Somebody remarked to me the other day that a disproportionate number of people in the Bible spent a lot of time in the desert. I thought it was both an amusing and insightful comment. Physical illness is so often a desert experience, in large part because of the emotional, spiritual and psychological effects of being ill.

When I am spiritually dry, as I am now, I find it helpful to do a number of things. Either I go for a walk on the beach, or I read the Psalms, or I phone a friend, or I watch one of two DVDs. Read more…

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To read a recent paper I co-wrote on Immigration and Social Cohesion in New Zealand: From a policy goal to reality? visit http://www.asianz.org.nz/files/abutcher_speech_19may07.pdf 

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Visit http://www.asianz.org.nz/files/abutcher_speech_11may07.pdf to download a PDF of a lecture I gave on 11 May 2007 at the Asian Studies Institute at Victoria University of Wellington on Asia and Research in the Public Space.

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It’s a funny thing sitting in the waiting room of a Doctor’s surgery. It’s one of those few times in life where we are willingly (albeit with great reluctance) around sick people.

Most of the time we avoid those who are sick. A colleague comes into work one day with a sniffle and we say to her ‘don’t come in tomorrow; stay at home; we don’t want your cold’. A friend, who is coughing away, like he’s the walking advertisement for Emphysema Incorporated, keeps his distance as we meet on the street and exchange greetings. ‘I won’t shake your hand’ he says, standing so far away that you can barely hear him above the noise of the other pedestrians, ‘but I have this cough and don’t want to give it to you’. Even a well child is kept home from school because all the other children seem to have lice or mumps or grazed knees or something infectious. Read more…

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This week Robert Webber died. Webber’s name is most associated with the call to an ‘Ancient-Future Faith’. Go to any emerging church conference, or read any emerging church publication, and you’ll find his name mentioned. My association with him is by proxy. In his foreword to my book A Time to Gather, David Newton mentions Webber as one of the key spokespeople for a resurgence in liturgical worship: the rediscovery of ’sacred time’ as a counter-cultural force. (You can read David’s full comments here).

Read more…

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