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It is my day off so earlier today I drove out along the peninsula with a bag full of camera gear. I turned into the carpark at MacAndrew Bay, thinking that perhaps a leisurely coffee at a table overlooking the beach would be a good way to start taking photos but I had to swerve to avoid a great knot of ducks writhing its way across the tar seal. A young female, small and exhausted, was stuggling beneath a jostling mass of drakes, perhaps six or eight of them who were all striving to copulate with her. They grasped her and climbed on her, pushing each other aside, not fighting but careless in their single mindedness. I asked myself if I should intervene? Here was nature, red in tooth and claw, doing its normal everyday thing, and who am I to impose my anthropomorphistic disgust on a perfectly natural phenomenon? My inner struggle lasted about as long as it took to put the car in neutral and turn it off. I opened my door and approached them. They were so intent  that I got within ...

My lovely daughter in law announced on Facebook today some news that we have been party to for a little while now: she is pregnant again. Happy. Happy. Happy.  She and Nick are such excellent parents that it would be a pity if Naomi was the only person on the planet lucky enough to benefit. So August looks like a time to be visiting Sydney.  **** The Old Testament readings at the moment are about Joseph and his unfortunate choice of employers and even more unfortunate choice of brothers. It's been a while since I've read it. I'd forgotten how quaint a tale it is. Or how gripping. **** At the last General Synod, held in Waitangi, Carole Hughes presented some data about gender equality which I found surprising. The overwhelming majority of people who attend Anglican churches in New Zealand are women. About half of those ordained are women. But there are very few women on the  national committees which govern our church and none of those committees, save one, the ...

I woke early this morning and re read the first 5 chapters of Matthew's Gospel, particularly chapter 4 which details the beginning of Jesus ministry and the Beatitudes in Chapter 5. I did this because last night at dinner Archbishop Brown Turei based his synod address on the beatitudes. His korero was humble, wise, holy, gently humorous, strongly rooted in the Kingdom and deeply considered - a bit like Archbishop Brown himself. I was very moved by it, as I was by Phillip Richardson whose address this morning used the same passage. The day began with a Eucharist at 7 am, which was followed by a meeting over breakfast which lasted until synod met for its first business session at 8:15 am. After the usual necessary procedural motions we were addressed by Archbishop Phillip and then by the members of the Ma Whea Commission. For an hour the commissioners presented their report and explained its various sections. We then met to discuss it. Early in the discussion we divided into h...

There is a call in the Church for leadership. It is echoed everywhere, that we are failing for want of strong, firm, decisive leadership. Amongst all the clamour for leadership though, there is very seldom any sound of a question being asked: "what do we mean by leadership?" Judging by the way the request for leadership is usually addressed to me, it seems to mean, "why doesn't someone around here, ie you Kelvin, kick a few butts and get those bozos over there to do what I want them to do?" A suggestion that the others might conceivably have a valid point of view is, of course, wishy washy accommodationism (or cowardly reactionism, depending ) and the idea that I might put the boot on the the other foot and kick the butt of the questioner, outright apostasy. So, on May 25 we met at St. John's Roslyn to discuss marriage. The catalyst for the gathering had, of course been the issue of the ordination of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people and t...

This little memoir by Rachel Mann is not an easy read; but  not for the usual reasons. It is only 135 pages long and the author is poet in residence at Manchester cathedral so she knows how to handle words. She has lived a full, some may even say sensational, life so it is never dull. Her initial academic training was in philosophy but she doesn't tie her readers up in complex philosophical knots. I found it slow going because it engaged me so deeply that I had to pause every chapter or two to think about what she was telling me, and let it sit with me for a couple of days. Rachel Mann was born Nick Mann and this is the story of her journey across gender. It is also the story of her battles with debilitating, painful, life threatening disease. It is the story of her conversion to Christianity and of her call to priesthood in the Anglican Church. It is a raw, visceral piece of writing but despite the plethora of edgy material in her life history it never invites the prurient or...

image (c) to, I suppose the BBC. Don't nick it. Like most families, we have inviolable rituals for the spending of Christmas Day. There's a couple of church services, of course. There are particular foods to be eaten at their apportioned times, and the contents of crackers to be guffawed at; and once the food and the red wine and the effects of the past week have taken effect, there is, for me, a couple of hours asleep. There is a particular time for parcels to be unwrapped and a time honoured way of going about it. There is the ritual phoning and texting and skyping to be done, and then, finally there is the one thing that happens on the evening of every Christmas Day: the watching of something long and absorbing on an LCD screen. There are some rules about suitable content, of course. It must be British (or at a pinch, something directed by Peter Jackson or something Canadian). It must involve people dressed in costumes from another time and/or place. It must have believa...

Picture: Parsifal The High Mysterious Call by Willy Pogani, early 20th C Hungarian illustrator According to separation theory, the developmental task for men and women is very different. All of us begin inside the body of another human being. All are born utterly dependent on that other and unable to distinguish between our own being and hers. To become a self we must learn, first of all, to separate our own identity from that of our mother. We then gradually grow into our own self through the lifetime process Jung calls individuation. As we move through childhood to adulthood we follow different paths. A little girl attains womanhood by becoming a being that is progressively more and more like her mother. A little boy attains manhood by becoming a being that is progressively less and less like his mother. Here is the Genesis of the differing spiritual paths of men and women: for women, the path is towards unity, inclusiveness, forging community. For men it is towards individuality, ...