Assessing Change

 

Were they the good old days?

I’ve been asked to write something about how the organisation I have served in has changed since 1990.  After 32 years I have now retired, leaving the tasks of ministry and leadership to “the younger generation”.  

Certainly a good time to reflect. But also a challenge to do it with clarity and equanimity.

The risk is being overall all negative.  My first thoughts are of what has been lost, particularly what has been of significance to me.  Can I see through that to what has been gained?

As a new on the job in the late 80’s and early 90’s I was finding my way into the tasks and the calling of parish ministry. The people who supported and mentored me were the key people in the organisation, regionally and nationally.  Being involved in national committee work was something new and fresh, as well as a chance to get to know more people with similar calling and purpose.

Key resource roles were disestablished years ago.  Working in the hinterlands of rural ministry, I’ve become more and more on the outer of what those in bigger churches and in the centre of the organisation are focussed on. 

It just hasn’t been relevant.

The challenge of reflecting with an open mind and an even had was sharpened when I read a document currently circulating. The document contains recommendations from a working group on the future of education for ministry.

How can I judge what they are doing now, let alone the ideas for the future, when it is so different from my own education?  The positives that have endured for me have been mostly connected to what doesn’t happen now – on campus education with university courses interwoven with personal formation in community. It is the community aspect that stands out most of all.   

Also I have had no recent contact with the process of ministry training, nor until this year any experience of the fruits of current training.  All my colleagues have either been in an older age bracket or have been educated in other denominations or overseas.

I can name all the good things we had that seem now to be lost, but how do I know whether they are relevant to those starting the journey now?

What is more, much of the change has happened because society has changed. What could work then – all students relocating (with their families) to Dunedin for several years – doesn’t fit personal and family lives now.  

I think what I need to do, if I’m to avoid simply harking back to the good old days, is three-fold:

• name what was good and proved valuable for me – that could be able to achieved in a different way now;
• identify the pertinent social and economic changes that have played out in the last 30 years – to clear the decks and be sure of addressing today’s reality;
• find words for what does not change throughout all this – the purpose of ministry in relation to the calling of the gospel – or maybe that should have been number 1!

Then and only then, perhaps I can have some insight into how things have changed in a way that can do justice to the good old days and to the good new days.

Memory and Place

 

For my nephew who can be wise without using many words.  

“Too much time on your hands – you need to make more jam”.

Well the apricot season is over and we’re now in a world where there is much more time on our hands for most of us.  Over the past weeks it become quieter and quieter in our temporary wee home, under the flight path for Queenstown airport.  The world has changed and the future world remains very uncertain.  So it seems reasonable to use this time of reduced physical contact with others to sort out a few thoughts.   In particular, thoughts about memory and the renewal of memory, the re-membering, that comes with returning to a place of a previous time.

Consider this familiar experience: 

You go into a room to get something and, right away, forget what it was you were looking for.  Go back to where you were and likely as not you remember.  Crossing a threshold from one space to another does something apparently to our brains.   A connection is needed – a re-connection that brings the previous thought together with the different space.

Returning to the place where I began has done that in lots of different ways.  Making jam is one example.   It’s probably 30 years since the last batch of jam was produced, so what to do was not front and centre in my brain.   But it didn’t take long before the memory was back and it felt good, very good.

Being in places whose familiarity is longer than my conscious memory has indeed reconnection me.  Much more quickly than moving to a new place, I am beginning to feel located again.  The connections remain with the place that’s been left behind: social media makes sure of that in a way that the interactions through comments, messages, and emails are not just holding on to the past.   It’s engaging with what is happening for friends at a distance and, in a funny sort of way, cheering them on from the sidelines.   This is become even more the case now that we are all in lockdown because of Covid-19.  I am as close for the people of Whangaroa, for example, as to the people in my street.  In fact closer, given invitations to share karakia together.

Relocated, memories of the past place are memories of people who remain part of my world.   So there is still some sadness, not to be there alongside and supporting in person, but more than that is the appreciation of simply knowing these people and calling them my friends.  Put simply, I am relocated and have kept the old location part of me, because of its people.

Recently, I was very fortunate to be in the hills (and to get there by helicopter) to help with a wilding conifer eradication project.   Last year when asked why we were leaving the north, the reply was always because the south is where our mountains are, and our rivers and lakes.   Up in the hills on that project, I knew I was in the right place. Home.  

A comment from a Northland friend has also helped me get my bearings.  “I love your total immersion attitude”, she said.   I guess that’s what the Northland experience was and this is what my returning south can also be.   When you’re in the hills, there is no need to work at it: one is immersed already.   And in the connections I’ve had a chance to make already with St John, prior to the lockdown (still keeping links of support through social media with those in the north), there’s been a sense of immersion, of simply being part of what they are doing here, listening and learning and enjoying getting to know the people.  Lockdown means staying away, for the sake of my older family members and, I guess, also me.  It’s hard not to be actively involved, supporting busy people who are even more overstretched than usual.  But I can spare regular thoughts for them and I’ve have been assured they are there for us if we need help.

Returning to a place, whether it’s returning to the room you’ve left in order to remember what you left for or returning to a place to call home, reconnects.   But not just returning to what it was before, as we bring with us the life and learning of the different places where we’ve lived.  Places and experiences that expand horizons.  Coming back is both returning to the same place and seeing it through wider eyes.  

Music connects with memory like this too.   There has been as growth in “nostalgia” radio stations in recent years.   What’s interesting is that the memories when listening to the music are mixed.  The music can bring a smile, but it also can trigger a sense of loss and sadness.  

Listening to that same music in a new context can also create new experiences and therefore new memories.

Dislocation – Disconnection

I’ve moved location very recently.  Back to the home place, my ūkaipō, but away from my home of the last 15 years, the community, the whanau whānui, where I came to belong and felt totally and utterly connected.
The choice to move was the proverbial no brainer.  Retirement meant we needed to get our own house to live in.  We longed for our maunga awa moana, for the land and waterways that were simply part of our being because that is where we each were born.  The adopted maunga awa moana of Te Tai Tokerau will always be special to me.  They and their people have been so welcoming and inclusive in their manaakitanga and whanaungatanga.  The land and waters of the north are heart and soul of the people who tell me now that they miss me heaps.  (I’m still sure that I miss them more!)  Thanks to social media we can stay connected and tautoko (support) one another.
“Stay-well connected” was what I said as last words in my final service with the parish and community last month.  My task is make good connections in a new place – newly in my old place, the part of the country where I grew up.
We change, so it’s never a matter of slipping back into old connections and certainly not into old ways of thinking.   The old connections of family are a real blessing.  There’s an assurance for the long-term when you are with your own people.  But the biggest disconnection for me is in world-view, attitudes, and language.  That’s how I feel the dislocation most.
Here in Central Otago and the Southern Lakes it’s like Kerikeri without Kaeo, the socio-economic upperside without the socio-economic underside, mainstream NZ (“we’re all New Zealanders”) without the Whangaroa reality of Māori and Pākehā in tension yet striving for partnership.  Residing within a white world where diversity stems mostly from tourism, from a constantly changing human populace rather than from the tikanga and culture embedded in the land and its tangata whenua, I feel dislocated.
What we see and experience in our corner of the world is not the whole world.  This is especially important for those who are part of the dominant culture, the so-called “mainstream”, which really is only a “different stream” from the streams that flow in and around this motu.  Enclave-living does not suit me now, if it ever did.  I can’t live with just my people, my own kind.  My own kind has expanded such that I feel I have multiple kinds, that is, I belong to multiple communities.
What seems important is that we find space wherever we are in which to imagine differently from what is immediately in front of us.  Space in which to scheme and dream alternatives and space in which to include those whose lives are different.

