I read three books while I was away. One was by an old Catholic author Michel Quoist. When I was younger I used to enjoy his meditations. (I have changed) I read Maurice Shadbolt's early book, "The New Zealanders" and found his short stories fascinating but frustrating. The book I really enjoyed was by an elderly Church of Christ minister, Ron O'Grady, now in his eighties. As a child and teenager I recall him as one of our ministers who was heavily involved in the ecumenical movement. I appreciated his thoughtful approach back then. The book is his autobiography, "The Ultimate Challenge". He led a very challenging, broad and high pressure life with a great variety of experiences right up until the present. Mother Teresa, New Zealand and Thailand Prime Ministers (he conducted David Lange's funeral) President Marcos, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Pope John Paul II are just some of the people he met and mixed with on his life's journey. Here is a short paragraph about him.
Ron is a minister of the Christian Church (Churches of Christ), married to Alison with three children and three grandchildren. He has served in parishes in Naenae and Christchurch and on the staff of the National Council of Churches in New Zealand. Later he became the Associate General Secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia based in Singapore. He spent one year in the United States as a Visiting Scholar and in 1982 became Director of the Australian Churches’ Overseas Aid Programme. Back in New Zealand he has been writing, publishing and assisting churches and organisations. In 1990 he founded ECPAT International, the programme to end child sex abuse.
I admire Ron and see him and his wife as a product of our denomination in New Zealand at its best. A song we sing fits. "Some there are who by their living lead us to a higher plane." Here are some quotations from the book.
On NZ Church life.
He speaks of the 1970's enthusiasm for ecumenical sharing but then goes on....
"Since that time Christianity in New Zealand has become even more fragmented. The major Christian denominations - Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox - are all experiencing some internal problems with declining membership and clergy shortages. The religious vacuum has been filled by an absolute myriad of new, independent and often mutually exclusive religious groups.
.... Each one claims the Bible as their central guide but their understanding of biblical history and teaching is usually highly emotional, personalised and selective.
....... The Christian ideals of service, simplicity, humility and love are often hard to identify."
On the "might have beens" in life...
The clearest fact of life is this
What might have been is not what is.
Ron shares his creed...
I believe in good
even in a world that rewards evil
I believe in love
though people rape and destroy
I believe in truth
even as I listen to public lies
I believe in tomorrow
even when today is bleak and empty
I believe in beauty
even when it is hidden beneath ugliness
I believe in Jesus
even when he is being crucified.
On the ending of life...(On the last page)
The circle of life is eternal
The beginning is only the point
at which we take up
where another person has left off.
What we call the end is just the moment
when we hand over the task to another person.
There is no beginning and no end.
Every end is also a beginning.
An amazing quotation he often used from a Korean writer...
He introduces it with, "Through all the years (in Asia) I was very moved by the courage of the many people risking their lives to defend basic human rights. The whole struggle was summed up for me in the powerful words of a little-known Korean writer Kim San which I often quoted:"
'Nearly all the friends and comrades of my youth are dead, hundreds of them: Nationalist, Christian, anarchist, terrorist, communist. But they are alive to me. Where their graves should be no one ever cared. On the battle fields and execution grounds, on the streets of city and village, their warm revolutionary blood flowed proudly into the soil of Korea, Manchuria, Siberia, Japan, china. They failed in the immediate thing, but history keeps a fine accounting.
A man's name and his brief dream may be buried with his bones, but nothing that he has done or failed to do is lost in the final balance of forces. This is his immortality, his glory or his shame. Not even he himself can change this objective fact, for it is history. Nothing can rob a man of his place in the movement of history. Nothing can grant him escape. The only individual decision is whether to move forward or backward, whether to fight or submit, whether to create value or destroy it, whether to be strong or weak.'
I love that quotation... "history keeps a fine accounting". "Nothing can rob a man of his place in the movement of history. Nothing can grant him escape." (Good or bad)
It is only a little book that I had read very quickly, but I went back through it and drew great inspiration from Ron's life and his emphases.
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