Kiwi On The Loose

Well today the Democratic convention starts here in Denver. 15,000 plus media staff, only 6000 delegates. AND thousands of hangers on.

Its going to be interesting. The longer I am here, the longer I find English styled, New Zealand type politic, much more appealing. I kinda cringe at the money thrown around in America for politics….just to get the vote. The rhetoric is draining on the human pshyche. Blah Blah bloody blah……………. on Fox news the conservative channel I have not seen ONE slither of news that is outside America.

Whose navel is being gazed at?

Thank God for freedom of speech, but I don’t know if you are as free if you criticise or see things differently. No such fear in New Zealand. There are a lot of emperors new clothes stories here. I get embarrassed by what people think about their role in history and the present.

I don’t want to feel like this.

Maybe I have Mondayitis.

I know what Friday feels like in New Zealand, (even tho it felt like that yesterday coz of the date line).

Fridays feel the same in America.

It starts in the morning with a sigh of relief that the weekends here as people head to work.

Then from 4 pm on you can feel it in the traffic as people head home.There’s a bouancy on the traffic line up at the lights, no one seems to mind and the music on the radio sounds better today..

This kind of thing unites mankind, as we all shrug off the burden of work and head into that space where you can have some choices with your time.

Saturday morning after a Friday night where you didn’t have to be so careful how late you stayed up.

Have a great weekend!

Its been a good day, a day of kids playing on the road @ the intersection, avoiding the brown UPS truck. Up the street the water works guys are  diggin’ up the road and cutting off the water. Its a huge hole and a typical scene globally. Two guys doing the work and the rest standing around watching & eating in this case.Nice guys tho, all dressed in orange. Between the relief of knowing that your water alone hadn’t been cut off for some reason, and their relief that you hadn’t come to see them to be some kind of ‘moaning urbanite’, there was humanity. Happy people.Kindness and smiles cost you nothing do they? The one and a half hours without water will be an excuse to sample more white wine with ice cubes.Its been a good Wednesday in America. I can feel the happiness on the street, the novelty of the road being closed, gated by orange cones to match the workers ‘can you see me vests’.The sounds of happy kids continue and I better go check the pork on the grill.There’s peace today in my world.

Was New Zealand @ the Olympics?

There I was watching the open ceremony, looking forward to and wondering how I would feel watching ENZED enter the beginning parade.

When we finally got to it………after lots of commentary and team USA promo patriotic adverts………………. team New Zealand entered the stadium…………ahhhhhhhhh. I started to feel things.

Was Sam Warriner there from my hometown? THEN after barely 5 seconds of seeing Black….’we are gona cut to a break now!’

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. No it wasn’t our politics or nuclear policy, pure and simple someone made a call that we didn’t matter, that some other nation of ONE entrant was more interesting.

In that one moment I had such a vivid illustration of worldview and NZ place on the world stage thru American eyes. Didn’t they know I was watching in Denver??? LOL.

Of course its normal and good and okay for USA to be there for the collection of news about themselves. If Naru had a broadcasting crew, they wouldm be there for Naru. Which makes me wonder, who does cover the little guys @ the Olympics for the fans at home. Eg,Samoa and Tuvalu had a representative this year….who does I wonder.

Maybe coverage isn’t that important, but being there is.

And there is worldview in a nutshell. America wants to see America, NZ wants to see NZ, Ukraine..Ukraine and so on down the line.

It all illustrates our preoccupation with ourselves, which to be honest some of which is good and healthy and needed BUT if we go deeper into it, PERHAPS the Olympics is just ritualised imperialism or one upmanship for some nations. And nothing is really gained from the spirit of competition that is mind broadening beyond a fascination and cutesy value of other competeing nations. Apart from the opening and closing ceremonies the media does nothing that will perhaps parallel relationally what is happening on the ground between the athletes in terms of life changing meetings.

IMAGINE if the media talked to competitors and people from other countries than there own, and there was passion and pride in a more global way. THEN I think the Olympics could be a defining time for all the nations.

IMAGINE being interested in the worldview of other atheletes from strange lands.

I didn’t mean to deep here but here I am again pondering serious stuff. IF I had been in NZ I know we would have got more than 5 seconds of USA entering the stadium. I know you gotta cut to the break somewhere in the studio BUT? I think NZ has a less self absorbed view of itself and others.

