Available Light

  What with one thing and another I've driven this road, between Dunedin and Rolleston, 5 times in the last fortnight. It's becoming quite familiar. Travelling in the early morning I pass the wetlands at Waitati. just after Blueskin Bay. The Moeraki boulders are always worth a stop... ...as is Oamaru in the hour after sunrise.

The Book of Job says we are born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. We are uncertain, constantly changing creatures in a continual state of being made. We live in an uncertain, constantly changing universe in a continual state of being made. No wonder we are anxious. No wonder that, in our ignorance, we seek to place our anxieties on others and seek to vanquish it by vanquishing them. Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the Good News; the God Word; the God Spel; the Gospel: think differently because it is God's Kingdom which lies about you on every side, as far away as your own hand. Be at peace and the world will be at peace. Look. The sign of it is only a day away. Joy to the world and peace on earth to all people of good will. Photo: The two things to avoid in trying to photograph the  Moeraki boulders are 1) cliches - these things are photographed a thousand times a day, and usually in the same ways, and 2) tourists - they have a penchant for clambering over them i...

A few weeks ago, I said that the marks of a spiritual practice are Intention, Consent and Repetition. The definition runs both ways. The things that you consent to, intend and repeat are spiritual practices. Our habits and repetitive vices shape our souls as surely as do our holy readings and prayers. It's a salutary experience to sit for a while in quiet and think about those things you do on a regular basis; ie those things you repeat. List them - mentally if you are not comfortable with someone stumbling across your list. Ask what is my intention when performing this action? What am I giving consent to in the performance of this action? And the answers to these two will give a good idea of how you are shaping your soul.

It's been a wet day in Dunedin and I took my camera out into the greyness, because I didn't know what the harbour might look like. I know this place, but I never know what I might expect to see.  I stood in the place where I have have taken a hundred versions of the same shot and found something different. Change is constant. But with every shift in the way the light falls on land and water I learn something new about the things that are constant. Christmas is only a few days away, and it will be different from the one we were all expecting. The light will fall, in ways that surprise us, and reveal some unexpected new shade of the verities which lie, only thinly veiled, behind the tinsel and the eating and the coloured paper: incarnation and grace.

It's possible to walk any of the many routes of the Camino Santiago by following a simple sign.  Siempre sigue las flechas amarillas - always follow the yellow arrows. They're there wherever and whenever you need them: painted unobtrusively on the back of a street sign or on a rock or gutter; emblazoned on the side of a building; handwritten by a member of the local Camino Committee, or expensively produced by the provincial junta. By following the yellow arrows it's possible to walk the breadth (and, indeed, the length) of Spain without GPS or map or guidebook.  Over the course of the Camino they came to symbolise for me, the presence of the Holy Spirit: usually unseen unless you pause and take the time to look; always there when you need them most; a faithful guide in unexpected places leading inexorably to the holy destination. They are like the myriad little promptings and leadings and coincidences and "chance" encounters, which anyone on a Christian pat...

In the first church I attended as a self identifying Christian much store was placed on "being on fire for the Lord" by which was meant not so much the usual medieval punishment for heretics,  as a state of constant glittery eyed enthusiasm for converting people. Which of course, I tried to effect, especially if anybody from the church was watching. It never did much good, neither for me nor for anyone else. What I had not noticed, of course that the firewood never sets itself on fire. It waits for someone else to do that. And it generally waits a long time.  I've cut a lot of the stuff lately. A gum tree was felled in the reserve beside our place and I've been processing it. The tree grew for about 40 years, and then waited a year after falling for me to chop it up, and it will wait another year or two before it gets its moment of glory in our wood burner. Then it will have about half an hour of being on fire for Kelvin. I think the proportions are about right. ...

I've seen this picture in the Tate a few times, and love the careful detail, especially in the indignant, resisting Peter. When Ford Madox Brown painted it in the 1850s Christ was clad, as he was in the Gospel story, in only a towel. The public were outraged and the picture didn't sell. Apparently the shock of Jesus' humanity far outweighed the far more significant shock of us being asked to surrender our dearly held ideas of how things should be decently done. As it was at the last supper, so it was in the 1850s. And now. And when you serve And when you serve, Start with the feet And when you serve, Get down low With a towel and a water bowl And when you serve, Find your honour not over But under Not higher But lower Not first But last. So when you serve, Don't wait your turn But push your way Right to the back. Where you'll find Nothing to prove Nothing to hide And nothing to loose But your pride. Yes, you heard, When you serve ...