A sad decision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Housing paedophiles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter Rants (August 2015)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nehalal Siddur Shabbat

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

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

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

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

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

 

O Earth, cover not my blood,

May my cry find no resting place.

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Blind and barbaric

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

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

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

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

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

Mortlock

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

On not going to church

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(30.03.2015)

 

A bit of biffo

Where does one start, about violence?  With a rhetorical question like that, I guess.  I will be told that violence is a primeval, necessary, ineradicable part of the human condition and vital for survival.  And indeed I have to admit that living intentionally and mindfully without violence, as I try to do, is rather the exception.  It is seen as a curiosity.

In my octogenarian years I have come to the view that human society reels and staggers from the effects of testosterone.  We can start with contact sport – although I immediately interpose that I have just read an article about chess, in the Guardian, in which the writer, who is preparing a book about championship chess, not a team sport, admits that the object of chess is bloody, to destroy your opponent.  The aim in a friendly game down at the pub is the same, to defeat someone else. 

The language in which sports are now reported reflects all this.  Opponents were smashed, destroyed, annihilated, cut down…  There is much more by way of example, but I can’t bring myself to read sports reports to garner more examples of the violent speech which now seems standard.

Knowing nothing as I do about the rules and practice of team sports such as rugby, league, netball, hockey, even cricket, it seems to me that aggression and violence, proscribed by gentlemanly rules in my youth, are now not only winked at but expected and enjoyed.  Violence in contact sports now regularly spills over into the off-field misbehaviour of sporting icons and role-models, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, resulting in drunken brawls and attacks on women.  Much of it is routinely excused one way or another.  “Letting off steam” covers a multitude of sins.

The world looks on in dismay and disgust as hordes of travelling team supporters from the UK or Australia typically, foul-mouthed and ignorant, stalk the streets and football venues in other lands, hurling abuse and urinating their contempt for decency. 

Most of this however is child’s play compared to what I view with horror each day on Al Jazeera, BBC or CNN.  How many tens of thousands of young men, testosterone flowing freely, are currently rampaging around Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Tunisia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon… Ukraine… to name a few places?   What you need are battle fatigues, a Toyota ute with some kind of ordnance mounted on the back, and an assault weapon in your hand which you brandish while you shout what in a politer age we called epithets. 

Presumably all these blokes believe they are in some righteous cause.  Whatever their problems, violence is apparently the way to fix it.  They shoot you.  They believe Allah is pleased.  Some of them commit atrocities – I forced myself to watch the unedited video of the beheading of 20 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya.  I have no words to compass my disgust.  Violence was bringing its own deep satisfactions for these people.  Testosterone and power on one side, humiliation and pain on the other. 

Now the victims of male violence include vast camps of hopelessness, women and children rendered homeless, terrorised, sent wandering and starving. 

Back at home, here where I live in this peaceful land, there are still children and babies brought to hospital with smashed heads or broken arms or ribs.  Women still get attacked at home, injured and raped.  Testosterone rules, along with beer and sport and the mate culture.  One aspect of all this less often told is the violence of the Pacific Island culture.  The ranks will close to conceal women who have been thrashed.  It is considered normal and necessary for children to be whipped.

I have no solutions, except personally to forswear violence in action and speech.   If violent attitudes at least are an addiction, then help may be needed.  But it can be done.  I think we can live without violence. 

 

The threat of care

If we come to needing care or special protection, then it will be best if we have already found out how to make friends with the inevitable in life and to accept what is necessary with grace and gratitude.  That is in considerable measure a spiritual matter, it seems to me.  It is something to be faced and attended to long before, through the years of strength, activity and maturity.  Part of the homework is learning how to face reality and make friends with the truth. 

Now we have the gleaming spires of the modern Retirement Village.  It looms up before us in our senior years as a serious option.  What is new about this phenomenon, I think, is that we are invited to make decisions about moving to a retirement village before we actually, physically or mentally, have need of it.  It is seen as prophylactic.  And so one silly superfluous wisdom wafting around these days is:  Don’t leave it too late!  You must consider your prospects in wealth and health – not be blinded by how content you are feeling right now.  You must ponder all the perils ahead in life.  It is an attempt to ward off adversity, everything nasty such as dependence, loneliness, frailty, becoming pathetic. 

