Micks notes

Lecture notes for Carey students

In 1985 my wife Ruby and I. with our two little children, left New Zealand and relocated to a typical Third World slum in Manila, the Philippines. And then tragically, in 1987, our third child, Joseph, died. During her pregnancy, Robyn contracted a virus and it never left her system. Later examinations revealed that a sizeable percentage of the placenta had been destroyed and so Joseph didn't receive enough oxygen. A few weeks after he was born, he died.

Bonhoeffer’s world was one at war. It was not a ‘neat and tidy’ world. Quite to the contrary, it was a world of agonizing complexity. David Gushee, in his work on The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, talks in terms of people during the Second World War establishing ‘boundaries of moral obligation’. He writes;

“She’s right, mate” is one of our all time great kiwi phrases. Embedded in such phrases are lodged certain values that make us who we are, for better or worse. Taruni Falconer, an expert in intercultural relations with the Auckland University of Technology’s Communications Department, has helped identify six such values. She believes these values are what we kiwis are to the core. Test yourself to see if she is on the mark. I will use her labels but flesh them out myself.