Cicadas

It was the cicadas that won. The deafening, ear-vibrating fortissimo of the Australian forest cicadas was dramatic, but it lacked the subtleties, the rhythmic Morse of the trans-Tasman counterpart. It became a parable of choice: in your face juxtaposed against seductive invitation.

For twenty five years the various guises of a harsh red island held me captive, not entirely against my will, thundering an eremitic sermon of nothingness. While most in the wide red land clung to the coast I sought the dust storms of the center, the ferocity of eco-systems that told me only of my nothingness, that I was an intruder, and that my intrusion was as nothing in the vastness of an unconquerable land.

The cicadas’ crescendo counterpointed the harshness of the inland’s deathly silence. Nothingness is your being: dust you are and to dust you shall return. The cicadas crushed thoughtspace, obliterated identity, and taunted attempts to hymn the universe.

Awhitu… karanga tangata whenua

 

 WHANGAREI

5^th January 2007

Goodbye: go well

The recent controversy over the departure of Hamilton priest Michael Hewat and most of his congregation from the folds of the Diocese of Waikato-Taranaki has, as is usual in the media, glossed over complex issues.  Sooner or later all dioceses face these issues, and as fellow-travellers we possibly need  more nuanced view than the popular press provide.

For one thing, this is not goodies v baddies. Michael Hewat, who I suspect it is fair to say operates from a theological and pastoral perspective very different to my own, is clearly a person of strong principle. His particular line in the sand is a matter of biblical interpretation with which I disagree, but I admire his integrity.

Helen Ann Hartley is equally a person of principle.  Her particular line is one of canonical and legal interpretation, that is to say application of church law, and she too is absolutely right to draw that line. To belong to a denomination is one thing (many Roman Catholics do not toe the official line on such matters as birth control) but, in purely secular terms, to be employed by it is another: the contested Motion 30 of General Synod that has become the bridge too far for Hewat is now enshrined in New Zealand Anglican Church polity.

Of course I disagree with Hewat, which makes it easier for me to pontificate about these matters. Although I am fairly conservative in doctrinal matters, I have long been persuaded that a) marriage has ever been an evolving contract (monogamous “marriage for love” is a very recent development, and was greeted with considerable scepticism and opposition when it emerged as a practice in the Romantic era. For what it’s worth, in the Medieval courtly world adultery was considered all but a duty, not that I am recommending it!).

If that were the whole of the argument I might never have been persuaded. In the end though I was persuaded (many years ago, incidentally) when I saw the vast chasm between theory and reality, as gay men and women were forced to live lives of self-denial (fine, if its voluntary), deceit (double lives are never fine) and emotional torment. Perhaps it’s little more than a “lesser of two evils” argument, but I could not believe that God, on the basis of the highly poetic sentence that forms Gen 2:24, would condemn perhaps 10% of humans to incomplete and unfulfilled and lonely lives.

Which is not to ignore the opportunistic and un-edifying approach taken by those who want to marry their dogs, cows, sisters, or sanction paedophilia: there will always be idiot fringes adding grist to the mill of the thin end of the wedge argument. I’m not sure I have much truck for those who want to marry while dangling from a helicopter, either. The NSW judge who recently declared that incest should be legalised was not showing particularly advanced intellect.

In the end I want to mihi Hewat and Hartley alike. Hewat’s churchmanship is fairly reprehensible and un-Anglican to me, so I might at one level be glad to wish him gone. But I don’t dance on graves: I prefer to wish him and his flock well. At the same time I am deeply grateful that Bishop Helen Ann has recognized that any body must have boundaries, the church included, and there are times those boundaries of authority and discipline must be drawn.

A racehorse in an ecclasiastical tea cup?

At secondary school I was often mesmerized by those glorious sweeping and irrefutable statements that spill unreservedly from the vocal chords of adolescents. Growing up on a cluster of isolated islands at the outer edge of a forgotten continent in the far-flung nothingnesses of an empty universe these claims were all the more irrefutable and thus all the more majestic.

