Beginning to believe
Power battle
It cannot have escaped the notice of your readers that every time the likes of Jonathan Young expound on the environmental futility and monumental strategic stupidity of the oil and gas decision, we are treated to an epistle by Colin Bell extoling the virtues of wind turbines and solar arrays.
In his latest diatribe on this subject Colin dodges the reality of an explosion in utility costs once gas runs out, and assures us that when ‘‘the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine’’, hydro storage will save the day by providing firm back up.
For his edification, our current hydro storage is a national disgrace – being measured in weeks, rather than Norway’s two years.
Hasn’t he heard of dry years, or wondered why there is a massive heap of imported coal outside Huntly Power station?
The gas storage facility at the depleted Ahuroa field holds 25 per cent more energy than is stored in all our hydro lakes combined.
Only the top few metres of a lake form workable storage – the 1000ft plus of water below might as well not be there.
My spies inform me that Colin is a retired structural engineer.
Rather than prattle on about energy – that he clearly doesn’t fully understand – could Colin please assist us all by commenting on a matter that falls firmly within the bounds of his professional expertise – and is well outside mine. To wit – my statement in this paper that in a moderate to severe earthquake the majority of NP residents would be safer sitting in the Yarrow’s West Stand than in their own homes.
John deBueger, New Plymouth
No need to apologise
Our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has taken the unprecedented step of apologising to the griefstricken family of the murdered British traveler, Grace Millane, on behalf of all New Zealanders. While it shows the Prime Minister as a very compassionate human being, the apology is unwarranted.
While many overseas visitors may picture this country as a safe holiday destination, they must be aware that serious crimes are committed here as they are everywhere else in the world. In fact, as the Daily News has pointed out ("Grace’s Death Joins A Sad List" TDN 11 December) a number of murders of tourists have occurred here in New Zealand. The deaths of young Swedish tourists Heidi Paakkonen and Sven Hoglin in 1989 sickened the public of that time and there have unfortunately been other brutal murders of tourists both before and since then.
New Zealanders as a whole have nothing to apologise for. There are dangerous delinquents in every society and it is preferable that our visitors from overseas should face reality. This is, relatively speaking, an orderly and pleasant country but, as is the case anywhere, they must recognize that there are deviants in every culture and that they must be on their guard exactly as they would be at home. None of the latter, of course, applies to the case of poor Grace Millane where the evidence is as yet unknown to the public.
Rob Sorley, New Plymouth
Big thanks to H¯awera
On behalf of our members I would like to say a big thank-you to the folk of Ha¯ wera and surrounding districts for their generosity during our food drive. Our shelves were quite bare and are now looking healthy again thanks to you all.
Our grateful thanks to the Scouts and all others who assisted, including the police, fire brigade, Ha¯ wera Intermediate, Fonterra, Farmlands, TSB Bank and Warehouse Stationary. Your time given was most appreciated.
It is very encouraging to have such helpful folk in our town that are willing to give help to those less fortunate.
Mrs Hazel Robinson, Chairperson Ha¯ wera Foodbank
Media Council
There is a scene in a recently released movie where two young friends are invited to a concert by a famous singer, who they met by chance. In disbelief they hesitate at the open door of a limousine sent to collect them, before eventually deciding it would be crazy not to go.
They are taken to the airport to board a waiting plane. Once inside they shriek and hug each other with delight, eventually landing to be met by another limousine and taken to the concert venue.
Here they are greeted as celebrities and shepherded through a huge stadium to the edge of the stage.
The concert has already begun; however their rock-star friend sees them in the wings and walks off the stage to greet them, inviting one of the friends to sing with him.
She hesitates – hardly able to believe what he is asking her to do – and then moves out cautiously, beyond the curtain’s edge to where he’s already performing a song she’d given him when they met.
Their duet delights the huge audience; and any doubts which had her hesitating evaporate.
There is a theme – in this intensely moving scene – which also belongs to the current season of the church year when, in the life of another ordinary young woman, something unexpected and extraordinary happens.
Surprised by the expectation and adoration of strangers who arrive to see her first born, Mary begins to believe.
She’d had more than an inkling of what was to come when an angel came to her, even before she knew she was pregnant.
Yet the everyday aspects of life still need to happen, with travel to another town while she is heavily pregnant and with nowhere to stay when her time comes.
And then, within this everyday setting something out of the ordinary occurs: in one account it is the arrival of angel-visited shepherds; and in another the star-led magi, or wise men, travelling far from their homes in the East to worship her child.
This adoration and total delight in someone whose company we long for is what we are assured God feels for each of us.
Every day we are invited to be utterly loved and adored by our Creator and invited in turn to treasure and adore all other creatures.
Every day we are invited to be utterly loved and adored by our Creator and invited in turn to treasure and adore all other creatures.
Yet in times of rampant self-interest at the highest level and terrifying uncertainty, believers have often huddled in the comfort of their faithgroups, forgetting to watch out for that blessed Other who – like the unknown singer at the edge of the stage – is uncertain if she is welcome.
As people of faith, we are called to adore the Other because she or he is actually the Christ.
If we huddle together in fear, with our backs turned, we still have Scripture to assure us: ‘‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear’’
The way we respond to those who are Other than ourselves has been studied closely, for several decades, by a group of European philosophers known as the Poststructuralists.
Amongst the most eminent of these thinkers was Jacques Derrida, who visited Auckland in 1999 where he was welcomed at a marae.
Once the formalities of welcome were over, Derrida stood up to speak but was so overcome by emotion that he wept; eventually explaining that he’d spent his whole career studying hospitality, but had never before encountered it as he had in that marae welcome.
Indigenous cultures around the globe all have distinctive rituals of welcome.
For example, there is an ancient poem or rune attributed to St Columba, from the time when Irish missionaries brought the Gospel of Jesus to the tribes of Scotland which says: ‘‘I met a Stranger yestereen; I put food in the eating place, drink in the drinking place, music in the listening place. And in the name of the Triune God the stranger blessed me, my cattle and my dear ones. And the lark sang: ‘Often, often comes the Christ in the Stranger’s guise’.’’
We all have indigenous roots somewhere. However, for those of us whose ancestral bones lie in the Northern Hemisphere, great distances of space and time now separate us from the hospitable ways of our ancestors.
Yet we recognise the spirit of hospitality in all Pacific cultures. Surely the celebrated Jacques Derrida is not the only European who has wept at their first encounter with the living rituals of welcome, for which the indigenous people of this land are rightly famous.
May this Christmas season bring the extraordinary promise of the angels heralding Jesus’ birth into our ordinary lives: ‘‘Kororia ki Te Atua i runga rawa, maungarongo ki Te Whenua, whakaaro pai ki Nga Tangata Katoa / Glory to God in the highest, peace on Earth, goodwill to all people.’’