Available Light

Well, I saw the haruspex and had the entrails read. My entrails, that is. The signs are hard to read and I won't have a complete picture until I see him again in April or May, but early indications are that the Radiotherapy I had, in December, worked as well as it possibly might. Thanks be to God. It was all a little tiring. I slept through much of Christmas and for a while my foot was numb, but that seems to have passed, and now I am in the full bloom of health. Or, at least, as full a bloom as a 68 year old bloke with stage 4 prostate cancer can be. There are some clear and accessible options ahead for me, so that with continued good medical advice and the watchful and prayerful support of  my family and friends, I can reasonably expect to lead a life as rich and full as the last ten years have been.

There's still a few things to do. Tomorrow I return the car, a couple of croziers and a book or two. I'll clean out my office, and do goodness knows what with the contents. No great drama there. Holy Saturday, I lit holy fire and flicked water over people in the candle lit haze of  All Saints, North Dunedin. Easter day I preached and sat in that ridiculous chair one last time, before driving slowly home to change and then to sleep the afternoon away. Today I took some stuff to the dump, cleared my in tray, trimmed a hedge, cooked a stir fry for dinner, cleared out my filing cabinet, and read a bit. I need to buy a car and there are a couple of promising ones in Auckland. On Wednesday I might spend some of my great wadge of accumulated airpoints, and then drive something plain and red and Japanese down the length of the country and back home again. So this is what being retired is like. Ordinary.   

Last hour Last set of minutes Last fill of the tank Last gasp Last call Last cab off the rank Last synod Last Christmas Last year Last Easter in a few days Last time under the pointy hat Last time I'm Last in the procession Last smile Last glance Last straw Last chance Last toss of the dice Last night Last time to be Last one out Last time to switch off the light Last book Last chapter Last page Last word Z Last thing I heard Last thing I knew Last thing I thought of Last thing I do Last will Last testament Last resting place Last seen Last time with you was the Last at Last. Nothing Lasts forever

  My mother, Pat Wright and my niece, Tania My nieces Tracy, from Perth, Western Australia and Jasmin, from London, with my sister Valerie in whose house we were gathering.     Clemency and Ada.  Sandie and Jane, my cousins, with my Auntie Julie.  Jane is an old flatmate of mine. Sandie a very accomplished painter. And no Julie , I do not cheat at scrabble. I just have a better than average ability to imagine possible and PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE grammatical constructions, that's all. Tomorrow my mother is 90 years old, though her memory is fading a bit and she may not quite realise it. This weekend past my whanau gathered in Nelson to celebrate her contribution to us all. My brother Guhyavajra was here from Stockholm with his daughter, Jasmin, from London. My niece Tracy, whom I had not seen for 45 years,  came in from Perth for the weekend with her daughter Anya.  My nephew Hamish excused himself from the wedding of a close frie...

I slept away the first couple of days. Not dozing, but deep dreamless sleep which crept up on me wherever I happened to be sitting. I hadn't realised I was so deeply tired. Days tired. Months tired. Decades tired. There are no anchor points to the day except the ones I choose to find. So, shortly, this is what life will be like, all the time. I have finished slogging my way uphill through the Torah and am into the easy downhill of the historical books. I am surprised to be reminded how much space is given over to Balaam - 3 chapters, more or less, which is an interesting comparison to the brevity of the Christmas stories . And I had forgotten that Moses had him executed. I'm reading a few books, concurrently as is my wont. Cynthia Bourgeault on the Trinity. Mitch Cullen's Mr Holmes . Evan Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being. Clemency has just finished Archibald Baxter's account of his time as a conscientious objector in the First World War , We Will Not Cease....

You know it when you see it. It has to be symmetrical and nicely dense but with enough gaps in which to hang things. It has to reach the ceiling which, depending on the house, means it's going to be broad. It has to be a pinus radiata , otherwise it won't smell right. All the really good ones have been taken days ago by the people who put them up way too early, but our tree will be there, somewhere amongst all those misshapen or badly coloured pines; we just need to keep looking. **** Who knows why we have Christmas trees? Pagans used to put evergreen branches into their homes during the Saturnalia, but the first record of a Christmas tree  as we would recognise one, is from France in 1576, which means there is about a thousand years gap between its appearance and the last popular practice of the Saturnalia - which seems a pretty big chasm to jump. More likely precedences are the Adam trees which were used in medieval passion plays, decorated with apples (for the Eden sto...

