Ashes

I'm marked.On my forehead is the rough shape of a cross marked out in ashes.  A sign to myself that I am signed up for Lent.  I've thrown the gauntlet down.

It's not so much the fasting I've decided to do, or the gut-felt determination I have to adjust some specific behaviours, but the message I am sending to myself in the process.

I'm not satisfied with status quo. I don't want just more of the same. I am fully aware that 'if I always do what I've always done, I'll always get what I've always got.' (David Riddell)

Last year I didn't observe Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), but I went to The Franciscan Friary in Hillsborough for a solo retreat the day after, and as I popped into the chapel to pray I noticed the bowl of ashes sitting at the front of the altar. I looked at those ashes and instantly knew they were for me, that they belonged to me. It took all of my will power and respect for the traditions of the place not to walk up and put my finger in the bowl and wipe the ashes on my forehead myself. Instead I got as close as I could to them without touching, and on my knees I prayed a silent prayer.

The ashes are a symbol of repentance and mourning, and a sign of the wearer's intention to participate in the season of Lent. I didn't grow up in churches that observed the church calendar and yet, when I saw those ashes at the altar, they made sense to me. I understood them.

And I understood them today, because today I began a forty day commitment to myself, I embarked on a forty day journey. And I also understood them today because today is the one year anniversary of the February earthquake in Christchurch. Today is the day a year ago that one hundred and eighty five people lost their lives. All their hopes, plans and dreams crumbled in a moment. Ashes.

a hangi for Waitangi Day

 

 

Last Monday was Waitangi Day and we got together with some friends and put on a hangi. I want to say that it started in the darkness of dawn early on Waitangi Day morning, when I got up just after the fire had been lit and the air was filled with the cackle and crackle of flames, but it didn't. It started the day before, when the pit was dug in the heat of the afternoon.

We've done something on Waitangi Day for a few years now, but this was the first hangi. And it was the first time we had this many people on our property, over a hundred. That in itself was exciting, because it's exactly how we see this place working. As somewhere for people to come and enjoy. There were kids all over the place, running around everywhere, in and out of the house, jumping on the tramp, riding up and down the driveway. And it was a good mix of people, many of them from church, plus friends and family. I got to meet a filmmaker from Shanghai, how cool is that. I love meeting interesting people.

But mostly it was about remembering and celebrating the history of our country, something we don't always do well. While angry and divisive voices are still calling for Waitangi Day to be abandoned, we all simply got on with celebrating. Celebrating being us.

who needs you?

This afternoon there was a 5.8 magnitude aftershock in Christchurch, followed later by a 6.0 quake, and further smaller ones as well. Dust rose into the sky from the already severely damaged Cathedral. Luckily there was no major damage in the city, but there was plenty of damage all the same. I watched footage filmed in a supermarket. The shelves shaking, the signage swinging, sirens going off, and people screaming. I cried - I couldn't help it. It was too much. Humans can't suffer that level of panic and stress for as long as the people of Christchurch have without it becoming debilitating. The Mayor, who is cutting short a holiday to return to the city, described people sitting on the ground and crying.

Cantabrians have left the city in droves. They've left temporarily and they've left permanently. More would leave, I'm sure, if they weren't stuck with a house that's impossible to sell, or weren't in the middle of negotiations and arrangements regarding insurance and re-building. The aftermath, which must seem now like it will be unending, is complicated and heartbreaking.

There are people who are choosing to go to Christchurch. There are builders and plumbers and engineers who are filling the gaps in the pivotal building industry. The re-build is far from smooth, it's not even a work in progress in many places. And then there are the people, like a friend of mine, who feel that this needy city is exactly where they need to be. I take my hat off to them.

But leaving is one of the sanest options available to Cantabrians right now. It goes against all instinct for survival to stay. We should be doing whatever we can to make it possible for those who need to leave to leave as quickly as possible. Could landlords in other cities offer a month's free rent to those re-locating? Could people offer their homes and holiday homes to those in need of a holiday somewhere where the ground is firm, as happened so generously after the February quake? Could employers make an effort to interview prospective employees from Christchurch? Could the government create a short term transitional unemployment benefit specifically for people wanting to move out of Christchurch to other parts of the country? Could the government set up a task force that would go about the business of re-building people's lives, not just their houses? Why not?