“New Zealand breeds the best race horses in the world.” It sounded an innocuous enough statement, and certainly I had never seen a horse from any other nation win at our local track, so clearly the stament was definitive. From the krakatoa-esque eruption at my maths teacher’s desk it appeared he saw the world through a different set of lenses. There was a seismic shock centred on my town that day, and I quiver still at the memory of it. “It is,” Peter Irvine roared, “that sort of nonsense that that means you will never be a mathematician.” As it happens I had not made the statement, and the wrath that descended on the perpetrator of the misinformation struck me only on the ricochet: the entire class was treated to an oratory display worthy of Demosthenes. Statistically the claim was errant nonsense, and for the next several minutes the now long-forgotten oratorical misadventurer was subjected to a blast of mathematical demonstration that I doubt he would ever forget.

The glorious claim of a (now, in a global-village economy, faux-) kiwi soft drink manufacturer “world famous in New Zealand” has a more delightfully self-deprecatory tone to it. On occasions, visiting New Zealand or finding the drink in question in a specialist retail outlet on far-flung soils, the phrase would wring from me a rueful smile. The gradual eclipse of antipodean horses in that litmus taste of relative greatness, the Melbourne Cup, would demonstrate that, while New Zealand bred some pretty good thoroughbreds, so too did one or two other equestrian states around the world. Come to think about it, the long absence of the All Blacks from the coveted (in some circles) Webb Ellis Trophy would suggest that even the most seemingly safe of claims, that of All Black supremacy on the face of world rugby (which matters in some nations), was open to considerable debate, at least in those interminable years between David Kirk’s and Richie McCaw’s elevation of the trophy above the heads of an awe-struck crowd.

My humour then is stretched a little thin, then, when I hear stated or insinuated claims that New Zealand leads the world in any field. I am as proud of any kiwi of our little tin pot nation at the bottom of the world, and indeed my inability ever to escape its subtle siren call to come home  suggests that I have demonstrated as a choice rather than mere obligation in taking up my option to live on its shaky soils. But, while it has its moments on the world stage, and sometimes even punches above its weight, its glorious supremacy in most fields remains a quixotic narrative of its own imagining.

When I hear those claims being made for the life and attributes of the Anglican Church I fear there are even greater degrees of possibility of delusion. “Church” is not exactly a buzz word on either the world or the New Zealand scene, and, again, while the somewhat fringe dwelling Anglican community in Aotearoa may have many strengths, I suspect neither the world nor the ecclesiastical world trembles in awe or gasps in untrammelled admiration. The three-tikanga­ structure of New Zealand Anglican ecclesiology is admirable, but it is nor the Reign of God, nor even the apotheosis of pre-eschaton ecclesiology. It has strengths. It has weaknesses. To that extent it is a wonderful receptacle and vehicle of God’s grace. I am no expert on Icelandic Lutheranism or Tahitian Pentecostalism but I suspect they too have magnificent moments in which they reveal themselves as prolepsis of the reign of God, and I praise God for that.

Like many, I admire the 1989 New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book / He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa­ (not least for its partially inclusive title), but amongst its jewels (compline and the house blessing services I would count as gems) it has many flaws (which may explain why it has become an optional extra or mildly formative reference in myriad New Zealand Anglican faith communities), and it is not necessarily the zenith of gathered (or “common”) prayer. At the risk of generating an ecclesiastical riot I suggest that some of the eucharistic prayers are wordily didactic, some of the congregational responses a little abstruse, the order of the Daily Office borders on bland, and the punctuation gives the impression, at times, of a communal experiment with a salt and pepper shaker.

