They are us: sharing the darkest days

I wrote this for The Australian Newspaper today: Days like this don't happen in New Zealand. We're not this violent. We don't hate like this. We pride ourselves on welcoming immigrants and refugees. Part of the mythology we hold onto is that we are the people who welcomed refugees from the Tampa when the Howard …

Immerse your soul in love: a manifesto

Immerse your soul in love, sings Thom Yorke at the end of the song Street Spirit (Fade Out). The line emerged from nowhere during a brainstorming session at Laidlaw College with Jaime Taylor 10 years ago, and subsequently adorned the brick wall of the college foyer, as the institution grappled with the idea that love …

Coffee and cigarettes: A captured moment

A kiss, but not a kiss A moment of connection, and also contempt. Those eyes, dark and foreboding, laughing with, or at, me. The casual and forceful exhalation of cigarette smoke in my direction ... towards the lens, towards my eyes, one of them closed but stung nevertheless. The ultimate act of dismissal. Or seduction. …

What’s love got to do with it: Theology and its defences against the dark arts

Towards the end of my very brief career as a theologian in a conservative, fundamentalist, NZ theological college, I had come to the sad realisation that theology, as an academic discipline, is unable — incapable rather than unwilling — to say things about love that art, even in its most popular forms, is more naturally …

Wildwood: The tunnel

I lost myself today, which happens when the day is spent with people rather than words. Some people do double duty — rich connection AND words ... but in their absence I need to find myself again in my writing. So, here's a chapter from the novel Wildwood, which crawls inexorably towards its completion in the …

Three words: Faith. Hope. Love.

  Faith is about the story in which our understanding of self and others is embedded. It’s about the implicit beliefs that guide our actions, our self talk, our narrative, our engagement with others, and the contribution we make to this world of things, and possibilities, and new journeys.   Love is the outworking of …

Who you calling fat?: a memoir

I received a text today that read, simply: We are starting a fatty challenge. I reckon you can take it! I take umbrage at this. One, the assumption that because I look fat, I am fat. And two, the equally presumptuous assumption that I could win easily. It's like the opposite of ‘You have nothing …

Darth Vader and the problem of evil: The worst sermon ever preached

Some moments are so embarrassing, so cringeworthy, so regrettable, they deserve to be canonised. If it's true that we learn from our mistakes, it's probably also true that our mistakes can teach others. And if not, well ... maybe they'll just give them a bloody good laugh. The worst sermon ever preached in the entire …

Assisted suicide: a Valentine’s Day poem about love

  No need to load the bullet Or knot the rope I’m gone already If I found knowing, then what is this? What ignorance, tormented If I found life, then what is this? What else did I find? The room and the keys A vision of what will, what could Be But everyone sang In …