I read "The Little Engine that Could" to Abigail tonight at bedtime. It's an old Golden Book that was on the bookshelf at home when I was a child. The story was too long for her to keep up with, so I was skipping bits, but it brought back so many memories. The little engine with it's carriages filled with treasures is stuck. It can't go any further. A shiny, haughty engine drives past and refuses to help; a big, self-important engine refuses to help. An old tired and rusty engine is sure he can't help. Eventually the Little Blue Engine, who thinks so little of himself, saves the day. He chugs to himself  "I think I can I think I can I think I can" and makes it over the hill.


It occurred to me for the first time that this is a re-telling of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. In that story, a man has been robbed and beaten and lies dying on the side of the road. Several people see him but walk to the other side of the road to avoid him. We all understand this. Sometimes it's just easier not to get involved. Finally a Samaritan, an outcast, takes the man to an inn and pays for his full recovery. The story comes from a question asked of Jesus by a lawyer, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

Jesus answers the lawyer's question straight from the Torah, the Jewish book of Law. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And your neighbour as yourself." Which means, in a nutshell, love and look after others in the same way as you love and look after yourself. But the lawyer, obviously on the look-out for a loophole, asks "Who is my neighbour?" And so the story of the Good Samaritan is born. Jesus' message is clear; your neighbour is the one who needs you.

There was another desperately sad story in the news today. A five year old girl was viciously attacked in a camping ground near Taupo on Wednesday night. The Mayor of the Taupo District has reacted strongly, demanding to know why "our forbears got rid of the death penalty."  He clearly thinks the offender is scum and doesn't deserve to live. That precious five-year old whose life has been changed forever is my neighbour, no question. But the offender? Who is his neighbour?

We don't want to think we are like the shiny self-important engine, too important and shiny to help, but sometimes we are. It's easy to be like the big busy engine, with other, better things to do. And we let ourselves off the hook too easily when we think like the tired engine,  I really can't.  But we can all be the little blue engine. If we think we can.


My closest neighbour tonight is Abigail. She came out in chicken pox yesterday, two days before Christmas. She is covered in spots and pretty miserable, and she's sitting on the table next to me right now scratching her head and looking at photos on my phone. I'll take her to bed with me soon and we'll try to sleep. I don't really have any other option, I'm her mother. But the thing is that we usually meet the needs that are closest to us. It's the needs that aren't so close that we often ignore.

If there was one thing that Jesus understood, and he wasn't the only great teacher to get this, it is that we are all connected. When you hurt, I hurt, somewhere along the way. We think we can live our own separate lives, keeping those close who we choose to keep close, and excluding those we choose to exclude, but it's simply not true. We will sit at our tables on Christmas day and we will all eat well and starve, in the same breath.

New Zealand: what future?

Yesterday I went to a special assembly at the girls' school. There was a powhiri (welcome ceremony) for all new students and their families. We who were the manuhiri (visitors) met in a classroom to practise a waiata and to have the protocol explained to us, and then we walked around to the school hall and gathered at the door. Inside the entire school was lined up facing us, with the Kapa Haka group in full costume at the front. One of the eldest girls called us, "karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai" and then the whole school welcomed us in with a haka.

Isobella has been in the Kapa Haka group since the first week she started at this school. I went along as parent help last week when the group performed at a multi-cultural concert in West Auckland. The kids were beside themselves with excitement. We negotiated crowds, ate lunch, got ready and had a quick practice, and in the end we were left with only a few minutes to get all thirty-something of the kids down through the hall and onto the stage. They did really well, considering there was no adult in the background to coach them. It's a pretty white group, and they didn't have the same volume or feistiness as some of the other groups, but they did their very best, and you could tell they loved every minute of it.

One of the other schools performing that day was one of the local schools in our old neighbourhood. This was a small school, one of those schools that some how along the way becomes the second-choice school for families who have the resources to choose something other than their local school. The roll at this school is tiny compared to the school up the road with the "excellent reputation", and has a high percentage of Maori and Pasifika kids. Is this the cause or the effect of the "white flight" that has gone on around it, who can say, but the result is undeniable. Still, it's a big-hearted school doing its best with limited resources and support. And the school's presence at the festival was hard to miss. They had just about the whole school involved, the kids were brimming with pride, and very happy.