So I want to have a worldview that sees the adventure of getting to know what others think as a primary objective. It by no means giving up your own convictions, or worldview BUT it sets a platform for UNDERSTANDING and with understanding comes tolerance, and sometimes understanding comes with a big stick too. I don’t want a gushy accept all behaviour kinda world. Its just not good when the stick comes out from self absorption or the road to understanding hasn’t been walked first.

So I wont get to see NZ’s entry and performance at the games, and find out how I will feel about it.. I don’t have a clue from TV how many medals we’ve got or how Sam Warriner did.

BUT the USA team patriotic adverts are the same, just no silver fern or black. AND I am happy to feel pleasure and pride in USA’s achievements. Its a different worldview, thats all.

I must confess

that I was really impressed by this debate with the presidential candidates and Rick Warren. Before the debate (which took the form of 60 mins each, same questions and with neither hearing the other), Warren said Americans needed to get over demonising those who thought differently, or held opposing worldviews. WOW I thought that is so what it seems like over here. Their are TWO camps, Republican or Democrat and never the twain shall met. I’d like to know what Mark Twain would say about this state of affairs!

In NZ it is not so one eyed about politics. I didn’t realise how pluralistic we really were until I came here on holiday.

ANYways back to the debate. I was hugely impressed on several levels.

A. The honesty and humanity of both Mc Cain and Obama in answering the questions. Impressed with them being there in the first place.

B. The depth of the questions. These weren’t as Warren said easy questions, and he didn’t want ’stump speech answers’. (campaign I wana win vote answers)

C. I was impressed that Christians were behind setting this up, and being salt to society. Sadly lacking in a beat up the fundamentalist kind of world.

D. I felt like I did get an ‘apples to apples’ kind of comparison of the candidates. They are both not perfect but I could see who they were and where they were coming from a bit more.

In this debate I so saw how the media has pushed Obama to the fore, how they have played the good footage etc and how they had done the reverse to Mc Cain. Mc Cain came over as a man of convictions, humour and deep passion. I had not seen this in the media. I liked how he saw America needed to see and work beyond its own self interests.

I know who I think would be the kind of president America needs. And they both need our prayers. I believe they are both good men.

Heres some of the intervew

Hi everyone, sorry for the technical problems yesterday, BUT its all solved and we are rock’n and rolling again. GOSH it was horrible thinking I had lost everything. This blog has taken a lot of time over the months working out how to tweak it and format it, not to mention the time writing down my thoughts etc, OR to mention the posts of the people who have responded.

May I just say that I really appreciate those who have responded. Susan and I were talking about this kind of thing the other day. The internet and the instant communication revolution has been great BUT we get a bit jaded by it all, we have so many choices to communicate, we end up REALLY communicating less. (really meaning the less in depth and perhaps meaningful coz it costs us nothing). MY THEORY is that we tend to go towards the easy less demanding web experiences, we will browse stuff that doesn’t make us have to think or reflect or go deep.

So we are back online and I intend to continue. Its raining here in Denver for the second day in a row ……………fall is in the air.

Great for working on the computer and writing………………like making banners. CLICK image below!

In some ways I should feel shame as a kiwi never having seen Mount Cook or in fact never having been to the South Island full stop, but I don’t.

You can’t do everything in your life and the years roll by awful fast when you get wonderfully tied up making a home, try’n to have a career, be a good husband, pay the bank back and be the best parent you can be despite the limitation of being who you are. It ain’t always easy folks, and then you look back and are ready to really do the job and 23 years have passed…..booof just like that!

Mountains offer a perspective all of their own. I was once fascinated by how many great people in history climbed mountains, or high hills. A mountain don’t have to have snow on it or mean you need breathing apparatus, its just something thats higher than you. Just like the obstacles in our lives………….but I digress.

When I first flew in a plane I was mesmerised by the fact that the sun was always above the clouds, and how above the clouds seemed like a whole new world. Thats where I wanted to live.

I wanted to live on the earth with an above the clouds perspective or mindset.

So here I sit, on top of Mount Evans, higher than the majority of kiwis at that moment in time………………(except those in Nepal or The Andes doing something crazy) and I wonder how high Mt Cook is compared to this.

