture, despite centuries of Christianity. Christians have been among the cruelest at times. I realise now I do not wish to be part of that culture. Perhaps I started exempting myself from it in about 1941 when I watched Mrs Copsey strapping kids because they had, often unintentionally displeased her. Auckland Grammar in my time was a violent and blind culture of incompetent teachers who thought whacking boys achieved something. It literally disgusted me. The violence moved seamlessly to the rugby field and general attitudes. We feel better to see people hurt, punished.

It is Good Friday as I write this. 2012. This is what I said in our little meditation group this morning:

Numbered with the transgressors - 6 April 2012

...the old King James Version words of Isaiah 53:
He poured out his soul unto death;
and he was numbered with the transgressors;
and he bore the sin of many...


It is very ancient and very beautiful and very moving poetry. It comes from centuries before the time of Jesus. It starkly depicts what happens to people. Never mind whether they are good people or bad. The fact is, as the poet realised, it is a cruel and unjust world.

We go on and on these days about deserving. Deserving has nothing to do with it. Good people suffer. In the towns of Syria... Nature takes over and devastates our lives. We get leukaemia, or alzheimers. Babies are born with some lethal disorder. In another way, after a lifetime of devoted public service you may stand in the dock accused of some neglect as a company director, and suffer utter and prolonged humiliation. People are accused unjustly, or justly. What is the difference...? as Robert Burns said,

Who made the heart, ‘tis he alone decidedly can try us...
Then at the balance let’s be mute, we never can adjust it.
What’s done, we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.


The Jews under Jewish law were in no doubt that Jesus was guilty as charged -- guilty they thought of blasphemy. The Romans under their law were not so sure -- he may have been guilty of sedition -- but Roman rule was in any case corrupt, and they needed peace in Palestine.

And so, in a morass of conflicting motives and ideals, of corrupt people, frightened people, ignorant people, Jesus chooses to stand there silent. Where would you start, anyway? His contemplative love of the Father, his complete confidence of the Father’s love for him, at this moment is the sustenance he needs. He is content to be numbered with the transgressors. Beaten, tortured, humiliated, condemned. We too have to fall into silence, if even for just this short time...

He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows...
He poured out his soul unto death;
and he was numbered with the transgressors;
and he bore the sin of many...

Monday, April 02, 2012

Saving the cathedral

This is the most sensible thing I have read lately about the Christchurch Anglican Cathedral. (I'm afraid it is a bit long...)

As a former Anglican pastor in Christchurch, I - like almost everyone else - deeply mourn the passing of the architectural heart of our city, the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral.

A few blocks away the Catholic basilica also lies in ruins. Around these two iconic buildings, places of worship for more than 150 years, perhaps 50 other Canterbury churches are demolished, ruined or excluded from use after 10,000 earthquakes.
Oxford Terrace Baptist; Hororata Anglican; All Saints Sumner; the Methodist churches at Rugby St and Durham St; Knox Presbyterian, Bealey Ave - the list goes on and on.
The two cathedrals may have been iconic bricks and mortar in our city, but they were hardly the spiritual heart of Christchurch.

Increasingly, they had morphed into tourist temples, complete with a cafe selling trinkets and a photographic booth outside, or a venue for concert music, with a bit of worship going on, on the side (usually in a side chapel).

They were increasingly irrelevant to ordinary Cantabrians as vital centres of worship. Rugby pitches were more familiar and more exciting.

As representatives of 21st century Christianity in all its colour and vibrancy, they were rather pallid and jaded examples. Larger and much more dynamic churches were flourishing elsewhere: Spreydon Baptist, Grace Vineyard (at Woolston and New Brighton), Majestic (city), Bexley Samoan church, to name just five.

Christchurch began, and has continued, as a city of vibrant Christian communities housed at more than 200 locations (including "Church in the Park").

Christian communities in Christchurch have been scattered and dislocated by the earthquakes; and Bishop Victoria Mathews mentors what true spirituality is all about (character, prayer, a broader perspective, and responding to detractors and critics with grace and humility); and dozens of congregations dovetail in shared facilities (four congregations meet at Middleton Grange School).