We spent much of the weekend sitting in the car, me driving because Clemency is not confident about towing the caravan. We led a quiet day in St. Michael's Clyde, where we spent the night, then participated in a confirmation in Wanaka, and a lunch in Tarras. The weather was clear and still and warm and sitting beside each other as we drove past the lakes and rivers and tawny paddocks was about the most appropriate thing to be doing, because 40 years ago today we were married, and spent the fortnight afterwards traveling these very roads in our 1962 Volkswagen Kombi. The people of the Upper Clutha parish treated us today with the most extraordinary generosity and kindness. Clemency and I exchanged some small but significant things and our children gave us gifts which showed a great deal of care and thought and planning, including a USB drive containing 40 pieces of music our children knew and remembered from their childhoods, or that they knew one or both of us responded to. So...

A few weeks ago, Noah started kindy. He's an open, friendly little guy and has no trouble socialising. He's adventurous, curious and intelligent and is always up for some new and interesting experience, so getting him along to a place with a sandpit full of diggers, scheduled morning tea and lots of other kids was no big problem. A week or so later though, a penny dropped for him that kindy wasn't so much a welcome break in his usual routine as a whole new routine in itself and that's where he balked. Poor wee guy. He was having his first immersion in  this pattern which we all repeat time and time and time again. Life is a constant series of endings and new beginnings. We start something or we join something or we learn something and the something suits us well. We get adept at it and comfortable in it and, if we are lucky, enjoy it. Then it ends and we leave it and pick up in its place something unfamiliar in which we are, once again, a neophyte. Kindy. Junior sch...

A beautiful morning on El Camino Santiago Today I wrote to Archbishop Phillip and informed him of my intention to resign as Bishop of Dunedin on Easter Monday, April 17 2017. I also informed our Diocesan Registrar and the Diocesan Council. I am giving this amount of notice because we need to make some very important decisions as a diocese.  In my opinion (and actually, in this matter my opinion isn't the one that counts, but still...) the diocese should not be subject to a long interregnum and to make an appointment as soon after my departure as possible we would need to set processes in motion in the not too distant future. Further, some very careful thought needs to be given as to how we will pay for episcopal ministry in the future and maybe some hard choices and some innovations may need to be made. Clemency and I drove to Invercargill and back on Sunday for Evening Church in All Saints Gladstone. The church was pleasantly full and the service was pleasantly in...

I was 15 when Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, perhaps the most influential  music album ever.  It changed, forever, how popular music was conceived, recorded and played, and of course I listened to it and within a month of its release, knew it pretty much by heart, including Paul singing the jokey little song on side two, When I'm Sixty Four . when I get older, losing my hair, many years from now.... At 15 I could not conceive of being 64.  I had worked out that I would be 48 at the turn of the Millennium and was greatly disappointed by that prospect, in that I would be far too old to enjoy all of the amazing wonders (flying cars, space travel, ray guns)  that the  Twenty First century was bound to bring. And today it's here. My 64th birthday.  I looked in the mirror when I took my shower and a sort of bristly, balding, scarred, heavy old man looked back. And was mighty pleased to do so. If it wasn't for advances in medical...

On Thursday I went to Wellington for a day long meeting of the Bishops. We sat in one of those soulless airport conference rooms and talked through matters which some people think are important enough to leave the church over. Friday was a day of conversations, some of them fraught, then an afternoon frantically preparing our little house for an influx of visitors.  And on Saturday, Ada was one . We had the sorts of food that toddlers like. She got presents. We sang the song and cut the cake, and people took photographs. Ada took it all in her stride. She doesn't sleep much, but nonetheless is determined and quiet and mostly calm. She is very quick to smile. She has been walking for almost three months now, so is very mobile and takes a bit of shepherding. She has worked out roles for us all, mine being to carry her about, on a route decided by her, follow the direction of the appraising frown in her dark brown eyes and talk about the things she ...

