musings

Gravestones and New Stories  In a development that should come as a surprise to no one, I finally received my ADHD diagnosis last week. The path to this result has been a lengthy, convoluted process that appears specifically designed to filter out the very people it seeks to assist. I would argue that one look at the interior of my car, or any first-hand experience of school mornings in my household ought to suffice as diagnostic material.  My first response…

Wasting Time with God   A few weeks ago I packed up some panniers, jumped on my bike, and rode off for a three- day personal retreat. It was a mix of ‘active’ resting, journalling, sleeping and amateur attempts at contemplative prayer. My primary objective throughout the retreat was to ‘be present to the present.’  To keep gently drawing myself back to each moment and simply, slowly pay attention to who and what was there.  I hoped the slow down and refocus…

A few weeks back our whanau got to experience a river swim in the Waihopai River, while visiting family at the Top of the South.  We had been hopeful of a river swim earlier in the day when we’d packed our picnic lunch and togs in expectation.  Our picnic spot was idyllic, but when we went in search of the river, we found that it had dried up to a trickle!  Not only that, we saw a dead possum sitting…

Fences and Bridges  I found a large pile of railings, palings and posts, stacked on my front lawn when I got home yesterday. Fortunately, I was expecting it. My three neighbours and I have agreed to work together and build a new boundary fence. It needed to happen. The old one was rotten and falling apart. None of us professes to be particularly handy on the tools, however we’re doing the job ourselves to save money. We will soon discover whether…

This is one of my favourite quotes and I have had the immense privilege of seeing it lived out over the summer holidays. We stayed in Kaiteriteri again with a number of families from Ilam. I also had some of my wider family staying as well. They were overwhelmed by the generosity and community that they saw and experienced. From bike rides and playing games at the beach to sharing supper and chatting in the evenings. For board games, walks…

Reflections and ResolutionsI find there is something really nice about the fresh start that New Years can bring. Yes, technically it is just an arbitrary date no different from the day before or the day after. But to me with everything wrapping up for Christmas, my birthday in early January and my siblings heading back to school and leaving for tertiary study later on in February, it definitely feels like a time of change.  Over the last few years I…

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,…

Ramblings of an Old Dog. There is a big old Saint Bernard dog at Hotel Dezor, in the village of Kaza, in the Spiti Valley, India. This canine warrior, however, is a bit of a sad and sorry sight. He stands tall among his street dog mates, but his fur is bedraggled, his two rear feet are bandaged, and he limps slowly and painfully around the hotel and surrounding streets. Karan, the hotel owner, looks after him. He feeds him well,…

Around the end of September, I came down with a nasty throat infection that was confirmed to be Glandular Fever/Mono after a blood test. The doctor told me that by age 35 most New Zealanders have had Mono without even realising it because of a lack of symptoms. Apparently, it only gets you if you are a bit run down already (lucky me!).  This has meant two months of forced slowing down, more sleeping, not going out, university extensions, boredom,…