Meanwhile, churches in other nations are being toppled, not just by nature, but by human and political forces.

In Orissa, India, for example, a Christchurch group has launched a project to rebuild at least the roofs of 14 churches attacked and ruined by Islamic extremists so Christians can again gather in their communities to worship.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, churches have been bulldozed and dismantled during years of systematic persecution, and one congregation has had its buildings destroyed three times.

In Anhui, China, in February a legally registered quarter-century-old church was demolished by the Government in the dead of night, to the shock of its members next morning.

In Kazakhstan in October, new laws resulted in the banning of all small churches or Christian groups in that nation. Five hundred and seventy-nine religious groups were forced to forfeit their registration certificates and cease all religious activity.
In Aswan, Egypt, in September a 3000-strong mob of Muslim villagers inflamed by fiery sermons from imams in 20 mosques, demolished the Mar Gerges church, burned down the businesses and looted the homes of local Coptic Christians, who have worshipped there for nearly two millennia.

During Christmas and New Year 2011-12 the Islamic terror group Boko Haram ("western education is evil") launched a horror campaign against Nigerian Christians resulting in the suicide bombings of: in January, the Evangelical Winning All Church II in Tafawa Balewa; in February the Church of Christ in Nigeria in Jos; and in March, St Finbar's Catholic Church, also in Jos. Most of these attacks took place during worship services when the buildings were packed with men, women and children.

In Myanmar, currently being visited by New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully, the Burmese military demolished a church in Tha Dah Der village, and crosses were systematically torn down or demolished in Mindate, Chin state, a no-go area for Westerners, by the military state.

As we mourn the demolition of Christ Church Cathedral in our affluent, prosperous Garden City, the wise are mindful of widespread anti-church, anti- Jewish and anti-Christian attacks across the world, bordering on genocide in nations such as Sudan and Nigeria.

Our theology reminds us, that God is no respecter of buildings. The Jerusalem Temple was destroyed several times as an expression of divine judgment, and St Patrick notoriously hacked down a sacred oak tree of the Celts.

Christians believe God has chosen to build his "Holy Temple" within all people, expressed by the Apostle Peter as "you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house" and by the Apostle Paul as, "you are the temple".

The death of three Christchurch men dismantling an organ in the damaged Durham St Methodist church during the February 22 quake, reminds us buildings are just stones; but that the Christian Church and the true religion of Christchurch is its people, wherever they are housed, be it soaring cathedral or smelly Bethlehem stable.


* John Stringer was an Anglican pastor in the Christchurch diocese from 2005 to 2009. He lost his house, car and business in the February 22, 2010, earthquake and now teaches at Middleton Grange School.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Do not resuscitate

It was a memorable thing to accompany Mary to Queenstown, to the 50th anniversary reunion of her Otago Medical School “Class of ‘62”. That is the year they graduated MBChB -- they actually assembled in Dunedin in February 1958, having already spent one year doing their Medical Intermediate somewhere, mostly somewhere else. Mary had done hers in Auckland.

Back in 1958 Queenstown was still a small remote Lakeland place, set in those mountains and lakes, with all its history of gold and exploration. I know. I went there that year as a raw divinity student “on supply” in the Queenstown church. The only access to Glenorchy at the head of the lake was by boat. Now it is all a major tourist resort, with a scary alpine international airport and all the concomitants. A sealed highway takes you to Glenorchy. There is furious debate about an extended highway and tunnel onward to Milford Sound. The first time Mary and I went to Milford Sound was in our ancient Austin A4 with bald tires, 70 miles each way on a dirt road from Te Anau. My main memory is sandflies.

Since the Class of ’62 now includes some geriatrics, and because most have made some money along the way, we met in the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the lakeside.

I actually wish I could get to the point here... The point is about life and death. I was one of the attending spouses -- in fact, the only male spouse. Some 120 students began in 1958 in Dunedin. At Queenstown some 54 years later, 50 survivors made it to the reunion. We had also two widows of class members. The total of doctors and spouses at the reunion was 91. Twenty of the original class are known to have died.

They came from all over the world. And I have to say, it was uncommonly pleasant to be at an event sensitively planned for people in their 70s and 80s, with plenty of time and space for chatting and leisure, plenty of fun and good food -- and a ride down the lake on the coal-fired steamer Earnslaw to Walter Peak Station for a sumptuous barbecue.

