I will not participate in my own invisibility

I saw that quote today, and I like it.

Today has been a day of me deciding that I will stand up for what matters to me. I heard about the "Women's March on Washington" in protest of the inauguration of the Orange Despot in America, and I decided that I would attend that march. Even more beautifully, my daughter (aged 10) also decided to go, in her full Girl Guide uniform, as she identified that Guides is about including everyone.

I have never marched before. I have never protested before. But now, I cannot stand by silent, as a complicit bystander, in what I see going on in the world. My friends, who are rainbow, inclusive, women, black, progressive, are frightened. I cannot be silent. So I marched, with nearly a thousand Wellingtonians.

I saw a number of placards I liked: my favourite was "Kate Shepherd sent me".

Then, this afternoon, I met with a friend from church to discuss language for God, which was really encouraging as she uses feminine names for God as well and would be happy to see them used in public worship.

And tonight, we met with the church wardens to discuss naming and language for God - for the first time I feel that someone is listening. The question will be whether there is doing as well.

I will not participate in my own invisibility. I see these three things linked: I am finally having the courage to stand up and say that this is not okay, that the silencing of some of God's most ancient names and nature is not okay, and that it is an issue of justice as well as a issue of understanding and seeing God's depth and beauty - and I finally have the courage not to be a bystander or complicit any more.

It's really tiring though....

Still here...

The calendar reads 15 December and it was Gaudete Sunday yesterday - somehow my brain looks at those two things and thinks, "Does not compute!" I'm not quite sure how it's got to the last working week of the year already. This year grew wings and just took off!

In my last post, I was thinking about little boxes in the spice drawer. Well, now there are little boxes everywhere. My pantry is the tidiest and cleanest it's been for 6 months, and all the kitchen cupboards have all been cleaned and tidied. I've been working steadily around all those little nooks and crannies that seem to create dirt, even if dirt never gets near them!

I've also been doing lots of practice with The Thing, my lovely compound bow (okay, that's my name for it), and my groupings have been getting quite close. The next piece of kit that's on the radar is a proper release aid - I've got a wrist release and want to move to a hand-held one. I tried one out the other day and it was gorgeous: the only problem was that it was for three fingers only and my pinky felt like it was waving uselessly around. I prefer the four-finger ones because all of my hand feels engaged and there's less pull through the wrist. Now to find one I like! Unfortunately the one I found that I liked doesn't come in a four-finger model....

Small daughter has had a good time recently, with another gold medal in her final trampolining competition of the year, and a wonderful report from school. Hubby has nearly finished trolling through the piles of final marking for his students, and I am trying to get my desk cleared before the office closes on Friday. The directors decided that they would give us the three days before Christmas as paid days off that aren't leave, which is rather nice. Good timing too - can finish off those last-minute preparations before Christmas!

A modern day pilgrim

Pilgrimage.

The word sounds a bit old-fashioned, a bit musty, a bit redolent of old schoolrooms and tattered copies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—those wonderfully funny (and sometimes slightly naughty!) stories told by a group of pilgrims in the Middle Ages, travelling together on the famous Winchester-Canterbury pilgrimage route to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury. How could this possibly be relevant in New Zealand in the 21st century, so far from all the famous pilgrimage routes of Europe (and the theology that said that pilgrims earned merit in God’s eyes by visiting holy places)?

We decided to find out. We joined a pilgrimage organised by Whakatane Parish to the sites associated with Wiremu Tamihana and Tārore: one of the first converts to Christianity in the 1830s, the peacemaker during the Waikato Land Wars; and the little girl who was murdered at Wairere Falls, and whose copy of a Māori translation of the Gospel of Luke was stolen and touched the hearts of her murderer, her father, and the great chief Te Rauparaha with the message of holy peace.

I began to better understand those pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales: travelling together on a bus wasn’t quite the same as riding on horseback, but the same sense of camaraderie and enjoyment, the same urge to tell stories, to learn about each other, seemed to be as present in these modern-day pilgrims as in the ones in Chaucer’s time. Partly it was a way to pass the time between sites, but it was also a chance to find out how we came to be there, to get to know each other, and to share our joy in God’s love.

Praying at the very simple little grave of Tārore, standing next to that little white cross and picket fence out in the glorious spring sunshine of the Waikato is probably a different experience from praying in the chapel of St Thomas, but nevertheless, it was a “still place”, with all the wildflowers blowing in the breeze and the sun soft on our faces, and the sense of this small girl’s love for God and message of gentleness and forgiveness close all around us. We could see the Wairere Falls directly across from her grave, some 10-12km away, and had a sense of the sad journey her father had to bring her body home and his own struggle not to seek revenge for her murder, but to be faithful to the way of peace he had chosen.

