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Dear Lynda, I was at your place yesterday. It doesn't seem so long since the last time, when I came and spoke about how all cathedrals are, in the final analysis, transitional cathedrals. I was gutted to be rung by Michael Hughes the other day and learn that deans are too. Shocked. Shattered. Unbelieving. I know your health was bad, and I know we are all temporary but you were so full of everything that makes life worthwhile that your death  just didn't seem right. You would have loved yesterday. As Garrison Keillor once said “They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.” You were there, of course; or at least your body was, and everything about the service spoke of you. I'd be really interested to know if you were conscious of all that. Perhaps one day we could talk?  The music was great: your choice, I understand, and Bishop Victoria spoke of you so movingly. T...

I came across this remarkable little film just yesterday. I am astonished by the technical brilliance of the film maker, Anthony Cerniello, but there is more than that. The piece is a reminder that we are not things: we are, each one of us, a process. We are a particular configuration of energy which is in perpetual change; and this energy pattern had a beginning and one day will have an end.  This film is very beautiful.  The face is beautiful and the changes wrought over the years are, to me, awe inspiring. How astonishing that the food consumed by this little girl can be reconfigured into bone and flesh and brain tissue. How amazing that a design for a human being can so relentlessly and powerfully unfold. And as I watch her change in the space of five minutes, I ask, "when does she become more, or when less beautiful?" And the answer is, "she does not". At every stage of her continuous journey from childhood to old age she is constantly and equally lovely. ...

No, not Bluff. Dunedin. Taken from our deck on a stormy day about a year ago.  Today was one of those rare Sundays where I had no commitments, so the question arose, where do we go to church? Well, it was a no brainer, really. There's only one parish left in the Diocese where I haven't worshipped on a Sunday morning, so Bluff it was. We rose at 6, left at 7 and after a cup of coffee in Invercargill, arrived at the Bluff Co-operating parish right on the dot of 10. As it turns out we were on time for the service, but still managed to be a little late as the first Sunday in the month is the one Bluff puts on a pancake breakfast which begins an hour earlier. A few people there, some of the Anglicans, of course, knew who I was and were very slightly surprised, but took it all in their stride. We were given pancakes and coffee and then, with the other 30 or so people present, sat at small tables while the service unfolded. It was simple, casual and very well done. There was si...