Available Light

(c) gostudy.co.nz I spent some of this week assisting my friend and colleague, Anne Van Gend of the Anglican Schools Office , in conducting a Special Character review of Rathkeale College , an Anglican boys school near Masterton. Rathkeale is an integrated school, which means that while the buildings and grounds  are independently  owned, in this case by the Trinity Schools Trust Board, the teaching staff is paid by the government. The partnership is embodied in an agreement between the proprietor and the state, the deed of integration, in which both parties agree that the state syllabus will be taught and all required educational standards adhered to while allowing the school to retain a distinctive character of its own; namely, that its life and work will be consistent with the teachings of the Anglican Church. The reviews Anne conducts, by invitation, provide an assessment of how well the school is adhering to this agreement. A report will be written in due course, and...

I led worship and preached in Knox Presbyterian Church today, and felt unnervingly at home. The music was polished and beautifully presented while remaining accessible. I like the building. It soars skyward and gently embraces all in the right places. It's large enough to seat 800 people, but even with today's congregation of  150 or so it didn't feel empty.  In my time I have been a member of the South Canterbury and Waikato Presbytries, so I have know the minister of Knox, Kerry Enrright since the mid 1980s, and ever since he has been here we agreed that one day I'd make this ecumenical gesture. Well, today was the day. This afternoon Selwyn College opened again for business. All Saints, which functions as the college chapel was full to bursting with the 190 nervous students and a far greater number of their even more nervous parents. I preached (for the seventh and last time!) and inducted the new warden, Ashley Day. We all trooped out into the sunshine for spee...

You've seen the movie a thousand times. The town is full of baddies and no one knows what to do, especially the very pretty school teacher/widow/shopkeeper who the chief baddie seems to fancy. In rides a lantern jawed bloke, who after a few initial setbacks,  makes the moderately bad guys look silly, shoots the really bad guys, and fights the really really bad guy up and down several flights of steps and on the top of something moving before witnessing his catastrophically inventive death. Then the the lantern jawed bloke tips his hat, says something self effacing and leaves, usually at sunset, and in the company of the very pretty st/w/sk, and the credits roll. So what happens next? By which I don't mean what happens in the sequel, which is the same film with the same plot but with more explosions. I mean what would happen next, really? What happens when the lantern jawed bloke and the pretty widow get over the horizon? When they start to feel a bit peckish, or when they ...

  What do you do when children want to handle valuable and fragile things? Forbid them and make the object all the more attractive? Let them handle it under supervision and and so familiarise themselves with it? Noah Picked up my number 1 camera. My heart sank as I watched him totter under the sheer weight of it, but I could see he was curious about this thing which he associated so strongly with me, and I would love him to have the gifts a camera can bring: the ability to see; the ability to make something beautiful in a fraction of a second.  So I opted for the latter, and gave him his first photography lesson: Always put the strap around your neck. Never put your fingers on anything made of glass. Look through this bit. Press this one. When I uploaded the results today I wish I hadn't left it set to continuous shooting. There were a lot of frames, but amongst the many mis-shots were several I would have been proud to have taken myself.  True, the camera did a ...

I am in Queenstown. Back on the job, back on the road. Still reading my way through the Old Testament. I like this part of the Bible, these stories of David as he rises to power and tries to keep one step ahead of the varied and vociferous and villainous band of relatives who make up his court. There's all the bits we were told in Sunday School, of course, such as Jonathan firing his coded arrows and the clear eyed shepherd boy squaring off against the armoured behemoth, but now, late in life its the other bits I notice. Such as Joab and Abner, ruthless, amoral and intemperate, locked  in a years long duel to the death from the shadows of their respective kings. Such as the ephemeral villains, each with his wonderful name: Doeg, Shimei, Natash. I notice the seams where the narrative has been stitched together from its various sources. I notice the women, the very few of them who make it into the story, and try to guess at the alternative history which is occasionally breaking ...