Colourful Dreamer

I have been a Hurricanes (regional professional rugby team) supporter from the beginning. So often they have promised so much. And this year they are delivering. Not pretty rugby. Still that vaunted backline has not ripped opposition apart. And yet, winning rugby. Just over a week ago they beat the NSW team in Sydney to win a home semi final, they first in our history. Then on Friday night they won again!! Our first final. Most people have not expected that. Some had dared to hope. And now. i do not dare to hope. I have confidence. This is a winning hurricanes side. And even if they loose,which I am sure they will not, they have done us the supporter proud. My only sadness was I was not there on Friday night. If they had ended up with the home final, I would have done my best to get down and be there for that. O what a night it was on Friday O what a night it will be on Saturday. Go the Canes!!!!!

We had a conference call at 1pm New york time. I thougth that meant 6am here, but no, it was 5am. So I wsn';t even awake! Not a good way to start a conference call. But things are moving on our gathering of youth officers and young adults next year. September 2-9 or there abouts. All we need is US$90,000. any ideas? Our website should be up done too, adn the newsletter out, which will be great

Youth Yeah continues!! Collects written by young people from across Aotearoa-New Zealand and Polynesia are still available at http://www.toru.org.nz/page.asp?PID=6 These are an excellent resource for use on sundays, and to pray in all sorts of settings, inclidng youth groups settings. Comments on them are very welcome

Emerging church stuff is slowly getting on the agenda of the Anglican Church here. slowly. people are talking about it. Some people are even doing study leave on it. People are wanting to do some new things. We just don't seem to know what to do. We need people from outside our square who have a toe or foot in our tradition who can be given permission and resources to do some new things and try new ways of mission and being church. The resources are the problem. so much energy and moeny is spent keeping what we have going. When we have an opporutnity to be freative we get sidetraccked into issues of amkign sure we all get our fair share. We don't think whole church, or even whole tikanga. We retreat into our own littel box!! it is so frustrating!! Mostly I think we need good anglican youth workers to be liberated into soemthing new. One day soon it will happen. anywho, here is a seminar that might jog us along a bit, or might not.

In January we (the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia) held our three tikanga youth event in Gisborne. it was another huge learning curve for many of the Pakeha young people. It was a great event hosted and run by Tikanga Maori. I am grateful for the effort put in by te tangata whenua. The meeting or hui did not end well. Tikanga Maori offered to co-host teh enxt tye with us, tikanga Pakeha. For a number of reasons, despite my wanting to do it, we were unable to accept this offer. Why am I writing this now? Because this raised for me how important and yet so often unnoticed is the tikanga rua relationship between Maori and Pakeha. Somehow we have not paid this the attention we have needeed. This is a big issue for our church, for those in youth ministry, and for our country. Since TYE, this issue has kept on surfacing in nearly every other issue and meetign I have been at in our church. yet half the time it goes unnoticed. Soemhow we need withing tikagna pakeha to k...

Gremio are football champions of South Brazil!!! And tomorrow night, the hurricanes play for glory. Go the Canes!

I have just spent the last week in Christchurch at our General Synod. This is like the parliament of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. You can find out more from a youth perspective on the above link, The two big things for me was the role young people have played here, and the election of three primates (chief bishops). The bishops decision is interesting. Some might see it as splitting our church further apart, and it might. But the hope is that the three will work closely together, and so remove the tension around who is the primate (from which Tikanga they come from) and allow us to get over some of those tensions and work closely together. And it is a recognition that it is very hard for a person from one Tikanga to offer appropriate leadership in the cultural settings of the other tikanga. So Archbishop Brown Turei (te Pihopa o Aotearoa) was able to speak to the reunion of the Maori Battalion in a way that no Pakeha could. And yet Archbishop Brown might ...

Check out the new Toru website. Toru is the Anglican Centre for Youth Ministry Studies based at our Theological College here in auckland New Zealand.

I have been doing a course on the pastoral function of christian doctrine this year, which has been fantastic. I have just finished an assignment on Julian of Norwich and how her theology applies to spiritual direction. Fascinating stuff. strangely enough, I am now a great fan of Augustine of Hippo, and Athanasius is wonderful. anyhow, here is a wee quote from Julian to encourage us as we head of to our General Synod. “And in this she showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying on the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball, I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought, “What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.”In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it; the s...