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Today was the day; one of those rare days when Dunedin is the most beautiful city on the planet: green hills; the harbour like glass; deep blue sky with the sun perpetually low so it always feels like 9:00 am; crisp and warm and still and clear all at the same time. Then, the same carpark,the same waiting room with the same magazines, the same gown, the same shorts that fall down unless you hold them up with one hand. A different machine this time though. This one was spectacularly high tech. I was shown down a corridor and into rooms with no windows. One room had a curved desk and banks of monitors: big, flat screen, sharp looking monitors, two displaying a movie of the bench where I would soon be lying, one with a very high definition x ray photo of a pelvis, maybe mine, and another couple with columns of incomprehensible but important looking gobbledegook. Then, just down the hallway was the room with the bench itself and a machine that looked like it meant business. It was cov

I am indebted to  This Fine Blog  for the following “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus,” by C.S. Lewis And beyond this there lies in the ocean, turned towards the west and north, the island of Niatirb which Hecataeus indeed declares to be the same size and shape as Sicily, but it is larger, though in calling it triangular a man would not miss the mark. It is densely inhabited by men who wear clothes not very different from the other barbarians who occupy the north western parts of Europe though they do not agree with them in language. These islanders, surpassing all the men of whom we know in patience and endurance, use the following customs. In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call   Exmas   and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in t

Copyright unknown It's nearly Christmas. Time for clergy persons everywhere to whine, bitch and moan about the unceasing commercialisation of Christmas. Well, what do we expect? We hijack the Saturnalia and complain when the old pagan festival brushes off its Christian veneer and reverts to form? Get over it. However, being a clergyman and being rather partial to the odd spot of whining bitching and moaning, there is one thing I'd like to wb&m about. The holiday season offers, yet again, an insight into what I call the Social Credit syndrome. For the information of those of you unfortunate enough not be New Zealanders, and to remind those of you who really should remember your political history a little better (see, I'm in a hectoring mood) the Social Credit Political League was a political party that flourished in our fair country from the 1930s to about the 1990s. And by flourished I mean sputtered along, fueled by the enthusiasm of those who accepted its somewhat p

I have been practising meditation on and off, mostly off, for a long time now. It's got a bit more serious of late. When I talk about meditation on this blog, I am not pretending to teach. I'm sharing where I'm up to, that's all. Let me repeat that: this, or anything else on here should not be construed as instruction. If you want to learn to meditate, find a teacher, a real live one, who will talk to you. Join a group. At the very least get a reliable book and/or CD in which someone will guide you through the basics in real time. I'm not some self styled new age guru with a 3 day meditation course behind him who is going to charge a bucket full of dosh for some half baked information. Mind you, if you do find my half baked info useful, the buckets of dosh can be delivered to me personally, bank transfer or cash preferred but all major credit cards accepted Instructions to meditate usually begin with the simple invitation: Take your seat. It sounds innocuous eno

Let me explain my previous post . I wrote that little story some time ago as a piece of practice writing. Before writing, I set myself some parameters. The piece must: *be exactly 1000 words long; *Contain a discovery that leads to conflict; *Mention 7 objects that all start with 'S' - sleeping bag, soap, sack, satin ribbon, stove, saucepan and soup; *Have a question in every piece of dialogue; *Mention every colour of the rainbow plus black and white, once and only once. This story did not aim to be a great piece of literature; it did not even try to be a particularly good story. It was an exercise, which aimed to make me more aware of my own writing: to help me to be more controlled and precise in my use of words, more inventive with my vocabulary, more aware of structure and the limitations structure must impose on writing. As an exercise, it worked; it worked because other, more serious pieces I wrote after the exercise were much more soundly constructed. This exercise was

A silence as deep and thick and dense as the blanketing snow settled on the tent. The storm was gone now and with it, most of their hope. They had struggled on for a mile or two in the wind, unable to see as the snow wrapped round them, like kelp around stricken divers, until, with no chance of making the supply depot, they had pitched the tent in the white darkness and struggled inside it. The wind had picked up the sled and slammed it into Myers as he crawled through the tiny door, knocking him sideways and breaking a rib with a snap, which sounded above the howl of the storm. All through the night the wind beat and shook the straining canvas, surrounding them in noise that subsided gradually until the indigo stillness told them that they, their tent, sled and all the supplies were feet deep in the silent snow. In their condition, the chances of finding anything under such a layer were negligible unless they could regain some measure of strength. “Did you manage to save any food?” as

