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It happens sometimes. I have a question or am pondering some conundrum or other and the right book arrives at pretty much the right time. In a session with my supervisor a few months back Paul mentioned an article by Rene Girard, whom I had never heard of. I read the article and over the past month have read two of his books, The Scapegoat and this one. I have another couple sitting on my shelf and they have elbowed all others in my to be read pile out of the way and sit firmly on the top. Girard has pulled a number of threads together for me: he has enabled me to rethink the atonement in a way which is consistent with an evolving Universe: he presents a view of scripture which is again consistent with what I know of science but is also faithful to the Bible as the Word of God; he has given me, for the first time in my life a theology (if that is the right word) of Satan which makes sense to me. Most importantly for me, he is consistent with my own lived experience of God's s

Part of the farm attached to Living Springs campsite. I brought a camera but didn't use it for any of the more typical bits of the week's activities. This shot will have to do.  This past week was spent at Totara Springs, near Matamata, attending the international conference of The Order of St. Luke . I was there to deliver a keynote address and lead a workshop on meditation. The OSL has as its raison d'etre the promotion of the ministry of healing, an aim with which I have developed a considerable sympathy over the past few years. I had been a member many years ago, but let my membership lapse. Back then, in my thirties, I had found my fellow members to be a decade or two older than me and their ways of doing things a little too highly regulated for my taste. When Archbishop David Moxon moved to Rome and could no longer attend the international conference I agreed to take his place in the programme. Coincidentally, the invitation to attend and speak came at about the

Photo (c) Nick Wright 2013 Lately our little house has been bursting at the seams, with five extra adults and two infants. My daughter Bridget and her husband Scott returned from Doha so that I could baptise 19 week old Noah. Nick, Charmayne and Naomi came over from Sydney for the event as did Clemency's sister and some of Scott's family. We had borrowed folding cots and high chairs and car seats. There was an airbed in my study and people sleeping in the caravan, and the house had the sort of pleasantly chaotic holiday feel of lots of people in a small space that I remember so fondly from childhood Christmases. We had decided that the most appropriate place for the baptism was our local parish church - this was not a Diocesan occasion , so the other logical choice, the Cathedral, was reluctantly set aside - and the people at St. Michael's and All Angels Anderson's Bay did us proud. This was St. Michael's Day, their patronal festival, so there was a beautiful

Photo (c) TVNZ 2013 1.5 million of us Kiwis watched the America's Cup, which is pretty impressive in a country of a little over 4 million. Even as I turned on my TV at 8 every morning and waited impatiently to see if the winds would be right in San Francisco Bay I wondered why. After all, the America's Cup must be as far from the mythical Kiwi image we all try and project as it's possible to get. For a start, two syndicates spending more than a quarter of a billion between them on yachts that would have no use whatsoever once one of them crossed the final line seems to give a pretty big two fingered salute to our clean and green self talk, even if they are wind powered. And then there's the whole cup ethos. Ever since the schooner America beat the field in the Isle of Wight race in 1851 to claim the cup for the first time, it has been a contest of egos between extremely rich men for a prize with no real intrinsic value. What with sailing being probably the most