The stained glass windows in All Saints’ Matamata commemorate both Wiremu Tamihana and Tārore in a stunning, modern style. There she sits, at the base of the Falls under the kowhāi, with tui and piwakawaka (fantails) fluttering about her, reading her Gospel. Another window nearby shows St Francis preaching to the birds of New Zealand that same message of compassionate love and peaceful courage.

St Thomas à Becket has had pilgrims coming to his grave for nearly a thousand years, after he was murdered by a greedy king for standing up for the faith and the church of his time. Tārore died in 1836, on her way to the mission school in Tauranga, after it was moved from the location near her home, and her grave has been a place of prayer ever since.

Both Thomas’ and Tārore’s stories inspire us to journey with them in the way of God, the way of compassion and love, the struggle to forgive and find peace even in the midst of bitter pain and loss. They tell us that listening to and learning from the saints who have gone before us is important—not to put them on pedestals, but to hear their human voices, their frustrations and their triumphs, and inspiring us with their steadfast courage in the face of loss and risk as they travelled with God in their own day, and as we travel with God in ours and find our own courage and hope with them.

Pilgrimage in 2014? Oh, I think so.

This article first appeared in the St Luke's Parish (Rotorua) magazine Reaching Out, St Luke's Day/Advent edition 2014

News from the hill

A friend of mine posted an amazing link today on Facebook, about a group of extremely brave Jewish women who smuggled a tiny Torah scroll into the women's section of the Wailing Wall and conducted a Bat Mitzvah there, a coming-of-age ceremony for a young Jewish girl. This was brave on several counts: the Orthodox rabbis who oversee the Wall tried to prevent them from gathering there, and traditionally women have not been seen as equals in Jewish law. They are not allowed to wear tallit, the prayer shawl, or tefillin, the little boxes with Torah scrolls in them that are tied onto the head and hands of Orthodox Jews when they pray (putting God's word on their heads and hands). Jewish women are not allowed to carry, touch, or read from the Torah, and synagogues are segregated.

This group of amazing women is asking, why is this so? Why is one interpretation of halakhah, the Jewish law, stopping them from gathering at the most holy site of their faith? Why are men allowed to carry out a Bar Mitzvah, the ceremony for a boy, at the Wall, and women are not?

These courageous women are standing up and claiming their faith in a new way. They too have been inspired by the Shekinah, Wisdom, Sophia - the working of God in the world. I pray alongside them in their struggle to be seen as equal in the sight of the Holy One.

Inequality

One of the things I have been reflecting on for a long time is inequality of language, particularly in a worship setting. Those of you who are regular readers here will know that I am journeying through a sea-change in my own experience of God's goodness: from a small picture of God as "father" and "son" to a much bigger, deeper understanding of God that includes Mother, Lady, Sophia - Holy Wisdom.

So what really happened to the women? Where did they all go? I even posed this question to the Patheos blog (and got a reply, which was super-cool!). The answer is essentially that, "to the victor, the spoils". The victor in this case was men: in Roman society, women were powerless: they had no rights, and could not own property or rule (although they could lead in church!). In Judea, it wasn't much better. Although Jesus himself welcomed women, stayed in the houses of his female friends and relied on their support, and Paul named Junia (sometimes spelt Julia) as first among the apostles in his letter to the Roman church, along with Lydia and other key female figures, by the end of the second century they were gone. Their stories were lost to us, their voices discredited. And why, you might ask?

Greek thinking was coupled with Christian reflections on God's actions in the world. The Greeks had a pretty dim view of women, and that translated into them seeing women as passive rather than active, dark rather than light - which Christian thinkers, raised in a Greek philosophical mindset, viewed as evil rather than good. Early Christian theologians such as Tertullian, Augustine, and Jerome assimilated Graeco-Roman ways of viewing the world that saw women as sinful temptresses who had to be "kept in their place". This of course was complicated by the Christian interpretation of the Jewish story of Eve and the "temptation". The language of God became male, because Jesus was born male, only a male was perfect, and therefore only men were perfectly made in God's image. I kid you not: they actually thought that women's bodies weren't fully reflective of God's image because they were female. And there are still people that think that.

