Why this plough

My choice of a sketch of an old plough as sort of signature to my writing says something of where I’ve come from and who I am: a Pakeha[1] New Zealander of fourth generation Central Otago rural stock involved in agriculture nationwide for many years.

It says something of foundations of creation and story, and of the living out of faith in community as creation and story unfold.

The sketch is of the plough believed to have turned the first furrow in Aotearoa New Zealand. . The date was May 5, 1820, the place a Bay of Islands mission station. Drawn by a yoke of bullocks, the little, single furrow implement may at first have prompted among local Maori a mixture of curiosity and disquiet. Land to them was holy. It was understood as the nurturing ground of life in community; to be lived with in respect as integral to the community rather than battled as foe or factory.

Were karakia (prayers) said as that first furrow was turned? By the tangata whenua (the people of the land) or by patronising foreign missionaries? Was there unease, hope? The record is silent.  In the following generation – before European colonists became so dominant in power and land hunger as to put a stop to them – Maori used the new technology dramatically well, growing and exporting large crop surpluses. But, as that first furrow was turned, few if any could foresee the future.

So the plough speaks of the deep tensions, the hurts, dangers and possibilities, of cultural change; of husbandry and exploitation and mana, of the earliest preaching of the Christ-truth for each culture and all land in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The first furrows turned that day would have been the feerings. To a passing urbanite, feerings look like mere scratches to mark the headlands (turning strips at each end of a paddock) and the first furrows turned in upon each other lengthwise at intervals across the paddock.

While the feerings may at first look unimpressive, the whole ploughing job is a mess if they are not drawn well. I know. My first day’s ploughing as a lad was in a paddock where the boss had ploughed the feerings. I was as proud as punch that night.  Next day, I was to begin another paddock from scratch. By nightfall, I could have cheerfully ploughed myself under, but covered the worst of my sins by disking the paddock before boss or neighbours could see them.  Humiliation is a powerful teacher!

In the spirituality of our land, we are, I think, becoming more conscious that the ploughing of the safe, tidy, “home paddocks” on which many of our assumptions grew is long completed.  Our spiritual vocation in cultures and creation-context has moved out to virgin land; wilderness. That’s scary, but there’s no call to retreat to those old home paddocks.

[1] Pakeha: descended from European settlers who colonized Aotearoa-New Zealand from the 19th Century. The forebears of Maori discovered and settled the land from perhaps the 12th Century. 

[2] Reproduced from “Farming in New Zealand,” Department of Agriculture, 1950