In a new place, this means taking the time and effort to make connections with the people of this place.  The fact that they can feel “other” to what has become familiar is itself an opening for conversation.  Who are these people?  What are their stories?  What are their aspirations?  What are their fears?  Here’s what I read some years back from wise rural writer Wendell Berry:

Community, I am beginning to understand, is made through a skill I have never learned or valued: the ability to pass time with people you do not and will not know well, talking about nothing in particular, with no end in mind, just to build trust, just to be sure of each other, just to be neighbourly. A community is not something that you have, like a camcorder or a breakfast nook. No, it is something you do. And you have to do it all the time.

So in some ways things haven’t changed.   Connection and belonging are always being worked out.  Never static, never fixed, and definitely without walls that exclude and create community that is secure but closed.

Who is my neighbour?  My neighbour is the next person I will encounter. And  I will treat them as a person worth encountering.   That’s whakawhanaungatanga wherever we are – building community.

It’s a work in progress – like our wee house.   One day we’ll be able to move in and really be in our new place.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom

Robyn

 

E noho rā - Farewell

Ka pu te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi

The old net is cast aside, the new net goes fishing

It would be so much easier and more to our inclination if in January Neil and I could just quietly head down the road.  Who likes goodbyes, especially goodbyes with a lot of fuss.   The little 2-year old whose picture I showed the Girls’ Brigade service in Kaeo recently (for your entertainment it is inserted here) really is the same shy little girl 63 years later.  Do I have to do it?

And all that effort people are going to make.  All that food and organisation, and cleaning up afterwards.

It would be simpler…

But it is not to be and, I think it probably is the last thing I need do as a positive act of ministry – for the sake of our purpose as a church.  We exist to be community, Christ-shaped community.  Therefore what happens in our lives we go through together.  We share happy times and sad times.  And we are community that continually opens up to others as a place they can feel at home and be part of this sharing – this whanaungatanga.  Times of farewell – and welcome – are opportunities to be visible church community within our wider communities, for the good of all.

The events of mid-January will be something of an ordeal, but as with any ending it is important to gather to honour the time that has been and say our thank yous.  I have much to be thankful for and very many people I’d like to say thank you to individually.  What’s more, our gathering will be a time a re-affirm what is really important to us as church and as communities in Northland.  That’s how it is with any ending, we grieve the parting but affirm the value of what has been and what will continue to be.  We affirm our values as people of faith.

We are very fortunate that the Methodist Stationing process came up with a person about whom the people of our congregations could say, “yes, you’re the new minister for us”.  I was delighted to meet Saikolone and his wife Fele’unga.  As we talked on the day after the face-to-face meeting, I knew for sure that you had found someone who would be an agent for continuity in the mission that is distinctive of this parish and an agent for new ways of being church in this wider district.  You are going to love Saikolone and his family very much.

The new net will definitely go fishing.

And the old net will rediscover activities I used to have time for and had almost forgotten about, as well as new activities I can’t even imagine yet.

Neil and I drive out of Kerikeri – and Northland – on Saturday 18 January and will arrive in Central Otago on 21 January, to unpack our furniture into storage and then settle into a wee crib[1] in Frankton until our house is finished.  I know I’ll be very sad as we leave – it’s tough having two places that you love that are at opposite ends of the country!  But how fortunate we have been that is the case – home in Te Tai Tokerau and Te Tai Tonga.

Nō reira, e noho rā aku tini hoa.  Goodbye my many friends.

Ka kite – ā te wā.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn

November 2018

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The measure of our compassion lies not in our service to those on the margins, but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.

Gregory Boyle S.J.

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[1] known by you northerners as a bach

Unexpected Heroes

Ruth 1:1-18

You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin–-to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours–-closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Like many of the books in the Writings section of Hebrew Scripture, you need to read the whole book of Ruth to get the real picture.   At least it’s shorter than e.g. Job, so it is something you could easily do settled into a comfortable chair with a cuppa.

The book is very likely a critique of male-centred law and culture, a challenge to the power of patriarchy and the powerlessness of women (and children) when they have no men to attach to.  It is clearly also a critique of xenophobia which patriarchy feeds into.  Now that’s very much a topic for contemporary consideration.

The important characters in this story turn out to be the least powerful people.  The people at the margins.

Do you know what it is like to be disregarded?  To feel dispensable.  Not sure of being any use.  To feel on the margins of a group.

The heroes in the book of Ruth – it might look like it’s Boaz the man in the story who rescued them from poverty, but actually it’s Naomi and Ruth – are margins people.

Bitter Naomi – that’s what her name means.  Her first thought in her dire situation is the welfare of others, of Orpah and Ruth.  That’s her response to being a nobody in the world’s view.

This is a clear pointer to her faith – her God is expansive, inclusive.  Even when she is suffering, even when she feels abandoned, she doesn’t lose this sense of all-encompassing life-giving Spirit and so can give of herself.

Ruth’s response to the dire situation is a promise to an “other”, to someone who in standard terms she does not belong with and has no connection or responsibility to.

This is a clear pointer to her faith – her God doesn’t take belonging as a cultural given, determined by birth and place in the world, but chooses belonging. Her God doesn’t see boundaries of social or political or cultural or economic making but, like Naomi’s, is expansive, inclusive.

Like Naomi, her response to being a nobody, counting for nothing in the world’s view, is to think of the welfare of this other person.

Here we have an unexpected God shown to us by unexpected people.  An understanding of Spirit and life that means it’s possible to risk the new and different.  We don’t have to stay within the confines of the known which so often require us not to care beyond our own zone.  For the sake of our own security and survival we shouldn’t risk too much compassion.

And we see God at work in unspectacular ways. God’s presence in the book of Ruth is through the characters, not grand action, but the little things of relationships.  Little things that really are the big things.  God is seen in what’s called in Hebrew hesed. Faithfulness, kindness, compassion, loyalty, never faltering love.  Aroha.

That’s the heart of who we are.

Shalom Rangimarie Peace, Robyn

An Act of Human Courage

Moemoeātia te moemoeā engari whakatīnanahia
Dream the dream but achieve it also
* * * * *
You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry. Please save your praise, we don’t want it. Don’t invite us here to tell us how inspiring we are without doing anything about it. It doesn’t lead to anything.
Greta Thunberg to the US Senate
* * * * *
People need hope and inspiration desperately. But hope and inspiration are only sustained by work.
Tarana Burke
* * * * *
We are hearing a loud and very clear challenge from young people right now. It reminds me of the verses in Joel (quoted in Acts 2) about sons and daughters prophesying and young people seeing visions.

Their vision of their future as adults concerns them greatly. Will life on this planet be liveable?
What will it be like in 2100 when babies born now reach old age.

There is quite a debate going on whether our youth should be leaving school classes to protest about climate change. As one politician (aged 70 plus) said, “they should be at school, getting a good education, and then being able to contribute to our country’s productivity.” But they can see longer term than the next two or even three decades.

Specifically, their protest is about the inaction of leaders on whom they have to rely at this stage of their lives. They are not yet the leaders. They do not yet vote. But it is their future that is most at stake.

Joel also said that the old people are to dream dreams. There is a clear role for the elders to draw on experience and keep dreams alive. With a lifetime of living in expectation and hope that we can make a difference for the future, there’s no point giving that up now, no matter how hard it is and no matter how bad it seems to get.

The prophets in the Old Testament were big on hope. Unfortunately, we’ve more often heard just their opening words, the ones making clear bad stuff was happening; the leaders were not being leaders for all the people, some getting the benefits, but most being left out; that the earth itself is being damaged. Yes, they talked about that too – environmental destruction by raiding armies and by urban exploitation of the rural poor.