So, to the victor, the spoils. Women's stories, women's experiences, women's bodies, were devalued. The language of God in churches shows a deep inequality that is the result of 2000 years of false thinking and fake theology, and say, "but it's in the Bible" to continue their oppressive treatment of women's skills and experience. If people actually take the time to look at the images of God that are truly there in the Bible, they would get a shock. Here's just a few of my favourites: El Shaddai "the breasted one"; God the mother bird who shelters her chicks; Holy Wisdom, Hokmah/Sophia, who is always addressed as she in the Hebrew scriptures and who is God abroad in the world - we usually call her the Holy Spirit; the mother bear defending her young. Female images and female language for God abound.

People also say, "but Jesus called God Father - doesn't that mean we should too?" Not when you count the number of times Jesus refers to God as abba changes in the different Gospels: it's used 4 times in Mark, 15 in Luke, 49 in Matthew, and 109 in John (the Gospels were written in that order, from around 60-120AD) - surely a sign of a growing community usage, rather than Jesus’ actual words. The oldest Gospel, Mark, refers to God as abba only four times. Given the Gospels had earlier sources now lost to us, might it be possible that the word was used just once by Jesus and then latched onto by his followers as a quiet and subconscious way of reinforcing the Graeco-Roman worldview of men as pater familias, the head of the household, and its use encouraged and strengthened through the years?

So where is this language now? Where is Sophia in our churches, the Holy One, God's own presence with us? Sung a hymn to Sophia recently? If not, why not? Called God Mother lately? If not, why not? The language we use for God defines how we understand and view God and God's work in the world. If God is never addressed or referred to as She in church and in public, then how will my 8 year old daughter come to truly understand and know that she is made in God's image: in all her beautiful skin and flesh, fully reflective of God's glory in her own person - as much as any boy? How can she possibly feel that she is valued in God's house if she never hears all of God's Names - all of them, the female ones too? Will she ever have a relationship with God that sees more of God than just what someone referred to as "two men and a bird"? Will she ever feel herself equal with men - in courage, faith, pay, and work?

I truly hope she will, but only if I can help her find Sophia: God in the world. She who Is. The God who welcomes us all, and sent her child to be the redeemer of all, the Chosen One of God.

A post for Blog Action Day 2014 #inequality

Family doings

Our "care of creation" efforts in the autumn appear to have paid off, with a lovely display of daffodils and tulips in our garden this spring. We planted mixed bulbs and so every flower has been a surprise, with different varieties of both. The ghost of the previous owner has also appeared with some jonquils and Canterbury bells popping up that we know we didn't plant! Not that we mind at all - in fact, it just made us more determined to plant more bulbs next autumn.

However, I am not confident in the longevity of my flowers: we have a significant storm over most of the country and some of the first "real wind" I remember in Rotorua. It's also freezing cold - it snowed on the Desert Road today and I smelt more snow in the wind when I went outside to get firewood tonight. We had thought we had nearly finished with the fire for the year - apparently not. It was windy enough to dislodge the top part of our metal chimney: we heard a huge bang this afternoon and then saw it bouncing around in the front yard. I'm fairly certain it isn't supposed to be doing that!

Rotorua has its tulip festival next weekend (there are over 42,000 tulips planted around the city in public spaces) but I wonder how many of them will survive for the festival? The city does look beautiful in spring, especially as all the cherries and plums come into flower, but I saw an awful lot of kowhai and other flowers spread all over the roads today.

The last few weeks have been filled with family doings. Daughter had a trampolining competition in Hamilton a few weeks ago, and we were very proud to see her win gold in the double mini for her age group (her second medal since she began competing). Last week she also won a ribbon in her interschool competition in an apparatus she had never used before (single mini tramp, which is not a standard apparatus - she trains on the trampoline and double mini which are both competition-standard).

We went up to Auckland to the Mythbusters Live event at Vector Arena for a treat for my birthday and Fathers' Day combined. It was a really fabulous day and the Mythbusters were really fun. It was very cool to see them live too - I think they're almost funnier in real life than on tv. Daughter tried desperately to get herself picked for one of the on-stage demonstrations but there were a lot of people there....

I've been doing a bit of moving around for work recently, with trips to Auckland, Nelson, Whangarei, Tauranga, and Taupo recently. Most of those have been one-dayers, fortunately. For my sins, I am speaking at the national conference of one of my clients this weekend, which will be interesting. I have been told to start with shock tactics! The good thing is that I get a day in lieu on Monday, which is the first proper day of the school holidays, so I'll get some time to hang out with the family. Hopefully the weather will behave: daughter is learning to ride a new bike and I'm loving mine, so it would be good to go play outside on our bikes!