So now we are pestered with daily advertisements and glossy brochures depicting all manner of happy senior people, usually well groomed, poncing about in pleasant surroundings, bowling, laughing, lounging and chatting, sometimes disporting themselves embarrassingly in some swimming pool, sometimes being led in wretched geriatric calisthenics…  There are always beautiful flowers nearby.   I notice that what these shining handouts do not show us are the inmates in real care, the ones not smiling, the ones sliding into dementia, needing to be fed, the ones with collapsed spines from osteoporosis and falling.

The modern retirement village has a hierarchy of living arrangements.  It categorises and labellises life.  You may have an independent villa or apartment.  That means that you will live in your own self-contained space with largely your own décor and stuff, but have access to communal facilities such as a dining and social area, and perhaps a gym, a hair salon, a bowling green and suchlike.  It is all very contemporary and jolly, and safe.  You will have a call button with which to summon help if you fall… in practice it turns out to be not so simple.

The operative word in these places is Happy.  They live with style.  They have a weekly Happy Hour.  One retirement village at Howick has a video I watched with mounting horror, which shows all the geriatrics prancing around joyously to pop music.  It was false to the point of terminal embarrassment.  This dreadful video was intended to attract me to their village. 

Or you may have some closer care arrangement, depending on your needs, including professional dementia care.  Withal, you have their guarantee of watchfulness over your welfare, on-call status of the management and staff, protection of your asset… 

OK.   But what you buy in most of these places is not ownership of your villa or apartment.  Ownership remains with whoever owns the business.  You buy something called a Licence to Occupy.  It is pretty expensive.  It more or less equates to rent in advance.  You must also pay ongoing fees to cover management and costs.  These fees only increase over time.  And eventually you or your beneficiaries get back some substantially reduced sum after various factors including what management had to do to bring your/their unit up to date again. 

Not all retirement villages have this arrangement.  I believe there are some where you actually do buy and own your living premises.  Lawyers are required to make sure their clients understand this difference.

These places offer an illusion of safety and security – but my impression is that anyone can drive into and through our nearby villages, any time, without question, as I have frequently done.  You are no safer living there than where I am living, and hope to remain.  And as for on-call response if you fall… well, anecdotal evidence suggests you are really on your own.  It would be wise to have your fall during weekday working hours – otherwise you may be calling your own ambulance.  Prompt, caring, professional response simply didn’t happen in reports I have heard.

They have no sound of children playing in these places, or adolescents occasionally hooning around.  Everyone there is elderly, or getting that way.  How boring is that!  I have heard that they can have fights at their Happy Hour –that would be some excitement perhaps.  Consuming topics at Happy Hour include the weather, the temperature, their little gardens, the village management, and everyone’s aches and pains.

The BBC series Waiting for God dealt definitively and dramatically with some of these issues.  Someone had seen the capitulation and horror of it all and put it into drama.  Waiting For God dealt often sensitively and always hilariously with two retired people who had actually plenty of life – which their new surroundings in a retirement home simply sought to deny, repress, control and quell. 

And there is the classic British movie, Mrs Caldicott’s Cabbage War, a delicious account of rebellion in a retirement home.  Somewhere in that movie Mrs Caldicott describes the retirement home as “this overpriced knacker’s yard”. 

My own impression of one of the local retirement villages is its similarity to photos of Siberian gulags.  It has rows of grey villas, relieved only by pretty flowers they may have planted out the front.  The village has rules, a list of which is supplied to residents when they take occupancy.  The rules restrict what you can do to alter your villa or apartment and your life there – changing decor, installing things, having pets, making modifications… 

However, it suits people who are frightened of danger, ageing and dependence.  For me.. well, if I became obliged to become an inmate of one of these places, I hope I would do so with grace and dignity and a minimum of fuss.  But I devoutly hope not.  It would certainly hasten my demise. 

