Warkworth is pretty well deserted at 8 am on a Monday, except for the queue outside the Diagnostic Medlab “collection centre”. They “collect” your specimens, and the report goes to your doctor. The queue this morning was considerable, all elderly gents when I arrived, standing outside in the frost awaiting whoever might arrive and open the place up. Each of us had thought we were smart to show up early. Each of us was wrong. The frosty morning was no help to those with prostate problems. Some if not most had been fasting, on instruction, and were wondering how long it would be before they got home to breakfast.
Others showed up. Some women, one arriving on her motorised module, whatever those things are called. The conversation outside in the cold was beyond belief. Opinions were traded, on everything from the government to the weather to the All Blacks to medical care these days to the state of the roads around Warkworth – and to a generally gloomy view of human prospects.
Botox is irrelevant in this company. Gravity had triumphed. So had the general failure of the education system. We crowded into the waiting room and sat there like some kind of human demolition yard. The neurones that were available were devoted to remembering where we thought we were in the queue. The wits among us made their excruciating comments, and laughed at their own witticisms. Others of us simply endured.
The waiting room was devoid of reading matter, and a notice stood on the counter to the effect that there was a yellow alert about Swine ‘Flu, and therefore we could not read the Woman’s Weekly because it could harbour bugs.
One by one we were called, to be taken into a cubicle, bled and in some cases equipped with some plastic gear and directed to the toilet.
This is pathology, to which my wife has dedicated her life for many years -- although she has always dealt more with soft tissue and bones, histo-pathology. Nevertheless, the pathologists’ reports will affect the lives of these people, in some cases deeply or terminally.
I actually don’t care, ultimately, what any of it says about me.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Setting Ego aside
I am trying to remember how it was I went to all the trouble to borrow Honor Moore: The Bishop’s Daughter. The local Rodney library system didn’t have it, so it had to be ordered on Interloan, which cost me $5.00. Honor Moore is the daughter of Paul Moore, who was the Episcopalian (Anglican) Bishop of New York. She is still locked in battle with her father, who died in 2003 – and also with her mother who died of colon cancer – and this book is a tedious tour around most of her major dysfunctions.
Both Paul Moore and his wife Jenny were products of privilege and great wealth. Paul served in the US Marines and came home a World War II hero, with a bullet hole right through his chest and out the back. It had my name on it, but I guess they must have spelled it wrong. Anglo-Catholic, tall and handsome, all the right connections... it was inevitable that Paul Moore would romp up the hierarchical ladder in the church. He also fathered some nine children with Jenny – and Honor, who writes this book, is the first.
Father Moore got stuck into innovative inner-city ministry, in Newark, in Indianapolis, in Washington, and New York. This is muscular theology, and Fr/Bishop Paul could certainly raise the funds. It’s all very admirable, but you know all the time that none of this tribe will ever lack for a dime. They can always retreat to their mountain pad in the Adirondacks. Mother Jenny was sliding seriously downhill... but hell! it’s a jungle out there. I’m sure I don’t know how you remain sane when the babies keep coming, and your husband is poncing around in medieval gear accompanied by choir and organ and acolytes. Honor, our writer, flees the family nest to live in New York as a poet, dramatist, and whatnot. So we have drugs, dedicated promiscuity, pregnancy and abortion, regular visits to the therapist... You do have to wonder about these Manhattan therapists.
Then it turns out that Paul the Bishop, all along, indeed right from his days in the Marines, has had another life as homosexual. Not bad when you’ve fathered nine kids. At this point, gathering together all my renowned willingness to understand and appreciate human difference, I start to struggle with the dependence of these people on image and narcissism, pills, therapy, sexual adventure, relentless combat with each other and with their massive cosseted highly expensive Egos. I suppose Honor’s written reflections on all this are lucid to her. They are largely incomprehensible to me. Get a life, is what I say.
Those years, the 1960s and 70s onwards, were when we discovered and carefully nurtured the Ego. I’m OK, You’re OK. Millions of westerners went looking for themselves. How I feel became the measure of everything. That is what this book depicts. It also depicts the sad, chronic juvenilism of people who have never grasped that Ego is what really has to go. Love and freedom tend to be in proportion to the receding of the voracious demanding Ego. Letting it go is a product of contemplative prayer. And what is left? The person God has always seen and known and loved.
Both Paul Moore and his wife Jenny were products of privilege and great wealth. Paul served in the US Marines and came home a World War II hero, with a bullet hole right through his chest and out the back. It had my name on it, but I guess they must have spelled it wrong. Anglo-Catholic, tall and handsome, all the right connections... it was inevitable that Paul Moore would romp up the hierarchical ladder in the church. He also fathered some nine children with Jenny – and Honor, who writes this book, is the first.