Romuald and Wordsworth

St Romuald's Brief Rule says, "Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it.... Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what their mother brings them." In that being is peace. The world may come with us into our cell, our place of prayer, but when it comes with us it comes into the paradise of God's grace, and wonderful things are possible there.

The world is too much with us, and sometimes at the moment it feels very much too much with us. Wars and rumours of wars, fear, hatred, death, loss, pain, grief. What can I do in the midst of so much suffering? My little efforts feel like less than the widow's mite. But I need to remind myself of what I am, of who God has asked me to be: to dwell in my inner place as if it were paradise and wait there. Even though it feels quite often as though no-one else has turned up - to wait there is a gift and it is paradise. My inner cell is the doorstep to heaven and I should be content to sit and wait there, whether there is sunshine or rain, and know that the world I have put behind me is part of me and is waiting on the doorstep with me, gathered to paradise in my heart.

But no-one said it would be easy. As one of the monks at St John's Abbey preached, in our monastic round of rediscoveries and re-echoes and revisiting the same truths day after day, "we have good days, and bad days, and sometimes just days". And quite often its raining on the doorstep, or it's cold, and frequently it is lonely and dark and dispiriting, and sunshine and light and love seem like a distant dream. A long obedience in the same direction, as Eugene Peterson called one of his books, requires sitting on the doorstep even in the winter when the snow is piled so high we cannot see over it and springtime seems a million years away.

But then there are the days when the daffodils are dancing in my garden and the first of the tulips are poking through the ground, the sun is warm on my back as I do a bit of weeding, and the tree down the road is pink with blossom: to sit on the doorstep of my heart on those days is easy and the whole day bubbles with a deep and subtle joy, even when the world is too much with us and seems to be falling around my ears and I don't know what to pray or to say or to do to help. Maybe it's enough. I pray that it is.

First fire

First fire of the winter season was lit tonight when we got home. Daughter was "star of the week" in her trampolining training session, so we took her out for dinner. I had forgotten how cozy it feels in the living room when the fire is lit. Everything seems to centre around the fireplace - particularly the cat, who was absolutely ecstatic that his "hot box" was finally hot again!

Tuesday of Holy Week. Jesus in the Temple. Listening to the teaching, and the silence between words, and the silence. 

Baching in the rain

Listening to the rain coming down all yesterday, all last night, and all of today felt a bit like a gift. It's the first real rain we've had in a couple of months, and it was as though all of the built up dust and stress and difficulty were being washed away by the rain; helped along this morning in my office by a gorgeous recording of Bach's solo cello concertos. Rain on the roof (a proper Bay of Plenty downpour coming straight down) and Bach. It doesn't get much more peaceful.

This afternoon was more of a rain adventure, with a visit to a potential new client here in Rotorua who has both some interesting hazards and some real challenges. It's also an organisation that would be a privilege to work alongside, and I am very excited about this opportunity.

A senior staff member took me on a tiki-tour around their operations and it was really interesting. It's a big site and most of it is uncovered... fortunately they had little golf carts with roofs to help in getting around and I had grabbed my big waterproof work raincoat before going over: it got a real workout today though and by the time I got back to the office nearly 3 hours later it was soaked nearly through and I was decidedly soggy (although not as soggy as my guide, whose coat didn't have a hood!). One hot chocolate and a change of clothes later and all was fine. That's one distinct advantage to having my office in my house: if I get wet, too hot, or too cold, I can skip across the hall to my room and change!

The practice of getting lost

For my Lent book this year I am re-reading and reflecting on Barbara Brown Taylor's luminous book An Altar in the World. The other day, I was reading the chapter 'The Practice of Getting Lost: wilderness', where she thinks about how being lost, following a star, crossing the Red Sea, making a wrong turn, can lead us into something unexpected.

I had an experience of that today. I was at Kinleith today, and was joyously driving home reflecting on the day and thinking about the training I need to deliver tomorrow, when I suddenly saw a car parked across State Highway 30. I slowed down so as not to T-bone it, and the driver got out and stood by the car in a hi-viz and said, "There's been an accident. Rotorua's that way" - pointing down a road I had only ever passed before and had never driven down.

I obediently turned off and found myself "lost": off the road I had always travelled to and from work, following a tiny rural road around twists and turns, over one-way bridges, around farm entrances and piles of dirt and manure on the side of the road, trusting only in the instruction given me by a total stranger, my own feeble sense of direction, and two major landmarks (the Horohoro Bluff and a large hill I recognised but don't know the name of) to get me home. I found myself wide awake, totally in the present moment as I negotiated the narrow way, intensely aware of light, shadow, the Bluff to my left, and the totally different perspective on the world I had from this route. I had to make decisions about intersections: to follow, or not to follow? Which way?