This blog however was prompted not primarily by the reunion, but by an article I found in the Guardian Weekly by Ken Murray, a professor of family medicine at the University of Southern California. He writes about “the art of dying gracefully”, and about how much end-of-life care is plainly futile, expensive, traumatising and pointless. So, he says, medics tend to refuse it for themselves.

That echoes much that I heard in conversation at the reunion.

Doctors die too. They get sick and struggle. In the Queenstown group there was the whole spectrum of human ailments, joints, tumours, emergencies, skin lesions, neuropathic stuff, blindness, varying degrees of deafness. I think I want to say that this was such an excellent cross-section of the walking wounded. It also covered the gamut of human frailty, with broken marriages and many hidden crises.

One doctor had survived, in a sense, his conviction and imprisonment for child abuse. He showed up. I think that was quite difficult for some of his colleagues, but the fact is, they simply included him at the reunion and there was no crisis.

It occurs to me now that I met no one “in denial”, as we say these days, about life and death. They have long ago learned what happens to people along the way. They have seen it in detail for 50 years. It is no surprise that it happens also to them. If any of them ever thought they would be somehow immune they certainly don’t think it now.

A number of these doctors have done brilliant work over the years, others have faithfully slogged along doing their job, some have pioneered techniques and done much for science and their patients. Yet no one at Queenstown was posturing or performing. Fifty years on, it seemed, there were no prima donnas any more. No one felt they had to prove anything. It was as real and human a bunch as I have ever encountered.

So now it dawns on me that I have had a rare privilege -- meeting with this group of talented and insightful people who have arrived, as it were, on the western slopes, and who can talk gently about what they see from there. Their experiences have generated some wise and good people. I note that any thoughts they may have about religion tend to be produced quietly and one-to-one -- or perhaps not so quietly but with the assistance of Central Otago wine. They have not solved the problems of the universe. But they all know about mortality.

There may be two main pathways to coming to terms with death.

• Death is inevitable, it is going to happen. The doctors who bring life into the world know that death is at their elbow. The only question is how we die. And they tend to reject any strenuous moves (in their own case) to save or prolong life unnecessarily after a terminal diagnosis. CPR, drugs, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, obviously have their uses, but if all it is going to do is buy a few more weeks of sickness, discomfort, dependency and helplessness, forget it. Death should be gentle and dignified, and they seek to make arrangements accordingly.

• The contemplative path, which I embrace, says that death is not our enemy. It is in any case the final defeat of the voracious ego, the victory in which love has finally overcome fear, and all is well.

These doctors at various times in their careers, and some of them frequently, have had to deal with family and friends, and perhaps actually the patients, who were desperate to prolong life when there could not be in fact any quality of life. Expensive science was wheeled in to keep lungs and heart working. Some frantic families resorted to magic to get some miracle cure. Death is seen as an offence for which someone must be to blame. Doctors may be sued if someone thinks they were negligent. A large slice of the health budget gets to be spent on the futile maintenance of life, because people refuse to come to terms with human mortality.

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are clearly vital parts of the medical weaponry against disease. Some of the doctors in Queenstown had been physicians in these areas. They could reduce pain. They could quite often cure disease. They could buy some months or even years of remission. But they also had to know when to say to a patient, and to the patient’s family, that from now on it is simply palliative. And they formed views on how they would manage their own mortality when it became an issue.

I feel privileged to have met with these people. Other events I sometimes get to tend to be rather more intense, retreats, seminars, quite different in purpose and atmosphere. While there was much thoughtfulness in Queenstown, there was also a wisdom and humour, and a reluctance any more to take oneself too seriously. It was refreshing.

It also made me more confident about my own eventual approach to mortality, frailty and dependence. If there is no further quality of life -- DO NOT RESUSCITATE.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

The cathedral

The decision to partly demolish the quake-crippled Christ Church Cathedral will be "heartbreaking" for many Christchurch people, according to mayor Bob Parker.

Good God. Get over it. It will be a huge relief to see it no longer there in pitiful ruins in every photo, and to know that the church is planning something new, different, fresh and relevant.

