E-NEWS 11TH JULY 2025
Greetings folks,
When thinking about what e-news you might find interesting I came across an article in the Magazine NZ Geographic by James Frankham citing two momentous events (my interpretation) occurring in NZ. One of RJ’s Confectionery ceasing production of Jaffas and the other the slow march toward extinction of the ‘Long Finned’ eel. No more rolling a Jaffa down the isle at the movie theatre to see who can get it all the way. No more annual Jaffa race down Baldwin Street Dunedin, (The steepest street in the world) As James says “a world without Jaffas seems less rich”. Perhaps some solace in that the Jaffa is and was an Australian lolly. In the end just another casualty of a monetary imperative (declining sales they say)
The other other event is the loss of a species we find threatened in the decline of the ‘Long Finned’ Eel. James Frankham reminds us that each time we lose a species, it diminishes us a little. With many wetlands drained and rivers obstructed by power schemes, our native eels are often blocked from migrating to breed, or unable to return to ancestral rivers as juveniles. Frankham qutes Bill Morris in a production of a feature on eels, when Morris met Willie Tai, aka The Eel King—words he has tattoo’d across his stomach. Tai rescues more than 100 big eels a year from a canal on the Ruahihi power scheme. Tai says: “It’s no fault of their own that they can’t get back to the sea,” he says. “They’re just trying to live, and they can’t—not like how they used to.”
An example of how a convenience we mostly take for granted contributes to an extinction and how a simple heroic act can express a symbiotic relationship with our planet, As Frankham says: Sometimes conservation means direct intervention. Other times it just means getting out of the way.
In another publication by Jerome Stone Sacred Nature we read that the “Application of the benefits of nature is an ancient wisdom we are only barely beginning to regain, as the Earth heats, glaciers melt, volcanoes pop and fizzle, rainforests are logged, tectonic plates collide and spe13cies vanish. What is now required is a different sensitivity, a natural ecological spirituality. Because… spiritualities come from the realm of insights rather than data”.
As members of St Andrews on the Terrace you and I are part of that movement towards a spirituality that is not a way of being different from the planet but rather in an intimate living relationship. Below is a sample of the theopoetic this Sundays service will seek to explore,
Earth is not a thing,
without a being
Earth is in relation
Earth creates, evolves
Without a being it is wonder
Earth escapes reason
Earth does not exist it lives
existence itself
Earth flows
Earth is flow,
relationship itself:
In, with, and through.
God is love:
God is unforced force
The flow in all things,
Doug Lendrum
You can read the full E-news here: https://mailchi.mp/943c753f7e1f/this-weeks-newsletter-from-st-andrews-on-the-terrace-10135597