You might ask, "You had your phone there? Why didn't you use GPS?" Not a dumb question, but a dumb answer: the phone was in the boot and there weren't many places where I could safely stop to retrieve it, and I also wanted to experience being lost this close to home and see what would happen.

What happened was an experience of light, shadow, life, journey, where I felt intensely alive and completely present: I trusted myself to the Way and the Way brought me home.

The best we can with what we have

It's late. It's quiet. The only sound besides the clicking of my laptop keys is the swish-swish of the dishwasher at the other end of the house: my faithful servant doing the washing-up after dinner.

The expected storm didn't come to much here: quite a lot of rain (starting nice and gently, which the farmers will be grateful for) and a little bit of wind in the very early hours of this morning, but nothing like the savagery forecasters were predicting - not here at least. The Far North had a pretty bad time of it, and lovely Paihia that I saw two weeks ago is very soggy now.

It's funny: Friday night I had that feeling of impending doom, and the storm turned out to be not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Today in church was much the same: the newly re-formed choir sang (all five of us) and the positive comments were overwhelming. I had that feeling of impending doom for the last couple of months, praying and working to get the choir up and running, and now we've sung a service for the first time (only hymns and communion songs, not a motet or liturgy yet) it's less about impending doom and more about doing the best we can with what we have.

I have always been a firm believer that we should give God the best of our abilities, particularly when it comes to liturgy, and it felt very satisfying singing praise again. Today we had the readings of the Transfiguration in Lent (although the Feast of the Transfiguration isn't until 6 August), which has always seemed to me to be a picture of what happens when give the best we can to God: somehow it becomes enough. Like the boy who trusted his lunch of two buns and a few tiny fish to Jesus, somehow it became enough to feed a whole lot of people; today, the best we could give was five singers and a pianist making beautiful harmonies for God. The best we could. And it was enough.

The calm before the storm

It is about 9.30pm on Friday night. I am sitting in my silent house, hearing the beginning of rain and the slight rising breeze, waiting. New Zealand is right in the path of Tropical Cyclone Lusi (which killed three people when it went over the top of Vanuatu), which has already made landfall in Northland. Metservice is predicting between 120-150mm of rain and gale force winds in the inland western Bay of Plenty, which is us here in Rotorua.

There are severe weather warnings in place for much of the country, and lovely Kerikeri and the Bay of Islands are already getting hammered with rain and wind. The wind and rain maps are alarming, and the forecasters are saying things like, "severe gale force", "secure all objects that could become missiles", "restrict all non-essential travel", "be prepared for loss of power, flooding, and slips", "ensure you have supplies on hand for at least three days", "Civil Defence is standing by".

But right now, all is calm. We have done what we can: the trampoline is tied down, plywood panels have been located where they can't fly away, and made sure the shopping was done. There are plenty of candles in the house too. For now, we wait.

It's an odd metaphor: waiting, knowing something is coming, but completely unable to do anything about it. Watching the storm creep closer, and knowing the whole country is going to cop it. There is nowhere to hide. It's coming.

Wagner and das land

I have just been reading my brother's blog about his recent foray into Wagner's Ring Cycle, with the BBC Proms. Sounds like it was completely amazing, and I am so jealous that he got to hear Bryn Terfel live. He did the complete Ring, which is pretty cool. I have to admit that I have only heard parts of the cycle, but what I have heard I like. Maybe I'll have to look up a good recording and have a listen to more of it.

However, on the other side of the globe, things have been a little interesting. Last night we were  rudely awoken by an earthquake around 1am, followed by another 6 quakes until about 2.30am.... They were fairly small but the epicentres were just 1km from our house, and only 5km deep. By the time we'd had the 5th one small daughter was so unnerved she wanted to stay in our bed (which I can't blame her for!). They were extremely noisy - in fact, I was woken by the first one and was trying to figure out where the truck was driving when the shaking started! So we ended up all of us sleeping in our queen bed, and the cat, not to be outdone, came to join us too... We all did get some sleep but it wasn't the most restful night I've ever had. Fortunately I was working from Rotorua this morning so didn't have to deal with the drive over to site.

