Religion and Peace

Talk about religions and conflict is sure to get a mention. The perception is that religion involves disagreement and often opposition. There’s something about being correct. For some reason faith seems to mean being right or having the right truths.

Religion in fact means what joins people into community together – the Latin word ligare means to bind.  Belief in having the right truths does bind people together, but does it make community?

My turn during October’s Inter-faith Week of Prayer for World Peace was the last night, with the theme of Truth.  The service sheet proposed we pray “for recognition of the fundamental importance of the quality of Truth”.  The quality of truth.

The quality is how rather than what.  It is not so much about being right as being in right relationship.  Relating one to another, we to you.  Relating through trusting and being trustworthy, being true to oneself and to the other.

I suspect this is at the heart of all religions: I can only speak for Christianity and I know that it’s the core of our faith.  What joins us together is, in the words of John’s gospel, “the way, the truth, the life”.    As church, as Christians, we are followers of the Way.  We are disciples (or apprentices) learning and re-learning the basic lessons of living, learners and mentors together on the journey.

It’s tempting to turn Jesus’ teaching into statements about truth and not truth, right and wrong, to read his teaching as nouns – naming words.  We’ll get the point much better (and not slide into conflict with people who see things differently, because of background, experience, personality, etc) if we read it as verbs – as doing words and being words.

How not what.  The quality of truth not the dogma of truth.

Karen Armstrong speaks of compassion as the heart and soul of all religions.  This is the quality that is emphasised by all the great religions and it is what binds their people together in true community.    Compassion is a noun but we can only find its meaning if we treat it as if it were a verb.  Being and doing is how compassion exists: never in the abstract, only in relationship one to another.  It is the key to bind people within religions and across religions, including those of no professed faith.

We all have life beliefs of some sort, whether articulated in terms of a religion or not.  We can all commit to the truth – the true practice – of compassion.  It is the only future for humanity and the planet.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom,

Robyn

November 2017

Our History Blankets Us

Grace and peace to you all in the name of Christ. To all who have lost loved ones over recent times, our love to you. Those who are part of our lives remain with us always, in memory, and in Christ. E ngā mate, moe mai, moe mai. Takoto rangimārie i roto i ngā ringaringa atawhai o tōu Kaihanga. Kia tau ki a koutou katoa te aroha noa, me te rangimārie, i runga i te ingoa o te Karaiti.

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The Closing Waitang Tribunal Hearings for Te Papa Rahi o te Raki (Northland) are taking place at Otangaroa Marae as this newsletter starts its circulation. Since 2010 I’ve listened in to Hearings Weeks as often as I could and learnt an enormous amount about local history. I’ve also learnt much, and been humbled much, by way of cultural perspective, attitude, and – I hope - understanding.

Maybe I see things more clearly now, more than just the view of my own people but also what was and is true for the iwi and hapū of the North. More than 200 years of European/Māori contact has had a huge impact. One very personal thing has been to contribute to blanket making – paraikete patipati. It began with the blankets being stitched during the 2014 Hearings Week (also at Otangaroa), with aspects of the Whangaroa Rohe (district) story (including the Mission at Kaeo) being represented in picture and design. Tribunal members and staff, along with all the lawyers present, were invited to add their bit to the stitching. If anyone didn’t know how to do blanket stitch, they did by week’s end.

I got asked to do an embroidered patch identifying the event and its date. Drawing on what my mother and Gran had taught me, I willingly got to work, and ended up being recruited for a patch for the Hearings Week in 2015 at Te Tapui, Matauri Bay. More has followed including a special one symbolising my hopes for Whangaroa.

Our history blankets us. It can weigh us down, especially if it is loaded with things that are not to our benefit. But it can also warm us, if it encompasses in a way that supports and empowers. Like what happens when we step out from under the blankets in the morning and feel ready to start a fresh new day. Those good days that begin with purpose and hope.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn
July 2017

Activism in the Long View

A few weeks ago Mike Smith, a local to Whangaroa but more often heard about around Auckland, was at the Taiwhenua Hui of the Whangaroa hapū putting their stories to the Waitangi Tribunal held at the Kaeo Rugby Club.

(Taiwhenua Hui are meetings involving whanau, and supporters, working together to gather history and present it in a way that addresses concerns to make a better future for whanau and hapū.)

Mike Smith is probably known to you as a protester, including the infamous chopping down of the tree on One Tree Hill.

