Posts from December 2024

Overwhelmed and Overjoyed Driving down Pages Rd, last week, on the way back home from Brighton beach, I was ‘ambushed by grief.” A wave of sadness suddenly swept up from my gut, squeezed my chest, gripped my throat and washed into my eyes. A bunch of precious people from my whanau are buried in the nearby Ruru Lawn Cemetery and one of them had come to visit me. It was my tuakana, my older brother Nick. We buried Nick just two…

Adelaide and I have been enjoying reading Pete Majendie’s memoirs together.  One of the chapters is called ‘Front Doors and Front Rooms.’  Pete’s Dad tells him that “if God ever wants to talk to you, He comes in the back door.”  Pete then asks the question, “like friends and neighbours?” He says, “I’ve never been in or out of any of my friends’ front doors.  All the indoor/outdoor flow is through the back door.  Brighton’s a back-door sort of place,…