The Guild Vicar of St
Lawrence Jewry and The New Zealand Society’s chaplain Reverend David
Burgess welcomed in from the cold some 80 members and friends along
with the New Zealand Girdlers’ scholars and members of the company
for our annual church service.
Our honorary chaplain
Reverend Barry Olsen, having prepared our service, led off with a
fine mastering of the verse in Maori of our anthem God Defend New
Zealand. Readings were taken from Isaiah chapter 61 and 1 John
chapter 4 by Master of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers Richard
Roberts and a member of Ngati Ranana respectively.
Having only read
James K Baxter’s Song to the Holy Spirit once before,
President Martin Conway got into a nice flow for this song that for
some reason has never been put to music. The text can be found at
the end of this report. Members present were also treated once again
to a solo piece from mezzo soprano Marion Olsen.
Graham Eklund QC, a
personal friend of retiring High Commissioner Jonathan Hunt, read
the address that sat perfectly in the middle of this evening’s
service. (Graham’s text can also be found at the end of this
report.)
At the conclusion of
the service we walked the short distance to the very fine Armourers
and Brassiers Hall for the Girdlers’ reception. We have been the
Girdlers' guests for now over 75 years when back in 1933 the hosted
the first tea party for the New Zealand Society. After a four word
welcome from the Master, the Society President replied on behalf of
the members present and thanked both the Armourers and Girdlers.
Martin made mention of the upcoming annual Corpus Christi Cambridge
v Corpus Christi Oxford netball match but advised scholars Ryan N
Harper, David Middlemiss and graduate Blake Hansen that study and
work commitments should always come first. On behalf of the scholars
David Middlemiss offered a note of thanks. The evening’s speeches
were rounded off with a short address from Jonathan Hunt and his
never ending amazement of breadth, depth and diversity of the New
Zealand “mafia” in the UK.
New Zealand Society President Martin Conway raises a glass
of thanks to Girdlers Master Richard Roberts (at rear) and former master
Peter Trimingham at the Girdlers' reception at the Armourers & Brassiers
Hall
Master
and Wardens of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers, High Commissioner,
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is
not easy to follow Marion Olsen who has been singing for you. Her
singing enlivens us. I have no singing voice and no musical
accompaniment. Today I do not even have the privilege of reading or
singing something someone else has written.
And - I
am a lawyer, a species of human being long vilified in these parts of
the world. I will not further mention Charles Dickens, who complained of
the pestilence of lawyers, but was unable to exterminate them.
You
might have thought I had been invited here today to address you on some
serious issue of law. If you were looking forward to that, I apologise.
If you were not looking forward to that, you will not be disappointed.
Although law is interesting, it is mostly interesting to lawyers and
since most of you are not lawyers, an address on some serious issue of
law would not interest you.
We have
already heard from Marion, but what of Barry, her husband, who silently
and in the background orchestrated an invitation for me to address you.
It was with his encouragement that, Martin Conway emailed me with a copy
of the service for today. The draft already had my name on it, but with
the little cautionary proviso created by those letters, tbc – “to be
confirmed”. Although Barry has known me for the best part of 25 years,
it is probable that he had lost my email address, my telephone numbers
and probably my postal address as well and was therefore unable to
contact me, to tell me directly that he was recommending to Martin that
I should address you.
No such
problem for Lieutenant-Governor Hobson in 1840, when he met the Maori
representatives to explain to them that Queen Victoria was taking over
sovereignty of their lands and henceforth they would come under her
protectorate. But then Hobson did not have the excuse of an email
address his system would not find, or a telephone number directory
inquiries had no record of, or of a postal address that he could no
longer find. Nor would he have had the excuse that even Google could not
find Te Kemara, Chief of the Ngatikawa.
And so
it was, that without a specific issue to address, or a case to argue, or
a brief fee to earn, I was invited to address you for a few minutes – I
had a blank canvas to paint. Some time later when I met Martin, he said
- “not too heavy and a little uplifting”. I hope I have fathomed what he
meant.
It is
168 years since the Treaty was signed, inspired, I suppose, by the will
of the English to spread Englishness around the world. I began to think
about inspiration and the sources and people we draw if from. I recall
my child’s perspective about our country. I remember thinking NZ was
quite old. When I was 10, the Treaty of Waitangi had been signed 120
years earlier- . a lot of years to a child of 10. Of course I had no
appreciation of what a mere blip in the history of civilisation that was
- nor did I have much of an appreciation of what had gone before in NZ.
Nor did I have any appreciation of the cultural diversity and depth
which in 1840 existed in other parts of the world, nor of course what
inspired people to travel across continents to acquire other lands.
Today,
Martin has read to us “Song to the Holy Spirit” a poem by one of NZ’s
most inspired and inspiring poets, J K Baxter. It is difficult not to be
moved by the last verse, in particular with its reference to the love of
friends and song in the hearts of the poor.
I want
to take you back, not to 1840, but just to 1964, via 1550 (or
thereabouts) and to tell you a little of a former school teacher of
mine. I met him in my first year at secondary school. I was 13 and have
been very fortunate to have a continuing friendship with him to this
day.
