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  • Added November 5th, 2013
  • Filed under 'All Sorts'
  • Viewed 2116 times

Stories make our world

By Helen Watson White in All Sorts

stories of war and peace and church; which need to be told?

"Stories make our world," says Prof. Richard Jackson, Deputy Director of Otago's National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. The
long title of his recent inaugural professorial lecture was "The discursive construction of social processes, or how stories make our world". It is not just that stories make us who we are, he says, but how they do it : that is the focus of his research.
This academic is also an artist, fly-fisherman and now a fiction-writer, with a novel soon to be launched called Confessions of a Terrorist. As the humorous but scary pretend-security procedures around the lecture made clear, there are many creative ways of getting your message across, and he considers the peace story, or world-wide web of peace stories, need to be told.
For years we have been sold a pup, he says, in the way our inherited legends of war embody heroism, nationalism and all things admirable, while tales of non-violent alternatives, of conflict resolution, and of the success of these strategies, have been suppressed or ignored. "The war stories have failed us" because they have suggested that "civilized" people may make war on "uncivilized" people, to defend the form of civilization - that is, in one major modern myth, the economy -- they have developed. Yet if you look at the American military response to 9/11, going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq has not brought peace or economic stability, but made the situation worse. A "civilization" that so readily goes to war is fired by an economy of death; he is not alone in thinking it doesn't deserve to be called civilized.
I am proud that the establishment of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies has been an Anglican initiative, planned and formed over many years, by people I have known in other contexts for their quiet persistence and their absolute faith that there is another way. Towards the end of the social gathering I discovered that Richard Jackson, too, is an Anglican, a member of St Paul's Cathedral; his wife Michelle sings in the choir in exactly the same spot where I used to stand. It's possible that Richard, the son of Salvation Army parents who were missionaries in Africa, made the switch to his wife's denomination as a great many people do. All such combinations make me happy, as they promote a merging and sharing of stories.
Stories make us who we are. My sister Janet and I have recently been on an Anglican "pilgrimage" to the Whakatipu area. After I dropped John at the airport on his way to the UK, we drove to Queenstown and next morning joined the group gathered at St Peter's for worship and story- sharing.
The "pilgrims" came from all parts of the Diocese of Dunedin (Otago/Southland), as they have done 5 or 6 times before, exploring the geography and faith history of its regions, from Stewart Island to North Otago and the Waitaki Valley.
Five carloads of people - who, although they were Anglicans, didn't necessarily know each other - made their way in convoy up the lakeshore to Glenorchy, Diamond Lake and Paradise, stopping at various points along the way for historical commentary from St Peters Vicar (and ex- Bishop) Rt Rev Dr David Coles. The stories that imbue this region now include Lord of the Rings, so we were travelling through country that is fabled in film as well as in Maori oral history and the printed word. Bible stories come alive as you ford the River Jordan (singing negro spirituals) and bump your way up to the old homestead called Paradise, with a bushwalk through beeches called the Garden of Eden.
The presence of trucks and workers of all kinds revealed yet another ad was being filmed in some of the most magnificent scenery in the country. Mountains, misty slopes, ancient and mysterious forests: this is the stuff of fairy-tales and literature; the grand house at Diamond Lake is called Arcadia. Our family lore includes a stay there with the Veint family for my three older siblings during the polio epidemic of 1948. After correspondence lessons with the Veint children, they were free to explore, on foot or on horseback; Janet recalled some thirsty days haymaking with everyone taking part, then racing down to the lake to swim.
The story of the church's origins in Queenstown is tied to the history of the town itself, and of its founder William G. Rees, who in 1863 - 150 years ago -- was not only (in one paper's words) "a carrier, coach proprietor, lighterman, boat builder, hotelkeeper, storekeeper, contractor, sawyer, gold buyer, slaughterman, baker, land- agent, station holder and ferryman" but also an Anglican lay reader, who took services for some six years before the area had its first vicar.
His great-granddaughter gave us another example of a family having more than one denominational identity, when she told the story of how William's father died when he was only 12, and his maternal (Pocock) grandfather became a strong influence in his life. George Pocock was a lay Methodist schoolmaster who conducted lively Tent Missions in Bristol. The great-granddaughter is a lay minister too.
I came away from the tiny 1889 interdenominational mission hall in Glenorchy thinking "when two or three..." (you know the rest). The Christian story is the greatest peace story of all, and because you don't have to be specially qualified to tell it, it continues to be told.
-- Helen Watson White, Anglican Methodist