This week has been a very busy one with a major audit on Tuesday and Wednesday. I've been preparing for this for months now, and particularly over the last few weeks it's been taking up a lot of my time. In the end it went pretty well, which pleased me (and my boss). I was concerned that my lack of spoons from the weekend/Monday may have made it difficult when it came to the site walkthrough on Wednesday, but I did okay in the end. I must admit that I came home on Tuesday and didn't want to talk to anyone (other than hubby and small daughter), after spending all day answering questions from the auditors! Long meetings are stressful when you're an introvert and an audit makes it worse. I am very grateful it's the weekend!

It's also been an interesting week in terms of the year too. Two feasts and a memorial in a row, with St Monica, St Augustine, and the Beheading of John the Baptist back to back. I don't know a lot about Monica, except she was Augustine's mum, but Augustine I know more of. The readings for vigils were from the Confessions and they were really gorgeous - from his investigations and meditations on the One Beauty. I have to confess I've never finished the Confessions - I did read quite a bit of them in patches when I was studying, and an awful lot of his theology, but I never did the Confessions from start to finish, although I did try. This makes me wonder whether it wasn't the right time for them then but it may be time for another go? And John the Baptist: I know it's the wrong image but I always think of Allori's Judith with the head of Holofernes when I think of this event. But also as forerunner, beginning, cousin, friend, torch, Elijah Mk 2... It was a bit of a relief to return to ordinary Ordinary Time today.

Autumn days

This weekend has been a pretty relaxed one. I had some kind of nasty bug thing on Friday so after calling in sick I ended up sleeping almost the entire day (very unusual for me). I was starting to feel a bit better on Saturday although still planning to take it quietly. Small daughter and I went on a bit of a shopping trip for her: time for new shoes and slippers after her current ones literally fell apart on her feet. We also found some small drinking glasses that are a good size for her hand, as she's quite keen to start using "big glasses" (as opposed to plastic) and "big knives and forks". At nearly 7 this is a fair request but we only had one small glass left from a set some years ago and everything else was too big for her to hold.

We went pineconing on Saturday afternoon in Redwoods, which was a whole heap of fun. Small daughter and I did this last year and got about a laundry basket-ful of pinecones for the fire. This year hubby came too and we had so much fun looking for pinecones, finding pinecones, trying not to get snared in rogue raspberry canes, finding more pinecones, walking too and from the car with bags of pinecones - fortunately it's flat and easy walking, not like the near-vertical place we used to pinecone up the back of Thorndon in Wellington when I was a girl! We got a good big lot, and I'm sure we'll do it again during autumn while the pinecones are still dry. It was a nice, gentle walk with the added bonus of looking and finding things for the fire.

The change in the weather is definitely noticeable now: daylight saving finished last night and the nights have suddenly got cold in the last couple of weeks. I got the duvet inners aired today and both inners went back onto both beds (in summer we use only the lightweight one on each bed) because we've all noticed the colder nights! However, it's still very very dry: we've had a couple of days of rain, not enough to break the drought. There is colour on the paddocks again but the water table is still extremely low and our fire danger seems permanently stuck at "extreme".

Today was a lovely relaxed day too. We had some more sunshine (although there was a definite nip behind the sun and jerseys were necessary in the shade). We had lunch with some friends from church, then back to another part of Redwoods for a gentle wander and chat. Dinner was a good big hunk of corned beef with all the usual veges - the return of hearty autumn food. And corned beef was always my favourite!

It's hard to believe that we've nearly been here a year. We arrived on the 17th of April last year, just after Easter (which was later last year). It's gone very fast.

Waiting for rain

It isn't officially a drought as no-one's got around to declaring one around here yet, but the last rainfall we had was on Waitangi Day a month ago. And before that, it had been about 3 weeks before the previous rain. The fire danger is extreme and it's getting very scary out there. There were dust devils dancing in the log yard at work, and the forests are so dry that harvesting has been restricted. It has been glorious for exploring the beautiful Bay of Plenty, especially all the lakes for swimming in, but everyone is now desperately hoping for rain.

And it isn't just us: Northland, Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Marlborough, Canterbury, Southland - all of them are dust-dry and scorched bare. Even Wellington has had the golden summer of a lifetime and has massive water restrictions in place - made more awkward by the fact that one of the reservoirs is being fixed or renovated or something and isn't working.

There are no water restrictions in Rotorua yet but everyone's being very careful anyway.

Coincidence - or something else?