I'm sitting here enjoying a delicious glass of bok choi juice and this sentence contains two absolute lies. Or at least, one absolute lie and one debatable opinion. I'm sure you can figure which is which. In a comment to a post a couple of weeks back, Alden asked me for my opinion on an opinion of John Hick's. To wit, and why anybody in the 21st century except an owl would use the term to wit is beyond me, there is a constantly recurring description in the mystical writings of all the great faiths that the mystical experience is of oneness with God (or Brahman, or the Buddha mind, or Atman or The One or whatever....). The experience is that of a drop of water sliding into the vast ocean and being one with the ocean. John Hick's opinion is that this is a metaphor for an experience beyond words, and is not absolutely true. After all, the mystic is now sitting at a desk somewhere, quill in holy hand, remembering and writing about the memory. Individual identity has obvi

Sooner or later everyone with cancer gets this book recommended to them. My daughter Bridget gave me a copy and last week I read it. It's an easy read, and for this sort of thing (ghost written sportsman type book) it's surprisingly well written. Take a bow Sally Jenkins. Lance Armstrong is a remarkable human being. In 1996, while he was world cycling champion he was diagnosed with a particularly nasty cancer. He had testicular cancer -a complaint usually found only in young men - which had metastasized to his lungs and brain. Men with this diagnosis seldom live. He went through a most horrific regime of chemotherapy which laid his body to waste and devastated him emotionally and spiritually. He recovered. In 1999 he won the Tour De France, generally regarded as the world's most grueling sporting event. He won it again every year until 2005 marking him as one of the world's greatest sportsmen in any discipline, ever. The book is an inspiring read all right. If he can r

This powerful little film begins with a widowed university lecturer, Walter Vale,living in Connecticut and sleepwalking through his safe and comfortable life. The lights have gone out for him: he takes no risks, he is alone and seemingly half asleep. He wears a tie and clutches an anaesthetising glass of red wine He recycles old lecture notes, is not engaged with students and makes half hearted attempts at learning the piano in an effort to hold onto something of his deceased pianist wife. Reluctantly he goes to New York to present a paper and finds that unbeknown to him, his fusty Manhattan apartment has been illegally rented to Tarek, a Syrian drummer and his Senegalese girlfriend Zainab. In a moment of uncharacteristic compassion Walter allows the couple to stay for a few days and his life is never the same again. Of course it is all a little predictable, or it could have been had not the direction and writing (both by Thomas McCarthy) been so beautifully crafted.Walter is capti

The good thing about going to Hospital outpatients is that you get a parking permit for the hospital carpark. It saves $2! Woohoo! Who would NOT have cancer when you can get deals like that? I got my $2 worth yesterday. I was there at 8:00 am bright eyed and bushy tailed, well maybe bushy is not the word. There's details about bowel preparation I will spare you. I changed into one of those hospital gowns that someone has spent an entire post graduate design degree on getting to look as unflattering and to fasten as puzzlingly as possible. Then, with my human clothes in a plastic bag, I went into the waiting room. A waiting room is a waiting room is a waiting room. They all have a look about them: neat rows of chairs bought from a catalogue; cheery posters on the walls advising you in 3 languages to get a mole map done; and magazines. Piles of magazines. I read the only two copies of Classic Car in the heap and then reflected that there were 33 more visits to go and only Women&#

