Thursday, June 13, 2013

Gone - no address?


With my recent history of a rapidly rising PSA, it was hardly surprising that my namesake from Canada sent an email enquiring after my health.

Well, thanks, David, and others who wondered, I’m still in the land of the living. The fact is that a blog of this kind, commenced in times of relative leisure during a series of major surgeries, and no particular responsibilities in the local church, was easy to start. But in times of much better general fitness and huge challenges in the life of our little congregation, it has been much harder to maintain.

Our parish has had most of a year with the new combined Parish Council and Ministry Team. It is a huge improvement on two or even three separate little organisations. The six of us are working well and enjoying the experience, but finding our time pretty fully occupied.

And in the last three months we have been through the horrendous business of closing the Methodist church at Russell. Services ceased last year but we waited for the centenary in late April for the closing. It was a bittersweet occasion. We had a packed church with great singing and enthusiastic participation in a much appreciated special liturgy. The President of the Methodist Church of New Zealand, Rex Nathan offered a timely address that contributed to a memorable occasion. Upwards of 100 remained for an excellent fellowship lunch.

I was heavily involved in preparing for the event and then, immediately afterwards, in writing the property’s history, to be forwarded with our urgent application to sell. This “Land Story” is required by Methodism for all property transactions, to ensure that the land was not alienated from Maori ownership under oppressive circumstances.

Talented researchers in Auckland and Wellington found that the original sale took place as early as 1829, 11 years before the Treaty of Waitangi. And, in a period from which few written records have survived, they were able to find the names of the six original Maori who signed over the land. The price didn’t sound much by today’s standards, but Land Courts over the next thirty years confirmed that the deal was fair. I dressed up our report in 36 pages of what has turned out to be what I am told is a very useful publication.

So that’s my excuse for being off air for a few weeks. Having said that, my PSA is still going up like a rocket and the best that experts can now offer me is “Keep taking the medicine”… So my emotions are all to heck, my skin and clothes are wet from hot flushes and my brain seems to be quietly fraying at the edges.

But they tell me I’m looking terrific. I’m certainly feeling fine. And I still don’t have a single identifiable symptom of the cancer that is probably growing quite vigorously somewhere in my nether regions.

So, blog on, eh?

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