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Last night I became a grandfather. Naomi Yin-Leng was born to my daughter in law Charmayne and son Nick in Sydney at around 11 pm our time, and suddenly the world is no longer the same. Thirty something years ago Nick was born in Christchurch, the first of our three, and the world changed then, too. Up until the moment he came blue and reluctant into the world he had been a possibility: a squirming bulge in Clemency's body. He had been imagined and read about and even viewed as a grey fuzzy blob using the steam and treadle powered ultrasound scanning machines of the 1980s; but nothing, absolutely nothing had prepared me for the experience of holding my first born, and looking into his eyes and having a person look back. In that instant the whole miracle of  Being presented itself; in the space of nine months the exquisite machinery of a human body had been formed, but more astonishingly still, a consciousness was now present within it. In that instant the boundaries of my self co...

It snowed on Monday and Dunedin shut down. It wasn't the sort of snow you can go outside and frolic in, but rather the sort that comes in sideways in the face of  a southerly like a cold, wet, sandblaster. We stoked up the fire and read and watched DVDs. It all calmed down a bit on Tuesday, and I was able to go about the things that seemed to be stacked into this week. On Wednesday I presided at the induction of my successor at St. John's Roslyn. Eric Kyte is an Englishman, born in the same town as Clemency, but a decade later. He arrived to face the worst weather we have had for a good long while, and there were a few local foibles to come to terms with, such as the peculiar little coal burner in the family room of the vicarage and a different way we work hot water systems over here, but by and large he seems to have settled in well and the service was wonderful. The church was full, and the optimism and good humour were palpable. It was good to again be amongst people with ...

For most of the past week I attended the Anglican Schools conference in Christchurch. This was a gathering of, largely, the principals and chaplains of Anglican schools, but there were a few also rans, such as myself, along to make up the numbers. What with it being a conference attended by the principals of some of the country's better schools and everything, we staying a a much classier hotel than we would have if it had been any other sort of churchy conference, so I was well fed and had a nice room, but that wasn't the good bit about being there. What made the four hour drive North more than worth it was two things: the conference speakers and the company I kept. The Anglican Schools office is run, in this country, by the extraordinary and wonderful Ali Ballantyne. Despite being shaken out of her Christchurch office and being forced to run things on a patchwork system she has cobbled together in the garage of her home,  she put together a program that was as good as anyt...

There was a 40 knot southerly blowing when I went for a walk on the beach today, so I wasn't bothered by the crowds. About halfway between St. Clair and St. Kilda three young women in wetsuits were pulling their surfboards out of the waves, trying to control them in the gale as they stumbled and shrieked their way into the comparative shelter of the dunes. Their faces and hands and feet were scarlet with cold and they caught my eye as I passed and  smiled in mute acknowledgement of the absurdity of their situation. It rained, and the sand blew in a small drifting mist at about ankle height above the firm beach. It was high tide and the waves just reached the six foot high cliff caused by the scouring away of the sand during the recent storms. After half an hour I turned and faced back into the wind, pushing against it and against the softness of my footing, glad of my Gore-Tex and gloves and snow cap, and straining on the flat beach as though I was walking steadily uphill. I retrac...

The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:23 The central point of Christianity is that in the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have the clearest picture anyone is going to get of that from which all things derive. What is at the heart of all things? Why is there something rather than nothing? The answer is not a concept or a principle or an idea or a law but a person. And the overarching theme of that person's life is continuous, unconditional love. The universe is formed in Love. We are formed in Love. Which all sounds a bit syrupy and naff unless we are careful about what we mean by "Love". Scott Peck uses a definition which seems accurate to me: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. We seem to be formed to grow and develop; and the movement towards us from the universe itself ( and from the Great One who is the beginn...

Lately I have been thinking of the almost abandoned Christian concept of sin. Sin is not a popular term anymore. In a society whose greatest good seems to be the right of anybody to do just as they jolly well please, uttering the word "sin" conjures up all the adjectives which are most despised in liberal Western democracies: judgemental, narrow minded, uninclusive, self righteous. Sin is a term which seems, to many, to come from some lesser, undeveloped, unreflective religion, and is not to be taken too seriously by more advanced spiritual people, (such as whoever is saying this stuff, for example).  But I don't think you can get very far along a path of spiritual development without a concept of sin. Not sin as some sort of arbitrarily drawn up list of prohibitions, mind you; but sin as a description of a propensity or an attitude of mind. At a certain point in any regime of spiritual practice you will have to face your own humanity and become aware of  those bits and p...

It is the school holidays and with the encouragement of those who watch over me I have taken a break. My Sunday schedule being what it is, I could only take a few days, so rather than take a real holiday we have gone for a bit of a drive in the country. On Sunday, after a service at St. John's Milton we drove north to Rangiora and stayed with Clemency's sister Bridget. The inland route is longer but going that way, the roads are deserted, there is snow on the mountains and they are very close. Then early on Monday we drove up through the Lewis Pass to Nelson. There was enough fog to make the early sunlight picturesque and once it had cleared, an absolutely cloudless sky all the way. Patches of black ice. A wonderful little cafe in Maruia selling vegan meals and little items for our imminently new grand daughter. Outside temperatures wavering between -1 and 7. Mountains and winding blacktop. Chatting. Then my brother Alistair's house and a quick tour of the new Jag and the...