He spoke to us about the change in direction he has taken.  Here’s what he says in an on-line blog, which matches what I heard here in Kaeo:

Kia ora my name is Mike. I am a Maori member of the northern tribes of the far north territories of Aotearoa-New Zealand. I’ve been an indigenous rights activist for most of my adult life. During the 1980’s through to the 90’s together with many others, I was engaged in the struggle to correct historical and contemporary injustices affecting Maori people in Aotearoa – New Zealand…

Our activism during this time was centered on political and constitutional rights together with social and cultural programs.

However, the emerging global climate emergency caused us to re-evaluate our focus.

My first exposure to the issue was in 1992 when I was sent to Rio de Janeiro to attend the first global Earth Summit of world leaders…

By 2008, in my home village, we were beginning to see the emergence of the predicted effects of climate change including unusual flooding events, increasing droughts, and more powerful cyclonic storms and that’s when we really began to be alarmed.

My partner Hinekaa Mako and I then began to interview meteorologists and climate scientists here in Aotearoa – New Zealand and the more we began to find out about the issue the more concerned we became, so much so that we decided to suspend our social, political and cultural activism in order to work full time on climate issues.

Mike invited us to look not so much for immediate remedies and compensation as a result of negotiations for settlement of treaty claims, as for what is needed so that our tamariki mokopuna, our children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren will have homes and livelihoods as sea levels rise.

We need to look more to the hills, he said, to re-establishing kainga (villages) and means of livelihood on higher ground.  Don’t use up energy and opportunities seeking return land around the coast and at the beaches.  Look to the hills.

Mike’s interest is in arranging meetings with people at marae to talk about this in relation to their land and opportunities. I asked him if a church could be included in his rounds and he said, yes certainly.

I think Jesus would line up with this kind of activism – having long enough vision to live for a future beyond ourselves.  And to seek a future that is God’s future, with well-being and peace for all the generations to come.  Indeed Jesus, I am sure, is leading it.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn

March 2017

I'm OK Because We're OK

“I’m OK because you’re not OK.”

That’s what I reckon I’ve been hearing from certain big voices in the news.    Or in the less blunt form: “We’re OK because they are not OK.”

It’s being expressed in group terms, us versus them.   This collection of “I” individuals over against that lot out there, other than us, beyond the pale.  They are different kinds of people.  They belong somewhere else, not in our place.  They behave badly, against the principles of our who we are.  They are a threat to our security and our identity. 

Because of the group aspect, it can feel that we can’t be wrong.  If, as a group, we’re feeling the same we can’t be accused of being selfish surely.  The argument is that we’re being honest. Honest about how lots of people feel.  Therefore it must be right and we’re justified in being outspoken and absolute.

I’m thinking of the people who have listened and responded with a yes to Donald Trump and those who say Amen to Brian Tamaki, as well as the speakers themselves.

We don’t use the word “primitive” much nowadays, but this is one place where it fits and it helps us understand in a way that makes for better life. It’s deeply embedded in our human functioning to feel good about ourselves by contrasting us with others. It’s a short-cut to clear identity to see ourselves over and against something we don’t like or don’t approve of. It’s much easier to do that than to take the hard self-reflective road of working out who we are as unique human beings.

That needs soul-searching. That needs the hard honesty of being honest with ourselves, warts and all.

It’s a primitive reaction to find identity by defining who we and our group are and exclude others because they are different and therefore a threat.

What we are learning on the journey of the spirit is to find identity in who we are in ourselves and in relation to others – to other people and the whole world around us. Who I am sits alongside who you are and we’re no threat to each other. If we can get to that place, then there is no threat. There is no need for security, for walls of exclusion.

Some use the words of a text, definitely spirit-inspired in its wholeness and its insights, to decree what is right and wrong for two human beings loving each other. But if this text, the Bible, is God’s word, then we cannot use it to claim human certainty.  What’s good with God, only God knows.

I am OK because we are all OK. That’s the journey I’m on. I’ve discovered that my wellness, my security, is enhanced by that of others. I’m not put off by the fact that “others” includes a huge amount of people and things. Focus on what’s in front of you, and keep expanding the view as “we” thinking becomes more and more natural. It is always a work in progress, as long as there are some others, somewhere, who are not OK and something could be done to help.

Rangimārie Shalom Peace, Robyn

November 2016

Do you feel connected?

We've been talking a lot about making others welcome. It's at the heart of our mission as a parish and our vision for our new building.

What about this question: do we feel welcome?

I know what it is like to be in the midst of a group and feel a bit of an outsider. I get involved in groups that are not really my expertise but I'm keen to extend myself and contribute as much as I can. Often I have the question: do I belong here? Is anybody really interested that I'm here, or could they carry on fine without me? Do they care?

