Dialogue: Hope still springs forth amid a year of despair

We can put the horrors of the past 12 months behind us if we each have the commitment and compassion to make it so, writes RICHARD RANDERSON*.

In 1969 I was living in New York as the World Trade Center towers were being built. As a young priest at St Paul's Episcopal Church, I was working only a block from the twin towers. The first tower, a mass of red girders and roving gantries, had reached the 30th level, while the second was just beginning to emerge from the ground.

At St Paul's Church I had taken over the work of a priest who had been stabbed to death on the street by a drug addict wanting money. Part of my job was to sit in the church's foyer distributing vouchers to an unending line of New York's down-and-outs who needed a bed for the night at a local doss-house, or a sandwich from a nearby food outlet.

Outside on Wall St, a different world of suited financiers, lawyers and stockbrokers pursued their frenetic lives in Manhattan's globally linked business district.

The stark contrast between two worlds was never more apparent to me. Those who strode the pavements with confidence and purpose were separated by a great gulf from those who could merely shuffle around seeking warmth and nourishment.

The reality of an impoverished underclass in society is equally apparent in the senseless murders that have beset New Zealanders in recent days. As a nation we have been stricken by the tragic death of Sir Peter Blake while engaged in a mission to save the Amazon River.

Closer to home the equally mindless murders of two young schoolgirls in Masterton, a teenage hitchhiker near Pukekohe, and three civic-minded people at the Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA have left us shaken and drained of confidence in our collective future.

The brief media glimpses of the allleged perpetrators of these killings tell the story of social dysfunction.

A Brazilian police chief predicted there would be no Osama bin Laden among those who killed Sir Peter Blake. Instead, he said, you will find Mr Ordinary, someone from a background of poverty whose path of robbery and violence many others will follow. His prediction was entirely accurate.

Those arrested for the New Zealand murders appear to be from a similar background of deprivation and difficult family circumstances. Such realities do not condone violence, but they point to deeper structural divisions in a society in which, until addressed, inner rage and outward aggression will be perpetuated.

Internationally, we are haunted by the pictures of refugees stranded or drowned on the high seas, or dying in containers while trying to cross from the Continent to England.

Millions more are without shelter, food or medical care. As United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in Oslo when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize: "Today's real borders are not between nations but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated."

Battered in body, mind and soul by what has overtaken us this year, can there be peace on Earth, goodwill to all?

For me, hope springs from many of the other images that confront us.

I am inspired by those many people of every nation and race who put their lives on the line to distribute food to refugees in war-torn nations, provide nourishment and shelter to desperate people in some of the most desperate places on Earth, bring medical care to victims of poverty-induced epidemics, and fight battles against Aids in the continent of Africa.

Their faces tell a story - a story of exhaustion, a story of struggle as they make do with too few resources for too many people. But they also tell a story of commitment and compassion, a story of determination that such evils will not prevail.

Many of them are young people who eschew well-paid careers at home to take their qualifications to places where they will really make a difference. Such young people carry with them for life a vision of how our global society might be. The world is a better place for their endeavours.

Others, like Sir Peter Blake, have developed a passion for the seas and rivers, rainforests, endangered species of land and water, and the quality of the air we breathe.

In environmental movements around the world they point to the selfishness and careless greed that put at risk the very ecosystems essential to the survival of humanity.

Religion is sometimes cited as a justification for civil and global warfare. After all, what higher moral authentication can there be than that which comes from God?

Such claims are spurious. Bin Laden's call for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States has been rejected by the bulk of the Muslim world. Many Americans would likewise reject the notion that God is on their side in a retaliatory strike.

Jews, Muslims and Christians share in common the Hebrew scriptures, or Old Testament. Those scriptures make clear that there is but one God who draws into one family people of every nation and race. As family members we are to live together on the basis of ensuring that in every nation the essentials of life, freedom and peaceful coexistence are there for all.

Around the world religious leaders, along with others of goodwill, work together to make these things happen.

In such unity there is hope. Thousands of New Zealanders will crowd our churches again this Christmas to celebrate Jesus' birth.

Some will come as believers, some as searchers, some as fellow-travellers. All are welcome in a shared quest for a deeper spiritual base for our life and relationships. Hope for a new world order of freedom, justice and peace will be built on such a foundation.

With Sir Peter Blake's memorial service in mind, words from his final log entry on the Amazon River are noteworthy. We must start appreciating what we have before it is too late.

Whether we are thinking of the environment, the global community, our national life or our personal relationships and commitments, his words challenge us. Next year will be a better year if we work to make it so.

* Richard Randerson is Dean of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell.