Archive for February, 2013

Whanau and friends…and a dead calf

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

A wonderful evening with three generations of family from four countries plus our neighbours. Wine, coffees, chippies and chocolate under the stars whilst we chatted and laughed the evening away.

We could have stayed around the table on the deck forever, underneath a three-quarter moon and stars – except a stench that has wafted over our place intermittently over the last 36 hours returned with a vengeance.  

As the assembled whanau reeled from the stink, I grabbed a hunting lamp and headed off for to track down the source but a quick search of our place revealed nothing.  My mate Johnny jumped the fence ahead of me and a wander around the adjacent farm revealed a dead and decomposing calf in a tomo* in the paddock nearest our house. 

We’re off to the Helensville Agricultural & Pastoral Show tomorrow but I suspect the afternoon will involve a call to the farmer (away on holiday) and a session with a digger to bury the calf/fill the hole.

*Tomo is Maori for hole or small cave. These are usually formed by underground streams eating away at the dirt above until the top caves in.

Bottling light

Sunday, February 17th, 2013

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The February show of WNYC’s Radiolab, called ‘Speed‘, contains three great stories. I am encouraging everyone to listen to the show or at least to the segment called Master of the Universe (about 44:48 minutes into the show).
 
It is about the work of Danish scientist Lene Vestergaard Hau (above) who has not only slowed light from the speed of light to just 17 metres a second and later managed to stop a beam of light altogether but went on to transfer light to matter, then from matter back into light – in a different place. Stop and think about it – that’s catching light, storing it, moving it and then releasing it somewhere else at a later time!
 
To a kid who grew up watching Star Trek and grew up to see communicators, tricoders and tablet computers become reality, turning light to matter then back into light sounds not too far away from what the transporter did!

A brief thought on true love

Friday, February 15th, 2013

My dear friend Chuck just posted his thoughts on Valentine’s Day and I was prompted to write the following comment.

We are called upon to love each, full stop (or period, as you say on your side of the Pacific). That means no exceptions and that’s the hardest thing about our faith; we are called to love all, regardless of who they are and what they have done. Not just our loved ones and the nice people but those we visit through prison ministry, those who cut us off in traffic and those whose theology is different from ours. Most of all, we are called to love those who we most abhor, revile, reject, denounce and exclude. Let’s turn Lent on its head and, rather than giving something up, let this be a time where we all take something on and try to love the unloveable. In doing so, we may just catch a glimpse of Him.

I am blessed to have known all sorts of love in my life.  Of late, I have resolved to try my best to love all I come into contact with. I fail abysmally every day but each new morning I resolve try again. How can I not when I receive the very same grace myself?