We were able to watch this school performing on stage just before we went off to get our kids ready. It was their Kapa Haka group, a big group of kids in full costume, with piupiu skirts and the girls with moko face- painted on. They looked fantastic, they were loud and proficient. Then just behind me a man who seemed to be one of the dads of the group stood up and started a haka of his own from the audience. He was loud and passionate too. By standing and doing this he was offering the highest honour he could give the kids in that moment, and giving them his sincere and tangible support. I looked at the man, a wild looking Maori guy with a woolly grey beard and tats down his arms, and I could see that he was bursting with pride for those kids up on stage. In a moment I realised how incredible it was for him to see his child up on stage, belonging and succeeding at school by celebrating being Maori. I cried. I couldn't stop the tears rolling down.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Maori kids got the strap for speaking Maori in class. Not so long ago, Maori children were likely to grow up ashamed of their Maoriness.  Whole generations have passed without having seen their culture and traditions valued. Who is crying for that now?

I was down at mum's last week when she was watching a TV programme that follows families with missing members and helps them find them. An elderly Maori had discovered he had fathered a son without his knowledge, and that son had been adopted. The programme tracked the son down in Australia and I watched the father and son's emotional reunion. It was a grey day, and the family had set up a welcome party underneath the carport at the end of the driveway. I watched as the family welcomed the son, assembled together just as the girls' school had been at our assembly yesterday. The wife of his father, his soon to be step-mother, led the call. "Karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai" she called, tears rolling down her face. The son walked towards them, his tears welling up too. The father met him, they shared a hongi, and then held each other in the tightest embrace, sobbing. The father whispered in Maori in his son's ear, over and over. I couldn't understand the words, and neither could the son, but they were like a soft song that washed over him. In that moment, no other language would do.

It's election day next Saturday. Politics was kept back stage while the Rugby World Cup was on, so it's felt like a very short lead-up. I've been more unsure about who I'll vote for than I have been for any election previously. I'm a left-leaning kind of girl, but I wouldn't call myself "left". I have some very "right" tendencies, but I'm definitely not "right", and even "centrist" doesn't describe me either. If I could dial up my ideal government it would be like an icecream cone with several scoops, each made of different flavours. I'd choose a policy from here, a policy from there, an ideology from one end, and another from the other end. Meanwhile, in the real world, a bleak financial outlook combined with some very desparate needs mean that I'm basically stumped. I can't see any one party that has the big picture covered.

I've been reading some sobering facts about our nation. The UN recently released a paper on child welfare entitled "Doing better for Children" and New Zealand doesn't fare too well. We have some of the worst statistics for children's health and well being in the OECD. Overall, our child mortality is higher than the OECD average. Twenty percent of our children are living in poverty. Maori children under 15 are six times as likely to be living in an overcrowded household, and Pasifika children are twelve times more likely. This has led directly to high rates of diseases that have completely disappeared from most developed countries. Margo White in the Listener notes that rheumatic fever is taking its toll amongst some of our children. This disease, which shouldn't exist, can leave children needing immediate heart-valve replacement surgery, and then monthly penicillin injections. Dr Norman Sharpe, the medical director of the NZ Heart Foundation, says that there are a thousand children on the Auckland register having monthly penicillin injections to prevent rheumatic fever re-occurring. Lance O'Sullivan, a Northland-based GP, regularly sees children who are "walking around with the heart of an eighty year old." His stark indictment;  "this is a disease of poverty, and brown kids... this is a race-based problem."

There's been plenty of political rhetoric thrown around recently about race-based policy. There are a few politicians who use it to fear-monger and to get attention. They want us to believe that race-based policy is morally repugnant, that it's a form of racism itself, and that it benefits some, only to leave the rest out in the cold. It's an easy position to hold when your culture is in the majority wherever you look, and when you live in a warm, dry, and comfortable house, and don't need to know where your nearest food bank is. But to believe it you have to be in some measure of denial about the reality of life for those on the other side.

At the end of the welcoming ceremony at the girls' assembly, the group of us who were being welcomed filed across the hall and greeted the front row of adults and children on the other side. Some of us shook hands, but most of us shared a hongi. That beautiful pressing of noses symbolises the oneness of shared breath. For a moment, the visitor and the host are one. Once the greeting was over, we the visitors were given new seats, right next to our hosts. I looked back over to the other side of the hall where the visitors began the ceremony, and the seats were empty. The meaning was clear. There were no more visitors, everyone now belongs.