Father Moore got stuck into innovative inner-city ministry, in Newark, in Indianapolis, in Washington, and New York. This is muscular theology, and Fr/Bishop Paul could certainly raise the funds. It’s all very admirable, but you know all the time that none of this tribe will ever lack for a dime. They can always retreat to their mountain pad in the Adirondacks. Mother Jenny was sliding seriously downhill... but hell! it’s a jungle out there. I’m sure I don’t know how you remain sane when the babies keep coming, and your husband is poncing around in medieval gear accompanied by choir and organ and acolytes. Honor, our writer, flees the family nest to live in New York as a poet, dramatist, and whatnot. So we have drugs, dedicated promiscuity, pregnancy and abortion, regular visits to the therapist... You do have to wonder about these Manhattan therapists.
Then it turns out that Paul the Bishop, all along, indeed right from his days in the Marines, has had another life as homosexual. Not bad when you’ve fathered nine kids. At this point, gathering together all my renowned willingness to understand and appreciate human difference, I start to struggle with the dependence of these people on image and narcissism, pills, therapy, sexual adventure, relentless combat with each other and with their massive cosseted highly expensive Egos. I suppose Honor’s written reflections on all this are lucid to her. They are largely incomprehensible to me. Get a life, is what I say.
Those years, the 1960s and 70s onwards, were when we discovered and carefully nurtured the Ego. I’m OK, You’re OK. Millions of westerners went looking for themselves. How I feel became the measure of everything. That is what this book depicts. It also depicts the sad, chronic juvenilism of people who have never grasped that Ego is what really has to go. Love and freedom tend to be in proportion to the receding of the voracious demanding Ego. Letting it go is a product of contemplative prayer. And what is left? The person God has always seen and known and loved.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Contemplative?
Someone – Karl Rahner? – wrote that the church of the future will be contemplative. Can’t see it myself, although I certainly agree that it should be. The church exists deeply immersed in the culture of individual success or failure narratives. People assume they are the authors of their own lives, for better or for worse. Everyone has an opinion, and listening is a rare commodity. Professional listeners now charge a fee. All of this, it seems to me, is the diametric opposite of contemplative spirituality.
That being the case, the church had better get used to being not regretfully but properly counter-cultural. The old word for that is prophetic -- confronting and challenging the principalities and powers and the prevailing culture. While as we know there are plenty of centres of authentic spirituality throughout the church and beyond, it is not clear to me that the church itself is changing in that direction. Power and status still matter and become the default positions in the local parish and the church’s wider and weightier counsels.
We have become so enchanted by our personal narratives – in the cult of competitive CVs, in the counselling industry, on TV, radio and in the print media... even narratives of failure, shame and disgrace carry their own value. Victims have narratives which can earn them recognition, status and money. The celebrity cult, all-pervasive to the point of nausea, is simply a solipsistic performance desperate for an audience. Michael Jackson, his ruined face, terminal drug addiction and his crazed devotees... his hideous funeral epitomised for me all that is sad, empty, lost.
The cupboard is bare. The grand narrative which said that you could succeed if you knew how, is everywhere discredited. The church has lost its way, since Jesus clearly taught otherwise than hierarchies, status, power and control. And somewhat terrifyingly, the new grand narrative seems to be apocalypse, environmental catastrophe. A recent letter to the editor of a newspaper informed us that the writer intends to hang on to his guns, even against the law, because “they will eventually be needed”.
This is why, for me at any rate, contemplative spirituality, Christian Meditation, the disciplines of St Benedict as an oblate, have come to be so meaningful. They are the only way I know, these days, to embody and live my original commitment, long ago, to the way of Christ.
That being the case, the church had better get used to being not regretfully but properly counter-cultural. The old word for that is prophetic -- confronting and challenging the principalities and powers and the prevailing culture. While as we know there are plenty of centres of authentic spirituality throughout the church and beyond, it is not clear to me that the church itself is changing in that direction. Power and status still matter and become the default positions in the local parish and the church’s wider and weightier counsels.
We have become so enchanted by our personal narratives – in the cult of competitive CVs, in the counselling industry, on TV, radio and in the print media... even narratives of failure, shame and disgrace carry their own value. Victims have narratives which can earn them recognition, status and money. The celebrity cult, all-pervasive to the point of nausea, is simply a solipsistic performance desperate for an audience. Michael Jackson, his ruined face, terminal drug addiction and his crazed devotees... his hideous funeral epitomised for me all that is sad, empty, lost.
The cupboard is bare. The grand narrative which said that you could succeed if you knew how, is everywhere discredited. The church has lost its way, since Jesus clearly taught otherwise than hierarchies, status, power and control. And somewhat terrifyingly, the new grand narrative seems to be apocalypse, environmental catastrophe. A recent letter to the editor of a newspaper informed us that the writer intends to hang on to his guns, even against the law, because “they will eventually be needed”.
