26 February 2008
rubbish free
I've just been reading www.rubbishfreeyear.co.nz/ - a Christchurch couple attempting to live rubbish free all year. They offer great tips for recycling, avoiding waste etc. They have hens - we've been thinking about getting some as well as we try to live more simply.
who looks?
In the latest magazine of Spanz (my denominational magazine which can also be viewed online at http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/) my colleague Fyfe Blair (from Highgate, Dunedin days) and I contributed some ideas about blogging - you can read the article here: http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/4800.0.html.
I am rather cautious about the whole concept of blogging and even more so after reading Ben Elton's latest and excellent novel Blind Faith. Elton exposes how many of the things of our culture can be taken too far, get too serious, be too personally invasive etc etc.
In the last week I've had a couple of encouraging emails from overseas ministers who say they enjoy my blog - which is encouraging (though I have no idea how they found their way to it). But I do wonder how many people do look, and whether those who do might have any suggestions about what kind of content they enjoy and would like more of.
Would you dare to email me martin@ststephens.co.nz or hit the comment header below and share a thought?
I am rather cautious about the whole concept of blogging and even more so after reading Ben Elton's latest and excellent novel Blind Faith. Elton exposes how many of the things of our culture can be taken too far, get too serious, be too personally invasive etc etc.
In the last week I've had a couple of encouraging emails from overseas ministers who say they enjoy my blog - which is encouraging (though I have no idea how they found their way to it). But I do wonder how many people do look, and whether those who do might have any suggestions about what kind of content they enjoy and would like more of.
Would you dare to email me martin@ststephens.co.nz or hit the comment header below and share a thought?
24 February 2008
address at rochester & rutherford halls
I've picked up the chaplaincy responsibility at R & R Halls - a student residential college at Canterbury University. We had our commencement service and meal last Thursday. I gave the following address on freedom and boundaries, mentioning among other things a reference to Yann Martel's Life of Pi and the outcome of the Tea Ropati rape trial...
I wonder how you are going as you settle into life in Christchurch, at University and at R&R in particular.
Because of talking with you tonight I’ve thought a lot about my own experience starting at university – living in a hall and what it was like (Knox College in Dunedin for me).
Actually I revelled in the residential hall experience – after a few days of adjustment that is. I recall dealing with the competing feelings of excitement at the great adventure of it all, along with the grief associated with moving away from a life I had known and enjoyed… everything had changed…
I think home-sickness is a lot about the grief associated with letting go what was good and safe and secure… it affects people differently because some people are more attached to the life of home than others…
In my observation, come the second weekend away, almost all home-sickness finds its rightful place – not so overwhelming, more a gentle reminder that you are loved and you are missed and that whatever this place becomes, there is always another place called home.
Mostly I recall the sense of freedom associated with shifting away and going to university. It was great – I had entered another world with significantly fewer constraints – if I was absent from something no one checked up on me – if I wanted to go out I could – if there was something on that I wanted to go to I did.
Are you enjoying that freedom?
But I also recall the sense of security that went along with that freedom because of where I lived – the security of knowing where my next meal was coming from – the comfort of a warm place to sleep at night surrounded by my things – the sanctuary of being in a community of peers, many of whom I got to know and enjoy and whose support I valued.
As much as I revelled in the freedom of being at university, I also valued the boundaries that were in my life, especially because of being in a hostel. I could go out but there was always a base to head back to.
That’s the strange thing about freedom – it seems to need boundaries around it for it to exist.
I’ll try and explain.
There’s a great little novel by Yann Martel called Life of Pi. Have you read it? It’s mostly about a boy who ends up on a lifeboat with 227 days with a tiger named Richard Parker. Pi’s father owned a zoo in India and they were relocating to another country when the ship sunk. The bit about freedom that I found fascinating was Pi’s observation about whether the animals in the zoo were freer in the wild or in the zoo. He observed that in the zoo the animals could relax in a way that they never would in the wild. Surrounded by fences they were free of the threat of predators and free of the worry over their next meal. Zoo life was almost stress-free for these animals – and they generally lived much longer because of it.
I think it was the same with my children – by having some rules and boundaries they have been able to be free to grow without great stress in their lives. They have known lines that are not to be crossed (mostly for their safety and my sanity), and they have known who is in charge, and as they have grown those boundaries have loosened as they have been ready for more independence. Around me at times have been other parents who have not provided such boundaries – their children act out, always seemed to be over-tired, and many of them struggled among their peers and in their schooling. They were stressed. Why? Because those kids were in charge before they were mature enough to handle the responsibility – those kids were in charge, whereas the adults should have been.