That oneness is exactly what we need. We could all do with more opportunities to walk in each other's shoes. It's too easy see people as either "them" or "us." But what sort of future is that?

hard week, happy ending

This shows you how happy a girl can be on the day of the performance of her school show. Don't you remember? Eating dinner early, jumping in the car in the new evening light of spring, being hustled into a room full of other children just as excited as you are. The air so thick with expectation you could stick your tongue out and taste it. Just look at her.

The funny thing is that I'm here at home writing this, while she is right now on stage in her moment of glory. Up until this morning I was the one going, and Paddy staying, because all week he has been the sickest of all of us, but today we were neck and neck, he slightly better, me worse. Isobella fervently prayed last night that Dad would be well enough to go to the show, and this afternoon when I told her he was, she was over the moon. Wasn't bothered much when I told her that that meant I was too sick to go. I love how she loves her Dad.

Anyway, he is there sitting in the school hall now, Greer beside him, video camera in hand, capturing the moment. But I'm capturing the moment too.

I'm weary and sick of being sick.  I don't need to say how exhausting it is when everyone gets sick at the same time, because you know. We've had a week of it. I didn't even know the date until yesterday.

I'm getting picture updates from the show on my phone, and it's wrapping up now with a haka, the whole crew. I can see in the mass of faces up on stage that they are overjoyed. Rugby makes these kids happy, especially at the moment. They love their haka, and they love their country.

I can't think of a better image that expresses the heart of a kiwi than a bunch of kids up on stage doing a haka as their grand finale, and reveling in it.

wild places

We're back. We started packing and cleaning last night, carried on packing and cleaning this morning, got in the car at about eleven, got home this afternoon, and then started unpacking and doing washing. I'm sitting here surrounded by drying racks covered in washing, with more waiting in the laundry to hang out tomorrow. Where does it all come from? How much energy is wasted over the globe with our modern (and privileged) obsession with clean clothing? With clothing, for that matter. But that's another story...

We had a great holiday. We had down time, family time, fun and adventure. It's not everywhere in the world that you can jump in your car and drive to see scenes like this.

The steaming ground in this geothermal area was punctuated with craters and blow holes. In a couple of places the craters were filled with mud that bubbled and blew steam out of large holes. The noise was amazing, it was like the ground was alive. I'd hardly given a thought to what was beneath me while we had been back in town, in our safe and tidy suburban house. And yet only a short drive away the ground was roaring, wild and inhospitable.

We saw water roaring, too. We visited a dam yesterday and watched the gates open. The water poured out in torrents and steadily filled the first pool immediately beneath the gates of the dam. Then all of a sudden it burst through the narrow rocky gap below, churning and bubbling.

This:

Became this:

The noise alone was breathtaking. It was the like the thunder of a hundred waterfalls. I thought about Psalm 42:7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and billows  have swept over me. 
This roar was man made, but we'd seen the same force of water rushing at Huka Falls the day before. There the water rushed through a narrow gap in the rocks and poured out in a torrent over the lip of the falls. It's waterfalls and boiling ground, earthquakes and hurricanes that remind us how fragile and momentary our lives are.

As we drove down the motorway into the city today I felt myself sigh, a kind of resigned sigh. The holiday was over too quickly. But as we got nearer to home and the roads wound down through the bush and out to the harbour, my spirits lifted. I can't tell you how surreal it was, to have been on holiday in suburbia, where trucks roared past on the main road behind us, and then to have come home to this quiet paradise.

broken city, broken people

I farewelled my sister back home to Christchurch this morning and my heart is still heavy. She heads home to a city that remains broken and to a house that is still recovering from chaos; a constant reminder of the earthquake.  She and her partner are lucky enough, their house was not seriously damaged and they both have jobs. But the earthquake has changed everything.  The way they drive to work, the atmosphere they work in, and what they do with their spare time. Their electricity is back on, but for essentials only. Through a miscommunication it turns out they didn't have contents insurance after all, so three or four hundred dollars' worth of food is lost, as well as some expensive tools. It's not money they can just pull out of thin air. She's been up here for a break, and was happy to be going back to her own bed, but she wasn't looking forward to returning to a disaster zone. Who would?