This is why, for me at any rate, contemplative spirituality, Christian Meditation, the disciplines of St Benedict as an oblate, have come to be so meaningful. They are the only way I know, these days, to embody and live my original commitment, long ago, to the way of Christ.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
My contribution to sport
Sport was compulsory at Auckland Grammar. You had to play one winter sport and one summer sport. I lined up for hockey with all the bad grace at my command – I was a 3rd former, 12 years old, and it was 1947. As I recall, they had me standing out on the field clutching a hockey stick, not having the remotest idea what I was supposed to do, or which indeed was “our” goal. Indeed, I didn’t even know whom I was playing for or against. I didn’t care. People were shouting at me. Evidently there was some autonomic sense of what to do in sport which I did not possess. I was apparently a bloody waste of space.
But I knew clearly that this was not how I wished to live my life; it all seemed even then juvenile and pointless. So I walked off the paddock and never went back. Over four years at Auckland Grammar I became invisible and watched the sporting heroes paraded at school assembly to shine the light of their magnificence upon us.
Sport was not an agenda in our home. My father, when he condescended to live with us, did have some prior and mysterious knowledge of wrestling, and that was of some interest to us in the time of Lofty Blomfield and Earl McCready. So we sometimes attended the wrestling in the Auckland Town Hall with morbid fascination, and considerable schadenfreude when the evil guys got dumped from a great height. “They know how to fall” said my father. Well, one would hope so.
Life proceeded without sport, as I still think it should. I could never understand why so many of my contemporaries were so eager to spend weekends on cold windswept paddocks to no good purpose. I recall being slightly amused when my father, by this time with a son at St Kentigern College, evinced a hitherto unveiled expertise in Rugby football, in the sense that he now knew all about it, and followed the fortunes of the St Kentigern First XV so assiduously each week that they made him an Honorary Member, and gave him a certificate which he framed and hung on the wall. My amusement was enhanced when he informed me one day that I did not and could not understand Rugby. He was right, I thought, the physical and mystical features of Rugby Football entirely elude me.
The fact is, I have always been unmoved and underwhelmed by the pervading cult of team sport and team spirit, speed, strength, physical prowess. These days it seems to produce, as collateral damage I suppose, sustained inebriation and gross sexual misbehaviour and crime. This is constantly excused by aficionados as the kind of latitude we have to allow to adrenalin-ridden sports icons, popping hormones all over the show -- and our role is to “understand”. That’s crap. These guys need to grow up. They haven’t yet come to terms with their gonads.
Professional football in all codes seems to me increasingly revolting. The juvenile and aggressive gestures on the field whenever someone achieves something, the often thinly-concealed racism, the tacit approval of violence and cheating against the rules... but then, as my father pointed out, I don’t understand any of this; it is somehow veiled from me. The exception, it seems to me, is netball, which appears to retain principles and is entertaining to watch.
Motor sport, on the other hand, is beyond belief. Noisy, polluting, wasteful of resources, hugely expensive, dangerous, pandering to everything less than admirable in human nature... Stock cars, drag racing, V8 stuff... It was a happy day for me when Auckland proved unable or unwilling to accommodate the international motor sport event which would have shut down part of the central city for about 3 weeks, and it went to Hamilton, which deserves it.
So I am counter-cultural. Isn’t that good! I have had a sports-free lifetime since I walked off the hockey field, and thus have achieved so much more in wideness and depth.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
I'm as well as can be expected, given the state I'm in...
Personal health issues are usually boring, it seems to me. Mary says I am a compliant patient. Well, I long ago discovered that it suits me to be that, and gets better results. I subscribe to the weekly Mayo Clinic email newsletter, because they are supremely competent and professional. I have learned to be understanding of other people's pain, arthritis, loss of neurones, lack of eyesight or hearing... But I also refuse to cruise around the supermarket leaning on the trolley, or walking around with my mouth open.
Our GP back in Auckland was part of a practice right on the frontiers of every major social health issue. He paid us the courtesy of leaving it entirely to us whether we showed up to see him or not, he respected whatever intelligence we have. Now we have had to sign up with a new practice here in Algies Bay / Snells Beach / Warkworth area. I have yet actually to meet the doctor I am supposed to be with. I met the locum, and I met the practice nurse, the receptionists, another doctor who has left... But they have sent me a notice informing me that I am part of a programme about diabetes, with things to do including a set of tests. And I have to show up also for a medical check before I can get my new driver's licence, since my 75th birthday comes in August. I suspect, in this practice, it may be a fight to get past the practice nurse, but we'll see.
But there we are, discussing health issues, a prevalent form of egoism. It's not as though any of it matters ultimately. It would be good to be without pain and suffering until one's last breath, but that's unlikely -- and is itself, I guess, a form of egoism. Mary sometimes says, "Stay away from doctors, especially surgeons." Well, it's a fine aim. I'm trying, I'm trying...
