Available Light

I was intrigued to read Bosco Peter's Liturgy website this morning and see this post . Basically Bosco is saying that Anglican Priests serving in Co-operating Parishes (those in which several denominations join together as one congregation) give precedent for people who wish to circumvent the constitution of the Anglican church by, for example, performing a blessing service for a same sex couple. As bishop my heart sinks a little when Bosco opens this can of worms - or more exactly draws attention to a can of worms that has been open since the early 1970s - but as a priest and a Christian and a human being I loudly applaud him. My first two parishes (Waihao and St. Francis', Hillcrest) were both Cooperating Parishes combining Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist elements in one church. At a congregational, everyday level these worked pretty well. At an administrative level they were a nightmare, and my failure to live with the difficulties imposed on us by our parent denom...

Our church will gather tomorrow at the Waitangi Treaty house and be welcomed to the Bay of Islands by the Tangata Whenua. We will be from three tikanga: Pasifika, Maori and Pakeha and we will all meet on Sunday for prayer and then on Monday to discuss our common business. Before that happens though, we Pakeha have been meeting to sort out the stuff that pertains only to us. There is a story told about a native American chief in the 18th Century who was prodigiously talented at languages. In the space of a year he became proficient in English, Spanish, French and Italian. He was taken to England  and at a dinner at Oxford University he was asked, "so tell us chief, what is the grammar of your own language?" He thought deeply for a few moments and then said, "my language does not have any grammar." Just as our own grammar is invisible to us and the grammar of other languages blatantly obvious, so is our own culture invisible to us while that of others is pl...