My sister and her husband are staying with us. Val and Mike live in Nelson, have just bought a caravan in Christchurch, so are towing it home via Dunedin, as you do. Mike is a master mariner and for years has been responsible for keeping the pointy bit of various large ships moving in the right direction. Val has done numerous things. She left school at 15 to become a hairdresser and owned her own salon at 18. She's had various successful businesses over the years and spent 7 years, with Mike, sailing around the world on a yacht. She's one of the smartest, most resourceful and wisest people I know. Last night she cleaned and repaired the mitre she made for me 7 years ago and over dinner we talked about our shared past. The conversation led off into some, for me, profound directions and today, after duties were done, I felt the need of a walk. So Clemency and I set out from Waihola along the Taieri Millenium track. while Val and Mike set out on ...

A sketch of Clemency from a letter I wrote to her in 1973 My niece Tania started it. She said, on Facebook,  she would love to see what was in that note that I passed to Clemency all those years ago. So I asked Clemency if she still had it and she disappeared into the garage and emerged a few minutes later with a couple of boxes containing everything I had ever written to her. And there it was. Written on a page torn from the cheap newsprint pad I used for notes, with the red pencil I was using to underline things (hilighters hadn't been invented yet, remember) were the first 51 words that ever passed between Clemency and me. And no, Tania, you can't see them. Ask Bridget after Clemency and I have departed for wider shores. So we read the note. And remembered. And then sat down together to read through the rest of the contents of the boxes. There were envelopes that hadn't been opened in 42 or 43 years. There were letters that had, back in the day, been read and r...

It's Valentine's Day. It's also Clemency's 64th birthday, so I got up early, cooked her the breakfast she wanted, and had the appropriate Beatles' song playing when she sat down at the table. She opened her presents and we skyped to allow Noah to help her blow out the candles on her birthday scone. Later this year we will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, which means that we have been together for 44 years. She was in my English 3 class at Canterbury University in 1972. I had noticed her, of course; she was so beautiful how could I not? But I was navigating other waters for most of the year, as was she. Around September/October exams loomed and most students stopped whatever it was they were occupying themselves with and began to study in earnest. We all spent the  most part of most days sitting at two seater desks in little cubicles dotted around the creaking three floors of the old townsite library. We arrived early and stayed all day and i...

My lovely daughter in law announced on Facebook today some news that we have been party to for a little while now: she is pregnant again. Happy. Happy. Happy.  She and Nick are such excellent parents that it would be a pity if Naomi was the only person on the planet lucky enough to benefit. So August looks like a time to be visiting Sydney.  **** The Old Testament readings at the moment are about Joseph and his unfortunate choice of employers and even more unfortunate choice of brothers. It's been a while since I've read it. I'd forgotten how quaint a tale it is. Or how gripping. **** At the last General Synod, held in Waitangi, Carole Hughes presented some data about gender equality which I found surprising. The overwhelming majority of people who attend Anglican churches in New Zealand are women. About half of those ordained are women. But there are very few women on the  national committees which govern our church and none of those committees, save one, the ...

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...

The view from our deck about a week ago, 7 am Tomorrow I fly to Aspen Colorado, and, after a few days wait will go just out of town to Snowmass, and St. Benedict's Monsastery where I'm taking part in a ten day post intensive Centering Prayer retreat. It's silent, not even any eye contact, and involves many hours a day in concentrated meditation. Am I looking forward to it? Well, actually, no. There will be no escape, nothing that must urgently need attending to, no knock at the door or phone call to save me from facing myself. But I know that's where I need to be. And I know I will be in good hands. There's no internet and no cellphone coverage, so I'll be out of touch. Clemency and Debbie will have a phone number where I can be reached but I'm not expecting either of them to use it.

  On any pilgrimage, the return journey is as important as the long soulful slog to the holy destination. To reach the goal and savour it is all we focus on as we march imperceptibly onwards. But once there, we turn and retrace our steps, hurriedly and practically. We return to our ordinary lives and the journey back is a transition, a moving back from one reality to another; we move from the holy to the mundane in a little anti pilgrimage.   So on boxing day we headed South, past Kawakawa with its famous toilets .  When I first met Clemency she sang in a folk group with Paula Feather. Paula's sister lived with Friedensreich Hundertwasser , the Austrian artist who once lived in Kawakawa and built the town's loos. With a close personal link like that (I'm astounded I wasn't mentioned in his will), of course we had to stop and take a look. I felt a little odd walking into a public toilet with a large and obvious camera, but the place was crowded and everyone...