The best thing is to have found a way to confront one's own mortality and actual death, and to know its sting is drawn. That's the road down which freedom lies.
Our GP back in Auckland was part of a practice right on the frontiers of every major social health issue. He paid us the courtesy of leaving it entirely to us whether we showed up to see him or not, he respected whatever intelligence we have. Now we have had to sign up with a new practice here in Algies Bay / Snells Beach / Warkworth area. I have yet actually to meet the doctor I am supposed to be with. I met the locum, and I met the practice nurse, the receptionists, another doctor who has left... But they have sent me a notice informing me that I am part of a programme about diabetes, with things to do including a set of tests. And I have to show up also for a medical check before I can get my new driver's licence, since my 75th birthday comes in August. I suspect, in this practice, it may be a fight to get past the practice nurse, but we'll see.
But there we are, discussing health issues, a prevalent form of egoism. It's not as though any of it matters ultimately. It would be good to be without pain and suffering until one's last breath, but that's unlikely -- and is itself, I guess, a form of egoism. Mary sometimes says, "Stay away from doctors, especially surgeons." Well, it's a fine aim. I'm trying, I'm trying...
The best thing is to have found a way to confront one's own mortality and actual death, and to know its sting is drawn. That's the road down which freedom lies.
Monday, June 08, 2009
David Bain
Once upon a time, a man I had never met showed up, asked if he could talk with me confidentially, and proceeded to confess to a murder. I did everything I could to get him to take his confession to the police. There was no way he would do that. So he was left with whatever solace comes from confession to a minister who could by no means offer absolution -- and I was left with knowledge of the identity of a murderer. The police never did resolve the matter.
It impresses me that only David Bain knows who murdered his mother Margaret, father Robin, sisters Laniet and Arawa, and brother Stephen -- five people. If Robin did it, that's four murders and one suicide. If David did it, it's five murders. Forensic evidence shoots either way, and could be argued ad infinitum. That has been abundantly shown in two major trials and an appeal hearing to the Privy Council. David himself presents as gentle and gentlemanly, open to hurt, braving the media, saying only positive things, entirely likeable. It is extremely difficult to see him in the role the prosecution wanted. He has said repeatedly he is innocent. Logic would believe him.
But of course just about everyone in NZ has an opinion.
I don't care. The Bain family was spectacularly dysfunctional, including psychopathological religion, and had become precisely the kind of environment in which something utterly dreadful could happen. And so it did. David survived from all that psychopathology, and he actually seems, even after some 13 years in prison, and much sustained harassment from the legal scene, to be reasonably intact. That's what matters.
It impresses me that only David Bain knows who murdered his mother Margaret, father Robin, sisters Laniet and Arawa, and brother Stephen -- five people. If Robin did it, that's four murders and one suicide. If David did it, it's five murders. Forensic evidence shoots either way, and could be argued ad infinitum. That has been abundantly shown in two major trials and an appeal hearing to the Privy Council. David himself presents as gentle and gentlemanly, open to hurt, braving the media, saying only positive things, entirely likeable. It is extremely difficult to see him in the role the prosecution wanted. He has said repeatedly he is innocent. Logic would believe him.
But of course just about everyone in NZ has an opinion.
I don't care. The Bain family was spectacularly dysfunctional, including psychopathological religion, and had become precisely the kind of environment in which something utterly dreadful could happen. And so it did. David survived from all that psychopathology, and he actually seems, even after some 13 years in prison, and much sustained harassment from the legal scene, to be reasonably intact. That's what matters.
Monday, June 01, 2009
The Solemn Feast of Queen's Birthday
One of the features of decrepency and retirement is that everyone else knows that next weekend is a long weekend because of Queen's Birthday, but you didn't know until it became apparent in the circumstances of life. Once upon a time, you knew it weeks ahead, and planned for it.
So we had Rachel and Simon and little Stephen (10 months) come up for dinner on Saturday, and Rachel and Stephen stayed over till Monday, and went back to Auckland with Mary. It was all lovely. Stephen is the most rewarding little kid, responsive, etc, etc... Both Simon and Mary subscribe to the NZ Taste magazine, actually quite good about menus and recipes -- but it means that Mary competes with Simon, in the gentlest possible ways of course. So we tend to get quite nice food.
It was Pentecost Sunday, and the locals were invited to show up wearing red for Pentecost. This amuses the local believers and advances the faith. Stephen utterly refuses to wear his knitted red beany, so that's a dead loss. Etc, etc... this is the local church from which I am emancipated.
But now they have all gone back to Auckland. All I have left to do is get the washing dry, and bring it in. I am alone..! Oh dear, how sad, never mind... I can live happily in both worlds.
