Titled, “Darkness lurks in NZs soul” Michael Laws commented recently on the a United Nations report on cannabis use, “Along with our propensity for binge drinking, anti-depressants and child abuse, Kiwis now misuse more marijuana than any other nationality.” I can add to that research from my own field - our teen pregnancy rate is the only one increasing in the developed world - our teen suicides rates, 2nd highest for boys, 3rd for girls. Not great records. Still, “I was smacked when I was a kid and it never did me any harm”.

Ok, smacking might not have done you any harm, it probably isn’t the cause of our cannabis use. It doesn’t seem to have helped though. And that’s my point. Smacking isn’t the main point. I don’t think we need to smack to be good parents. I’m possibly even prepared to accept that in certain circumstances, a smack isn’t bad. But we’re missing the point.

If we are going to turn to the bible to look for solutions, the messages I see most clearly are those of relationship - a God whose very nature is relational and whose mission “at the culmination of the ages” was for relationship restored. Steve Biddulph, a child psychologist, stated in his controversial book on daycare for under 3’s, we must choose between love and money. I am saying that promoting a philosophy of parenting that focuses on spending time with your children, listening, playing, and involving, that values parenting, that is the point.

Whatever we have - 9 million dollars, a political position, a pulpit - could we please choose a cause worth fighting for, I don’t think the right to smack is that cause.

“Larry,” I might say, “2000 years ago the child was included in, and a part of, everything that was going on in the family. They were always with their parent or mother. We are now in a culture where everyone is busy all the time. Time, the currency of love in the mind of a child, is our primary poverty.”

“If you have Biblical parenting concerns,” I might go on, “you would have been better to invest the 9 million pushing for two years paid parental leave - with support and education.” Sweden even makes it mandatory for the non primary care giver (often the father but not necessarily) to take 2 months of that parental leave. Allow a parent to invest their entire time in the care and raising of their child.”

We might even engage in an exegesis exercise on Proverbs’ ‘spare the rod.’ The point is, at least the actual issues would be on the table. I don’t know if this is behind any of the referendum thinking, but I would not be surprised.

A group of organisations throughout New Zealand are working together to reduce any threat to the 2007 law.  More information on the referendum and how the law is working is available on the vote yes website.

As is so often the case a complicated issues is broken down into polar opposite simplistic positions. Maybe this is an inevitable result of the amount of information bombarding us from every media outlet competing for our consumer buck. Consider the way I chose the title of this post. One short line has to catch your attention. Polemic works best.

There was so much of value that was lost during the last debate, is this our second chance? The poll is so badly written that is favours one outcome. “Should a smack as part of good parental discipline… ” Well the answer is right there in the question, good parenting has been written in. We are not asking whether a smack is part of good parenting; but when it is should it be illegal. We are not really engaging with what good parenting might look like at all. There are all sorts of issues that are lost with the type of debate we see around high profile emotive bills. For example: Is time out - or love withdrawal - any better?

No disrespect to the people who have written the question for the referendum. When you see things a certain way and feel strongly about them, it becomes hard to see the bias. (It happens often in the polls on this site).

How about finding a way to set the debate in the direction we actually want behaviour to go? How about a bill that makes ‘not playing with your children in the evenings’ a criminal offence in New Zealand.

Rituals at dawn always evoke an air of mystery, as though we are poised on the dividing line between two worlds.  They symbolise the movement from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment, and in our Easter story from death to life.  Easter Day ought to begin at dawn but most of us have become lazy, mistakenly assuming that the mystery of our faith will be just as appealing at 9.30 after a good breakfast and a quick read of the paper.

Not so ANZAC Day regulars who relentlessly turn out in the early morning mist.  These days they are joined by growing numbers of young people, generations removed from the veterans and untouched by the subsequent political movements through which we sought to extricate ourselves from involvement in Vietnam and the nuclear weapons business.

Standing in the cold dawn amidst a sea of red poppies, it is apparent that lurking around this ritual, just beyond our consciousness, are important stories that offer a different perspective than the one being presented.  Unfortunately, our ability to ask penetrating questions, which might unleash the healing power of these stories, has been suppressed within a history of militarism that annually fuels the political and media frenzy around ANZAC Day.

While chaplain in a boys school, I was fascinated and disturbed by the way my students were unthinkingly captivated by ANZAC Day services.  Their magnificent inner qualities of loyalty, tender protectiveness and princely valour were all muddled up with their adventuring spirit and poured into the day which has become synonymous with sacrifice.

The idea of sacrificial death is seductive.  At its basest level, the notion that someone would die for us, feeds the ego but, if we are honest, this is more suited to a world where capricious gods hold sway and we are all caught in an eternal cycle of appeasement and gratitude.  Stripping away that old world cosmology opens the window onto a different perspective.

The writer of Mark is certain that Jesus has introduced a new way of being where everyone has free access to God, where the poor and marginalized are always included and where touching the unclean, the enemy, the German and the terrorist is the most inclusive and loving thing you can do.  He is also clear that following this way will bring you into danger.  Within this context, Jesus became a pawn, his vulnerability and openness exploited by the powerful elite, leading to his inevitable crucifixion.