I think
it was Latin first (amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant – I love, you
love, he loves etc). I have wondered why when it comes to Latin, that
the first thing we learn, is the conjugation of the verb “to love”. I
have found no answer.
After
Latin, it was History, which may have included imparting contemporary
learning about the Treaty of Waitangi and related history. Whatever were
the subjects or the lessons, I have long since forgotten the content.
What I
have not forgotten however is some detail of the extra curricular
activities, including cricket, that wonderful game introduced to NZ, in
the early 19
th century. The earliest mention of cricket in NZ
is apparently to be found in a churchman’s diary, written in 1832. The
first definite mention of cricket in England was in a 1597 court case
concerning a dispute over a school's ownership of a plot of land. A
59-year old coroner testified that he and his school friends had played
kreckett on the site fifty years earlier (i.e. in about 1550).
The school concerned was the
Royal Grammar
School, Guildford. The Court record shows what a civilised
place Surrey was, at least from the mid 16th century.
But I digress.
Picture
the scene in 1964, some 4 centuries later in another school some 12,000
miles away, in a land colonised by those cricket loving people. I am in
the nets as a rather scrawny, ashen faced 13 yr old padded up with bat
in hand dealing easily with the fast and slow being dished up by other
13 and 14 year olds. Then the said teacher takes it upon himself to
demonstrate his leg spin ability. The mismatch between a cricketer in
his mid 20s and in his prime, and a young boy in his very early teens is
not difficult to understand.
It was
not long before a ball was whistling down, pitching on middle and leg
and spinning viciously, missing my forward defensive prod and crashing
into my off stump. The sound of the timber being shattered was
accompanied by a loud yelp of joy from the bowler. It was a delivery
Shane Warne would have been proud of. I recall concentrating harder
thereafter and I do not recall being beaten again. Fortunately, the
bowler had no googly, no flipper and no wrongun. Those were reputedly
developed after the leg spin demon became a parliamentarian. The teacher
was of course our present High Commissioner, Jonathan Hunt. It was not
only vicious leg spin I was introduced to – it was also serious music,
good food and foreign lands. Parliament’s gain, was most certainly a
loss to many schoolboys.
And the
relevance of referring to our High Commissioner in my address to you
today? Simply that he was one of those inspirational people we have the
privilege of coming across from time to time, who set me on the path
towards university, leading to England, and to this great city of London
- and today this wonderful church.
By the
time the Treaty was signed, this church had been built in its present
form for 153 years, having been rebuilt by Christopher Wren after the
Great Fire of London.
Which
brings me to the inspiration we get from churches, music, poetry and
dance, all of which we have in our service today.
Churches
are not just buildings – as buildings they have no inherent warmth. Yes,
they inspire by their majesty and grandeur, but they are not alive, as
buildings. They are but monuments. They are alive when full of song and
music and prayer. Even the great cathedrals of the world are but
monuments, when silent, but something else when filled with music. I
learned that most vividly in Paris’s Notre Dame - a routine tourist
visit of the cathedral was transformed by the music of a service which
started while I was there.
Baxter’s
“Song to the Holy Spirit” was published in 1973, in a
volume entitled
Thoughts About the Holy Spirit. According to Dr Jane
Simpson an historian, poet and composer, and former lecturer in
Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury, it was never intended
to be sung. Inspiring and reflective though it is, what a pity. What joy
there would be in bringing it to life in music and song.
Baxter’s
poem and the possibility of setting it to music, reminded me of Friedrich
Schiller’s “An die Freude” or, as we know it in English,
“Ode to Joy”.
Schiller was a German poet, playwright and historian and wrote “Ode to
Joy” in
1785. You will know it in its musical setting by
Beethoven
in the fourth and final movement of his
Ninth Symphony
(completed in 1824, some 16 years before the T of W). Several other
composers have set that Ode, to music, including Schubert and
Tchaikovsky (who incidentally was born in the year of the T of W), but
none as successfully as Beethoven. Try it. Find a copy of it, turn up
the music as loud as you can. It is a hard hearted person indeed, whose
spirits would not be raised. It is surely some of the most inspirational
and uplifting music ever composed. It celebrates joy.
“Joy,
beautiful spark of the gods, Daughter from Elysium”
Daughter from Elysium is a reference to Joy from Paradise. It is not
hard to hear that in Beethoven’s music.
And so
I wonder, did our colonising forefathers think of Aotearoa as a form of
Elysium –a form of paradise. What was it about NZ that inspired them? If
they had been aware of our Benedicte Aotearoa, they would surely have
been aware of the essence of paradise which we think NZ has, which
inspires something in most of us in one way or another.
To me,
J K Baxter got that essence, when writing of the Holy Spirit by
reference to various qualities of NZ’s landscape.
And so
to finish, with a very short poem by another fine NZ poet, Hone Tuwhare
- his poem Haiku (1): His short instruction addresses the bed of a creek
and is intended to uplift it. It applies equally to us.
“Stop
your snivelling,
Creek-bed
Come rain hail
and flood-water,
laugh again”
And so
should we.
And now
to the uplifting joy of music and dance, and our next hymn.