And in my solitude world...? Well, that is my hermit existence. Except that tomorrow I feel committed to set off for Hamilton, to visit my mother's remaining half-sisters, Tui and Patsy, in Te Awamutu, and also Helen Oliver. Helen and Jack Oliver, Jack now died, are very old friends.
I don't want to venture from here. But this one I ought to do.
Pentecost passed without inspiration, except that I keep the faith.
So we had Rachel and Simon and little Stephen (10 months) come up for dinner on Saturday, and Rachel and Stephen stayed over till Monday, and went back to Auckland with Mary. It was all lovely. Stephen is the most rewarding little kid, responsive, etc, etc... Both Simon and Mary subscribe to the NZ Taste magazine, actually quite good about menus and recipes -- but it means that Mary competes with Simon, in the gentlest possible ways of course. So we tend to get quite nice food.
It was Pentecost Sunday, and the locals were invited to show up wearing red for Pentecost. This amuses the local believers and advances the faith. Stephen utterly refuses to wear his knitted red beany, so that's a dead loss. Etc, etc... this is the local church from which I am emancipated.
But now they have all gone back to Auckland. All I have left to do is get the washing dry, and bring it in. I am alone..! Oh dear, how sad, never mind... I can live happily in both worlds.
And in my solitude world...? Well, that is my hermit existence. Except that tomorrow I feel committed to set off for Hamilton, to visit my mother's remaining half-sisters, Tui and Patsy, in Te Awamutu, and also Helen Oliver. Helen and Jack Oliver, Jack now died, are very old friends.
I don't want to venture from here. But this one I ought to do.
Pentecost passed without inspiration, except that I keep the faith.
Monday, May 25, 2009
I / We apologise -- Yeah, right...
A genuine apology means not merely that I feel sorry. It means that I know that my part in what happened was wrong, and that I have determined that it won't happen again. At a deeper level it means that I have had a change of heart -- I inwardly reject whatever it was that caused me to do/say that thing. Apology means that I have accepted my personal responsibility for what happened, I acknowledge that it was wrong and should not have happened, and that so far as it lies with me it will not happen again.
So real apology lies much more in the will than in how I say I feel. How I feel, even if I feel devastated, is not the issue.
In recent times we have a curious phenomenon. People are apologising all over the place. It has become trendy. Or it has become for some an exercise in damage limitation. Prime Ministers, Presidents, Popes and Bishops, are having to apologise. Others who see themselves as Victims are, often self-righteously, requiring apologies. Apologies are alleged to help towards something called Closure. I don't know what Closure is, and I suspect no one else is sure about it either. In some cases it seems to entail some implied permission to go ahead with a funeral, or to get on with life, as though these things were not possible before.
Media call it the "sorry word", which, as often as not, they say they're not hearing. But when we do hear the Sorry word -- from some celebrity typically, some sporting icon after the latest gang sex episode, or some commercial tycoon who caught his fingers in the till -- we tend to say Yeah, right. It is as though the secular world has really no pathway for healing and restoration, no redemption except for some pathetic ritual apology routine, which is about as empty and hypocritical as anything they criticise in religion.
But I think real apology is just as important and moving as it may be rare. I also think its currency has got drastically devalued in both secular society and the church, in these times.
If all you want is your oppressor to say he is sorry, publicly and humiliatingly, and then you will feel better, and perhaps put it all behind you (another cliche) -- well that's OK, and sometimes it can even be arranged. Then everyone is at liberty to say whether they think the apology is sincere (as though they have any way of knowing). Always there will be some who are satisfied with the expressed apology, and others, possibly many more, who are not.
Perhaps now political and church leaders should cease issuing apologies, for just this reason. For a real sincere apology to be given and then questioned, or rejected, is insulting, doubly humiliating, and perhaps destroying. But to issue merely formal apologies is also insulting, in other ways.
On a more personal level, if you wish your oppressor to confess sorrow and amendment of life, that is quite another matter. That is what the Bible calls metanoia, change of heart and mind and will, a turning around, a new heart and a new start. It is what is meant by repentance.
I don't think secular culture has any way of doing this. So real apology is rare, although ritual apologies are surprisingly common. On the other side of metanoia is not merely peace and resolution of past issues, but also a new life and resolve.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Local culture
This is Sunday (evening), 24 May -- and we have just phoned Rhys in Brisbane to wish him happy birthday.
Mary and I got ourselves to a rather remarkable concert in Warkworth, this afternoon, in the historic old Anglican church. They have a very versatile and well-installed electronic organ. Some people get sniffy about these things -- they prefer a genuine pipe organ, they say. Well, no doubt, but the modern electronic (digital...?) instruments are respectable and useful instruments in their own right, it seems to me. They are affordable by smaller churches. We had one in St Peter's, Mt Wellington, and it was actually better for our purposes than a pipe organ. It is 1000 times better than a couple of badly-played guitars, a piano, and some compulsive enthusiast with a trumpet. Or drums.
On this occasion we had the Auckland City Organist, Dr John Wells, who lectures at the university, composes preludes and fugues and other stuff, and is recording an organ version of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. He's talented and very pleasant and witty. So he gave us a programme called The Well-Tempered Afternoon, and it consisted of some J S Bach, some Handel, some Mendelssohn and Vivaldi -- and some John Wells. His own works were played on the parish's fairly ancient piano, and he managed to break the ivory off one of the keys in the process. All good fun. All of this for $20.00. Who needs to travel in to Auckland for culture...
He did explain why Bach called his composition The Well-Tempered Clavier. It all has to do with tuning for different key signatures, and how the modern piano is really a compromise that can be played in any key. In Bach's day the keyboard instruments were tuned only for certain key signatures. And in German, Bach's title means "The Well-Tuned Piano".
So, we enjoyed ourselves. All the music was lyrical, tuneful... And was soothing, since I had just found a flat tyre on my car (which had only just had a new set of tyres fitted), and we had had to come in Mary's car.
Mary and I got ourselves to a rather remarkable concert in Warkworth, this afternoon, in the historic old Anglican church. They have a very versatile and well-installed electronic organ. Some people get sniffy about these things -- they prefer a genuine pipe organ, they say. Well, no doubt, but the modern electronic (digital...?) instruments are respectable and useful instruments in their own right, it seems to me. They are affordable by smaller churches. We had one in St Peter's, Mt Wellington, and it was actually better for our purposes than a pipe organ. It is 1000 times better than a couple of badly-played guitars, a piano, and some compulsive enthusiast with a trumpet. Or drums.
On this occasion we had the Auckland City Organist, Dr John Wells, who lectures at the university, composes preludes and fugues and other stuff, and is recording an organ version of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues. He's talented and very pleasant and witty. So he gave us a programme called The Well-Tempered Afternoon, and it consisted of some J S Bach, some Handel, some Mendelssohn and Vivaldi -- and some John Wells. His own works were played on the parish's fairly ancient piano, and he managed to break the ivory off one of the keys in the process. All good fun. All of this for $20.00. Who needs to travel in to Auckland for culture...
He did explain why Bach called his composition The Well-Tempered Clavier. It all has to do with tuning for different key signatures, and how the modern piano is really a compromise that can be played in any key. In Bach's day the keyboard instruments were tuned only for certain key signatures. And in German, Bach's title means "The Well-Tuned Piano".
So, we enjoyed ourselves. All the music was lyrical, tuneful... And was soothing, since I had just found a flat tyre on my car (which had only just had a new set of tyres fitted), and we had had to come in Mary's car.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The abuse of children
A very high-powered commission in Ireland has produced a massive report on the abuse of children in Catholic institutions in the mid-20th century. It's monstrous. On the web, the .pdf files are huge. And sickening. Needy and helpless children knew nothing other than sustained torture, beatings and floggings, sexual assault, injustice and exploitation, fear and suffering, through their childhood and adolescent years -- at the hands of professing and vowed christian servants in orders such as the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy...(Mercy...heaven help us all...)
And that's just Ireland. This is not ancient history. The recipients of this christian service, many of them, are with us today. Many of them remain crippled and consumed with anger.
This is the shadow side of catholicism -- of importance to me, because I am a Benedictine Oblate, and therefore somehow committed to catholicism. I have always known that, wherever you are in the christian outfit you have to take the rough with the smooth, the ugly and the botoxed with the beautiful, the sinners with the saints. You have to buy the whole rotten field because it is there that the treasure is buried...
But this is unthinkable. To over-work a verb, I think Jesus also thought this.. Whoever harms one of these little ones, it were better for that person that a millstone were hung round his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. (Anyway, see Matthew 18:6, and Luke 17:2).
Someone on radio this morning pointed out that, at that time, plenty of people entered these religious orders, not because they wanted to, or had any sort of christian calling, but because of family pressure, social deprivation, total lack of prospects. These people became professed Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy -- to say nothing of other orders. The children referred to these institutions encountered teachers, supervisors, whatever, who had actually no vocation, no hope, whatever. Ye gods.
And I want to write something, perhaps another day, about apology and apologies, and how the whole currency of real contrition has got devalued... Another day.
But meanwhile, the children. Children have an absolute moral claim on adult care. It's not negotiable. The Irish children, and others around the world, are an ineradicable blot on the conscience of a great many christians, most of whom had nothing to do with it personally.
And that's just Ireland. This is not ancient history. The recipients of this christian service, many of them, are with us today. Many of them remain crippled and consumed with anger.