In much the same way, young men and women were, and continue to be, exploited by governments who consider that teaching them to kill other human beings is preferable to working at non-violent ways of managing the world’s problems.

Just this week, some bright spark has suggested that our young people be encouraged to spend their gap year in the military.  Alarmingly, the Principals’ Federation president, Ernie Buutveld said the idea had, ‘reasonable potential’.  Exploitation of their youthful vulnerability is the reality, not the development of potential.  And, tragically, they’ll fall for it.

Field Punishment No 1 was known as the crucifixion because of the way soldiers were helplessly spreadeagled across a gunwheel.  By the time the conscientious objectors,  Archibald Baxter, Mark Briggs, and others were forcibly shipped to France, the rules for this torture had changed after the death of a British soldier.

Now, all that prisoners had to endure was to be tied to a post in the open with their hands bound tightly behind their backs, knees and feet bound.  They were only meant to be left standing for two hours a day, three out of every four days and 21 days in all, but such orders were easily ignored when officials were far away.

Instead, their hands and feet were tied tightly for up to four hours in all weathers.  Blood congealed in their wrists and hands so much that they turned bright red, then purple in the cold.  Then there were the days when Baxter was tied crucifixion style to the poles, when his feet were lifted above the ground so he could get no stability.

David Grant’s recent book, Field Punishment No 1, writes searingly of the many tortures these heroic men underwent because they stood for a non-violent approach to fixing our human problems.

One day Mark Briggs, at the hands of a sadistic sergeant, had a long piece of cable wire fastened around his chest and under his arms.  Four soldiers harnessed themselves to the wire and began to drag Briggs along the duckwalk the mile to the front line, with two soldiers hauling each leg.  Battens had been nailed across the duckwalk and to make walking easier, wire netting had been nailed over some parts.  Consequently, the clothing that protected Briggs’ back was torn off, leaving it exposed to the battens and the wire.  His back, neck and arms soon became a mass of lacerations, and blood oozed through the remains of his garments.  Worst of all, a huge flesh wound was gouged into his right thigh and back about a foot long, later described as big enough to put your fist into.

No morphine, that wonder drug named for Morpheus, Roman god of slumber and dreams, was available for these shattered men.  Morpheus appears as a character in The Matrix, a classic movie which suggests we are all being conned about the nature of reality.  Neo, the potential saviour of the world, is offered a choice by Morpheus.  Take the blue pill and continue to sleepwalk through your existence without understanding who you are or what your life task is.  Take the red pill and awaken to reality, the way the world really is without our dreams and fantasies, no matter how uncomfortable that is.

The research and reading I did through my year as a military chaplain forced me to face the reality that the Christian church has a tragic history of colluding with principalities and powers whose central focus is diametrically opposed to the Jesus way.  The call to arms made by many clergy during both world wars is well documented and makes embarrassing reading.

But there were others who stood against military and government manipulation.  The Rev’d Ormond Burton, who was Shirley Murray’s inspiration for the ANZAC hymn that we sang today, was an outstanding man.  Although honoured as a war hero after WWI, because of his outspoken pacifist views was imprisoned during the second world war and finally expelled from the ministry.

As the growing attachment to militarism increases, through the unthinking and unexplored expression of ANZAC Day, it is interesting that the Christian church remains largely silent.  By doing this we are once again colluding with the state that was prepared to torture conscientious objectors like Archibald Baxter and Mark Briggs and who continues to ignore their part in the ANZAC story.

We may stand in pious judgement against the excesses of the soldiers at Abu Grahib, Guantanamo Bay, and many other terror sites and events, but we have our own Kiwi litany of torture and injustice to be made right.  And until we do, we are sleep walking through ANZAC, blind and deaf to the whole story.

Having only just stumbled out of Holy Week, the image of the crucified Jesus remains fresh in our minds.  On the cross, the open hearted acceptance that he showed in life was writ large.  Arms spread wide, vulnerable, and powerless to save himself, his big heart unprotected.

But let’s remember, we are only part way through Easter.  Contrary to his words, it is not finished until we have moved on from the empty tomb and begun to recognise Jesus as the wounded healer around us.  He’s already appeared as Ormond, Baxter and Briggs.  This week in Israel, another appearance has been reported in 18 year old Neta Mishli, imprisoned because she will not enlist in the military and collude in destruction.

These are the untold, resurrection stories that lurk around the margins of ANZAC Day and symbolised today by this white poppy that I wear.  White poppies stand for the belief that there are better ways to solve conflicts than killing people.  It’s not a new idea but one that is hard to embed in our psyche when we fail to recognise the links between institutional and personal violence in our society.

The Peace Movement of Aotearoa has responsibility for running the White Poppy campaign in New Zealand.  Perhaps we Anglicans can join them next year in making sure that white poppies are seen in Aotearoa.  More than that, we have the opportunity to create a mystical dawn ritual that allows the stories of the wounded healers to be heard so that we awake from our sleep walking to make the resurrection real in our time and place.

