Ae whanau – yes, Christmas is coming so quickly now even Don Brash cant keep up with the korero and thinks Mere Kirihimete is what Radio New Zealand is now calling Mother Mary.
It's not just the birthing day of Jesus or Santa's sleigh day coming around faster than a six-month warrant for the kid's car, so have birthdays and end of year assemblies for our tamariki (kids).
This year was a birthday bob each way of sorts. There was some sadness and a bit of boohoo for our girl who was leaving a school where four generations of her family had been pupils before her, thus ending my own connection until my next mokopuna (grandchild) - due this very day, will enrol in five years' time.
But also, a sense of celebration as she goes from crayons to perfume as a young lady ready to find her own feet in the big wide world.
Hei ano (therefore as well) - what have I learned since the last three clever fullas came over the Kaimai carrying frankincense and messages of hope for the lost, the lonely, and the followers of our Bro Jesus?
The big lessons have come from the lost and the lonely.
These past weeks I have been behind the wire working with and supporting residents at two of our correction facilities by helping them tell their story off the back of a book I launched a couple of months ago titled When Daddy Comes Home.
Last Friday we were back behind the wire to listen and learn from their completed stories and the overwhelming common korero, just like it is for the stories, dreams and aspirations of the homeless we look after outside the wire, is the cry out for connection ...
the deep inner sadness of lost souls wanting to reconnect with whanau and family.
It didn't matter the age, the ethnicity or the patch these young men belonged to, the cry for connection embroidered into their stories was the same.
Never have I witnessed a haka like the 20-minute hard out haka tautoko inside the Te o Marama unit of Waikeria Corrections facility last Friday, performed by 40 men who have found freedom inside the wire by learning how to channel their aggression and their frustrations into understanding where their turangawaewae - their place on the planet to stand is.
To be in the presence of prisoners who have found freedom before their release is a gift equal to any the three wise men or big fat fulla dressed in whero (red) could have brought, and hopefully if Kelvin and his wise men within corrections can allow this prison putiputi to bloom, we will start to see our prison population shrink.
Christmas, like life itself, is all about belonging. In my opinion, it's about connecting, or reconnecting, to what matters most, and that is whanau and family, or someone who loves you for who you are now, not who you may have been.
Perhaps in this age of instant gratification where we take for granted the freedom to frolic from one Christmas to the next there is a danger we to can become disconnected from what matters most – our whanau and our family?
Never has there been a time when we as a planet, a country, community or family and whanau needed to connect.
I could see it in faces of the Cat Stevens crowd last Thursday.
The song remained the same inside the wire the next day at Waikeria Prison and I am sure the sermon on the Mount Smart stadium given by the band on the run on Saturday night said the same thing.
I wish you all the very blessed and a Meri Kirihimete. May you find every excuse to love and laugh with your whanau and take life one day at a time, sweet Jesus.
broblack@xtra.co.nz Tommy Kapai is a best-selling author, edu-tainer and lo-cool writer
