Blogs • Revd Tim Hurd (Former Chaplain)

“A community of mutual care”. That’s a phrase the Warden has distilled to describe one of the essential elements of the Selwyn College identity.

As well as being a universal trait of healthy human communities, it resonates strongly with the Christian foundations of the College.

But just unpacking that for a moment, what does it actually mean?

It means - as the events and dramatic traditions of Orientation Week try to express - that “we’re all in this together”: that both Freshers and Returners are part of the same extended household or village or family - whatever metaphor works for you.

That we are also - although one College - made of unique and differently gifted individuals. To care mutually, means respecting difference and diversity, giving people the space they need to find and shape themselves in the University and College environment.

That we learn to live in relationship with others: to be attentive, to be tolerant, to be able to accept another’s help and friendship and foibles.

And somewhere in all of that, we find ourselves more fully. And perhaps we find something more as well:

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:1-2

I wish you all well as Selwyn 2009 continues to discover its identity.

The prospect of spending some time overseas makes you think about what national days mean.

Sure, Waitangi Day may be a great excuse for a pub crawl in London, and - bizarrely - for Sales in Fiji (multiculturalism: so many cultural holiday sales to exploit!), but what does it mean to us, right here and now?

Of course, the papers and TV are full of such musings, but as part of the Anglican Church family, and named for it’s first NZ Bishop, Selwyn College might like to think about such things.

Those who drafted the Treaty at Waitangi were Anglicans. It was Anglican missionaries who had enough Reo to translate them, however imperfectly. Governor Hobson was an Anglican.

In recent years - 17 and counting - the Anglican Church has tried to model in its governance a partnership that acknowledges the Treaty. It means we sometimes have to talk a lot at meetings - sometimes frankly, other times with infuriating obliqueness. Sometimes we have to agree we can’t. Some of us choose to use the structure as a way of hiding from real encounters with real Treaty partners.

Nonetheless, it has been a really useful part of the journey as far as I can see. We’re forced to identify elephants, historical and present, in the metaphorical room. Pakeha have been invited to think about who and what we really are, apart from “the majority”, as a culture and a partner.

And we discover together some of the richness of the cloth from which our “now” is woven. (The Anglican symbol in this country is the “flax cross”, which tries to depict something of that).

As a theological student, a friend and I offered a presentation on identity and meaning in the very tongue-in-cheek persona of a pakeha-angst-ridden Folk duo, called “Generation Xile” (even before Flight of the Conchords!)

The keynote song was, deliberately, awful. But maybe the parting shot was not so pretending-to-be-insightful-but-actually-saying-very-little as I intended.

You may call me melancholy, / “A rose by any other name…”
And was the Treaty Hobson’s folly?
When he said “we are one people” did he mean,
“we are the same”?

Identity and partnership.

Just some of what might be up for exploration, Selwyn 2009.

On Christmas Day I announced my impending resignation to those few souls still left in North Dunedin at that time of year. I hope to be moving to a position in Fiji around Easter, but that seems still a little up in the air.

The bigger issue remains - and I’m sure will be there for some of our new soon-to-be 2009 residents at Selwyn… that place you’re at - as am I, which is an ending and a beginning. A sense of coming closure and the impending expanse of the future. Leaving “home”, and making that somewhere else. A bit of grief and a good dose of excitement.

New possibilities, full of wonderful opportunity and ringed with a little trepidation.

Such is life, with all its twists and turns. Such is the realm of the spirit too sometimes.

When I was at College (meaning High School), we had one - and only one - term-by-term Bible reading: the Parable of the Talents: three servants, differently weighted but equally prestigious (financial) gifts entrusted to them. Two invest and profit; one “plants” his in the ground: no risk, no return. Goodness knows what we make of that given recent financial madness… Suffice to say, the latter servant is not well regarded by his Boss.

Anyway, I hated that parable at school, but on Sunday found myself seated in an unfamiliar place, and looking straight at the window at All Saints that depicts it, in all of its Victorian sentimentality. I was forced to admit that, yes, it is a bit of a metaphor - full of opportunity and trepidation - that rings true. I think that’s why I feel at such tension with it: there’s a challenge there.

The servant who “plants” his Talents (a financial measure, maybe 10 years’ average wage - and the whole image I think a comic one to a farming society: peopl who know that money doesn’t grow on trees), does so out of fear. His instincts are to keep things safe at all costs, and be able to say at the end of the process - “Look, I didn’t risk, I didn’t lose anything, we’re sweet. I give you back just what you gave me”.

An ending and a beginning, indistinguishable.

Not what we’re called to, at any stage of our lives.

Selwyn, study, friends and relationships - all are going to stretch us, take us somewhere, make us someone, different. If we let that happen. Richer, in a purely non-financial sense at least, I hope.

Maybe that will come as well, maybe not.

Ends and beginnings.

T.S. Eliot writes famously (in “Little Gidding”, one of his Four Quartets)

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
…
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Whether you’re studying evolutionary biology or existentialist philosphy, or maybe even theology,
something there rings true.

I look forward to meeting many of you at Selwyn in the first part of 2009.

Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War One. The impact of that conflict on a generation - and on the College - can scarcely be overstated. Lives were forever changed or lost. Lovers and families bereft. The College corridors haunted by the memory of far away friends and young lives cut short.

The Selwyn College dining room is given in memory of two young men - brothers - who lost their lives on the other side of the world. I include the following reflection we used on ANZAC Day this year:

The Brothers’ Hall, the dining hall, is named in honour of two former Selwyn students,
brothers, who lived and died in an age of war.
This accident of birth saw them, and not us, living in a dangerous time.
Their sense of duty and adventure saw them serve.
Their courage saw them do so with distinction.

John and George Massey from Invercargill were 24 and 21 respectively when they died,
far from home, in “the war to end all wars”, World War One.
There were many in the First and Second World Wars who were killed before they saw 19.

John was studying at Cambridge University and enlisted at the start of the war.
He received a commission in the Royal Field Artillery, eventually promoted to Captain.
He was killed fighting to save his gun battery being out-flanked in May, 1918.
Of his men, only four survived, with but a single gun among them.
John’s body was not found until 1927.

George, his little brother, also joined the Field Artillery,
reaching the rank of Second Lieutenant
and was killed at the Somme on 27 June 1916.

John Massey, was awarded the ‘Croix de Guerre avec palme’, the highest French decoration.
He had previously been given the Military Cross for bravery.
John was a deeply religious man with a high sense of duty.
A senior officer wrote of him:
‘I count it one of the privileges of my life to have known him.
I shall always remember him for his many gifts and steady ripening of powers,
the gift of friendship, a rare delicacy of scruple and sterling courage.
Brave, affectionate, and soldierly,
he drew to himself the trust and admiration of those who knew him.
He loved his men and they him.
He was one of those few to whom it is given to “leave footprints in the sands of time.” ‘

The Brothers’ Hall was donated to the College by George and John’s mother and sister
in 1930, a testament to their living and dying.
The memorial tablet above the doors was unveiled by Sir James Allan, one time M.P.,
whose own son John is remembered in a stained glass window to your left.
He fell at Gallipoli. He too was a student when war broke out.
34 members of this church died in WWI alone.

We will hear in a moment the names of Selwyn students and exies,
young men who walked the College corridors, who never came home.
Today we remember their sacrifice, and the cost for all who have served in time of war
or who have struggled in the cause of peace.

Mrs Massey asked that the following inscription
be placed on the memorial for her two sons, the brothers:
“Thus these men died, an example of a noble courage
and a memorial of virtue not only unto young men, but to all their nation”.
Their example of service and the terrible cost of war, we remember this day.

It’s been a number of weeks since I last made a contribution here, and it seems the world has become a much more turbulent place.

Not just because exams have started - and I’ve been thinking of you all who are studying for and sitting these - but the global financial situation has come to the fore in our news, the election campaign, and in the public consciousness.

The causes for the mess international banking is in - and all the knock-on effects - are numerous, but it seems fairly clear there’s a good ol’ fashioned dose of greed and simply trying-to-be-too-clever-for-our-own-good somewhere in the mix. Just the latest of a long line of such behaviour, to which any study of history - or indeed the Bible - will attest.

At a General Election we’re invited to exercise our right - and some might drift towards duty - to vote. Which should remind us we’re part of a bigger whole. Margaret Thatcher famously once said “there is no such thing as society”. Even in the most generous interpretation, I think that’s rubbish.

We are, to quote the song that accompanies TV ads for the Salvation Army appeals, “all in this together”. And that’s one of the insights and possibilities that a residential College offers students: not only a sense of belonging, but of community, inter-relation, and common purpose.

Most especially at exam time, residents know they can’t escape the impact of noise or nuisance on other Selwynites. We are all links in a chain of interdependency that, when working well, can offer strong support and useful boundaries. Something, in short, greater than the sum of its parts.

In such an environment, individuals rise and flourish, but hopefully not without a sense of the foundation on which they build, and a desire to contribute to the greater good, not just in the narrowness of self-interest, however supposedly “enlightened”.

Best wishes to all who are still in exam mode. May you do yourself, and those behind you, justice.

Readers may be aware of the recent profile of Selwynesque band the DFenders.

The current College band is recording a song which will soon be heard on a promotional podcast for Selwyn, composed by current students, evocatively titled “Rise”.

The church congregations that meet across the fence from Selwyn (all 5 of us, embracing diverse traditions and ethnicities) were also honoured to have the Selwyn Small Choir perform for us at a gathering on Saturday night, where they ended by performing Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” - both a fab song (watch her perform it live - in a post-modern electronica sense - here), and a really interesting musical and lyrical statement. Best wishes to Small and Large Choirs for Wednesday’s choral competition with Knox!

I’m also beginning two precious weeks of Study Leave where I’ll be working on some of my own music. So forgive me, if I’ve got music on my mind.

Oh, and I’m currently listening to the latest offering from “national treasure” singer-songwriter, Dave Dobbyn, titled “Anotherland”. And rather enjoying it.

I have a book called “What language shall I borrow?” It’s about the way we speak about faith. Where we turn for a language to express joy and emptiness, love and hope.

And really, where we do our spirituality, many of us, is in our music. Music is the language we look to when language by itself proves to be too thin.

Music is the language that many of us turn to, whether we realise it or not, to ground ourselves, to make sense of what’s happening, to get beyond ourselves.

That’s the language of spirituality. Always has and always will be.

Dave Dobbyn is a case very much in point. His rediscovered faith and his music are so clearly and powerfully connected. You can clearly see the man on a journey, little statements of faith, little statements of hope, little questions of self, and those of us who’ve lived with the music are caught up in it.

There are tracks on that journey like “Lament for the numb”, “When I needed you most I couldn’t find language”, “Sudden staring at a naked flame”, “Beside you”. And the song that opened the album marking his overt claiming of faith was interestingly titled “Welcome home”, a wonderful statement of inclusion and identity in itself (see the video here - note the use of flags as markers of identity). I sang too at our gathering on Saturday Dobbyn’s setting of onetime Burns Fellow [50th anniversary this week] James K. Baxter’s “Song of the Years” (text at end).

With another Dobbyn album named after Auckland landmark, The Hopetoun Bridge, I challenge anyone to suggest that New Zealand music culture is not a place of deep spirituality. And it’s not just this one artist.

Why is it that music tends to engulf us at adolescence?

Because music is and has always been about meaning and identifying and… something we just can’t put our fingers on.

The language of the soul.

SONG OF THE YEARS James K. Baxter

When from my mother’s womb I came
Disputandum was my name.

Weeping, hoping, threatening,
beyond myself I had no King.

I drew in with each hour’s breath
the grey dust of the second death.

And when my childhood days were spent
it was to Venus I grew suppliant.

Little tremors woke and died
within the mountain of my pride.

Singing on the gallows cart,
created beauty held my heart,

The aardvark and the onager
were stabled at my sepulchre.

And in that deep den the King of Bliss
broke my heart and gave me his.

“This for your doom and penance take:
be merry always for my sake.”

He gave me a white stone to bear
with my true name written there.

And without end I’ll say
Laus tibi Domine!

My nephew has a job as a waiter. At least he did last night.

All of 5 1/4, he and his Primary colleagues from St Francis Xavier school cooked, served and entertained last night for their parents and families. What did they prepare? What else: burgers.

Now, I’m told the food was actually very good.

But in a moment of cynicism I can’t help but make the unfair and totally unfounded leap… So just what is our education system preparing us for?

A job at McCafe? Surely not.

A role further up the corporate McLadder? Maybe.

Does education - and especially tertiary education - only fit us for a career, or is it supposed to do something else as well? Or even instead?

Back in the 1990s we moved - at least financially - from the idea that higher education benefited society as a whole, to acknowledging that it benefited the individual concerned. Hence the advent of student fees, student loans, and the ongoing remodeling of institutions.

If you approved, this remodeling was about making education relevant, outcome-oriented, and bringing a medieval institution kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat (for you Terry Pratchett fans).

If you did not, this was the age when our Polytechnics wanted to become Universities, and our Universities tried their very hardest to become Polytechnics: vocational training centres, where knowledge and learning for its own sake was a perverse and flabby indulgence.

Both descriptions of course are caricatures, but in a world where George W. Bush is electable and reality TV still pulls the punters, what do we make of wisdom?

With a capital “W”, wisdom is one of the biblical descriptions, personifications or attributes of God.

Our University motto is Sapere aude: “Dare to be wise”.

What does it mean to “dare to be wise” in our world, and our still “tall-poppy” culture?

What does it mean to be a literal philosopher, a “lover of wisdom”?

Do we study to be moulded or enlarged?

To answer questions or to ask them?

Perhaps in that’s the difference between the burger and El Bulli (ref. Monday’s interview on National Radio).

Go on. Be wise. I dare ya.