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Birds, the park, 1662

On Friday 15 March I went for a walk in Foster Park, near my daughter's house. I had been there, earlier in the day with the children and had seen a pair of white faced herons, and now, with my grandparenting duties temporarily suspended, I came back to see if I could get some photos of the birds.  As I was walking home across the soccer field, a woman approached me and asked what I was doing. It wasn't a friendly question, and I could understand why. I was an old man, alone near a playground, carrying a big camera with a very long lens.  I told her about the herons, and also about the plovers which were at that moment keeping a fair distance from me. They too were suspicious of my motives. She nodded and went on her way. The world is not an entirely innocent place.

I came home and began processing the pictures, and was in the middle of tweaking the one above when Bridget entered the room with the astonishing news that Noah's school was in lockdown. And then we were reminded of just how far lacking in innocence the world really is. Someone was shooting in the mosque in Christchurch and until the police knew how many people were involved and where they were, all kids in the wider area were being kept safe.  it was all still unfolding, a friend or Bridget's texted her the killer's manifesto and offered her a copy of the video he was apparently livestreaming. She declined the latter but accepted the former and passed it on to me. I flicked through it - it read like a schoolboy essay, hastily thrown together, full of Facebook opinions and self pity. It began and ended with poetry, of the type chosen by people who are not themselves poetic but who would like other people to think they are. It described with great calmness the events taking place on the television screen before me. The snivelling little bastard. He'd planned all this. This was no mere lack of innocence. This was evil. Pure evil. I deleted the damned (sic) thing. 

So the week passed, with time to process the events, and look at the faces of the innocent victims, and watch the reactions of my fellow New Zealanders. There was time to visit the wall of flowers near the mosque. There was time to talk and think and feel and share,

Then this Sunday past I led the 8 am eucharist in the cathedral, using the old service, the one from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. I preached, of course, about the murders. And then, after the offering had been taken and the vessels placed on the altar I began the prayers of intercession. And I couldn't continue. I had wanted to mention the victims, and to pray for our Prime Minister but inside me was a sob too big to come out. Conscious that I was not there for myself, but for these faithful people in front of me, I stopped for a bit, and then, instead of improvising my own prayers, read aloud Cranmer's lovely old words. They come from a different era, when death was closer and the frailties of the human condition are not so well anaesthetised against as now. They speak of the reality of evil and ask for the punishment of wickedness and vice, and beg for mercy when the world seems unpredictable and hostile. They were perfect. They got me through. Just.

So today, I looked again at the pictures I took of a lovely bird, its beak filthy from visiting death on the worms in the Foster Park turf. How beautiful the world is! And how dangerous. And how real is the evil which shrouds that beauty from us. 

Have mercy upon us, most merciful father. For thy son our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, forgive us all that is past and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life. 


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Craig McLanachan. said…
No-one has been left untouched by these events. We all have coped and reacted in our own way. On the Sunday, outside the Mosque in Clyde street, I was overwhelmed by the love shown. If the perpetrator's aim was to sow hatred he has failed miserably. My moment of emotional release came when sculpting with my radio on National Radio and Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings was played. Never did it sound so poignant and powerful for me. Nothing about this atrocity defines New Zealand or its citizens for me. Kia kaha.
26 March 2019 at 09:20
Elaine Dent said…
The congregations I serve as interim have been including the people of New Zealand in our prayers....probably not as beautiful as Cranmer's. And you and those for whom you care in this grieving time are in mine.
26 March 2019 at 13:04
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