Even family can feel like this. Or church.

And then there's a word or a gesture that tells me I should stop fretting. And just get on with being who I am in the midst of these people. Make the people and the group the focus.

It's important to talk about this because, in relation to churches, I've found that most people feel this way, most if not all, sometimes at least. We all can feel outsiders and think everyone else is fine.

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.

Wendell Berry

There's something here that relates to the old saying that what you get out of things depends on what you put in. But it's not based so much on what we do, or what others do for us, but on being in the midst. Doing and active caring are important to a group – all the valuable things we can do, that some people are really good at, different people for different things. But they are not at the heart of belonging: being ourselves in relationship is; being, and valuing being with the others around us.

Hallelujah I/you belong! Stay well connected.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn

Water

E kore te wai, e kore te tangata.

If there's no water, human beings can't exist. The life we depend on can't exist. Water is not something we can manufacture for ourselves. Clean water is surely worth more than diamonds and rubies or all the gold in the world. As they say, it is a taonga.

In my mentioning of water, what issues come to mind for you?

The big one is surely managing water resources for the long term, in our regions in New Zealand and everywhere in the world. In some places the management has to cross national boundaries, and the potential for dispute is even greater than it has been over oil.

To irrigate or not to irrigate? Is irrigation a public health risk? Is this something that can be managed with science? Are we able, as local and regional communities, to agree on the fair use and distribution of water?

What can we afford to do? What can we afford not to do? That is, what will be the price of inaction?

Water is essential to individual life, across the range. With climate variability, and it seems that is only increasing, irrigation is a significant benefit and becomes essential in some situations to keep the garden alive, so to speak. Water is also a resource for producing energy, something it can do alongside feeding plants and animals of all kinds. New Zealand does well by international standards in this.

But clean water is a crucial issue too: the rivers we swam in as youngsters, the creeks that once fed all the families in the valley, the lake that didn't used to smell.

I take heart from the combined efforts of iwi hapu and local government which are slowly but surely having positive effects on the Waikato River and on the Rotorua Lakes. Things can be done. Co-operation. Talk it through together and find common ground; respect and affirm different views and realise it's a complex and interconnected task to move from unhealthy to healthy, from dead water to living water.

Funny how the language starts to sound spiritual. It is spiritual. The Spirit of God, the life-giver, is always involved when previously distrusting people with divergent views start acting together with the common purpose of well-being.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn

Earth Creature

One of the hidden treasures of the Bible lies in its first few chapters. Sadly the Western Church, European based in its thinking, has cast its own shadow over the Bible with a focus on intellect rather than wholeness, individuals rather than community, growth through progress rather than growth through belonging. Enlightenment, modernist eyes, have missed the insights that are truly biblical – human life lived in community and lived in strong connection with the earth from which we come.

I think therefore I am (or nowadays, I shop therefore I am!), that is the best summary of Western thinking. Individuals looking for freedom and autonomy. The Bible has therefore been read as a source of insights into our salvation as individuals, what goes wrong and how we, and God, can make it right.

But in truth at its heart is a richer message, and remember that the Bible as Jesus knew it was not the Bible as seen through Western eyes. If we want to hook up to the faith of Jesus, we need to look deeper into what the Bible actually says.

In the beginning...the foundation of our being human, indeed the foundation of all that exists actually existing, is a creator. That is, life is a gift and as Genesis tells it comes as wind and breath. Hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2) and breathing into what becomes the human creature (Genesis 2:7).

Every time I stand at a graveside, the spirit of those texts – the Hebrew meaning of them – is acutely present to me. Regularly I share it at the moment of lowering and I see faces turn and listen, I see hearts stirred, particularly among Māori, but not exclusively so. From my own heritage I found these Hebrew origins of the text finally help me make sense of this creation narrative, and find it relevant and powerful for life in our era.

Adam translates into English as “human being” (not “man” except in the now out-of-date sense of “embracing man and woman”). What's more, and this is the heart of it, Adam means earth creature.

The Lord God forms Adam from the dust of the adamah, which means the soil, specifically the nutrient-rich top soil.

That's who we are. Earth with life breathed into it. Earth creature who then, as the narrative continues, finds need for community with other humans, along this belonging with the earth and its other creatures.

So if you take delight pottering around with the soil, and if you find it strangely settles and refreshes you, don't be surprised. Indeed, whenever we feel that connection with world and creatures other than ourselves, and we find it restores us somehow, then we are simply being who we are.

Gifted life in community, with people and with the earth.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn