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Showing posts from April, 2013

Pangaimotu

On the last morning of the Bishop's conference on Pangaimotu Island, just off Nuku'alofa in Tonga, we had been asked to walk around to the other side of the island for our morning Eucharist. So, leaving our little ferry by way of a floating jetty we walked the ten minutes from Big Mama Yacht Club, where we had been meeting, and found Archbishop Winston Halapua waiting for us. He was dressed in an alb and was talking on his cellphone. Here, in this place where it felt about as remote as it gets he was still connected. Which was why he had asked to meet us there. The spot he chose was one where, as a small boy, he had gone fishing with his father. As he explained it, the clergy stipend back then wasn't nearly enough to feed the twelve members of the Halapua family, so his father put food on the table using his expertise with a throw net. Little Winston's job was to gather the fish his father took from the net and form them into a sort of raft to float back to the main

Three Services

Photo courtesy St. Peter's Cathedral, Hamilton I went to church three times this last weekend. On Saturday in company with about 1,000 others I went to the chapel of St. Paul's Collegiate School in Hamilton to participate in the farewell service to Archbishop David Moxon. The next day I went to my old parish, St. Francis Hillcrest and was able to take in the main morning service before rushing off to the airport to catch the flight home. Then in the evening I went to the Resurrection service in the Regent Theatre in Dunedin, and again in company with about 1,000 people. The three events were quite varied. And that former sentence will be my official entry in this years understatement of the year awards. The St. Paul's chapel is a beautiful place with a soaring wood roof. It is light and spacious with the reflected light of a pool playing through a plain, frosted window featuring the words of Jesus arranged to form an enormous cross. The liturgy was considered, intel