Hello everyone
We tremble on the brink of the most volatile Election Day we have known in recent times. I hope you have chosen your election party invitees carefully! I remember a terrible election night held in a blue ribbon electorate at a teaching colleague’s home. It was an unexpected landslide for Labour. One half of the room got progressively quieter and quieter while the other half got more and more ebullient. Awkward!
Something to celebrate is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons signed by 50 members states at the United Nations on the 20th of September 2017. Just this week!
This is the “first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the goal of leading towards their total elimination.” We can be proud that New Zealand played an important role in getting this agreement together. The vote was taken in July and after that vote, Emily Welty, vice moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission of the Churches on International Affairs gave this interview which Paul Barber has alerted us to. https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/emily-welty-tide-of-hope-for-a-world-free-from-nuclear-weapons.
This week has been one when several things have hit a friend of mine at once – sister’s health, mother’s rest home care, moving house, pressure from family over money…. What’s that Ashleigh Brilliant quote? “I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.”
It’s hard to know what to do as a friend – and can be done. Perhaps some of you are being hit by several days at once at the moment or have been in the past. It’s not a nice feeling.
On Sunday we celebrate the High Country – the South Island’s gift to the world. Hope you can be there. Remember day light saving sneaks that extra hour back again and maybe the election results will have kept you up later…. but it will be good to be among friends on the Day After.
Go well and go carefully Susan
