Greetings from Andrew - Advent 2020

 

Greetings from Andrew – Advent 2020

Golden Pohutukawa, New Plymouth, 23 Nov 2020	Lockdown view of High Street, Dunedin, 1 April 2020

It seems strange to think that this time last year we had no idea of the impact of a certain virus and the massive world-wide disruption it would cause. Although not as severely affected as in other parts of the world, it has certainly been a year of best laid plans falling apart, double the amount of work to try to keep things going, and the emergence of words that didn’t have the same significance in November 2019: bubble, lock down, Zoom, tipping point….

There is still a lot to celebrate:

·        Living in a country with a strong compassionate response from leaders and people, resulting in fewer deaths and disruption than other places.

·        Being able to get on with an albeit modified life that is the envy of others

It also meant changing overseas excursion plans to spending time “at home” so to speak… swapping a mid -year planned journey to Scotland, to Wellington, the Hawkes Bay and Taranaki instead.

Kat and David arrive at their wedding reception, 29 Feb 2020	Paul Woodward, taken in May 1999.

There have been significant events to celebrate this year: the wedding of Kat and David on 29 February just before things started shutting down, the 60^th birthday celebrations of my brother Scott (October), Paul (November) and Chris (December)… which I guess must mean mine is only just over a year away!

Work wise, the emerging pandemic required a lot of national and local liaising to position the Diocese of Dunedin for new ways of working in a virtual world and ensuring that people continued to be loved and cared for. This involved a significant amount of health and safety related work all alongside the personal pressure of having no human contact for a number of weeks. I was a bubble of one for Alert Level 4 and 3.

The unusual element of it all was that all over the world people were experiencing the same [apart from some places where the apparent  lack of any collective identity resulted in science being ignored with fake news and conspiracy theories - usually tied into a particular brand of evangelical theology that saw all this as a sign of the end times… people who appeared to be on a very different planet].

Everything went virtual for a time, including the first part of our Synod in September, although we were able to meet in November to decide the future of Selwyn College – Te Maru Pūmanawa (a university hall of residence that comes under the Diocese of Dunedin).

Emerging from lockdown, 31 May 2020	Synod on Selwyn College, 14 Nov 2020

This did mean we had to think differently about how we connect faith with each other… and started a series of videos that I’ve begun to try and tell some of the stories going on in faith communities in this part of the world.

Otherwise, I’m still surrounded by friends who keep in touch. I’ve been receiving some massage therapy this year as a preventative measure (thanks Nick at Knox Rehabilitation!) and (so far) have not had a single cold.

Alison continues to hang in there (88 this year) and seems to have survived this rather strange year intact. It was sad the say goodbye to my Aunt Marion Strang from motor neuron disease: may she rest in peace and rise in glory.

Wishing you all the best as the year draws to a close… along with peace and joy in all you do over the holiday period.