Slumbering on…

Parliament's Speaker David Carter announced the other day that the traditional prayer he uses to open daily sittings of Parliament will remain as is, with its Christian references.  Here is the prayer:

Almighty God, humbly acknowledging our need for Thy guidance in all things, and laying aside all private and personal interests, we beseech Thee to grant that we may conduct the affairs of this House and of our country to the glory of Thy holy name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the honour of the Queen, and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Just about everything is wrong with this prayer, and the problem is, where to start? 

·         It is addressed to God.  It assumes that God knows, cares, or bears any special regard for the NZ House of Representatives, beyond what he/she bears for the Taneatua Bowling Club.  It assumes that the cursory recitation of this prayer because it is required in Standing Orders somehow gets God’s attention.

·         It professes humility.  That is not normally my impression of this assembly.

·         It claims that the members want guidance, that they are keen to lay aside all private and personal interests, that they seek to debate and decide things to the glory of God, etc – some or all of which is difficult to believe.

·         It assumes that “the maintenance of true religion” is the business of the NZ Parliament.  It decidedly is not.

·         It assumes that they are all professing Christians, or that if they are not they ought to be – whereas some are of other faiths and some are of none.  This is offensive and dishonest.

The Parliamentary prayer has quite a history, I find.  It was realised as far back as the 1850s that it would always be a bit of a minefield.  They solved the problem at one time by bringing in some hapless cleric to say the prayer, as it were vicariously, each time Parliament convened – that seemed to some to absolve them from any direct responsibility.  The current prayer, read each day by Mr Speaker, has been around for quite a while now.  I presume it was put together by some Anglican prelate and was thought unexceptional at the time.  It assumed that this is a “Christian country”, something some people still believe. 

Speaker Carter recently followed a very low-key consultation process with MPs and offered an alternative prayer which removed religious references to "Almighty God" and "Jesus Christ our Lord" from the older version.  But what he proposed turned out to be ten times worse.

His alternative prayer included lines in Maori - E te Atua Kaha Rawa - that translates to "Almighty God," something Assistant Speaker Trevor Mallard described as "almost dishonest."  Carter proposed to farewell the deity in English and welcome the deity back in Maori.

As well as that, the Speaker would have included a daily acknowledgment to the local tribe Te Ati Awa.  To most of New Zealand that simply beggars belief.  It is arrogant, unnecessary and embarrassing.

This is the alternative prayer Speaker Carter suggested:

E te Atua Kaha Rawa (Tr: Almighty God) Ka whakamanawa taua hunga katoa kua riro atu i mua i a tatau - moe mai okioki (We honour those who have gone before us - rest, slumber on).  We recognise the mana whenua, Te Ati Aawa, the kaitiaki of this region, Te Upoko-o-Te-Ika-a-Maui.  We acknowledge the need for guidance and lay aside all private and personal interests so that we may conduct the affairs of this House for the maintenance of justice, the honour of the Queen and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand.  Amine (Amen).

I love the slumber on bit.  They might as well.  There will be little enough to edify them if they sit up and pay attention. 

Mr Carter refused to entertain any debate on further options; it would be either the current prayer or the alternative he proposed.  He refused any public comment also, clearly seeing it as a matter only for MPs.  Then he issued a statement saying: "A substantial majority of members expressed a view to retain the existing prayer. I intend to respect that wish."

Is all this really a measure of the extent to which the politicians are out of touch with reasonable sense and sensibility, with intellectual honesty, indeed with decency?  They are way out of their depth.

But they do need some serious and mindful observance with which to begin each parliamentary day.  So why not keep it simple and unexceptionable.  When the Speaker enters, all stand.  Let there then be one minute, and I mean 60 seconds timed by the Clerk of the House with a bell, of silence and stillness.  No one should enter or leave the house during that time.  That is all.  It may be seen by all as a moment of pausing and remembering.  It may be seen by some as a prayerful time.  That is all they need to do.

