Re-consecration Service
Friday 10th November 2006
There’s been a bit of trouble lately in Tinui, just down the road from here. Some people wanted to shift the old pub further down the valley and give it a new lease on life. Not everyone was happy about it. Over the years they’d become attached to the building because of all the community celebrations that had gone on there. Even though the building may have looked old and tired, somehow it symbolised the life of the community and would have triggered memories for the townsfolk as they passed it on their daily rounds. So saying goodbye to a building like that is much more than just rearranging the woodwork in another part of the country.
This moving and renovating business seems to be in our Kiwi blood. Our varied ancestors have arrived here on waka or sailing ships taking months to cross dangerous seas in search of adventure and new possibilities. And now that we’re well established, we find any excuse to pack up our gear and fly out all over the world to experience some of that same thrill of adventure that inspired our ancestors.
But however exciting the traveling is, somehow we return to the familiar, to places where family and memories are strongest, where we feel the most connected.
Connectedness is what many young people say is most important to them. Students taking a course on spirituality at La Trobe University in Melbourne report that they want to, ‘connect with themselves or their ‘inner selves’, with other people, with nature and the environment, with the cosmos at large.’
This search for connectedness is not new; it is a vital part of being human. But we only get occasional glimpses of what real connectedness could be and in some ways this just tantalizes us. We know it’s there but we can’t quite get a grip on it.
While some days we might wake up bright and breezy feeling at one with the world, the truth is it’s not like that a lot of the time. Often we crawl out of bed, prep for Period 1 not done, a difficult meeting looms, there’s a speed camera fine sitting in the letterbox to welcome us home, you’ve had a fight with your best mate, your parents still don’t understand you and your girlfriend seems to have eyes for someone else.
To help us develop this sense of being connected, humans have developed a whole special language, which tries to probe the wonders of what we call the ground of our being and special buildings that we set aside to help us contemplate this depth at the heart of the cosmos.
Within these buildings we call churches, we act out sacred rituals using special utensils to help us open the doorway from our ordinary disconnected lives so that we can see and experience, even if just for a little while, the intensity of life lived in connection with our own selves, other beings and ultimately what we understand to be God.
St Martin ’s on the Close is more than a building. Over the past 100 years it has held within its walls the pain and passion of the Mangaweka community. Here babies have been welcomed into the world; couples have made promises to one another, arguments have unraveled, relationships have found ways to be healed, loved ones have been grieved over.
Through this entire panorama of life the search for the divine has gone on through the rites and rituals of Anglicanism, which seeks to hold, sometimes a bit tenuously, the diversity of that search within its embrace.
Today we gather as two quite different Anglican communities, joined now by this sacred space of St Martin’s. Gracious People of the Mangaweka, we recognise that you are entrusting us with the guardianship of a great Taonga, a special treasure. You have let us take out of your community a building that for 100 years has symbolised the life and death struggles of thousands of people.
We appreciate how hard it must have been to wave goodbye to St Martin’s as it sped out of town on the back of a Brittain's truck. Some of those feelings are going to be reignited today and we hope new feelings will be stirred as you see how this beautiful church has been loved back into new life.
Now, it is our privilege and our duty to hold the memories within St Martin’s as sacred, while our own unfolding life stories are added to your story. We commit to ensuring that St Martin’s continues to uphold the generous orthodoxy of Anglican tradition, a sacred space which can hold a myriad of journeys into the divine, that place where we are challenged to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love others as much as we love ourselves.
Thank you for trusting us enough to hold sacred all that St Martin ’s has been for you and all that it will become for generations of Rathkeale boys and their families.
Rev. Sande Ramage
The Presentation 
The Bishop’s Citation for Community Service
In appreciative recognition of the service given to the community by
Frank Holland, Simon Prior and Judy Wagg
Frank Holland, Simon Prior and Judy Wagg are being honoured today for their significant community service in the restoration process of St Martin’s on the Close.Every Wednesday, Frank and Judy have joined Robyn Prior in countless hours of painstaking work restoring the woodwork in St Martin’s. Frank, a grandfather to one of our Rathkeale boys, came to this work as a long time Anglican, concerned about the need for a special church space on site. Over the long winter he was found high up in the chancel and sanctuary breathing fumes as he lovingly worked on the wood far out of our reach but within our gaze. Although working in cramped and messy surroundings, Frank took seriously the spirituality that this building stands for and so, every day before he left he would set up the altar again with cloth and candles ready for whatever group would enter next.
When St Martin’s arrived on site, she looked tired and in need of a paint job, which is what Simon Prior set about doing. The roof was painted and the walls began to glow with his ministrations and the care of others whom he enticed into his painting gang. Simon was only marginally deterred by the prospect of rain and would race to beat any downpour, but sometimes did get interrupted by having to deliver a baby. When the painting was done he set about the digging of soak pits, assisted by some of the boarders. Since then Simon has been at Rob’s side as she cleaned and restored, always there to offer a helping hand for whatever needed doing.
Judy Wagg was once Chapel Prefect at Woodford House and we are fortunate that she rediscovered her love of all things Anglican in time to help us with St Martin’s. We do honour Judy today for the restoration work she has done, but also for her skills in practical pastoral work and contemplative photography. Judy believes that St Martin’s is more than a building; instead it is a sacred space where, through the daily church tasks of brass and silver cleaning, tending candles and laundering linen, love for a community is both given and received. That love is also made manifest in the photos Judy respectfully takes of us all as we worship together and these photos help us understand that our spirituality is writ much larger than we often try to pretend.
The Rt. Reverend Dr. Thomas Brown
Bishop of Wellington
10 November 2006
THE DIOCESE OF WELLINGTON
CITATION FOR THE BISHOP’S MEDAL OF SERVICE
To
commemorate the service and commitment given to
Rathkeale College, an Anglican integrated School, Masterton
By
ROBYN PRIOR
It gives me great pleasure to join together in recognising the service of Robyn Prior.
‘Without a vision the people perish’, exclaimed the writer of the book of Proverbs. Not to be daunted by the disaster of a church falling off the back of a truck on the way to Rathkeale, Robyn resurrected that seemingly impossible vision of a consecrated church for the college, when St Martin’s Mangaweka appeared on her horizon.
Over the past few years Rob has overcome incredible obstacles to convince a range of people of the importance of having a specific, designated worship space at the heart of Rathkeale College . She has been a researcher, an historian, a networker, a strategist, an archivist, a lobbyist, a financial whiz, a manager of works, a cleaner, a designer, a wood and brass restorer, in short, a Jill of all trades, as well as an inspirational leader to the dozens of people who have caught Rob’s vision and given so enthusiastically to the restoration of St Martin’s on the Close.
If you asked her though, while she would be enthusiastic about the way St Martin ’s glows in its new livery, it is what goes on at the heart of this building that has inspired Rob to keep going through the dark and cold winters of the restoration period. As the candles are lit for Night Prayer, as the boys spill in the door for year group chapels or we welcome families for weddings and baptisms, her dream is realized as she sees the depth of spirituality emerging, encouraged by a sacred space that holds the life stories of generations, now passed on for safe keeping to the community of Rathkeale.
We are grateful for Robyn’s contributions and I celebrate with all in this faith community the generosity of time she has given to those around her.
Presented on this TENTH day of NOVEMBER in the year of Our Lord TWO THOUSAND AND SIX and in the SIXTEENTH year of our Consecration and enthronement the EIGHTH.
Thomas. Wellington