Stories - Pastor's Pen for 22nd June 2025

Lake Pupuke in winter twilight, June 2025

Maurice Gee, one of New Zealand's most respected novelists, died last Thursday, aged 93. I own a good number of his books, and have read most of his work. On one work trip to Wellington I saw him strolling along The Terrace with his wife. I should have stopped him and been a fan, but instead I just smiled to myself and went about my business.

Who can forget his 1979 children's book Under the Mountain, with the foreboding alien Wilberforces, and the brave children who stopped their plans for world domination? It would have been a bit close to home for some North Shore kids, as part of the 2009 movie was filmed around Lake Pupuke, where Gee's story unfolds. The movie brought it all to life in a new and quite scary way.

Perhaps, Gee's most respected adult work was the Plumb trilogy, tracing the life and descendants of the irascible George Plumb, a Presbyterian minister loosely based on Gee's own grandfather. Britannica records; "Like the succeeding volumes of the trilogy, Plumb is narrated by a central character who interweaves the historical past, the personal past, and the narrative present."

We are people of story, particularly as we age and develop a sense of the past and a present in which we are hopefully wiser than before. Woven into our own story is the gospel story, which helps us make peace with that past, live and love as fully as we can in the present, and hope for a future in Christ and His Kingdom. This weaving of stories adds colour and richness to our lives.

On the last page of Plumb we read George's thoughts; "I'm ready to die, or live, or understand, or love, or whatever it is. I'm glad of the good I've done, and sorry about the bad." My you find God's shalom in your own story.