An odd coincidence this year puts Ash Wednesday on 13 February, followed immediately by the double feast day of Sts Cyril and Methodius and St Valentine on 14 February. I find this a little striking: Sts Cyril and Methodius were Greek brothers from Thessolonica (the same place that St Paul's two letters to the Thessalonians were directed to). They are known as "the apostles to the Slavs", taking the news about Jesus to Russia, which included creation of an alphabet in which to write Slavic. St Valentine, rather than being a sappy figure associated with an overdose of chocolates and roses, is a bit of a shadowy figure from the third century. Tradition has it that he was a bishop who was known for creating ways for Christian couples to get married - at a time when to do so meant certain death for him, them, and anyone who abetted them. Valentinus eventually was martyred.

I find it immensely interesting that a trick of the calendar and the phases of the moon has put these two days side by side this year. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, the time when we remember that, "from dust you came and to dust you shall return" and commit again to turning from our faults and sins back to God, and the feast day of three very brave men who, each in their own way, carried the story of the love, kindness, and forgiveness of God to different people. Ash Wednesday is my chance to turn back to the God who is infinite love, infinitely patient, and infinitely caring, but to do so requires courage because I know that God loves me too much to leave me where I am. It is a choice to return, but to do so means that we turn away from what may be some quite comfortable habits and ways of thinking. Cyril and Methodius left their own land, their language, their families and friends, and went to a strange place, for the love of God and others; Valentinus risked his own life to help young persecuted Christians to marry against Roman law. Lent is a time of risk: risking trusting in the depths of God's love for me and casting my barque into the deep waters of his forgiveness and his kindness, and turning away from those comfortable bad habits of mind and body to something more true.

Of course, that isn't to say that I will manage it all the time. We fall down, we get up again, we trust in God's forgiveness, and go on falling and getting up again - knowing that God's love for us all is deeper than the ocean and as infinitely varied as the universe that we marvel at.

We're finally here

It's been a long time in the planning and execution, but we're finally in Rotorua. We really enjoyed our last Easter at St James in Lower Hutt and spent the week folllowing sorting and packing all our stuff. Final farewells were tough, as we knew they would be.... The packers arrived on Monday 16th and all our kit disappeared into a large truck, and reappeared the following day in our new house here in the beautiful Bay of Plenty. Daughter and I drove up on Monday and stayed the night with my aunt and uncle; hubby and cat came up the next day. Unfortunately for hubby, the cat doesn't like his box and cried literally the whole 7.5 hours from Wellington to Rotorua.... Fortunately cat and husband arrived alive although both were rather frazzled!

This week has been a bit insane, trying to find what boxes we stashed things in (mostly they were pretty logical, but it has taken us a week to find the toaster!), deciding what needs to be unpacked with some degree of urgency and what can wait a little longer, and beginning our explorations of the city we find ourselves in.

So far, we like it. It is definitely sunnier than Wellington (not hard, I hear you say!), and it is really lovely on the shores of Lake Rotorua - one of about 11 lakes around here. The city sits smack in the middle of the Rotorua caldera and is NZ's most active geothermal area. The city is famous for its geysers, boiling mud, hot pools, which I've blogged about before. So far, we've had a look at Kuirau Park, Waiotapu, the Buried Village, found the library (and joined it!), and discovered a reasonable fish and chip shop! We've also discovered that many of the attractions around here have a significant discount if you can prove you live here - a library card and a letter from a bank or phone company does the trick! Some of them are even free.... nice.

We like our new house too. It's a lot bigger than our house in Lower Hutt - it's older too, but so far it seems warm. The whole house, and especially the kitchen-dining-living area, is much bigger and a more practical layout than our one in the Hutt. We're still waiting for the sale of our house down there and praying that it will sell soon.

Next week: work. I start my new job on Monday, which I am really looking forward to. It's going to be different being in an operational role again, and especially one in heavy industry. Daughter starts school on Monday too, and now that we have internet again, hubby can get on with his assignments for his study.

We're also hoping that the cat will have settled enough to allow him outside next week, because he's currently driving us slightly insane inside. He's used to being able to go outside any time he likes; we've got a little harness and lead which we've been using to take him out into the garden so he gets a feel for what it's like out there, but he's not awfully keen on the harness! He does seem a lot happier in the house today though. On Wednesday he decided that he needed to mark his new territory inside - all over my pillows - and he marked enough so that it soaked through the "fancy" pillows we have on top, through my pillow underneath, and through three layers of sheets and mattress protector..... The stressful bit was that we had to jury-rig sheets because I was still catching up with the washing after the move! I was not best pleased....

However, we know that despite the little issues we're where we are meant to be. There have been lots of little signs pointing the way and we're trusting for the rest. The last one will be the sale of our house. We're hoping!