Yet somehow I fear a variety of hubris has rooted itself in the psyche of this ecclesiastical community. The best race horses in the world? I recently heard a claim that one ministry unit was a shining example of collaboration that would infiltrate the consciousness and revolutionize the praxis of that unit’s region, its diocese, the national church and indeed the world. Whether the world that was about to be revolutionised by this ministry unit’s praxis was merely the Global North (or are we South in this downward spiralling edge of the eastern hemisphere?) or merely the ecclesiastical world I was unsure. I’m sure it was not merely the Anglican ecclesiastical world, for such a claim would hardly be worth making, and would set its sights far below the expectations and self-understandings of the orator. We breed, after all the best race horses in the world.

I tremble, for in my imaginings even posting these thoughts will generate such a storm of rage that the entire world will quake, and emperors and presidents alike will take sides on the finer details of eccentricity o Aotearoa. Alternatively, of course, the storm may merely spill over the edge of a teacup – or perhaps not even generate the beat of a butterfly’s wing and leave the tea unmoved. But when we become the summation and subject of our own adulation we do at times catastrophize. The new Aotearoa Anglican ecclesiastical praxis that was so lionized will, I suspect, remain a legend in its own lunch time, and Secretariat will remain the finest racehorse the world has ever known, even if not particularly world famous in New Zealand.

Sri Lankan refugees? What would Jesus do, Mr Morrison?

I am watching with deep distress the response of the Government (and Opposition) across the Tasman to the plight of the world’s most vulnerable, refugees seeking asylum. Since the middle years of the Howard Government neither side of politics has done anything but out-tough the other in response to refugees, playing off a perception in the community that waves of “bludgers” are crossing the seas, desperate to snatch Australian wealth from its rightful owners (who are, of course, in this narrative not the dispossessed Indigenous people but the Anglo-Celtic colonisers).

Lest this be seen as your too-Australianised Dean banging on about another country’s issues, there are New Zealand angles here. First, let it be said, that following the Tampa crisis in 2001 the response of the New Zealand (Clark) Government was exemplary, and the way in which New Zealand opened its hearts and doors to the refugees should have poured hot coals on the consciences of Australia. 150 Afghani refugees were granted NZ citizenship following that crisis. Eventually the Howard Government was forced to accept some as refugees, but did so reluctantly. Captain Arne Rinnan of theTampa was, in a snub to the Howard Government, named International Captain of the Year by Lloyds of London, even though his ship was refused entry to Australian waters.

On the whole New Zealand has been quarantined by distance from the refugees descending on Australia’s somewhat misplaced Christmas Island, 500 kilometres from Indonesia. From Christmas Island to Perth is a further 2,600 kms—and a further 5600 kms to the closest kiwi port (Port Taranaki, as kayaker Scott Donaldson could tell us). So far only one boat-load is known to have attempted that massive journey, and gave up at Geraldton, still some 420 kms north of Perth. There is some talk of refugees attempting to use the Pacific Ocean route, but the logistics remain huge, and a landing on the Hokianga or other west coast harbours could be fairly scary.

The Judaeo-Christian tradition however has some very stern things to say about obligations to refugees. So does International Law. The current performance of the Australian Government, particularly in attempting to hand 250 Sri Lankan refugees back to Sri Lankan authorities, is simply evil. As it happens, so far, the Abbott Government has been thwarted by its own High Court, but it is likely to find ways to circumvent their sanity. Sri Lanka reserves the right to imprison (and therefore potentially torture) Tamils who flee the country. Meanwhile mothers in “off-shore processing centres” are threatening suicide to save their children, and two Tamils have self-immolated rather than be returned to Sri Lanka. The primary ministers responsible for refugees are, incidentally, both professing Christians. They refer to the refugees as “illegals” and call the suicides “manipulation.” What would Jesus do?

I can only hope and pray that we as Christians in New Zealand speak out about the atrocities the neighbouring government are perpetrating (with Opposition collusion). I can only hope and pray that when the time comes for New Zealand to take its fair share of the world’s most vulnerable we do a better job, and that Christian voices are at the forefront of the demand for just and compassionate response. Let us hope our response to Tampa was not a one-off event.