He’s been shackled to his children on an anti-slavery march, mistaken for a pimp in seedy Cuba St, and founded a modern monastery.
Nikki Macdonald talks to Bishop Justin Duckworth about his colourful past and his greatest challenge yet – revitalising the Anglican Church.
By the glow of a candle stub cradled inside a coconut shell, Justin Duckworth says sorry for letting anxiety and stress get in the way. And at morning prayers the next day, in the tiny chapel he helped build in the foothills of the Tararua Range, the Bishop of Wellington asks God for insight into a difficult problem.
It’s a rare glimpse into the weight of the task facing the head of Wellington’s Anglican Church, a year on from his surprise election to an erstwhile fusty old boys’ club.
The dreadlocked, barefoot bolter who’d lived a life on the edge of society and the church, is now charged with reviving an institution in decline.
If there’s one thing the 45-year-old wants to drive home to the church, it’s the need to enact their faith and live “peculiar lives”. And few could be more peculiar than Duckworth’s own – the boy from Stokes Valley turned urban missionary turned modern monastic.
That simple wooden chapel is the centrepiece of Ngatiawa River Monastery, the spiritual community Duckworth and his wife Jenny founded, which has been their home for the past 10 years.
The couple bought the dilapidated old Presbyterian camp, tucked under the hills behind Waikanae, as a refuge for “strugglers, seekers and servants”.
It’s a place of contemplative quiet, and listening without judgment. Of a thrice-daily rhythm of prayer rung in by an old railway iron. Of communal meals seasoned with laughter. Of home kills, fruit trees, roaming sheep and escaped ginga pigs. Continue reading
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