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St. Hilda's Collegiate School, taken with my phone after a recent meeting. This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but I like the interplay of shapes and particularly the shadow on the wall. My mother is a Methodist, liberal in her theological and social opinions. My father was a socialist, just slightly to the left, in his politics, of Karl Marx. My siblings -there are 5 of us- are all bright, eloquent and omnivorous in their consumption of books and other intellectual fodder.  One of my most cherished childhood memories is of mealtimes in our little state house. The food was ingested with copious amounts of spirited, opinionated, clever and sometimes informed debate on whatever subject happened to catch the attention of one of the family that day. Or whatever one of us thought might get a rise out of someone else. So, sex, politics and religion it was then - oh and motorbikes, economics, international relations, demographics, cricket, company ownersh...

I took this photo on my phone.Can't remember when or where. Just found it now, and I quite like it. I spent all day Friday on planes and in airports. Saturday I slept in. Sunday I went to Balclutha to preside at the induction of Griff Moses as the new vicar, and I was grateful that the service was late in the day as I felt so tired. Today, my day off I went for a long walk and began to renovate our bathroom. Pulling wallpaper off walls is a good thing to do when there is inner stuff to process. I took part in a couple of the synod debates, other than the one on the Ma Whea report, of course. I was, for instance, quite shocked when Carole Hughes presented a table showing the low number of women in leadership in our church at a national level. We have few women members of our key committees and almost no women chairs of those committees.I think there is more to this than just telling the boys to step aside and let the girls have a go; I think there are issues of structure and...

We've had a lot of spectators in General Synod. Some dozens of people have come to see the debate on the Ma Whea commission, and see what our church decides with regard to the ordination and blessing of people in same gender relationships. We are a church of the middle: most of us take the broad and open spaces of acceptance and tolerance, and I think that on this issue most of our people, quite used to taking on the one hand this and on the other that, are not quite sure what to think. The spectators by and large aren't drawn from the mainstream of Anglicanism. They seem to come, rather, from the encapsulating views at either end of the spectrum. So we have a group with rainbow scarves hoping for change and a smaller group hoping that we will all stand with our toes firmly on the traditionally held line. Both groups have had to be patient. They have been excluded from the gallery for much of the day as we have discussed matters in committee, and they have arrived at the end o...

I woke early this morning and re read the first 5 chapters of Matthew's Gospel, particularly chapter 4 which details the beginning of Jesus ministry and the Beatitudes in Chapter 5. I did this because last night at dinner Archbishop Brown Turei based his synod address on the beatitudes. His korero was humble, wise, holy, gently humorous, strongly rooted in the Kingdom and deeply considered - a bit like Archbishop Brown himself. I was very moved by it, as I was by Phillip Richardson whose address this morning used the same passage. The day began with a Eucharist at 7 am, which was followed by a meeting over breakfast which lasted until synod met for its first business session at 8:15 am. After the usual necessary procedural motions we were addressed by Archbishop Phillip and then by the members of the Ma Whea Commission. For an hour the commissioners presented their report and explained its various sections. We then met to discuss it. Early in the discussion we divided into h...