Christchurch has seen a range of responses to the earthquake. Many families have temporarily relocated to other parts of the country, plenty more have simply packed up and left. Some have gone to Wellington and Auckland, some even to Australia. Whole suburbs have been abandoned; empty houses stand beside roads covered in pot holes, silt and flooding. But community spirit still abounds. Churches all over Christchurch have stepped up to supply free meals, food banks and temporary accommodation. A memorial service was held in Hagley Park on Friday, attended by Prince William and thousands of Cantabrians. Mayor Bob Parker looked tired but resolute. Everyone promised that Christchurch will be rebuilt.

But buildings can be rebuilt. Given the necessary time, money and expertise, re-building will happen. Not so for people. Damaged emotions aren't so easily healed. Time helps, yes, but the other ingredients necessary for healing are not always clear. What will it take for my sister to feel at "home" in her own home? What will it take for those who have fled Christchurch to find home in the places they have fled to? What about those who struggle to sleep? Those for whom fear has manifested as anxiety and depression? And what about those who suffer most of all, those who grieve the loss of their dearest? How will their lives be rebuilt?

When the first earthquake hit last September it was easy to write about angels. We all said it was a miracle that nobody was lost. This time around we are hard pushed to find miracles. No survivors have been discovered since the day after the quake. But there are miracles. Every survivor will tell you there are. The beloved Christchurch Cathedral has been completely cleared with no bodies found, when we were expecting twenty. When rebuilt it will become a place of hope, without any shadow of death. Perhaps they're small miracles, but they're miracles nonetheless.

Still, some will refuse to see miracles at all. For many it is just too difficult to bring God into the equation. A talk back caller was asked how the earthquake had changed his life, and his answer was bitter. "I'm now convinced there is no God," he said. I expect that for him Japan's earthquake and tsunami have been the final nail. Who can believe in a God who allows such things to happen? Yet earthquakes and other natural disasters have occurred relentlessly over the ages, and there have always been believers.

For the first week after the earthquake I found prayer was as automatic as breathing. I couldn't not pray. But at the same time I was keeping my distance from God. Deep down I felt abandoned. I could see God in the earthquake of September 4th, but not on February 22nd. It was too awful. I found within me an endless, anguished "why?" I heard it repeated by others as the days went on. Even the Mayor voiced it, wondering if there was anyone he could ask why these things happen. Then he answered it himself. "I don't think so."

No one would begrudge that talk back callers' denial of God. On a rational and intellectual level it's completely understandable.  Why would we place our hope in a God who appears to have failed us? Historically we have been seen as a Christian nation.  Missionaries were some of our first European settlers. But who would question us now if we completely turned our backs on any faith at all?

I haven't heard an answer to my guttural "why?" and I can't see anything in what I know of the bible or the Christian faith that gives me a solid answer to that question. All I know is that my instinct tells me something which goes beyond any head knowledge. My instinct tells me that this world as it is, with its earthquakes, floods and famines, is not how it was meant to be.

 There's a mental and emotional leap required to keep faith in God. Those unable to make it often count those who can as lucky. They stand as if on one side of a divide watching the rest of us as we size up and then make the leap. They don't feel capable or even necessarily desirous of making the same jump, so they shrug their shoulders and get on with their lives. Often it's as if we humans live our lives separated by this divide, believers on one side, non-believers on the other. But in times of inexplicable tragedy such as this, the divide is erased. We all suffer the same grief, we all ask the same questions, and for believers and non-believers alike, the answers are few.

Yet there is a difference. Many of the groups serving the practical needs of the people of Christchurch right now are Christian. These are not believers who are providing food and shelter simply because it's what they "should" do. These are people who are moved by genuine compassion, people for whom their faith not only compels them to serve, it gives them the strength to do so.  The bible is not silent when it comes to grief and tragedy. Jesus himself is often described in the gospels as weeping. The words of the Psalms take us as frequently through suffering as they do rejoicing. Think of those words we all know, Psalm 23. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...

I haven't heard an answer to my "why", but that hasn't stopped me asking. My "why" makes my prayers feistier and my tears real. And I've added this "why" to all the "why's" from years gone by which somehow I know I will get to ask in person, one day, on the other side. My "why" finds me here, writing, and as I write I find the heaviness of my heart lifting.

Just as Christchurch is broken, so are we broken. We need hope, peace, and all of us need some measure of healing. We can turn our backs on God if that feels safer, but in doing so we may be rejecting the very thing we need most.

Christchurch tears

If words were tears these words would be as salty and as wet as the ocean. No survivors have been found since Wednesday. There are still about two hundred people missing. The death toll keeps rising.