What is it with this sudden Cohen revival going on in our household? I went to bed last night and Clemency was sitting up under the covers with 40 year old sheet music scattered all around her, going over the tablature for Suzanne and The Stranger . I only have to play a few bars of Hallelujah ( any version will do, but Jeff Buckley works best ) and she's speechless - drifting around the room with a dreamy look on her face. It's very handy, but also puzzling in a woman whose usual taste runs to Teleman Beethoven and Rachmaninov. Why is it that I woke this morning with a burning desire to listen to Rufus Wainwright singing Chelsea Hotel ? Why is it that since about 5 I have been awake with the song - well, actually, not the song, but one line from the song - running through my brain? It happens doesn't it? A catchy phrase or a haunting bit of melody gets stuck in the gray matter like a piece of gristle between the teeth and no amount of mental licking and pushing can dislo

A couple of people have questioned me privately about the Leonard Cohen song The Traitor , and about Cohen's comments on the song, "[The Traitor is about] the feeling we have of betraying some mission we were mandated to fulfill and being unable to fulfill it; then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it; and the real courage is to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you find yourself". What on earth does he mean, and why am I so excited about it? For the latter, check with my psychiatrist. For the former, my take on the song is this: The Traitor is another of those instances, as in The Partisan , where Leonard Cohen uses a military metaphor to speak of life in general and human love in particular. Many of us hold high ideals: some great quest or other that we pursue. These are often laudable things: finding true love, finding the absolute love of God, becoming enlightened, spreading the Gospel, writing the great novel or some such

AAhhh.. the early seventies. Bell bottomed cords and paisley. Going to the Victoria Coffee lounge where they served Nescafe in earthenware cups and lit the place with candles jammed into the necks of old wine bottles. Sitting around til dawn having D&Ms. And the soundtrack to it all was Leonard Cohen . His dark eyes glowered soulfully out from the cover of Songs Of Leonard Cohen propped against the side of the sofa as the needle cracked and popped its way across the LP: Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river, you can hear the boats go by you can spend the night beside her ... I wish. I haven't listened to him in years. He caught absolutely the angst and self absorption of early adulthood; he gave it all meaning and set it in a bigger context. The last album I bought was Death Of A Ladies' Man , and then I sort of lost track of him. I'd found another even bigger context. But a couple of weeks ago I was given a DVD called I'm Your Man , a film ce

It's not easy to establish a meditation practice if you are a Christian because there is no easily visible meditative tradition in most of the Church and even if someone becomes interested in meditation, where do they go to learn about it? You won't find a notice for Thursday's meditation class on many parish noticeboards. You won't find many teachers of meditation listed in the Diocesan phonebook. Books like Anthony De Mello's  Sadhana  or Morton Kelsey's  The Other Side Of Silence  can give pretty reliable information and instruction but does your local Christian bookshop stock them? Don't count on it. Sure, we know there are monks and nuns somewhere who probably meditate but mostly we hardly even know what the word means.  Sometimes we use the word to denote deep thought, particularly if that thought consists of pondering the meaning of tricky Bible verses. Sometimes we use it as a synonym for a short sermon. Sometimes we refer to it by kinder, more accep

For two weeks now I've been trying to stick to Ian Gawler's Healing Diet, and, I have got to say, more or less succeeding. It's a lot of bother. There are six glasses of juice to be made and swallowed daily, and apart from the one made of fruit, they aren't the sorts of things you'd swallow for the fun of it. There are three vegetarian - well vegan, really - meals to be made in a day, which has meant a radical revamp of the fridge freezer and pantry. Because the whole day's menu has a carefully planned balance, I've been sticking to the recipes, which is not the way I normally cook. I'm more of a lets get the vibe of this dish and amend it as we go sort of cook, but this way has taught me a lot of new ways of combining food which would be worth repeating even if you didn't have a bigger agenda for the meal. It's been easy doing without meat - I haven't missed it for a second. It's been easy doing without the processed flour and sugar and

A rough, unscientific rule of thumb I have used in running churches over the past 30 years has been the distinction between sources of satisfaction and sources of dissatisfaction. That is, the things that make people happy and pleased to be here and the things that tick them off. Fairly early, the penny dropped for me that they are not usually that same thing. If you remove the sources of dissatisfaction you won't make people any more satisfied. In a church, the things that make people dissatisfied are things like heaters that don't work or a buzz in the sound system; or the Vicar's annoyingly drony voice or the fact that whoever chooses the hymns around here has the taste of a blowfly maggot. Sources of dissatisfaction are easily identified - people let you know about them early and often. Sources of satisfaction are harder to idenify. They are more subtle, deeper and often unconscious. People don't talk about them much and tend to take them for granted. They are

