Available Light

Forty or so years ago I committed myself to Jesus Christ. A glittery eyed young man led me through the sinner's prayer, in which I acknowledged that pretty much everything I had tried, up to that point, by way of making myself what I hoped I might be had been a bit of a flop, so I acknowledged that and asked God to take over. Since that moment, in the back room of the Assembly of God church in Lower Hutt, a lot has happened. I have been Vicar of 5 parishes, accumulated a few degrees and a roomful of books and become a father and grandfather. I've travelled the world and I've accumulated all manner of nicely framed certificates attesting to other people's confidence that I know some stuff. But really, in all that accomplishment, the one thing I have been trying to do, in everything I've done since that Sunday evening, has been attempting to live up to that commitment.  It is so simple and so hard because I am human. The experiences which have formed me, the ide...

....to fall into the hands of the Living God. You make these Lenten promises and don't think too much about what they mean. So, at the start of Lent I thought I would discipline myself to blog everyday,  which has got me into a habit of regular reflection and communication, and, as an unexpected and very satisfying side effect, led to an approximately 500% increase in my audience. I also stopped, as far as I could manage it, using plastic which had as one of its main results a drop off in my coffee consumption, which has got to be good for me, but you'll need to ask the planet if there were any other benefits. Almost as an afterthought I also looked at my daily meditation schedule. I sit quietly every morning for about 30 minutes. I usually do this before breakfast when there are few phone calls and even fewer visitors so it has been easy, over the years, to make this a habit. I also try, and usually fail, to meditate every afternoon. My timetable is so erratic that this...

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front By Wendell Berry Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. Sa...

Up early. Read the lections. Kneel. Remove my glasses and episcopal ring - why are they both so heavy in the silence? Set the timer going. Those little numbers flicking round are a trap. Why do I need to peek? The gong will sound at the end. I know it's about control, or the illusion of it, and this is one of the things I am slowly learning to relinquish. As the wisest man I've ever met said, " The way of pure faith is to persevere in contemplative practice without worrying about where we are on the journey, and without comparing ourselves to others or judging others' gifts to be better than ours. We can be spared all this nonsense if we surrender ourselves to the divine action, whatever the psychological content of our prayer may be. In pure faith, the results are often hidden even from those who are growing the most... the divine light of faith is totally available in the degree that we consent and surrender ourselves to its presence and action within ."...

It was an early start as I needed to leave for Queenstown by 7.00 am . This morning's readings included a verse I was force fed when a new young Christian in a Church which believed that learning Bible verses by heart was the best way for people to become what God intended them to be. I have been crucified with Christ;  and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:19b-20). I am amazed the difference 40 years makes to how I read the verse, even as it still conjures in me a deep recognition of truth. But it is some words from Jean Malcolm's Facebook page which stay with me through the day. The great Anglican spiritual teacher Evelyn Underhill once defined mysticism as the art of bringing the self into union with reality. The mystic—the truly spiritual person—is one who embraces that challenge. And that means facing realit...

Four readings in the very early morning. One of them is Psalm 51, the Miserere. I carry a few words from it into the quiet: ...For I know my transgressions,      and my sin is ever before me...   ...You desire truth in the inward being, therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. ....   ...O Lord, open my lips,      and my mouth will declare your praise... **** We sit in a circle, the four of us, around the cup and the unbroken wafer. We pass ashes one to the other and mark each others' foreheads. Two Anglicans, a Catholic and a Methodist. We have shared so much over the past few months. " Your past is behind you, God's future is before you; walk the road to Jerusalem with Christ ." **** It's good to see Neil again. We sit in his reclaimed living room, sparsely but adequately furnished with the things the college has rustled up to tide him over until his own stuff arrives. We discuss real estate and weather and...

The photo above is the first one I ever posted to this blog, back when I began it 8 years ago. I started blogging to  record  a study leave I was taking back then. I intended a sort of philosophical musing for a small group of friends and acquaintances, and the blog was called ReVision. Now with a new name; 602 posts; about 1,000 photographs; 2 sabbaticals; 4 trips to Europe and others to The Pacific, the USA and Australia; 2 pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela and one across Otago and Southland; a diagnosis of and treatment for cancer; the marriage of two children and the births of three grandchildren; the varied departures and arrivals of people very dear to me; and my election and ministry as bishop later,  here I am making a start again. I'm beginning another pilgrimage. Like the others this one will last 40 days. Like the others I have some clear ideas where it is going but I know it is going to surprise me. Unlike the others this one will not involve any w...

