It doesn't get much better than this

Recently Teresa and I had an opportunity to travel in South Westland. We set off at the end of a week of wild weather and wondered whether we would strike snow or slips on the road or both. To our immense and very pleasant surprise, we woke up in Fox Glacier township to a perfect blue sky day with not a breathe of wind.

That meant we were able to visit nearby Lake Matheson with reasonable expectations of the picture postcard view that lake is famous for, as illustrated by a photo I was able to take:

For most of that morning, touring around the Fox Glacier district, we were constantly in view of snow capped mountains, in particular the two highest mountains in NZ, Tasman (on left in photo) and Aoraki/Cook (on right). The combination of snow capped mountains in the background and bush shrouded hill and grassed lowlands is unparalleled in beauty elsewhere in NZ (in my humble opinion). 

We were blessed!

And the day continued in that vein as we drove southwards towards the fabled land of Haast, with its mighty and outstandingly picturesque rivers (Haast, Waiatoto and Arawhata [photo above]) and reached the literal end of the West Coast road at Jacksons Bay. Perfect sunshine, zero cloud, no wind. It doesn't get much better than that.

We were blessed!

Life seems incredibly simple on such a day and in such an environment. God created the earth and the sun, life is glorious, enjoyable and straightforward.

Of course, that is not all there is to life. As we left the Haast, driving up to Haast Pass to reach our central Otago abode for the night, we headed into overcast weather and incredible cold the next morning just 3 degrees C, without any mitigating sunshine! Back in Jacksons Bay, we read how the first European settlers there, lured by the promise of land and a new life on it, found the going treacherous and so difficult, that within three or four years, all but four families had left the place to find an actually better life in other parts of NZ. Haast on a sunny day betrays no clues that it is one of the wettest places in NZ! Nor that over the Pass might be clouded coldness.

Also, of course, while we had a glorious day last weekend, the global mayhem of our day, with its continuing slaughter of innocent civilians, including children, was as persistent as the rain on most other days in South Westland.

Is there hope amidst the dark cloudy weather of our disputatious and dangerous day?

While travelling, I have been reading a fascinating book by Lamorna Ash, Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion (Bloomsbury, 2025) - available, when I return it, later this week, from the Theology House Library, Christchurch.

Lamorna is a c. 30 young woman, exploring love and life (bisexually), as a journalist and writer, whose search for meaning and order to life prompts her to seek out a variety of Christians and Christian experiences (for instance: a Christianity Explained course, spiritual retreats, frequenting Quaker services, settling into a north London Cofe parish) - her journalistic endeavours being and becoming part of an intensely personal spiritual quest and, ultimately, transformative encounter with Christ.

"I know you don't need religion to keep awake [alert to what is happening - contrast the disciples falling asleep in Gethsemane], or to be a good person - often the opposite is true. But I think I might need it for that. I think I might need the ritual of Sunday worship to discover the courage to become the version of myself I would like to be.

I choose to hold my nerve. I choose to become a Christian with my scepticism about organised religion intact, ... I believe I come closest to knowing something of God in my interactions with other people, the people I love, the strangers I meet. It's not a thin place. It's my church, in my city and I want to stay here, where heaven is right in reach. ... I believe the God of the religion which is my heritage might have come down to Earth as a man 2000 years ago to walk alongside us and help us with our terrible pain because I cannot think of a more beautiful story for how a god might behave" (pp. 290-91).

In part the significance of Lamorna's book is not only about her own journey but the current - green shoots appearing - drift in the UK away from secularization of society towards God, even towards "organized religion":

"What I have noticed is that the people around me, my awkward generation, just now on our way out of youth, have started discussing faith more seriously than we once did" (p. 288).

Life is beautiful. Life is complex and frustrating. There is hope. We all need to find the most beautiful story of God coming to Earth to walk alongside us to help us become who we are meant to be.