War Resisters’ International, London, 24 April 2009

Neta Mishli, 18, from Tel-Aviv, a signatory of the 2008 high school seniors refusal letter, began serving her first prison term on 23 April 2009. Neta Mishli arrived at the military Induction Base on 22 April and refused to enlist. For this she was first sentenced to seven days of confinement to base (she was told there was no room in the military prison for women). However, the following day she was again tried and sentenced, this time to 20 days in military prison. She was told that the Military Attorney’s Office has authorised trying her again for the very same act.

Neta Mishli has prepared the following declaration upon entering prison:

“I am not willing to be part of an organization committing war crimes, taking the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, an organization that, in the name of humanism and democracy, forces me and my peers to sacrifise a period of our lives, and our lives themselves, for false calm, for no calm shall come to pass until Israel decides to give up the policy of war and turn towards peace. Therefore, as a small step towards stopping the cycle of bloodshed, I hereby refuse to enlist in the military.”

Neta Mishli is due to be released from prison on 10 May, but is likely to be imprisoned again soon afterwards.

War Resisters’ International calls for letters of support to Neta Mishli:

Neta Mishli (Military ID 6044321)
Military Prison No 400
Military Postal Code 02477, IDF
Israel
Fax: +972-4-9579389

War Resisters’ International calls for letters of protest to the Israeli authorities, and Israeli embassies abroad. An email letter to Israel’s Minister of Defence Ehud Barak can be sent from here.

Canon Oestreicher is an outspoken critic of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, in spite of having a German Jewish father.. At the age of seven he experienced first hand the Nazi pogrom of Kristallnacht that forced his parents to go into hiding. He and his parents were fortunate to be among the 1000 Jews allowed to immigrate into New Zealand in 1939 for the price of £2000. His grandmother, who hoped to follow, was not so fortunate. She died in the holocaust.

Living in Dunedin he suffered from the stigma of being both a “Hun and a Jew” although his family were practicing Quakers. While studying politics at Otago University he became an Anglican. After post-graduate study in Germany he was ordained a priest, serving most of his ministry in England. In 1985 he was elected the Bishop of Wellington, but his election was not sanctioned by New Zealand’s bishops at the time because of his views were considered too radical. In retrospect, Canon Oestreicher has expressed relief at this outcome. He has used these years to continue his focus on reconciliation and peace issues.

In addition to his work on behalf the Palestinian peoples he has been a strong advocate of for nuclear disarmament and has worked bringing reconciliation between the people of Dresden who suffered the greatest loss of life of any city and the English whose RAF firebombed them during World War II. He recently represented Coventry Cathedral at the opening of the rebuilt Frauenkirche, Dresden’s famous cathedral, destroyed during the bombing.

Canon Oestreicher will preach at the 10:00am Good Friday Service on 10 April and at the 8:00am and 10:00am services on Easter Sunday, 12 April.

On April 11 he will be interviewed on Kim Hill’s National Radio morning show. -

Each month the race relations commission puts out a news letter acknowledging various positive contributions to race relations and cultural diversity. It is so easy, for those involved in ecological or justice related issues, to focus on the negative. But part of being prophetic is not only pointing to injustice and what is broken, but also drawing attention to what could be, and what is working.

Four of those mentioned in the latest newsletter are Samson Sahele, Hajar Ali, Abubakar Mohammed, and Shamim Homayun for ‘Earthless Trees’, a book of short stories. These 11 short stories are written by four young refugees about their experiences prior to coming to Aotearoa New Zealand, whilst creating a new life here. The collection is a product of a 10 week writing course run by the Wellington branch of the Refugees as Survivors Trust. There is also a web site for the Auckland branch. The book is published by the Trust and was launched by Dame Fiona Kidman on February 17th in Wellington.

Why do you let homeless people and refugees stay with you?

Why do the local kids hang out with wadjalas (white fellas) like you?

Why were you on the news peacefully protesting?

Why do you have time for me when no one else does?

Why do you volunteer in the community permaculture garden when the food often gets taken?

The challenge for youth pastors is the challenge of hearing Jesus say, “Follow me”; to lose our lives in living God’s love.

http://blog.sojo.net/2009/02/11/jesus-and-justice-always-kiss-a-plea-to-youth-pastors-making-out-with-empire/

A new grassroots initiative, the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace, has set up a web site to help do just this in regards to the occupation of Gaza. The database and information center reflects an on-going two-year effort, rigorous research, and documentation of who profits from the Israeli occupation.

Visit the database here. http://www.whoprofits.org

“It is a matter of grave concern that there is an apparent breakdown of the rule of law within the country, and that the democratic process is being undermined, as shown in the flagrant disregard of the outcome of the democratic elections of March 31st 2008, so that Mr Robert Mugabe illegitimately holds on to power. Even the recent political situation of power sharing, brokered by SADC, may not be long lasting and simply further entrench Mr Mugabe’s regime. There appears to be a total disregard for life, consistently demonstrated by Mr Mugabe through systematic kidnap, torture and the killing of Zimbabwean people. The
economy of Zimbabwe has collapsed, as evidenced by the use of foreign currencies in an independent state.

We therefore call upon President Robert Mugabe to respect the outcome of the elections of 2008 and to step down. We call for the implementation of the rule of law and the restoration of democratic processes.”

Read the entire statement here.