I was looking through Will S’ photos yesterday (yes the colours in the photo are wrong. I used a cross developing filter to see what would happen to a photo taken at dusk, when the dark green of the NZ forest becomes very black) and that makes me think of the most regional NZ poet: James Baxter. This is taken from his Jerusalem Sonnets, which is still in copyright — it’s taken from the online NZ encyclopedia. Baxter discusses his version of hippie Catholicism: leaving the comfortable life of the Burns Fellowship (a stipend at the university and no questions on what he wrote) to live among the Maori, and Hurinui, or Jerusalem, next to a nunnery set up by the Mother AUbert.

Poem for Colin—25

The brown river, te taniwha, flows on
Between his banks—he could even be on my side,

I suspect, if there is a side—there are still notches worn
In the cliffs downstream where they used to shove

The big canoes up; and just last week some men
Floated a ridge-pole down from an old pa

For the museum—he can also be
A brutal lover; they say he sucked under

A young girl once, and the place at the river-bend is named
After her tears—I accept that—I wait for

The taniwha in the heart to rise—when will that happen?
Is He dead or alive? A car goes by on the road

With an enormous slogan advertising
Rides for tourists on the jetboat at Pipiriki.

A taniwha is a river monster, a dragon, in Maori mythology. They cause floods, earthquakes and disasters. And more recently, some iwi have required roads are diverted or a large sum of money is paid to appease them. As a nation we have lsot our faith, and become credulous, as we try desperately not to offend.
Baxter wrote poems about how the car offended him. The modern greens would have it banned as culturally insensitive: the jetboat rides still occur on thar river.

This is an error. This world is fallen: locally the floods come as a direct consequence of geography, which changes after each volcanic eruption or earthquake. Both happen: the Wanganui catchment includes as it source two active volcanoes. And the glory we see now is but a foreshadowing.

Isaiah 4:2-6

²On that day the branch of the LORD shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and glory of the survivors of Israel. ³Whoever is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, ⁴once the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. ⁵Then the LORD will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over its places of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night. Indeed over all the glory there will be a canopy. ⁶It will serve as a pavilion, a shade by day from the heat, and a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.

Ephesians 4:1-16

¹I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

⁷But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.” ⁹(When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) ¹¹The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

We can walk forwards from the glory into the implications of this or we can walk backwards from the commands to the theology: it does not matter much. For it is God who will refine us and test us and keeping on working by his spirit so that if we abide with him we will be not merely accounted as beautiful and glorious but be the same. The Romans talk about purgatory where we pay for our sins: there is no penalty we could pay but death, and Christ as paid that, in this life and the second.
So we will all end up as saints, beautiful, glorious, living in a land of beauty, where the stream runs sure and beauty is untrammeled, or we will be experiencing the second death without respite for an indefinite time. The comfort of oblivion, the wish of the atheist, is a delusion. We will be held to account. This life is the beginning, not the end. But in this life we choose our end.
And in this we need to keep to essentials. An illustration.

Last week I was at a seminar or teaching how to write. Which was challenging, because we had to examine how we write ourselves. In one exercise, I was working with someone from the English department and we both identified that people move from the point. He discusses this and talks about it: he mainly works with actors and playwrights. I diagram the experiment. ANd that which is not needed to explain the experiment is discarded.

The essentials of the Christian faith is the gospel of Christ. There is such a thing as mere Christianity: the baptism we have is one, the salvation we have is one, and the communion we have is one. The speculation on what these things mean is our own, and each religious tradition falls into the same theological error of speculating on what we cannot underhand, and trying to make God neat.

But God is not tamed. He is not neat. For he has the power of salvation: he can make and remake the universe.

And it is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.