The prophets started with “a state of the nation” strip down. They continued with a message of change and of hope. Turn back to ways of living that build community and livelihood for all. Turn back to God: keep the faith and work for the future.
Jeremiah did something like this when he bought back a piece of family land right in the middle of the exile (Jeremiah 32), when that land was still under the control of the occupying Babylonians. He put his money where his mouth was, to show people he believed God did have a good future for them. They just needed to join it, to believe it would happen and do whatever they could to work towards it.

That’s what I see as our call to action, all of us as adults, older and younger, and as young people.

Like Jeremiah, believe in what seems almost impossible with the trend of current events – a future that is liveable for the next generations and not condemned to conflict and contest over resources.

Yes, be inspired by our young people, inspired to help turn our dreams of what good life looks like and feels like into their reality in the decades to come.
It’s not the whole solution we’re asked to come up with. Just to have hope. To have hope and to prove it by living now in a way that helps towards good life on this planet. Every little bit makes a difference.

The last word is from an Old Testament scholar whose teaching has been formative for me, Walter Brueggemann. Hope is for him a key theme, perhaps the key theme of the Bible:

Hope is not a passive reliance upon God. Hope is a human act of commitment to and investment in the future. Hope is an act of human courage that refuses to cherish the present too much or be reduced to despair by present circumstance. Hope is the capacity to relinquish the present for the sake of what is imagined to be a reachable future. In the end, hope is a practice that bets on a vision of the future that is judged to be well beyond present circumstance, even if one does not know how to get from here to there.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom
Robyn

Kindness

Aroha mai, aroha atu

Kindness received, kindness given

Kindness is a way of life and a treasure beyond all else.

Another whakatauki reads:

Ahakoa he iti he pounamu

Even though it is small it is a treasure

A small act of kindness proliferates into more of the same. 

It grows in the person who gives it, becoming in them more and more their instinct and habit. 

It grows in the person who receives it, like the way a smile from one person triggers the other to smile, a smile that is then passed on to more and more others.

A child learns kindness by receiving it and, I believe, by having their instinctive little acts of kindness appreciated and affirmed.  Presented by a toddler with a bunch of flowering weeds, would you ever say anything but

“Lovely! Thank you very much for this beautiful gift!”

As we grow up, experiences of getting things wrong – wrong in terms of popular perception – can make us hold back.  We don’t get humoured any more.  Who wants to feel a fool? 

But then, hopefully, we get to realise that it is much better to appear a fool and be kind than to be smart and unkind.  That’s my baseline understanding of Jesus and of what is involved in following the way of Christ.

I’ve been very much running on the kindness of others in recent days as I face one of my biggest challenges ever. 

You could say that it’s been a bit stressful.  What has surely helped me keep on track has been the people around me who, without fuss, have given me little doses of kindness, each in their own way.

On reflection, I’ve been running on the kindness of others for decades. 

For all we might say about church, what stands out to me is the kindness of church people. Church doesn’t have a monopoly on kindness: I’m surrounded by many people not connected with church who are equally kind.  The Spirit we speak of in Bible terms is alive and out there, very often calling us to join in.  Aroha mai, aroha atu.  The Spirit is urging us not stay safe and secure with kindness just among our own kind.  But out among many different kinds, being kind regardless of knowing the response we will get.   

And yet I reckon it’s in this delightful family of Christ that I’ve been able to count on it most. For all our differences and idiosyncrasies, some challenging, some inspiring, some irritating, there’s a pervading atmosphere of kindness that we pick up from one another. 

In relation to this I have found a strong bond with Māoritanga: so much in common between Christian values and what I have experienced among the people of the land (tangata whenua) in the North.  

Kindness is at its heart, the word aroha embracing it plus so much more.   Manaakitanga is the real essence of what we see in terms as the spirit of Christ.  It is aroha in community, interacting with, embracing, and reaching out to all kinds of people.

That’s the quality to hold on to.   Caring, welcoming, accepting, open hospitality, giving and receiving.

Nurturing relationships and therefore never-ending in its loving kindness.

  Rangimarie Peace Shalom

Robyn
July 2019