It was a rather ordinary building anyway, as cathedrals go. No one who has stood in Freiburg Munster or York Minster, could claim that Christ Church Cathedral was great, “iconic”. It was a handsome church of its type -- colonial 19th century English nostalgia, which says nothing much to the world and realities of the 21st century. It was built with manifestly unsuitable material and methods, on unstable land.

Some Christchurch councilor said he would chain himself to the building to prevent demolition. He could organize hundreds of locals to hold hands around the ruins. He actually said they would pull it down over his dead body. Well OK -- two birds with one stone, as it were.

And isn’t it interesting how all these people who in fact have nothing to do with the Anglican church suddenly start claiming some sort of ownership and a say in the matter. “The cathedral belongs to Christchurch…” Well, that would be news to the Anglican Church Property Trustees. “I am by no means religious, but…”

Then this morning, a retired 73-year-old Anglican priest sets out how much the cathedral has always meant to her and her clan, all the events that have happened there, memorials to family members there, ordinations, baptisms there… Wonderful. But it all bespeaks a church that actually doesn’t exist anymore. And if I wanted to know about a proper format for the church of the future I would be unlikely to enquire from this dear lady.

What with care and toil he buildeth,
Tower and temple, fall to dust.


I don’t know whether Bishop Victoria Matthews feels besieged, but TV shows her standing there quite unsupported at media interviews answering silly questions clearly, humbly and succinctly. Where are the cathedral canons and suchlike?

The cathedral dean, Peter Beck, resigned and stood for a vacant Christchurch City Council seat, which he won. I am sure he will do a lot for the city that way. But we have to wonder about what caused a senior Anglican cleric to hand it all in. It may have been what so often happens these days, simply a change of vocation.

Of course Bishop Victoria is not of Canterbury blue blood. She is an import, a foreigner, and she is female. I think there are Christchurch Anglicans and others for whom all that means she starts well behind.

However, there are as we know two cathedrals in Christchurch, not one, and both are more or less in ruins. The Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Barbadoes Street was in my view a far more interesting and significant building. It impresses me that the Catholics have been much quieter in bearing their anguish and plotting their future.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Knights in yellow jumpsuits

They should be made to wear a yellow jumpsuit when they do their community sentence and clean-ups, and it should be published in the paper so people can go and look at them and say, 'Oh, how the mighty have fallen'.

Two former NZ Ministers of Justice, with a third director of Lombard Finance, have been found guilty of making false statements to investors about the company’s position. Sir Douglas Graham is one of the three and he was chairman of the Lombard board. Douglas Graham was National MP for Remuera, and always seemed to me the handsome epitome of Remuera’s abiding satisfaction with itself.

And so the media are rounding up investors who have lost some or all of their life savings with Lombard. Mr Paul Wah wants Sir Douglas stripped of his knighthood. “How can a knight of the realm be ... not a common criminal but someone guilty of criminal conduct?" the pensioner asked. "My fondest wish would be to see those guys on bread and water for a few years." Well I imagine the ranks of knighthood would be somewhat reduced if white collar and other criminals were excluded.

It was Gino Zambon who proposed the very public humiliation with which we began. And indeed, if you have seen the foundations of your retirement ripped away, the money you had put together through years of work and planning… If you had placed the funds with Lombard partly because of the reputation of these men… If in later years you now have to find other ways to afford to live, including rising medical costs…

Sir Douglas himself lost money, we are informed -- he reinvested $12,000 of $17,000 of matured debentures in October 2007, and also held a small stake in Lombard Group, then NZX-listed. Well it might have been prudent not to have advanced this information. Mr Wah invested his six-figure life savings in Lombard, and is probably unimpressed if Sir Douglas thinks he is sharing the pain.

Granny Herald, always helpful, supplies us with an interesting list of knights who have been stripped. I cannot imagine how Sir Douglas now feels being listed with Albert Henry of the Cook Islands, Morgan Fahey the disgraced former Christchurch Deputy Mayor, Frank Goodwin of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Robert Mugabe -- and Jeffrey Archer who actually got to keep his life peerage in the end.

