John Archer: Prayer a chance to assess life's journey

Dad built our house at Mangamahu in 1952, right behind the old coach station. There was also a blacksmith's shop, a wagoner's shed, post office, supply store and the "Upper Wangaehu Road Board Office," a vivid reminder of our pre-motorised past. A year or two later the coach station and wagoner's shed were pulled down to make way for mum's front lawn and dad's sheep trucks, the store became a shop, then closed, and the Road Board office was shifted across the river for use as a rugby hall. Only the smithy's was kept, as a milking shed for our house cow, then reminders of those horse-drawn days were gone.
I spent a weekend at Moawhango marae last month, on the Taihape-Napier road. Up a side road there, I found myself right back in 19th-century Mangamahu. A coach station, stables, supply store, office, even a schoolroom and a jail. And two churches, a brick one with piped benzine lighting for the Pakeha land-owners, and a wooden one with kerosene lamps for the local Ngati Whiti. All in immaculate condition; the Historic Places Trust had been spending some money there recently.
But it had not spent any money on the nearby Ngati Whiti meeting house, although it had raupo-lined walls and ceiling and was 15 years older than the churches. Perhaps this was because the carvings at the front consisted solely of the same figure, a vigilant and energetic Whitikaupeka, the founder of the iwi. Such a contrast with the recently-built marae at Waiouru where the walls writhe with a myriad heroes, ancestors and gods: Whina Cooper, Ngarimu VC, a Singaporean merlion, left-handed Tumatauenga going to war, Tangaroa waving a stingray, and my favourite, the earthquake god Ruaumoko, quivering with energy.
Apparently the very old marae buildings around Taihape did have carvings of mythological figures whose exploits expressed the values the iwi considered essential, and were thus sacred, but religious zealots among the British colonists burned the buildings because they considered them to be "demons and devils". A meeting house near Taihape was rebuilt after a fire in the same era by a Pakeha builder whose specialty was carvings of sunflowers.
Surprisingly, although the rugged old Whitikaupeka building was fully utilised over the weekend, the two pristine churches remained totally empty. Perhaps this is an indication of what now considered sacred in our society.
I was reminded of those marae burnings when I read of Councillor Clive Solomon's attempt to abolish the district council's pre-meeting prayer "because it was unscientific".
Actually there has been quite a lot of scientific study of prayer and religion, charting the stages of growth in a person's awareness to what is sacred.
James Fowler has charted the uninhibited imagination of the pre-schooler, the school-child's literal belief in religious stories, the developing idea of self - "Who am I? - in an adolescent, the young adult's de-mythologising of symbolic religious stories to create a neat, rational world view, the house of cards tumbling down in mid-life, allowing for a new awareness of "other" in the unconscious mind, an understanding of the deeper reality of myths and rituals, and a response to it. Then in the sixth and final religious stage, the myths fall away and the person becomes the full expression of the sacred loving spirit in human life.
Cr Solomon's rational opinion of prayer would seem to be at the "young adult" level of religious growth, while the opposing opinions mostly seem to have been still at the school-adolescent levels, with one or two at the fifth level.
I can now see my own spiritual journey through these stages in terms of a little sentence I learnt at te reo classes to introduce myself. "Ko Ruapehu te maunga, ko Whangaehu te awa, ko Mangamahu toku kainga." (Ruapehu is my mountain, Whangaehu my river, Mangamahu my home)
As a child I learnt aroha in Mangamahu. I was secure from the outside world under those papa bluffs in the mid-Whangaehu valley, and when I climbed up to the top of the steep sheepfarm hills, I could see the snowy summit of Ruapehu beckoning to me in the distance.
I spent several decades of spiritual struggle, toiling up through slippery gorges filled with rushing sulphurous waters, fighting my demons, occasionally climbing up to craggy ridges to orient myself towards my mountain, occasionally retreating, wounded, back to Mangamahu. Then finally onto the high volcanic plateau, out onto that barren but beautiful Rangipo desert. I have now climbed about halfway up the mountain I think.
As I've climbed upward I've meet travellers from other coastal valleys. Different journeys with the same aroha. The snowy slopes still scare me, but outside my window, as I write this here in Ohakune, the morning storm clouds have cleared, to reveal a deep layer of fresh snow all over Ruapehu.
Tomorrow I shall go walking in it, trying to climb a little higher, a little closer to the summit.
That old coaching station at Moawhango was used by 19th century tourists visiting Ruapehu. Today it is a reminder to us that we need to stop at regular intervals and gather our resources together, to gain strength and orientate ourselves before continuing on with the journey towards our metaphorical mountain peak. Perhaps that is the function of the district council's prayer.
John Archer lives in Ohakune and shares his views with readers, coloured by his love of the mountain life.