Resources

Māori-Pākehā relations put under author’s spotlight

https://www.localmatters.co.nz/health/maori-pakeha-relations-put-under-authors-spotlight/

Becoming Pākehā - Book Review & Giveaway

https://anglicanmovement.nz/blog/becoming-pkeh-book-review-amp-giveaway

Interview with John Bluck "Becoming Pākehā" - Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1tTIEc094Q

Interview with John Bluck "Becoming Pākehā" - Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XBb14TtAN0

Interview with John Bluck "Becoming Pākehā" - Part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYfZe66UsJM

"John Bluck writes" - Essays on a variety of themes by John Bluck

https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/john-bluck-writes

A Pākehā place to stand: John Bluck’s bicultural journey

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300747649/a-pkeh-place-to-stand-john-blucks-bicultural-journey

John Bluck: The fight that led the Anglican Church to launch the Hīkoi of Hope

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-listener/opinion/john-bluck-the-fight-that-led-the-anglican-church-to-launch-the-hikoi-of-hope/ZWPX2ZG3KNAJNKICVAVVTQVD3E/

Here’s a question that you’ll never see asked or answered by Bradley Walsh or any of the Chasers. What do the following have in common: the name of a breed of muscular cattle much favoured by NZ farmers; an expensive brand of French fine china and the patron saint who gave his name to this church you’re sitting in today?

For 20,000 pounds and three seconds remaining, the answer is Limousin, a region of west central France.

The cattle come from there, though only over the last two centuries. The fine china comes from there though only over the last five centuries. But 1600 years ago, St Leonard set up his monastery in the forest in Limousin and attracted thousands of visitors to join him, share his land and work on his gardens.

And they weren’t just any old visitors. Most of them were former prisoners of every sort – criminal, political, women and men, the crafty and clever, the mentally and physically damaged, St Leonard’s hospitality embraced them all, and not just as temporary refuge. Those who stayed were given land to farm and garden, as they worked to restore their life and health and dignity.

It’s an amazing story of prisoner rehabilitation from a time when locking people up was second best to chopping people up.

But it’s a story we know so little about because it’s wrapped  in myth and legend. There might even have been more than one Leonard who holds the story, certainly it lasted long beyond the original Leonard’s short life.

The St Leonard legend lasted for over 500 years, his followers were still found in the 11th century, and always the focus for this ministry in his name  was on prisoners and their rehabilitation.

Other groups also took his name because he was so famous. Women in labour for example would call on him for help. But Leonard’s core business was always prisoners.

It’s worth wondering why a cause as unpopular as prisoner rehabilitation is linked with someone so famous and widely admired. Because Leonard still is. Churches and schools that take his name abound around the world. Even in a deeply secular country like ours. There’s a whole suburb in Hastings, and another one in Dunedin that carry his name. His fame lingers on. Yet his cause is as unfashionable as ever.

We’re happy to be St Leonard’s people. In Matakana it might even become fashionable one day. We do have the best real estate in town after all. The most visible.

But no one wants to think too much about prisoners. They are the people we lock away out of sight and out of mind, and even if you want to go and visit one, it takes ten days and more to process your request because of staff shortages. Which is the same reason for having to lock inmates up without exercise for up to 23 hours a day. But we don’t need to think about them because we can’t see them. There are no reality tv shows about daily life in prisons like there are about airports and highway patrols and real estate.

That out of sight out of mind attitude is no accident.  We really don’t want to know about the 7700 of our fellow New Zealanders, over half of them Maori, who are currently locked away.  That’s 2,500 fewer than there were two years ago but are we glad about that? Not if you read the social media trolls who say lock em up and throw away the key.

And the prisons where they are incarcerated offer no clue from the outside what’s going on inside.  Have you driven past Mt Eden recently and wondered what’s happening in there? I have and I’d rather not think about it.