Man overboard

 

We had a report that the cruise ship Sun Princess, en route Auckland to Sydney, arrived one passenger short.  An 84-year-old man had fallen overboard.  I don’t know how you search one of those immense ships for a missing passenger – but this seems to have become academic anyway because they found CTV footage showing him falling into the sea.  Four hours earlier, at 3 am, his fellow travellers had reported him missing.

At this point we could have some black jokes about the increasing intrusiveness of spy cameras in our lives at every point.  Presumably there are cameras aimed along the sides of the ship, as well as along all the decks and companionways, restaurants, swimming pools, casinos, atriums, lifts…  Presumably someone on board is monitoring these things.   That’s a job I could apply for.

No one will ever know for sure whether he fell, or jumped.  The captain turned the ship to do a search, without result.  Heaven knows what that cost Princess Cruises.  Maybe he fell… and there has been some discussion about the height of rails on the many decks of these ships.  My wife and I recently spent two weeks cruising on Emerald Princess, around the Baltic.  The rails seemed fine to me. 

But it did occur to me that a depressed and lonely octogenarian might well decide to save everyone a lot of bother and expense, if he felt his life was substantially over, by getting a leg over the rail late at night.  It makes sense.  From one of those upper decks the fall to the water would be probably lethal. 

This is not something I would do.  It is something I could understand. 

But it would have been considerate to leave a note in his stateroom:

I’ve gone over the side.  It seemed best.  Love to all.  (PS:  Port side… although, as Lady Bracknell might have said, the side is immaterial.)

That should do it.  Then it’s tidy and considerate.  And it’s a lot less messy than all the conspiracy and drama accompanying elected suicide these days, expensive clinics and expensive drugs and excruciating goodbyes. 

Maybe this 84-year-old got plastered in one of the many bars, and simply fell off the deck.  But I doubt it.  I suspect he had a plan… and perhaps being rocked in the cradle of the deep seemed OK.


Later (2.12.2014)...  This morning early, in clear and still air, from our lounge, I watched a huge cruise ship steaming past the Tawharanui - Kawau gap, en route to Auckand.  On the web, on my iPad, I found it was the Dawn Princess, sister ship of the Emerald Princess on which we cruised the Baltic.  Dawn Princess was due to berth in Auckland two hours later at 0915.  I could even access her ship's web-cam, and see the way ahead.  There seemed to be no one falling off the decks...


I wondered whether, as we had steamed into Stockholm or Tallinn, Oslo or Gothenburg, some elderly gent had watched from afar and had similar thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

Hi, Honey…!

I hope every bloke who works in an office, store, military unit, factory, transport, walked in this morning and greeted each female cheerfully, perhaps even with a hug:

“Good morning, Sweetie / Honey…!”

Of course it would be over the top, unnecessary, in many cases inappropriate because the mood was otherwise.  But it would make the point – the complaint against Roger Sutton, CEO of the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority, and the solemn silly sanctimonious response to it, are plain bloody humbug. 

Most people who have a life know that Roger Sutton, who came to this job at a pretty desperate moment in the life of Christchurch City, has been a light and a leader.  He was already deeply involved as CEO of Orion, tending all the electricity reticulation.  To take over the Cera job he accepted a substantial drop in salary.  He brought style and efficiency, and manifest care for people.

I don’t know Roger Sutton.  I know his parents.  We were fellow parishioners for a while at St Luke’s Church, Remuera.  St Luke’s is Presbyterian, but the Suttons were Anglican.  We all got on fine, we never thought we wouldn’t… and it indicates that the Suttons are not easily pigeonholed or categorised.  Roger’s mother was at university with me and our lot, long ago.  We were devout, and we assumed that liberal attitudes were the intelligent way ahead. 

Neither do I know his complainant.  Let me see… Is she perhaps about 50… divorced, maybe, no longer with some bloke who decided he couldn’t face the rest of his life this way…?  Does she wear a black suit to work, relieved slightly by a chiffon scarf in mute tones to hide her increasingly elderly neck?   Yes, I am being rancid and petty here, but I am confident Dante would reserve a place in one of the circles of hell for some (by no means all) of these complainants.  I imagine Roger’s complainant as a section leader in the organisation, and she quite enjoys being formidable.  Her nightmares are her own regular performance reviews, when she is vulnerable, but which so far she has managed to survive. 

