Space to rest...

We journeyed north and ithroiugh from Greymouth over through beautiful valleys and then over Takaka Hill to Golden Bay up in the north of this South Island. It was the part of journey that signalled less exploration and more rest. It was everything we needed after the year past. Sea was warm, beaches that were full of space and well don't these views say it all. How blessed we are! What a beautiful space to rest.




Here is where Abel TAsman touched down at Ligar Bay.


Being on the edge of Abel Tasman NAtional Park we entered at our nearest end and doid a short walk to Taupo Point. We only got so far as the tide wasn't fully out. However there was a less coastal route, so I on behalf of the others set off up the steep cliff through the bush amongst the cicadas sounding loudly and the steamy heat. At the top I came out and saw this....


I truly felt like an explorer as I saw it for the first time. It made me stop a while, before heading back down.

So spaces to rest... this coming week when so much of church seems to be abuzz with doing and activity that drains and demands of people, it is my hope that our Lenten journey on Highgate will begin for us the practice of hospitality, that can only truly begin to happen genuinely, if there is a restfulness to it, but also space to get restless as a result of the rest is needed. Hence, I have put out a simple journal that will go out for the next few weeks based on a few psalms. Following all the changes we've undergone to pursue mission, I feel we need to create spaces to rest and the mutual building of one another up in faith.

Explorations - Into the west

Into the west and through the immensity of the Haast Pass around us on either side, waterfalls gushing amongst the dense forest.



Then the west coast a curious mixture of lengthy, wild grey beaches strewn with driftwood logs and them vast areas over hills of native tree forest/bush.


I picked a small driftwood piece and felt the smoothness that had been given it by the pounding sea. In the immensity of the beach there was a moment to find some quiet. All this newness was stimulating to all the senses. As we traveled it didn’t seem to matter where we were placed or rooted, I felt so caught up in the thrill of exploring and sesing each new place we encountered, even what we might say seemed like the middle of ‘no where’.

A visit up the the Fox Galcier saw us pass signs giving dates of when it was at point x or y and now the distance cvovered to the face of it. To simply look up and see the carved rocks that were huge edifaces, somewaht cathedral like rising sheer upwards... it was overwhelming.



Children need ‘wild’ places. Perhaps we all recovered a sense of that and enjoyed it. No longer did being in a ‘strange’ new land feel as overwhelming. Children in the way they roam break the boundaries between themselves and the world in which they move, no matter their space they are in… imagination helps create this as they can make the place their own for that time. Into the west had a sense of this, as well as a curious mix of intimacy and immensity.

Preparing for Ecclesiastes tomorrow in church, it strikes me that Qoheleth somewhat soberingly makes a call to gather the people and seeks to rid them of illusion, falsehood, fraud and sentimentality, holding up a mirror and more perhaps to enable the people to engage faith with reality, in a very disillusioned context. In the face of those who offer a chummy God who is rather banal /reduced, and hence people's faith is more a quiet resignation. Qoheleth voices a more robust faith affirming the holiness, the awesomness the other-ness of the God of Israel who is the centre of everything we are, we have and we do without such a faith God's care, love, joy - God's YES to us and our 'yes' response are empty, vanity, illusion, fraud, or as Zimmerman says is 'flatulence'. How do we see God today? Can we live with what for us may feel like paradox, a God who is 'other' and evokes awesome fear and intimacy as we know and experience it in Christ ?

Gaston Bachelard in Poetics of Space philosophically explores intimate experiences of place. In Chpt 5 on shells (pp105-135) he aims to open up an understanding of ‘intimacy and immensity’.
‘To imagine living in a seashell, to live withdrawn into one’s shell, is to accept solitude – and to embrace, even momentarily, the whole concept and tradition of miniature, in shrinking enough to be contained in something as tiny as a seashell…’ (Foreword o the 1984 edition p. viii)

Psalm 91 v2 'Say this:' God, you are my refuge, I trust in you and I am safe.'

Explorations of Place

One of the exciting things on our trip was not that we covered some 2000+Km’s was the way in which it has helped place us here in New Zealand. Each step of the way provided so much visual stimulation among others as we ‘explored’.
In the end it has given us an even better sense of place beyond Dunedin. It was interesting to move from reading lines and names on a map to actually see these places and continue to have even beyond photographs very vivid images still in my minds eye of places, landscapes we simply passed through. Our sense of place is clearly interactive. As a result of our journey I want to reflect a little bit about this.

Central Otago took us up into high-land and mountain country filled with orchards, vineyards and sheep stations. Here we knew some parts having journey that length before. We me family there and they go each year to the same farm cottage. It was clearly a place that they valued and it was good to share in it together.
The mountains and ranges never fail to impress. It’s when you read the old stories of settlers and life in this environment it makes you wonder. I note the big blue skies above them and how small it makes me feel in this grand stage…



Central otago

Lake Wanaka (on approach to Haast Pass)

I ask myself – what kind of place was it for me? What do I value about it? Perhaps further, what relationship do I have with the place now?

What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Psalm 8 v3