Posts from 2025

I like to think that God often speaks to me in the voice of Sarah Bessey, and this week has been no different. This blessing is inspired by the story of the bleeding woman who seeks out Jesus in desperation, having spent all she has in search of a cure. I imagine her wrestling with herself as she pushes her way through the crowds. Perhaps she feels in those moments all the pain of past rejection, and fears that He, too,…

Recognising Our PovertyI was speaking with a patient at hospital this week who was talking about being in a 12 Step programme. We were reflecting on the first step which was recognising our powerlessness over the thing that has us locked in addiction. As I was thinking about this conversation later, I connected it to a quote I had read in the book, ‘Blessed are the Others’ by Andrew DeCort in which he leads readers in reflections based around the…

Shout Out to the Mums.  ‘Mum, muum, muuum. I did it. I did it.’ My three-year-old grandsom Jonty barreled across the room, held up his partly built lego tractor and proudly thrust it in front of his mum. Beth stopped peeling the carrots she was prepping for dinner. She crouched down on weary legs, took the emerging toy in hand, and carefully examined it. “Wow Jonty, that’s amazing. You’re so clever.” She smiled at him, tussled his hair, and gave…

Most of my family find it funny that I keep losing my belongings. They laugh or roll their eyes when I ask them if I have seen my favourite grey (100 percent merino) jumper.[1] Except Mum, who brings up that she can’t find hers either. I feel like I am slowly losing my marbles. Metaphorical ones. I probably lost the real ones when I was younger. I have been busy wondering and worrying whether I will be able to get the…

Blessed are you when you have a sinus infection and are curled up on the couch in the sun with the cat on your knee…I wasn’t feeling much like reading so I ended up listening to an audiobook about the Beatitudes called The Ninefold Path of Jesus, by Mark Scandrette.  There was something relaxing and almost comforting about tuning in to the slightly robotic voice and being ‘read to’.  But the messages from the book are quite challenging and counter-cultural: “Instead of…

A Walk in the RainI really enjoy walking in our city’s green spaces. In our local neighbourhood we are fortunate to have places like the stunning Halswell Quarry and also Te Kuru, a vast wetland and stormwater basin to wander through. In Ilam, near the church office, we have the beautiful Ilam Homestead Gardens and the magnificent Riccarton Bush. Several times a week I head out for a stroll through these urban breathing rooms. The rhythm of footfall often moves…

The Daily Practice of Incarnation“Kinship and kingdom are the same thing … God’s dream is that we find kinship and connection.” (Father Gregory Boyle) Over the past weeks I have been reading Barbara Taylor Brown’s book An Altar in the World, in which she writes about ‘the daily practice of incarnation’ – a life of embodied faith that recognizes the importance of the body in God’s revelation to us. Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples the night before he died did not comprise a…

On the barstool on Sunday I spoke a little about going on the 5 night silent retreat a few weeks ago. I wanted to tell you a little more about it. Lake Coleridge Village is a beautiful place in autumn. It is on the Te Araroa trail and the trail runs right through the property we stayed on. It is called Powerhouse Lodge. It was the single persons living quarters when the power station was built. The person who was…

Weave Your Own Web “For one particular research project, my colleagues and I at Fuller Youth Institute conducted long-form interviews with a number of families who had been nominated by their faith communities as exemplars.  We asked pastors to nominate families based not on whether the kids “turned out right,” whatever that might mean, but whether the families stayed faithful through the normal challenges of life, even as kids made mistakes and didn’t unfailingly comply with their parents’ wishes.  They were…

What’s in a Word?A colleague of mine once said to me, “words are like freight trains, they come loaded with meaning.” Those meanings, as you may have observed, are often quite different for each of us. They awaken diverse worlds within us.Last Sunday we spent time considering the images and ideas we each associate with the word “God.” We chatted with one another, wrote down our thoughts and placed them into two flax kete. Rachelle gathered them up and later,…

Last Sunday Catherine Fink spoke on barstool. She was reflecting on our journey exploring LGBTQAI+ inclusion and affirmation as a church community. She recognised the importance of this journey but also celebrated that Ilam is so much more than this one conversation. I wrote down some of the things she spoke about and added a few more that have come to me as I’ve thought about it. As Catherine said it is so important to recognise and celebrate our diversity…

This week I stumbled across a Netflix documentary called ‘Stories of a Generation with Pope Francis’.  At the beginning, Pope Francis says “for me, today , it is important for the future of humanity that the young talk to the old.”  The film was taken over the course of a year, and young filmmakers (under 30) interviewed and filmed people over 70 from across the globe, listening to their life stories.  There are stories from a variety of people, including…