Copyright 2008 New Zealand National Party Our new prime minister will be sworn in next week, so I am told, and despite myself I find I am beginning to respect the guy. He's moved a lot faster than politicians normally do in setting up his government. He's shrewdly got the Maori Party on board, hitting three birds with one stone: extending his somewhat slim majority; alleviating some of the public apprehension about the ACT party having their rabid fangs in the treasury's leg; and setting himself up nicely for a broad electoral appeal in 2011. Very neatly done. I respect that. But do I trust him? I don't know yet. I am dreading a return of the new right policies of the 1980s and 1990s which did such damage to so many layers of our social fabric and suspect that under his neatly brushed pate he has only three basic ideas: privatisation, privatisation and privatisation. We had the lowest voter turnout for years. Perhaps the election was such a foregone conclusion that peop

We went and saw the urologist again on Friday. He discussed options for further treatment. He outlined the probable side effects of radiotherapy and then said, "Most of these side effects will happen in about ten years, so, of course, they aren't going to be an issue for you. " It was double take, knock me down with a feather, go back a sentence or two if you don't mind time. He's a very frank, matter of fact sort of guy. He spends his days from morning til night dealing almost exclusively with men who have prostate cancer. He knows my profile. He knows the odds. He was telling me the truth as he saw it. This was 8:30 in the morning, and I spent the rest of the day in a sobre sort of way. I did some internet research and was even more sobred. I emailed and texted my family and friends. And I got on, as best I could, with preparations for our parish fair and with the other things that would normally have happened on a Friday. Life was suddenly very rich and real an

The most popular page on our website by far is Alan Firth's The Beginner's Guide To The Anglican Church . This brief informative little piece is linked to by 35 other parish websites in a number of countries. For the last couple of years it has been read about a thousand times a month. The feedback we receive about it is generally very positive, but last week we had an email from a reader who called us confidence tricksters for publishing such a thing. What struck me about the email wasn't the content of what was said but the tone. It was filled with fear and anger. Fear and anger are of course closely related. Anger is a threat response. We get angry when we are threatened with a loss of some sort. The loss might be real or imaginary. It might derive from something in the world around us or the inner world of our conscious or unconscious psyche. The loss might be to us personally, or to something or someone we care deeply about. An angry response may or may not be an appro

Young at Heart : A film by Stephen Walker. Go and see it.

On Koekohe Beach, just north of the small hamlet of Moeraki, there are a few dozen large, perfectly spherical boulders scattered along the tide line: the Moeraki Boulders . Tourists on the road between Christchurch and Dunedin stop for a while to stand around and on them and to take photographs. I drove up there today and took a few snaps myself. The boulders are unusual but not unique. There are several other sites in New Zealand where similar rocks occur, and, so I have read, they are found in other parts of the world. They are not always found at the seaside, and Moeraki boulders are sometimes unearthed   several kilometres inland. They have been fairly extensively examined and the process by which they were formed is no great mystery, although their uniformity and large size has meant that over the years legends have accreted around them, in much the same way that calcium and carbonates accreted around some core to form the boulders themselves, millions of years ago. One of

Last time I posted, I said Middlemarch is the greatest English novel of the Victorian era. Katherine replied, and said on the strength of that recommendation she'd gone and bought it. Wow! Power! Who'd have thought it? It's an anxiety making thing, being taken notice of like that. Well, it's a great book, and if she's the sort of person who can settle into the century old language, and can handle big ideas cropping up on every second page, she'll absolutely love it.  It's big, rich, intelligent; a work filled with great characters and an intriguing plot. But, even so,  what a thing to say - the greatest novel. In whose opinion, exactly? Mine that's all. Oh yes, and the guy who wrote the lead review at Amazon.com . And a few others. Read on Katherine, I'd love to know what you think. Novels are a form of entertainment but they are so much more than that. Novels and films are the two principal ways in which our society deals with ideas. Philosophers a