This is the shadow side of catholicism -- of importance to me, because I am a Benedictine Oblate, and therefore somehow committed to catholicism. I have always known that, wherever you are in the christian outfit you have to take the rough with the smooth, the ugly and the botoxed with the beautiful, the sinners with the saints. You have to buy the whole rotten field because it is there that the treasure is buried...
But this is unthinkable. To over-work a verb, I think Jesus also thought this.. Whoever harms one of these little ones, it were better for that person that a millstone were hung round his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. (Anyway, see Matthew 18:6, and Luke 17:2).
Someone on radio this morning pointed out that, at that time, plenty of people entered these religious orders, not because they wanted to, or had any sort of christian calling, but because of family pressure, social deprivation, total lack of prospects. These people became professed Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy -- to say nothing of other orders. The children referred to these institutions encountered teachers, supervisors, whatever, who had actually no vocation, no hope, whatever. Ye gods.
And I want to write something, perhaps another day, about apology and apologies, and how the whole currency of real contrition has got devalued... Another day.
But meanwhile, the children. Children have an absolute moral claim on adult care. It's not negotiable. The Irish children, and others around the world, are an ineradicable blot on the conscience of a great many christians, most of whom had nothing to do with it personally.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The old boys gather and blather
Some rich company today. Peter Wedde came up from Auckland and brought Graeme Ferguson -- these were my contemporaries at both Auckland and Otago Universities, and at Knox College. Long ago. All our marriages have survived, and between us we have seen and experienced quite a lot. Peter and Graeme still do things in the church, while I don't. We enjoy each other's company, and I suppose each of us thinks the others have mellowed, and that "they" needed to.
So we had lunch together. I made some rather fine pea and bacon soup, and some bread -- and Mary left some chocolate and apricot squares for us. We talked. I'm interested to note that none of it was bitter or recriminative, or regretful. It is as though we have made peace with life and unanswered questions and unresolved issues. Graeme battles on with the effects of his big stroke some years ago, but he sat at the table and one-handedly buttered and cut his own bread, and dealt with his soup. Of course we traversed theology and politics, and the state of the church from where we are. They loved the situation here, the view, the quiet.
These are people who embody the gentle, scholarly, sensitive and liberal company of Christ. Our wounds and scars show, I guess. We have long ago relinquished any need for dogmatism or control. We have ministered everywhere from Scotland to Papua New Guinea, from Cambridge UK to Australia, to Kiwiland, in parishes and theological college. Mary was sorry she could not be present, but maybe soon we'll organise another such luncheon here, with spouses.
So we had lunch together. I made some rather fine pea and bacon soup, and some bread -- and Mary left some chocolate and apricot squares for us. We talked. I'm interested to note that none of it was bitter or recriminative, or regretful. It is as though we have made peace with life and unanswered questions and unresolved issues. Graeme battles on with the effects of his big stroke some years ago, but he sat at the table and one-handedly buttered and cut his own bread, and dealt with his soup. Of course we traversed theology and politics, and the state of the church from where we are. They loved the situation here, the view, the quiet.
These are people who embody the gentle, scholarly, sensitive and liberal company of Christ. Our wounds and scars show, I guess. We have long ago relinquished any need for dogmatism or control. We have ministered everywhere from Scotland to Papua New Guinea, from Cambridge UK to Australia, to Kiwiland, in parishes and theological college. Mary was sorry she could not be present, but maybe soon we'll organise another such luncheon here, with spouses.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Day at home
Mary is at work, which means at Middlemore Hospital. It means she has to live in an apartment the hospital has provided for her in central Auckland, and take the train from there each day -- Tuesday to Thursday. I see her in the weekends.
I had to get blood tests, urine tests. It meant having no breakfast, driving to Warkworth, joining the queue of fasting supplicants hanging around there, and getting my doctor's form in at a reasonable time of waiting. I await results. Went to the doctor yesterday -- well, to the locum for the bloke who will probably be my doctor now -- and she, a very laid back lady, seemed merely to be amused at everything. That's fine with me. They'll phone me if there is anything untoward.
So tomorrow I have a visit from maybe three old colleagues in the Presbyterian Church, which I have departed. So they are good and loyal old friends, and I will entertain them with pea and bacon soup, and fresh bread that I have made.
I had to get blood tests, urine tests. It meant having no breakfast, driving to Warkworth, joining the queue of fasting supplicants hanging around there, and getting my doctor's form in at a reasonable time of waiting. I await results. Went to the doctor yesterday -- well, to the locum for the bloke who will probably be my doctor now -- and she, a very laid back lady, seemed merely to be amused at everything. That's fine with me. They'll phone me if there is anything untoward.