I am approximately 2000ft higher than Mt Cook and 5 thousand feet higher than my previous Rocky Mountain exploits.

The new perspective it offered from that mountain top was on myself, and its always good to see yourself differently and feel like you are stretching your boundaries. (that’s not a term for putting on weight LOL), I realised the exhilaration of living differently, and in living differently experience wonderful things, like the clouds up here, the mountain wildflowers and pasture, the mountain sheep, breathing the thin mountain air, being surrounded by granite, looking out over the ranges distant, touching the green as grass on mountain meadow, knowing that the mountains are His.

Its good for your soul to get as high on the earth as you can sometimes and look out and feel the thrill of being there and grow in some small way, and go back down to the real world somehow different.

So Mt Cook /Aoraki is 12,316 ft high (3754m) and I have never been there and in all honesty wont ever stand on its top.

Mt Evans is 14, 258 ft high and there is a road to the top then a short walk/pilgrimage to the peak. I was there

I took a trip with Susan to Mt Evans. In the USA it is the highest sealed road in the whole of USA. the road goes to 14,285 ft. On the day we went there were huge numbers of people also making the pilgrimage to higher altitudes. JUST how high is Mt Cook in the Sth Island of NZ. Better do the Google thing. It illustrates my whole point however that until you need to know you don’t find out in a way that is meaningful for you to remember it. about your own country by a living feet on the earth breathing the air (or what there is of it)of another country…….it all makes sense in the mental filing system of meaningful information. So here we are on top of Mt Evans., Co. USA. There are some sheep up there that don’t look like no kiwi sheep…….and beautiful wildflowers.

Apart from the fact that you get used to everyone thinking you are an ‘OZZY’, or that sometimes people look at you with their head sideways and you know they don’t have one ounce of an idea about what the hang you are talking about, BEING A KIWI on holiday in America is pretty cool. The number of times people, (actually usually women), say ‘I love your accent!’ is pretty heartwarming and you kinda feel special. This invariably happens just from saying hello as you breeze past them in the street as you head to the Mexican supermarket.

You never ever felt this special in NZ! EVER! Not just from opening your mouth anyway.Usually it just gets me into trouble.
So having a ‘kiwi’ identity here is pretty special. Most Americans think ‘kiwis’ are fruit, the green things in the supermarket. Some more redneck types think you are a fruit for a different reason, like becoz you use the word

lovely

, or you text someone with a nice message…or you see the beauty in the sunrise, or becoz you write poems. You have to re assert your heterosexuality before you can get close to them!

Any way I have a photo here of a friends car which shows the lengths you can go to to keep your unique identity as a kiwi.

Culture shock doesn’t just happen when you enter a culture, its ongoing as you get more deeply into it…….so having a number plate or an accent, keeps you in touch with your kiwi roots.
Language is a minefield, if I get that ‘What the hell are you talking about’ look, which MAYBE is just becoz of my accent OR MAYBE I’m using a completely wrong word like ‘metal’ instead of gravel…….I have found if I put on an American accent I am more often than not understood, and the frown turns to a smile of comprehension on their dial! (cor blimey that’d be confusing for them)

Of course there are ugly people in all cultures and I have only talked to one American that really upset me and spoke in f………. words about of my country of origin. It really upset me for about a day.

He was the loser not me. What a jerk.

I’d like a number plate like this.

Well it’s been a long time since I wrote ANYTHING. I hope you will come back more! I intend to. Here on holiday in America it’s been a mixture of emotions for me. I stayed up in the mountains for several months @ a lodge where I did a lot of thinking, pinching myself to see if the beauty was real, AND feeling a lot of things. Over the coming days I would like to unpack all that internal stuff, mix it with some funny stories and reflectionz. I am back in Denver now and its very different being here. I miss the sound of the running water in the Crystal River, the smallness of the Marble community and being able to make friends, AND I miss the mountains. The mountains and the snow melting on them became symbols to me of God, his creative work and His all greatness & mystery

Already i have said toooo MUCH. I could go on and on and on and in the end who wants to read screeds of writing. I AM going to discipline myself and write small bitz and UPDATE this blog daily.C u soon!