But it hasn’t happened yet, and I doubt that it will. Sir Douglas was knighted not for his financial leadership, but for the very effective work he did over the years while Minister of Justice in Treaty of Waitangi settlements. It was good work, and it would be ridiculous to take that away from him.

I confess to being as uneasy as ever when responsible media so eagerly give an airing to the irrational anger of victims. The anger is perhaps understandable, but not always. It ought to be possible for Mr Wah and Mr Zambon to see what kind of society we would have if we followed their punitive prescriptions. It ought to be possible for the NZ Herald to review the ways they select what they are going to report. It ought to be possible to distinguish between fury and sensible legal outcomes. And it ought to be easy enough to see that gross deliberate public humiliation of people (as though the directors of Lombard had not suffered enough of it already) is actually barbaric.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

22 February

It was always going to be like this on 22 February, one year on from the worst of the long series of Christchurch earthquakes. Christchurch and much of the rest of NZ spent the day remembering and wallowing, commemorating and grieving. TVNZ gave itself over to long coverage of the various events in Christchurch, with sad repetitive accounts of individual stories. We heard of heroism, sad loss, destruction of important buildings, children finding ways to cope, people who can’t cope, people who have cleared out, people doggedly making the best of it, angry people, very tired people, people still trying to clear liquefaction, problems with certification and classification, hopes for the future... We saw flowers and balloons and new memorials, a wonderful big bell in Hagley Park.

On the whole our betters spoke quite well and were mercifully brief and sensible. The Anglican Bishop, Victoria Matthews, seemed to me a real minister, quiet and strong and without ego needs. Even John Key and his speechwriters seemed to sense the real needs. One of the truest things was the music of Linwood High School, obviously rehearsed 1001 times and needing another few rehearsals yet, but so good just as it was.

For me the hardest moment was when TVNZ played a couple of minutes of the first police calls on radio to base. These officers including one woman were reeling from what they were suddenly seeing and what was dawning on them, yet still cool and professional. “We need everything you’ve got...” They were hearing calls for help from every direction. “It’s huge, send all units... the building’s on fire... we’ve got a gas leak here... I’m seeing multiple injuries here...”

Of course we fall deep into sentiment. Grown men weep. We sing How Great Thou Art, heaven knows why. We hang notes on trees. And the media devote hours of time to getting people stumblingly to recount how they felt, how they feel now, how they think they will feel eventually. Right after we heard from one ferociously protective über-mother about how her children needed to be shielded from harsh reality, we went to a bunch of about 50 yelling happy kids and some sensible adult who said, “Oh, the kids are fine, they deal with it in their own ways...” As we have always known, the kids will reflect the adults’ anxieties and hang-ups.

Here in Algies Bay we are far away from it all, and should avoid making judgements. What has happened in Christchurch is monstrous, and it’s interesting to watch how different people react. Some simply don’t manage. On the other hand, we have dear friends who know that, whatever might be the worst that could happen to them, it’s not any of that. Neither did they ever expect life to be serene.

A TV item the other day concerned a couple who bought their Lifestyle property in the Waikato somewhere, and built their Dream Home. It was all perfect, the money, the vistas, the ponies... until Transpower built a large pylon 9 metres off their boundary and hung transmission wires. These people see it as a deliberate planned invasion of their lifestyle. It wasn’t for this that they dreamed their dreams and earned their wealth. They are destroyed... being evidently so fragile. Well, tough. Get over it. Christchurch people are dealing with real issues, not mere ruffles to their lifestyle.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out

Someone has identified a global phenomenon (it has to be global these days), and even given it an acronym which makes it kosher among the trendy set -- Fear Of Missing Out, FOMO. It is all around us and among us.

The adolescent never more than an arm’s reach from the cellphone... The mindless communication: “What are you doing? Nothing... What are you going to do? Dunno...”

The mother to whom it is vital that “my daughter and I have no secrets from each other -- she tells me everything”. Oh yeah? It would be a crisis should she find out that her daughter had done something, experienced something, thought something, met somebody, without the mother knowing first. The sadness of this quite often is, not so much the mother’s illusion of uninterrupted openness as it may have been years ago, but that it may be slightly true -- the adult daughter may actually be more open still with her mother than she is with her husband, partner, lover, co-tenant, or whatever she’s got. I recall a young parishioner in Scotland whose husband had just stupidly turned down a wonderful job offer in Canada -- she said to me, “Oh, but I couldn’t leave me mum...!”

