Table of Contents
Morena
It’s 5 am Wednesday, Feb 17 and I’m writing from the tent village outside parliament where a great diversity of people have gathered, vaccinated and unvaccinated, of all ages, from infants to great grandmothers. Some even brought their pets.
I’m here to call for the end of mandates that are keeping us apart. In every group of people, there will be a variety of messages but I have found this is the message that predominates here and is the central focus right now; stop the mandates.
The atmosphere is very special. It’s a festival atmosphere, with that unity that comes with a grassroots cause, but there is also lots of Aroha and something that caught me off guard; the absence of fear.
The dark cloud of fear we have lived under for two years now is absent from the village and we want it gone from New Zealand.
People are serving people. It was epitomised by the lady that appeared before me with an open rubbish bag after I finished my meal. When I earnestly thanked her she said simply, “I love New Zealand.”
People with microphones led the large crowd well, including with prayers, calls to make love our top priority “as our scriptures say” and leading crowd responses of love and forgiveness for all, fully expressed towards the police it seemed to me, not so much the politicians.
I don’t have connections in high places but I did bump into a bishop in an open cathedral. He gave me an empathetic listening ear for his few available minutes. I speak with anyone anywhere who will engage in conversation, I’ve held signs to speak across spaces and now I have begun to write.
I’m writing not just to inform you, to bear witness to what I see and hear but also to make a call. Will you join me, not at parliament, but in calling for an end to what is keeping us apart, the mandates?
We all have agency and I do feel very confident that if everyone who does not want the mandates to continue, says so, they will quickly stop.
So would you speak up, email your MP, write your own open letter or spread this far and wide; use your influence, whatever it may be, to do whatever low-cost thing you can, till we can be together again in full fellowship around The Table?