The bodies that have been recovered, and those yet to be found, they were just like us; three days ago they ate breakfast and had plans for the weekend. They are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties, uncles, friends, sons and daughters. Yesterday the coroner assured us that the bodies were being looked after. "I am a mum and a grandma" she said. "There is always someone with them." I've done a lot of crying but at that I sobbed. Those bodies belong with their loved ones. There are hundreds and hundreds of people desperate in their grief to see the ones they have lost. To touch a hand, to hold the corner of a shirt. Who can imagine the horror of the damage that they will see? I can't. Crushed limbs, faces unrecognisable. But something, hopefully something they can touch, talk to. This is what the mourners at Pike River were so cruelly deprived of.

And the rest of us, even those of us removed by distance and with our loved ones safe, even we need something to see, something real to help us comprehend the horror. I feel useless up here in Auckland. If I could jump on a plane and get down there I would. I would sweep up the broken glass in my sister's house. Slowly work with her to pick up and clean up the chaos. I'd put on an orange jacket and walk into the war zone that is Christchurch's CBD. I'd pick up bricks, I'd comb through rubble. I would work all night and through the day to find your mother, your baby. I would sit next to the body of your cousin, sing to her, touch her. These are all things that we ordinary people are not needed to do. Yet this is what deep down we long to do, all of us.

New Zealand is broken. We have lost the heart of one of our most beautiful cities. Per capita our loss of life is greater than the losses of 9/11.  We are all hurting.

Are prayers and best wishes futile? No. Distance is no hindrance to those. We can sing too. We can let a song rise in our hearts, a lament that is waiting to be sung. As we sing it together, it becomes our desperate prayer.

I've linked it before, but this version of our national anthem was made for now.

Christchurch

Please pray for Christchurch. There are about 200 people still trapped. Please pray that the rescue teams will be able to reach them. My family are safe, thankfully, but so many are not. Please pray for wisdom for all those involved in civil defence and in rescue efforts. Please pray for miracles of survival.
O God come to my aid. O Lord, make haste to help me.

the treasure of home

Sunday was Waitangi Day and I stood at the window at the end of the day and watched the sun go down. It was fiery golden right up until the moment it dipped below the horizon. The girls were in bed and most of the cleaning up from the BBQ lunch we'd had was done. I stood looking out the window at the glowing horizon, the brick house over the road and the trees, green green all the way up to the top of the ridge. I thought about how good it was to belong to New Zealand.

I was born in Spain, but Mum was a kiwi, and Dad immigrated to New Zealand from England as a child. We lived together in Madrid for a few months and then headed to New Zealand via England. I arrived at customs, Auckland airport, still all new at only four months old. There is a photo of my parents walking through the arrivals gate pushing a trundler of suitcases with a woven bassinet perched on top. I was home.

I was home, yet I didn't fully realise it for another thirty-six years. Home is a funny thing. Some people are at home wherever they are. Others can spend years living somewhere and never feel at home. My Grandmother was like that. My Grandfather dragged her to New Zealand when she was thirty-seven, two children in tow. She's about to turn ninety-nine, and she still calls England home. I've never questioned the fact that I am a New Zealander. I have the citizenship papers to prove it. And yet I haven't always known what being "home" really meant. When I was younger I spent a lot of time either travelling or wishing I was travelling. I wanted to go everywhere. I still do.

Then soon after Isobella was born a story was conceived. I don't talk about this story much, but if I'm lucky, you'll get to read it one day. The story was breathed out of the very dust and soil of my mother's home town Raglan. It's an earthy story, with roots that go back farther than I can see. The story made me fall in love with Raglan. It opened my eyes to see that I actually belonged to this place. It was in me.

The Maori have a concept "Turangawaewae" that is sorely lacking in western culture. Turangawaewae means "standing place." Te Ara, New Zealand's online Encyclopedia describes Turangawaewae like this;

"Tūrangawaewae is one of the most well-known and powerful Māori concepts. Literally tūranga (standing place), waewae (feet), it is often translated as ‘a place to stand’. Tūrangawaewae are places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home... In the concept of tūrangawaewae, the external world is a reflection of an inner sense of security and foundation. The mountains, rivers and waterways to which one can claim a relationship also express this internal sense of foundation."