Then we have the church’s high art of gossip. Seemingly mature people in the church can fall out with each other because gossip was withheld from one to the other. “You didn’t tell me...!” Confidentiality, respect for privacy and dignity, can be at a high premium in the parish church. It may be that I am over sensitive about this. I am also aware that there are plenty of people who actually think they have some right to information, accurate or distorted, about others. FOMO is a living reality in the church. St Benedict, who is important to me, was very much aware of gossip and opposed to it.

I suppose the fear of being left out of the loop is pretty basic. A couple of colleagues recently told me some information about another colleague, which I hadn’t known. My initial reaction was, I am sorry to have been told that. I didn’t need to know. And indeed, the “Need To Know” principle is always worth bearing in mind.

A real and mature challenge is to form our own assessments of people with love and charity, and constant awareness of human frailty, without the help of gossips and tittle-tatlers. After all, our need is not to pin labels on others, which will always be only marginally accurate (and we don’t like it when they do it to us), but to practise hospitality and openness and exercise generous judgement.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

The time of the tractors




The time of the tractors has returned. The Blokes need to haul their boats back and forth to the water. If homo sapiens ever had a particular mating season, this has replaced it.

The tractors have been brought out, filled up, run up and deployed. Our road is alive with diesel throb and fumes as the tractors take their place with the motor mowers, line trimmers, chain saws, leaf blowers, farm bikes, quad bikes, outboard engines.

I realise now that the deployment of the tractor is more than the pragmatic thing it seems. The simple possession of a suitable machine is itself a securing of status. It is the bloke who gets to drive it of course -- I have never in coming here over 30 years seen one of the women driving a tractor. The women ride obediently in the boat being towed, they mind the kids, tend the food and booze, down to the water and back. They don’t get to drive the boats either.

Rather in the manner of the ordo surrounding that important cultural shrine, the barbecue, there are clear roles. The bloke presides, as did the priest in the high places of ancient Palestine. He invigilates the events and protocol, and the frequent libations. The handmaidens hover in the background with their supporting functions.

No one buys a new tractor. Not around here anyway. Perhaps they do at Omaha. There must be a lively market for old and obsolete farm tractors that can be kept in more or less working condition and brought to life each summer. That does not mean they are registered to go on the roadway, or have any actual warrant of fitness. The local police seem to turn a blind eye to these things, as also to the fact that children routinely ride precariously on the back of them, and most tractors have no safety roll bars that I can see.

I came across an advertisement for a tractor. I don’t understand any of it. Here it is exactly as it was printed, and I am not making this up:

Gas Left Hand Clutch. Nasty old tractor that 'D' 4 Speed Trans that shifts sideways Hand Clutch that has a brake when you pull it back 2 speed PTO but no 3 point hitch Spring Loaded Drawbar Poor Ground Clearance - Hung up on a patch of Dandelions Throttle is under the steering wheel and forward Seat Goes behind the wheels so you can stand on a pan and the brakes are down there to. 42 hp and HEAVY! Its Short to Solid Fenders for Rides and Safe to operate


Well, it is moving to realise that some bloke will read that as pure poetry.

A few years back red was the colour de rigueur. A bloke who bought a green tractor or a blue one would paint it red before anyone saw it, and then dirty it up a bit. But now I’m afraid any colour goes, along with the general deterioration of standards and disappearance of the old moral landmarks. The rest of the uniform remains however, for the present -- baseball cap, black singlet, black shorts and bare feet. After all, that is the uniform blokes wear also to the supermarket and the petrol station.

So far this summer of 2011-2012 has been dismal, however. Clouds and heavy rain. Kawau Bay has been leaden and choppy much of the time. Campers have given up and gone home. Everyone expects that the procession of fronts will ease off soon and there will still be time left for long hot days. Meanwhile here are all these tractors, some of them forlornly hauling $100,000 boats down to the water for a spin around the bay or some fishing out beyond Kawau.