Decently and in Order

My study is built, the books are on the shelves in more or less their permanent positions and there is a desk which will do in the meantime. Just through the wall is a corner of the garage which will serve as my workshop, and those familiar with our garage at Highgate will be astounded by its tidiness: there are little spring clips on the walls to hold all the tools; there are little jars and colour coded plastic trays full of bolts and screws and thingumejigs; there is a lamp and a vice which is actually screwed down to the bench. This temporary attack of anal retentiveness is unusual in someone and by someone I mean me, with the Myers Briggs personality type INFP, for whom, normally, the mere mention of the words "sub clause" or "scheduled" is enough to bring on an attack of hives.

Partly, this orderliness is the result of having a smaller house than we used to and having to make best use of the space available. Partly it is because at my age the natural progression described by the MBTI means that my tertiary and inferior functions - borderline sensing and extroverted thinking- are coming out of their 50 year long apprenticeship and are starting to throw their weight around. Partly it is because even I now realize that tidiness is actually the easiest and least demanding way of doing things, and that some semblance of organisation is needed to move the big picture imaginings, which are my stock in trade, from lala land into the world of being. Or at least into my garage.

Which is why I spent some of this week in a room with colored stick it notes and highlighters and very large sheets of paper. Benjamin Brock Smith had come up with an ingenious system for scheduling our Diocesan plan and we spent a few happy hours sticking things on and coloring bits in. Now, attached to the wall of the Diocesan board room is an enormous diary, outlining the way we will implement our vision over the next five years. It is a work in progress, and in fact has only had the barest preliminary outlines put on it yet. I hope that people, after they have cadged a cup of coffee from Barbara, will feel free to wander up the stairs and have a look at it, and make any suggested comments or alterations to me or Alec, or Benjamin or Helen Wilderspin or Bronwyn, who will all have a hand in shaping it. Seeing the plan begin to be set down on paper in doable chunks encourages me to hope that we are going to do more than that thing the church usually restricts itself to: circulating bits of colored A4 paper.

The energy for the changes we are embarking on will come from the enthusiasm of the people of our Diocese; energy such as that in the room when I met the combined vestries of Gore and Waimea Plains just yesterday. We were talking of how we could cooperate across that part of Southland and work together for the Kingdom. The enthusiasm was so palpable you could have cut it up and sold it by the yard. Perhaps someone reading this might fancy a 1-2 year job ringing in the changes in that busy little corner of Middle Earth or perhaps, later, the longer job of acting as the regional leader. There are plans afoot. We have it down on paper and the dates and names are steadily being filled in. It's very exciting, intuition, feeling and perceiving notwithstanding.

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Location:Glenfinnan Pl,Dunedin,New Zealand