Available Light

We bought a bed yesterday. The old one was a bit past its use by date, but you know how these things go - it isn't any worse today than it was yesterday so there is always a thousand things ahead of a bed in the budget queue. But what with the defunct springs and alarming potholes and everything, not to mention the rumours of vast ecosystems dwelling within it, it was getting harder to sleep on the probably important artifact of domestic furniture history in our bedroom. So yesterday was the day. Over the last couple of weeks I made a thorough reconnoitre of the bedding market. It had been a few decades since I had taken the remotest interest in it, so needed to refresh my memory. I googled. I wikipediaed. I looked in showrooms. I found that beds were a lot taller and more expensive than last time I looked. Over a few days I managed to look at every bed for sale in Dunedin and noticed something very odd about the bedding market. Although several of  the major brands were proud...

Although ours is, geographically at least, a big diocese, it is traversed by only a few main routes and by now I am pretty familiar with all of them. I began this year driving on roads I know very well, into Central Otago and Southland; but while the scenery and the way into it might have held few surprises, the destinations had plenty. There is change in the air. All over the place, people are realising that what we have been talking about for years in the Anglican Church - the necessity for new ways of doing things - is now a matter of inevitable necessity rather than a conversation filler for church discussion groups. It's been a while since I wrote the above paragraph. In the time since I have: -Helped to choose a new warden for Selwyn College. -Agreed to the ordination to the diaconate of  two people -Ordained Richard Aitken to the diaconate and inducted him into a new ministry in Invercargill -Met with four people newly interested in the possibility of ordination ...