Kiwis on the outside keep their distance from the Kiwis on the inside, and it’s not only for understandable security concerns. It’s bad for real estate values as well. At Omaha Road in Hastings, Ngati Kahungunu have big plans for a prisoner rehabilitation centre, but resource consent is fiercely opposed by the up market subdivision alongside. Even the mayor’s not happy.

And we don’t want to know too much about what puts people into prison in the first place.

This is where it gets really shocking. We have among the very highest incarceration rates of any country in the developed world and 90% of our prisoners have mental health and or substance abuse issues.  At least half of prisoners in NZ struggle to read or write. They are functionally illiterate. And 70% of them reoffend within two years of release.

St Leonard where are you? Back in the forest of Limousin, former prisoners would flock to him carrying the chains they had prised open by invoking his name. They’d bring their broken bonds and leave them heaped in a pile.

That’s the legend. We don’t know exactly how that happened back in the sixth century but we do know men and women were freed from bondage and found new lives inspired by him and his practical generosity and care. And the power of that story continues to this day.

It’s what the Anglican City Mission is doing on Hobson St in Auckland with its newly housed rehab services and that’s what is happening with a hundred half way houses and drug addiction programmes and employment training schemes and literacy courses and Te Ao Maori empowerment workshops, all around the country. Wonderful work but woefully underpowered.  68% of prisoners have no follow up programmes available to them when they apply for parole.

Because the range of issues that drive people into prisons in the first place is so complex: sexual violence and domestic abuse at home, woeful housing, chronic ill health, distorted images of male power, sexual orientation, school failures, bullying…the list goes on and on.

Underneath this overwhelming challenge and our underwhelming response as a church and a nation is our failure to find and trust a story that will inspire us to do better. Like in so many other examples Pakeha NZers have lost a spirituality that helps them respond to crisis.

What needs to inspire a response to the prison crisis is some kind of faith, some sort of symbol or sign that will drive and sustain us. Maori are finding that in kapa haka, song and legend from their heritage of Te Ao Maori. Christians, both Maori and Pakeha, but sadly not secular NZ can find that in our history as a church and the saints who surround us on every side.

St Leonard is one of them. He gives us a story that we can translate into words and symbols for our time and place; for those in prison and for those locked up prisons of their own making; a story that will help us break the chains that bind us, for we are all prisoners of some sort, all bound to habits and behaviours  we find hard to break alone, habits of indifference to others, excess in what we demand, carelessness about the environment. We need models, signs, symbols, stories that inspire us to change.

And how does that happen? Because these stories hold a spiritual power that goes way beyond any physical limit. A hermit in a forest living in poverty transforming prisoner’s lives.

A treaty signed in Waitangi drafted and translated by missionaries and signed by chiefs who saw it as a spiritual covenant. A Tongan girl from a poor south Auckland family who couldn’t afford a pair of sneakers becoming the world’s best shot putter, the greatest athlete of her generation. A 6th century saint in a French forest, with a halo around his head. Why a halo? Because it symbolises someone whose love of God is so intense, his faith so clear that it radiates from him, like light from the sun. It’s strong enough to allow his yoke to be easy and his burden to be light, as a disciple who carries the weight of others.

The story that shapes this Matakana church and the symbol of broken chains that we offer to the world has all of that spiritual power and more, if we choose to tap into it and let it flow through our liturgy, our hospitality, our pastoral care of each other, the kids programme outside, the op shop across the drive, and to any ex prisoner who may stumble across us one day and want to leave his or her chains behind as they leave.

Till then let’s use this festival day to let go of our own chains. In the pew shelf in front of you is a chain link that I invite you to take and hold. And as you do name something in the silence, just to yourself, that you would like to let go off and leave behind. It might be a memory you’d like to discard,  some habit or behaviour you’d like to change, someone you’d like to forget, something you’ve done that you’d like to let go of now. Whatever it is, attach it to the chain link and put it back on the shelf. When you come to communion, bring it with you and place it in the canister in front of the altar. We’ll then cover the canister and with a  little help from St Leonard, leave our chains behind for ever.

That’s what happened in the forest of Limousin. No reason that it can’t happen here.