To practice means that you do something you can do in order to do something that you can't. For example, if I decided I wanted to run a marathon, I would know that despite my best intentions I can't run 42 km but I can run, if I was determined maybe 1 km. So I would practice. I would run my 1 km and I would run it again and again until I improved and the distances I could run increased. I would keep on doing what I could do until, eventually,  I was able to run 42 km. And if I wanted to play the Waldstein Piano Sonata, which currently I can't,  I would need to do, repeatedly, those pitifully small things I can do on the piano often and regularly enough until my skill level increased to the point where I could play Beethoven. As it is with running and playing music, so it is with our spiritual lives, which is why we have spiritual practice.  The Kingdom of God, says Jesus, is as close to us as our own hand. By that, I think he means that the goodness and power and ele...

It's Monday and the harbour, a few hundred metres from my home is rippling in a light breeze. The low sun is back lighting clouds of small insects swirling over the water. It's time to drive around the bays and see if anything is crying out to be photographed. Nothing is really. Or nothing I haven't shot a thousand times before. There are boats sitting picturesquely above their own reflections and quaint old boathouses ditto. There are Southern Rata trees with the sun behind them and a clear blue sky and a flat horizon. But nothing to point a camera at, especially. I do notice, outside of the range of the gear I own, that  seabirds are gathering in a great moving cloud above the water: Black Backed and Red Billed gulls, Terns and Shags. No doubt there are schools of small fish beneath them. I stop to watch and am fascinated by the shags. They swim with their necks protruding from the water but with the rest of their bodies submerged, bobbing along as though a ship fu...

On Ash Wednesday I went for a walk on the beach. It was one of those silvery late summer days when the sand and the clouds and the sea all seem to be made of differently worked bits of the same stuff. There was a wind from the South, cool and insistently strong but also in an odd way, gentle and enfolding. I didn't want it to go around me; I wanted it to go through me and open me and unsettle me. I wanted it to turn me inside out and help me unattach. I had made my Lenten resolutions. This year I am not giving anything up; I am adding. As well as my customary morning meditation I have added another of equal length late in the day, and where my timetable permits, also one at noon. I have also added a daily reading from one of my favourite books, Anthony De Mello's The Way to Love. This Lent I want to let the wind blow through me; as much of it as I can stand, so it's as well to build into my life some more opportunities to stand in the breeze. At the end of the be...

A week or two ago I listened to a talk given by Judy Ringland-Stewart about her daily prayer walks. Every day she takes an hour or so to follow a path from the house she shares with John and their children, though the forest, along the beaches and up to the summits of  the Otago Peninsula. These daily walks are a kind of pilgrimage; an engagement with her surroundings as places of wonder and beauty in their own right but also as an encounter with God. There was a sense of passion and integrity and connection about what she was saying that made me immediately think of two things. Firstly I thought of my own almost daily walks on the same peninsula, albeit on the other side of the harbour. Clemency and I walk whenever we can for all the usual reasons: for the companionship of a shared activity for an hour or so;  for fitness and postponing the inevitable consequences of aging; for the sheer enjoyment of  this ancient, weathered, once was volcano; (the photo at the to...

There is a paradox about Lent which actually clings to the whole business of asceticism. We give stuff up for Lent, things which we enjoy or things we know are harmful to our spiritual well being -or both. We do this for a number of of reasons, such as to implant a reminder of God''s presence into each day; or to make a genuine start on that simpler lifestyle we have been putting off 'til tomorrow since 1997. Mostly though, the discipline of Lent is an aid to weakening the hold of our egos. Jesus said, If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (Mtt 16:24) In other words, to follow Jesus we must forsake the control our egos have over our lives and allow Jesus to have control of our daily actions and decisions. It's a big ask, but saying "no" to the chocolate biscuits for six weeks will be just the help we need to make a start on it, right? Well, maybe. There is the small matter of that pesky paradox. The ...