I wrote about this a year ago. We had spent a week on Great Barrier Island, and being there I felt the same feeling I'd felt falling in love with Raglan. That same incredible feeling of belonging. The group we were with had gathered to learn and talk about New Zealand History, The Treaty of Waitangi, and the role of the church in all of that. During the week we had a spontaneous powhiri - the welcoming ceremony used when visitors arrive on a marae. Those who were immigrants to New Zealand and those who had never felt like they truly belonged here were invited to be the "manuhiri" or visitors, and the rest of the group were the "tangata whenua" - the welcomers or literally, "people of the land" who would welcome them to New Zealand. I knew straight away I needed to be manuhiri. It wasn't that I was conscious of not belonging, it was that intellectually I have always known I was a visitor. Not just because I was a literal visitor at the age of four months, but because I was pakeha. Deep down I saw myself as an outsider.

The powhiri was the real deal. I joined the group of manuhiri and we stood shoulder to shoulder as the call came out.

"Haere Mai! Haere Mai! Haere Mai!
Haere Mai ra e te manuhiri tuarangi e
Haere Mai! Haere Mai! Haere Mai!"

We moved slowly towards the voice that was calling us and the people waiting for us on the other side of the room. As we walked, I suddenly found that tears were rolling down my face. I hadn't realised I needed to be welcomed. I could have easily chosen to stand with the tangata whenua. The decision to be manuhiri was purely intellectual. But my heart was telling me otherwise. My heart was telling me I needed to belong.

So this Waitangi Day was special. For the first time I actually felt like celebrating. We kiwis are funny about Waitangi Day. Historically it has been a focus for Maori protest. Most non-Maori New Zealanders see Waitangi Day as a holiday and not much else. We turn on the TV news at night expecting to see images of Maori waving placards. A red-necked minority resent Maori and their grievances. Some Maori resent pakeha, understandably. It's a complicated situation, with a history full of tragic injustices and misunderstandings. Not unlike the history of so many other colonised nations.

But there's a difference. We have a treaty. In 1840 Britain was being urged to do something about the growing number of English and other immigrants in New Zealand, and the ensuing lawlessness and land-grabbing. The urgency was being voiced by Christian men - the same group that with William Wilberforce saw slavery abolished. Britain was reluctant, not wanting to repeat the past.  However in the end there seemed to be no other path, and she agreed on the grounds that the transfer of power be just.

So the treaty was born. A well-meaning but hastily drawn-up and poorly translated document. We have a complicated relationship with this treaty of ours. We can go through years of treaty history in public schooling and still not understand either its vitality or its uniqueness.  Waitangi Days come and go, protesters come and go, and we remain ambivalent. Yet it is ours.

The Sunday Star editorial yesterday was entitled "Waitangi Day's evolution cause for cautious pride." The editor noted that treaty settlements are now "treated as normal events" and that they have "restored a small portion of lost taonga and considerable mana."  This is good, and the atmosphere of celebration that is slowly coming to Waitangi Day is entirely appropriate.  But it's hard to celebrate something that's not entirely yours. Belonging to New Zealand means sharing ownership with the others who belong here. Ownership comes with responsibility, but it also comes with the many benefits and priveleges of belonging.

The conversation about the treaty belongs to all of us here in Aotearoa New Zealand. If we leave it to those at either extreme of the political debate then the conversation is not complete. More than that, our absence in the conversation is a form of filial laziness. We are the absent adult children, out of reach just when the family needs us most.

Where are you at home? Whose table do you eat from? How often do you stop to appreciate the feast that is laid out for you? What contribution do you bring?

Dorothy says it, Dave Dobbyn sings about it, we all know it, but there's no place like home. To have a home, and to feel at home, is one of the greatest treasures any human can have.

We got a dog just after Christmas. Silas was a rescue puppy, straight from the pound. He's a sweet and easy-going five month old lab-cross and it hasn't taken long for him to settle in. Two months ago he was wandering the streets, abandoned, but now as I write he's sprawled across our doorway on his back, legs splayed. He's at home.

I've got three daughters and they're at home too. They love their country. They get excited about our beaches and bush and birds, and they sing the National Anthem like a prayer without anyone even suggesting to them that it is one. I've been here since I was four months old, but in a way I'm just as new as my girls or the dog. So I'm taking my cues from them and making myself at home. I'm stretching out and speaking up. I'm home.

Thanks to Cindy Ruakere and friends for making this incredible version of our National Anthem. I've been listening to it as I write, and I challenge you to listen and not feel your spine tingle.