So tomorrow I have a visit from maybe three old colleagues in the Presbyterian Church, which I have departed. So they are good and loyal old friends, and I will entertain them with pea and bacon soup, and fresh bread that I have made.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Update
This is 18.05.2009. I went to set up a blog, and discovered I already had two from way back some time. It was interesting to read them and see how I have moved on in that time. Blogs are by their nature egocentric, and that is what I am trying not to be. But you can't write a blog without the use of the first person singular pronoun. And that's an irony, because I have just been fulminating about what the NZ Herald currently calls journalism -- which so often consists in columnists interviewing themselves, one way or another, about some apparently newsworthy person.
How do you feel about...? It's the standard interviewer question, and often it's astoundingly banal and inappropriate. It assumes that how someone feels about someone or something is news. Typically people these days haven't the remotest idea about facts and circumstances, subtleties and history, but they sure know how they feel. So egocentrism rules.
My wife Mary and I are now living at Algies Bay, which is about an hour's drive north of Auckland. You go to Warkworth, a lovely town but steadily now being ruined by "development", and then about 11 km out to the coast, via Snells Beach. We bought this property back in 1981, after we came back from Fiji. It was to be out retirement home, and in the meantime a holiday place. About 3 years later the estranged husband of a tenant burned it down. So we built this house, with a little self-contained flat downstairs for our holidays, but tenanted upstairs. Now it's all ours, completely renovated -- and we look out over Kawau Bay and watch the changing light and clouds and boats and weather effects. It's all lovely. We are growing feijoas and guavas, apples and plums, and during the renovations we got a raised vegetable garden built, which Mary has now planted in useful things.
But Mary had decided to do a 3 months locum back in her old workplace, Middlemore Hospital. So until July she is heading back to Auckland on Mondays, giving our daughter Rachel a few hours with our lovely grandson Stephen David Ross, and then on to the apartment the hospital is providing for her in central Auckland. From there she can take the train to Middlemore and back on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then drive back here on Fridays, again via Rachel, Simon and Stephen. I think it's working well, but I'll be glad when the 3 months are up.
I resist various attempts to enlist me in this and that worthy local community thing. Despite this blog, I actually prefer my privacy -- especially from the church, right now.
How do you feel about...? It's the standard interviewer question, and often it's astoundingly banal and inappropriate. It assumes that how someone feels about someone or something is news. Typically people these days haven't the remotest idea about facts and circumstances, subtleties and history, but they sure know how they feel. So egocentrism rules.
My wife Mary and I are now living at Algies Bay, which is about an hour's drive north of Auckland. You go to Warkworth, a lovely town but steadily now being ruined by "development", and then about 11 km out to the coast, via Snells Beach. We bought this property back in 1981, after we came back from Fiji. It was to be out retirement home, and in the meantime a holiday place. About 3 years later the estranged husband of a tenant burned it down. So we built this house, with a little self-contained flat downstairs for our holidays, but tenanted upstairs. Now it's all ours, completely renovated -- and we look out over Kawau Bay and watch the changing light and clouds and boats and weather effects. It's all lovely. We are growing feijoas and guavas, apples and plums, and during the renovations we got a raised vegetable garden built, which Mary has now planted in useful things.
But Mary had decided to do a 3 months locum back in her old workplace, Middlemore Hospital. So until July she is heading back to Auckland on Mondays, giving our daughter Rachel a few hours with our lovely grandson Stephen David Ross, and then on to the apartment the hospital is providing for her in central Auckland. From there she can take the train to Middlemore and back on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then drive back here on Fridays, again via Rachel, Simon and Stephen. I think it's working well, but I'll be glad when the 3 months are up.
I resist various attempts to enlist me in this and that worthy local community thing. Despite this blog, I actually prefer my privacy -- especially from the church, right now.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Ross's Moment
"Moment" is in the sense of the Greek kairos. It means the present moment -- not the past, not the future. It means what the bible calls Now. It is the moment of God's Word, and the only moment of reality.
I am Ross, and I am a Benedictine Oblate.
I used to be a Presbyterian Church parish minister in New Zealand, but grew out of it.
Right now I am setting up this blog, and finding my way around the protocols... Bear with me.
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I am Ross, and I am a Benedictine Oblate.
I used to be a Presbyterian Church parish minister in New Zealand, but grew out of it.
Right now I am setting up this blog, and finding my way around the protocols... Bear with me.
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Some advice from Aristotle (4th century BC) for the USA...
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
(Politics)
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Inwardness is all. For me, as a christian believer, that means Christ. For others, it means whoever or whatever they find central, pivotal, axial. And I draw from Buddhist teachings. But without our inwardness secure by way of daily discipline, our outwardness, social attitudes and actions, are insecure. I find my inwardness through the teachings of the Rule of St Benedict, and through the daily discipline of christian meditation. Important teachers include John Main, Laurence Freeman, Joan Chittister, Beatrice Bruteau, Thomas Keating...
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