Available Light

I have been listening a bit to Vienna Teng. She's a Californian of Taiwanese descent, classically trained in the piano, and a lyricist of rare intelligence and beauty. Her The Hymn of Axcion is stunningly beautiful, and makes a powerful critique of social media and the culture which has given rise to it and is shaped by it. I love Goodnight New York , the first song of hers that I heard, and her range runs from pure pop in Level Up to gentle personal statement of Lullabye For a Stormy Night to the Jazzy Stray Italian Greyhoun d, and all points in between. But today it's her The Atheist Christmas Carol that's hitting the mark. Despite its title, the lyrics are speaking to me of Holy Week in a way which I can say Amen to. It's the season of grace coming out of the void Where a man is saved by a voice in the distance It's the season of possible miracle cures Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown Where time begins to fade And age is we...

This video clip is from the wonderful and beautiful movie, Human . This short (3 1/2 minute) interview is a moving testimony to the transforming power of forgiveness and love. It is a living example of resurrection. Murder, such as this young man committed and such as Jesus suffered, has effects which extend far beyond the taking of a human life. Murder destroys the relationships of those who are left. It heaps up an seemingly unresolvable pile of guilt, anger, frustration and bewilderment on those who are left: the relatives and friends of the murdered and the murderer. Of all griefs, the death of your own child is the hardest to bear. Of all griefs over children, that for a murdered child is perhaps hardest of all. Which makes the actions of Agnes, whatever they were, all the more remarkable and all the more profound. And on the cross, Jesus works, even as his life is dripping away, to lessen that grief for those he loved most dearly, his mother and his friend. H...

Copyright unknown. Not mine anyway Clemency has a particularly womanly  metaphor for what happens after death. She compares it to a baby in the womb. Inside the womb the baby lives in a tiny all sufficient world. It is dark, warm and comfortable and all needs are met. Occasionally some hints of another, larger world drift in: there is perhaps music or the sound of voices or unusual movement, but the baby has no idea of what awaits after birth. While it is ignorant of all the things - people, air, sun, moon, tastes, colours, smells - which make up this new world, it is ignorant also of the basic principles and concepts -light, dark, up, down, hot, cold, painful, pleasurable - which it will need to make sense of  what lies outside. The baby is born into a new world which is beyond any comprehension and which is unimaginably bigger and more real than the tiny confined space of the womb. And the little world of the womb is seen to be not opposed to this bigger world, but actu...

This video clip is of a young man, a father and husband, whose wife was murdered by extremists in the Bataclan attack in Paris. It is searing, courageous, profoundly moving. And it captures exactly what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not about minimising evil. It isn't pretending that the wrongs done somehow don't matter or that the perpetrators can avoid the inevitable consequences of their actions. Forgiveness is the hard, brave, powerful decision not to let yourself be defined by the wickedness of others. Jesus lay with his lacerated back on splintered wood and watched as a drunk Roman Legionary with one hand held a nail against his wrist and with the other swung a mallet. In this moment of fear and pain he chose not darkness and anger, but the light which had guided his young life to this point: Light which would in only three days be shown to have triumphed over the darkness which sought so brutally to overcome it.

The face of  the child Jesus from a stained glass window, reflected in the wine in a chalice, in St. John's Church, Roslyn . I had no commitments yesterday morning, Palm Sunday and in the afternoon presided at a prerecorded  Eucharist to be broadcast on Radio New Zealand on Easter morning. There was a congregation of 50 or 60 and the choir was in glorious voice. We wore white, said the Easter versicles and responses, read John's account of the resurrection and I pronounced an Easter blessing. The dean preached an erudite sermon which, along with all the Easter music and hymns, will be repeated in a few days time. So I began this week's journey towards the cross with a full hearted proclamation of the Resurrection. It seemed bizarre at the time, but as I participated, oddly appropriate. The ending of any story determines everything that went before it. In a Shakespearean play if there is a wedding at the end the play was a comedy, and if there is a death it was a tra...

Palm Sunday and the sky was decked in red: the liturgical colour of the day. I took these photos in my back garden at sunrise - about 6 am. Red is the colour of life and passion. On this first day of Holy Week it seemed somehow auspicious.