What do you get if life has no boundaries? Anarchy. Of course, every so often the boundaries need to be challenged. That’s the problem with boundaries – the fences can get too high and too unyielding and they begin to oppress people. But if there are no boundaries then people have no security – no safe-guards and no freedom.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the 10 Commandments [Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21]. The ‘thou shalt not’s’ of the Old Testament. For a long time I kind of resented the way they were used in the church as a kind of stick to beat people around with. But lately I’ve come to understand their role as being the boundaries for human freedom. Kind of like a fence that we can live within and be free. The commandments were given to Israel when they were in the desert having escaped enslavement in Egypt and before they entered the Promised Land. These boundaries were about how the people could be truly free in their new land and how they could achieve that freedom by being attentive to how they were before God and before each other.
I want to suggest that if there are not some good boundaries in place in your new life in Christchurch then you will be vulnerable to some things that might cause you considerable harm and distress and work to rob you of your freedom.
I don’t know if you caught up with the outcome of the Tea Ropati trial a week or two ago. He was acquitted of a rape charge. It appears that the woman who had laid the complaint of rape was grossly intoxicated and in a blackout phase (which doesn’t mean she was comatosed but rather that she could function but without any clear memory of what was going on). But it also appears that Ropati was aware of that state and still pursued a sexual encounter with her.
Was it rape? No, the court determined. But was it honourable on Ropati’s part? No, but there is no law against being dishonourable. Was the woman free? Hang no, she was incredibly vulnerable – very at risk, and fundamentally she put herself into the position where it was unclear whether the sex was consensual or not. She didn’t have appropriate boundaries in her life. But neither did Ropati – who also had a partner and family. Both of them have a lot to think about.
The Apostle Paul had given thought to the freedom that he experienced in Jesus Christ. He saw that once he had been a slave to a life of having to get everything right in his own strength – and he had even overseen the killing of followers of this Jesus thinking that he was right. But it all changed for him in knowing Jesus.
“It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life,” he wrote to the church in the region of Galatia (modern day Turkey). “Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?”
My prayer is that as you enter this new season in your lives and enter into the adventure of it, that you will also find your security and thereby your freedom in some of the boundaries offered to you in the discipline of study, the loyalty of new friendships, and especially in your life in this Hall. Keep yourselves safe and God bless you and keep you! Amen.
I wonder how you are going as you settle into life in Christchurch, at University and at R&R in particular.
Because of talking with you tonight I’ve thought a lot about my own experience starting at university – living in a hall and what it was like (Knox College in Dunedin for me).
Actually I revelled in the residential hall experience – after a few days of adjustment that is. I recall dealing with the competing feelings of excitement at the great adventure of it all, along with the grief associated with moving away from a life I had known and enjoyed… everything had changed…
I think home-sickness is a lot about the grief associated with letting go what was good and safe and secure… it affects people differently because some people are more attached to the life of home than others…
In my observation, come the second weekend away, almost all home-sickness finds its rightful place – not so overwhelming, more a gentle reminder that you are loved and you are missed and that whatever this place becomes, there is always another place called home.
Mostly I recall the sense of freedom associated with shifting away and going to university. It was great – I had entered another world with significantly fewer constraints – if I was absent from something no one checked up on me – if I wanted to go out I could – if there was something on that I wanted to go to I did.
Are you enjoying that freedom?
But I also recall the sense of security that went along with that freedom because of where I lived – the security of knowing where my next meal was coming from – the comfort of a warm place to sleep at night surrounded by my things – the sanctuary of being in a community of peers, many of whom I got to know and enjoy and whose support I valued.
As much as I revelled in the freedom of being at university, I also valued the boundaries that were in my life, especially because of being in a hostel. I could go out but there was always a base to head back to.
That’s the strange thing about freedom – it seems to need boundaries around it for it to exist.
I’ll try and explain.
