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Tomorrow I am flying to Napier to attend the national Youth Forum. I will be there for only a day, and on Tuesday will fly to Auckland to join Clemency on a flight to Doha to visit Bridget and Scott. We'll be away about a fortnight. My bag is nearly packed and I have got everything I need except for the folder containing all my Youth Forum papers, which is sitting in the back room of the Cathedral. Never mind. I'll wing it. The last 24 hours has been quite inspiring. On Saturday evening I was at St. Mary's Mornington for a midwinter dinner. Of the 50 or so people present, the overwhelming majority were young families with children. There were games and an amazing magician with an even more amazing patter. His best trick was to mark a $20 note, then pull it out of the middle of a fresh walnut, which he pulled out of the middle of a fresh, unbroken egg, which he extracted from the middle of a lemon. It was astonishing; almost as astonishing as the sense of vitality and new ...

It's been a while since I posted. For the last week I've had the heavy chest cold which seems to have taken a real shine to Dunedin lately, and decided to stick around and make the acquaintance of half the city. This waking up all night to hack and cough and splutter is the dull bit of winter, which is generally my favourite season. I've been tired of it and with it, but there is a lot happening, so I haven't felt able - or willing for that matter - to just sit around home sipping whisky and lemon and looking pale and interesting. At long last though, the malaise has receded to a level that is only mildly annoying and today was a good one: I had some fruitful conversations; the chapter meeting this evening seemed to flow well and get through its business with good humour and efficiency; I had a funeral visit with a truly remarkable family who even in their grief were whole and self aware and grounded -together in every sense; a seemingly intractable problem looks like i...