.

Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon I drove across the hill to the West Coast to celebrate the weekend Masses in Hokitika where I will also be (for a Saturday retreat day and Sunday Masses) next weekend.

As always it was wonderful drive across the plains into the rolling hills through Porter’s Pass past Castle Hill (crowded with rock walkers) alongside Lakes Pearson and Grassmere, then to Cass and alongside the Waimak to Bealey, across the river and into Arthurs Pass Village before crossing the hilltop down the viaduct to Otira past the couple of houses at Aickens to Turiwhate (with many good memories of Mass every second Sunday in the little church known as the Church of the Good Thief because it was said the priest stole all the materials needed to build it in the 1950’s) on to Kumara (where the election booth was bustling) to the Junction and the ten minutes south to Hokitika.

A steady stream of cars stopped at the Kumara School Polling Booth, not too far from where the longest-serving NZ Prime Minister Richard John Seddon was running a store and pub when he entered parliament almost 150 years ago.

Last month Kumara celebrated 150 years as a town, first with Seddon as Mayor.

Back then on an election day I might have written that by the time you read this tomorrow morning we will have a new government. But the complexities and machinations of MMP will probably require a few more days or even weeks before we know the makeup of the new government.

And perhaps this political uncertainty is characteristic of the reality of human existence every day.

Nothing earthly is stable or certain enough to warrant our certain or confident hope.

Perhaps all those years ago when Seddon was in politics people lived with more of a tentative touch on the earth? Perhaps more people more often attributed unexpected things to God. And therefore perhaps the people of Aotearoa took Seddon’s death from heart attack aged 60 as just another sign that we do not know the day or the hour (to quote today’s Gospel passage).

I like the idea therefore of living every day, every hour, with the quality I would value if I knew that today was my last earthly day.

And when I do this I discover an immediate and new depth in life.

That’s my desire for this new day.