She has an issue with any man who is in authority over her, who perhaps turned down her recommendations, or who treated her flirtations lightly, or who seems to be happy with his own life and love and family.   Any of this is neurotic, and dangerous for males. 

It was wonderful to see Roger Sutton’s wife, Jo Malcolm, step up in high indignation to point out the obvious about her man.  She loves him.  He is OK. 

It's been hideous. He is a really good man. Why his hugs and jokes have been misinterpreted, I have no idea. He's a touchy-feely person.

Sutton could be silly, she said.

That's what I love about him and he forgot he is the leader of the public service and he's too informal, he's too relaxed. That's who he is, and that what makes him who is and why the Cera staff love him – the majority of them do – and I think it's really sad for Christchurch.

The disastrous still-developing complaints culture needs urgently to review itself.  It is now increasingly ruled by juvenilism and humbug.  This is sad, partly because there are still serious instances where women and men are bullied, vilified and oppressed, in the workplace and elsewhere.   Our ability to respond to these things should not be hampered by the manifest time-wasting triviality of the pursuance of Roger Sutton by some sad woman.

Verity's constipation

I have a guilty secret.  It's not Geordie Shore. It's not peeing in the shower. It's not wanting just "a milky coffee", not a triple mocha frappa rubber dubber cappuccino.  It's that when I stand in a bar, I find the guy outside smoking sexy.  I don't want to. I actively try not to. And frankly I wish it didn't happen. Not in the least because I end up internally wrestling with this while I'm trying to impress said sexy person. Which normally means I end up looking constipated.

No, I did not write this mindless, tasteless claptrap passing as journalism.  It is written in the NZ Herald (18.10.14) by Verity Johnson under the title: Rebels with a cough - why I find smokers strangely sexy. 

By my count, the first person singular pronoun occurs nine times up to, appropriately, constipation. 

The NZ Herald editors seem to admire writers who interview themselves.  Michelle Hewitson is another.  The culprits include men.   We seem to have a culture in which Ego is best, and with it goes the corollary, the assumption that what happened to me, or to my teenage kids, or what my day was like, or how I am feeling about something, or what food I would die for (or from, hopefully), is an interesting or even informative “read”.   Once upon a time when I was a junior journalist on the late Auckland Star we called it “interviewing your typewriter”. 

The Herald does have some competent and edifying writers, among them Brian Gaynor and Fran O’Sullivan.  Sir Robert Jones is good for a laugh and usually some sense.  There are others.  But surely the Herald can do without the excesses and indulgences of the women’s magazine scene, the fixation on bodily processes and food.  If Verity Johnson can’t stir herself to some real research on issues that matter, she should make way for journalism.

Occupy Omaha

Omaha is a beach community not far from here.  It is mainly on a sandspit, the houses in brave defiance of the biblical warning about the man who built his house on the sand.  A medium tsunami would wipe them out.  Nevertheless, a fair proportion of the Omaha houses are the upmarket summer retreats of Auckland’s wealthier lifestylers.  One of these is NZ’s Prime Minister, John Key.

Omaha is an extraordinary sight in places – house after house behind high grey security walls, dutifully equipped with built-in barbecues, pools, indoor-outdoor flow, pebbled surrounds, yuccas and pampas grass.  Each house says Keep Out, privacy, privileged only.  These people employ professional day and night surveillance of their assets at Omaha, video cameras and all, 24/7. 

You can sight some of the inhabitants on sunny summer Saturdays when they venture out to the Matakana market.  Women in their casual designer label frocks accompanied, often as not, by their indulged bored and sullen 14-year-old daughters named Samantha or Madison.

Behind the sandspit is a large lagoon, a golf club, a state-of-the-art boat ramp.  Not going there often, I don’t know much about it.  It’s altogether too depressing.

Suddenly there appears a delightful little novel set in Omaha.  Cathie Koa Dunsford: Occupy Omaha (Global Dialogues Press, 2014).  Our local rag, the Rodney Times, had a news item about this but, typically I’m afraid, omitted to give us the title of the book.  I prised that somewhat essential information out of the editor, ordered a copy, and behold – what I got turns out to be Copy 10 of 100, signed indeed by Cathie Koa Dunsford. 

Her story is witty and instructive.  Her hero is a 60-year-old named Gloria, made homeless since her new house turned out to be a leaky home and worthless.  The developer responsible for this had his holiday home at Omaha.  Gloria decides to move in, since it’s vacant most of the year.  She is very caring and responsible.  The Moet she drinks and the items from the freezer are all credited to his debt to her, the amount she believes she has lost through his deceit.

Soon it’s the occupation of many of these Omaha mini-mansions by single mothers and others, all strictly enjoined to do no harm, and all done legally by signed house-sitting arrangements.  It builds to a great drama involving the blocking of the causeway to Omaha, legally again, helicopters and much fun.  Cathie Koa Dunsford makes her point about various basic issues. 

Well, this afternoon I attended a meeting at our local Mahurangi East Public Library, at which Dr Cathie Koa Dunsford launched her book.  She was accompanied by Dr Karin Meissenburg.  I am unsure of Dr Karin’s role or relationship, but she played a kind of soulful ocarina or Maori flute while Dr Cathie read extracts from the book. 

I am no good at these events.  Dr Cathie knows how to talk.  I would have preferred quiet thoughtful questions from people who had actually read the book.  As it was, we luxuriated in memories of former days before garden centres and inequitable distribution of wealth. 

For all that, it’s a worthy little novel.  I think it might be time to read one or two of her others.

 

Neither male nor female

Dr Bruce Hamill, a Dunedin parish minister, has clarified a cloudy issue for me.   I am grateful to him.  In the just-concluded General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa NZ, the big issue of contention was, unsurprisingly, whether Presbyterian ministers were to be permitted to marry same sex couples.  The Assembly said no. 

I am a long way from these debates these days – I watch from afar with emotions ranging from dismay to despair.  The generation of ministers and lay people younger than mine, who long for an inclusive and intelligent church marked by generosity and Christlike openness, have been hanging in there, “much in sorrow, oft in woe”.   Some of their ministers and churches have been open for same sex marriages ever since the law of the land allowed it, and for same sex civil unions and blessings even longer.  But now the church has spoken.  The church has said no. 

The next day St Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace in Wellington announced that they will defy the Assembly’s ruling.  Others will follow, and I have no idea what the outcome of that will be.

My difficulty with all this until now has been recognizing same sex unions as marriage.  Civil unions, it seemed to me, and de facto arrangements, could be blessed in Christian ceremonies and in Christian churches where they were genuinely loving and stable relationships between people who know what they are doing.  But I saw marriage as a special thing.  It is clearly and biblically intended to be permanent, however often marriages fall short in practice.  I saw marriage as between a man and a woman.

Bruce Hamill identified for me the point I had been missing.  Here is what he had intended to say in the General Assembly, but was prevented by the exigencies of debate.  He began with St Paul:

In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is no male and female” (Gal 3:28).  Not even the great complementarity of male and female defines the new world of life in the body of Christ.  What there is according to the writer to the Ephesians is a practice called marriage which signifies the mystery of Christ’s relationship to the church. (Eph 5:32)…  Both a witness to God’s love and a practice in which we learn to love, in all the intimacy of our bodily existence, our nearest neighbour.   ... I do not want to deprive homosexual people of the opportunity to share in this witness, this asceticism, this practice in holiness and hope.  Jesus made the reform of a range of institutions into an art form.  I believe he is calling us to reform our understanding and practice of marriage, not to set it in ecclesiastical concrete.  I urge this assembly to remember the spacious love of Christ.

If (for the Christian) marriage is a sign of the love of God in Christ, then on what basis do we deny such a sign to two people of the same sex, in a loving, committed bond? 

Good one.  Thank you, Bruce Hamill.