I'm sure there will be lots more bits coming from our new adventures in the beautiful Bay - including some new pictures from hubby (the camera is expected to get a good workout here - even more so than normal!). But for now, it's starting to feel a bit like bedtime.

The world spins...

The world spins on, and we spin with it. Although right now, it feels as though the spin we’re doing is rather faster than the rotation of the earth! We’re in the process of packing up our lives in Lower Hutt as we get ready for a relocation to Rotorua in the central North Island. I have been to Rotorua several times to visit and for work and like it, but am not sure what it will be like for living in. I have landed a rather plum role at a large NZ manufacturing organisation so it’s a move because of me.

I am in several minds about this move. I want to go because the professional opportunity at my new employer is so huge. It’s a major manufacturer and exporter in an industry where doing safety really matters: if it’s not done right, people die. Literally. The site manager is really committed to sending his staff home safely, and he’s a really lovely person that I know I will enjoy working with.

What I am more scared about is the loss of networks for all of us. We’re moving away from our families, from the networks of external activities that we’re involved in (particularly hubby), from our church, from our daughter’s school where she is really happy, from my professional networks – the lot. It is a HUGE leap of faith. If my family is not happy there, then I know that I will not be happy no matter how good my job is.

However, we all have the feeling that this relocation is being managed, and not by us. So many things have just fallen into place really quickly, including the job itself, the ability to go up there and check it out, finding a real estate agent we like, the timing of the church fair (so we could take a whole lot of stuff down to it) and so on. The real acid test of this arranging will be how long it takes to sell our house. We’ve got the first open home this weekend and apparently there’s already someone been through the house.

So the big things now are selling the house, finding somewhere to live (either buying or renting, we haven’t yet decided), somewhere to worship, sorting the movers and insurers etc etc! I commented to one of my friends here that I’ve got lists of things to do in my head, lists on paper, lists on other bits of paper, and I suspect that I’ll be tattooing lists onto my forearms before long!

However, I am hanging onto God’s promises that he will make our path straight, and the overwhelming sense we all have that God’s hand is in this move. It’s going to be a tough gig, but at the same time I know it will be worth it.

Tears, laughter, and goodbye

Today was the liturgical farewell for our Bishop Tom Brown, who has been the Diocesan Bishop of Wellington for 14 years and was the Assistant Bishop here for 7 years before that. Bishop Tom Confirmed hubby and me; he has been a source of personal encouragement in my various vocation wanderings; he has ministered to us, laughed with us, rejoiced with us when our small daughter arrived; he has been a friend and a leader. I will miss Bishop Tom!

It was a wonderful service. The music from the Cathedral Choir was outstanding as usual. We had a sermon from Archdeacon Judy Hardie; speeches from the Chancellor, Ven Robert McClay; the ex-Mayor of Wellington, Kerry Prendegast; and Archbishops Phillip Aspinall (Brisbane, Australia) and David Moxon (Waikato and Co-presiding Bishop of New Zealand). I thought the Chancellor was a little long-winded, but the two Archbishops were fabulous. Serious, beautiful, funny, engaging. Bishop Tom had the right of reply, and he was also engaging and wonderfully funny. One joke he made really stuck with me: his small granddaughter was looking at a book on Christianity he had on his coffee table, and asked him seriously, "Are you a Christian?" Apparently his son said, "It goes with the job description!"

It was sad to see Bishop Tom lay his crozier down on the altar for the last time, and weird to have the blessing given by Archbishop David instead of Bishop Tom. When Bishop Tom was escorted to the cathedral door by the Dean the thought occurred to me that maybe they were making sure he left! One lovely thing happened as they were escorting him out: some of the young people had gone up into the roof and dropped what looked like hundreds of large pieces of coloured confetti - but turned out to be coloured notes written by the children of the diocese. What a lovely idea!

We finished with a barbeque (how Kiwi is that!), and then came home. It was long, but it was lovely. And now the waiting time, the interregnum, begins. I am awaiting the arrival of a packet from the Electoral College next week with information on the candidates....

Ashes to dirt

From dust we came, and to dust we will return.

Ash Wednesday is today. Imposition of Ashes, beginning of Lent, reflection on the beginning of the journey to Easter. But it's also the first anniversary of the 22 February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch that killed 185 people.

Those two things are working oddly together for me today. From dust we came, and to dust we shall return. From dirt we came, and more dirt kept coming. We lost friends. We lost family. We lost a city. We wear ashes. We grieve. We pray. We hope. We journey to Easter.