There’s a great little novel by Yann Martel called Life of Pi. Have you read it? It’s mostly about a boy who ends up on a lifeboat with 227 days with a tiger named Richard Parker. Pi’s father owned a zoo in India and they were relocating to another country when the ship sunk. The bit about freedom that I found fascinating was Pi’s observation about whether the animals in the zoo were freer in the wild or in the zoo. He observed that in the zoo the animals could relax in a way that they never would in the wild. Surrounded by fences they were free of the threat of predators and free of the worry over their next meal. Zoo life was almost stress-free for these animals – and they generally lived much longer because of it.
I think it was the same with my children – by having some rules and boundaries they have been able to be free to grow without great stress in their lives. They have known lines that are not to be crossed (mostly for their safety and my sanity), and they have known who is in charge, and as they have grown those boundaries have loosened as they have been ready for more independence. Around me at times have been other parents who have not provided such boundaries – their children act out, always seemed to be over-tired, and many of them struggled among their peers and in their schooling. They were stressed. Why? Because those kids were in charge before they were mature enough to handle the responsibility – those kids were in charge, whereas the adults should have been.
What do you get if life has no boundaries? Anarchy. Of course, every so often the boundaries need to be challenged. That’s the problem with boundaries – the fences can get too high and too unyielding and they begin to oppress people. But if there are no boundaries then people have no security – no safe-guards and no freedom.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the 10 Commandments [Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21]. The ‘thou shalt not’s’ of the Old Testament. For a long time I kind of resented the way they were used in the church as a kind of stick to beat people around with. But lately I’ve come to understand their role as being the boundaries for human freedom. Kind of like a fence that we can live within and be free. The commandments were given to Israel when they were in the desert having escaped enslavement in Egypt and before they entered the Promised Land. These boundaries were about how the people could be truly free in their new land and how they could achieve that freedom by being attentive to how they were before God and before each other.
I want to suggest that if there are not some good boundaries in place in your new life in Christchurch then you will be vulnerable to some things that might cause you considerable harm and distress and work to rob you of your freedom.
I don’t know if you caught up with the outcome of the Tea Ropati trial a week or two ago. He was acquitted of a rape charge. It appears that the woman who had laid the complaint of rape was grossly intoxicated and in a blackout phase (which doesn’t mean she was comatosed but rather that she could function but without any clear memory of what was going on). But it also appears that Ropati was aware of that state and still pursued a sexual encounter with her.
Was it rape? No, the court determined. But was it honourable on Ropati’s part? No, but there is no law against being dishonourable. Was the woman free? Hang no, she was incredibly vulnerable – very at risk, and fundamentally she put herself into the position where it was unclear whether the sex was consensual or not. She didn’t have appropriate boundaries in her life. But neither did Ropati – who also had a partner and family. Both of them have a lot to think about.
The Apostle Paul had given thought to the freedom that he experienced in Jesus Christ. He saw that once he had been a slave to a life of having to get everything right in his own strength – and he had even overseen the killing of followers of this Jesus thinking that he was right. But it all changed for him in knowing Jesus.
“It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life,” he wrote to the church in the region of Galatia (modern day Turkey). “Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?”
My prayer is that as you enter this new season in your lives and enter into the adventure of it, that you will also find your security and thereby your freedom in some of the boundaries offered to you in the discipline of study, the loyalty of new friendships, and especially in your life in this Hall. Keep yourselves safe and God bless you and keep you! Amen.
22 February 2008
So long Madge
Madge Allsop has died.
Actress Emily Perry, who played Dame Edna Everidge's glum-faced, brow-beaten bridesmaid, died in an English retirement home on Wednesday, aged 100.
Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna) commented that he thought if Dame Edna was to pay tribute, she'd say: "I'd wish I'd been nicer to her."
I have from time to time wondered if a Madge Allsop-type figure sitting near the pulpit of most preachers would be a good foil for those times when the preacher is a bit excessive and over-the-top. To have a Madge sitting deadpan and unresponsive would be the perfect foil - a counter-measure to any flights of ego.
In her blankness Madge was a perfect foil to Dame Edna's flambouyance - a reminder that some balance helps the world go around as it should.
08 February 2008
great site
I've just linked up with free range studios and their stunning series on YouTube: "The Story of Stuff" - my friend Bruce Hamill pointed me in that direction, and in the direction of an acquainatnce Jolyon White who is attempting to live on $1 a day in Dunedin starting 5 Feb. You can track him by hitting: http://www.onedollaraday.net.nz
http://www.youtube.com/Freerangestudios
http://www.youtube.com/Freerangestudios
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