Moments Contributors

Tess Ashton

Tess Ashton is a spiritual director who also helps unemployed South Aucklanders find jobs.

She trained as a journalist and has developed a special interest in the sacramental nature of poetic language.

She is fascinated with the way the Holy Spirit can inhabit certain poems.

Tess explored the nature of poetics as part of her spiritual direction training and came up with a recipe for poetry that ‘speaks’.

“I’ve learnt,” she says, “that poetry is water Jesus can walk on – if it talks about ‘real’ things, if it is written from the heart and offers love and hope rather than being merely introspective. Poetry that works this way typically uses the language of nature, beauty, myth and silence. It provides the grand stage for divine action, as God mysteriously meets the ordinary, the human.”

Stuart Holmes Coleman

Stuart Holmes Coleman is a writer, speaker and environmental activist who lives in Hawaii. Author of Eddie Would Go, Fierce Heart and more than 60 published articles and poems, he has been awarded the Eliot Cades Award for Literature and writing fellowships at Mesa Refuge, The Norman Mailer Center and Vaughan Park Anglican Retreat Centre.

While earning his Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing at American University, Stuart served as the Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School. He has taught writing, literature and leadership at high school, college and graduate levels and currently works as the Hawaii Manager of the Surfrider Foundation. www.Stuart-Coleman.com

The Rev. John Fairbrother

John is the former Director of Vaughan Park Anglican Retreat Centre in the Auckland Diocese.

The Rev. Gayanne Frater

Gayanne is a priest whose borderless ministry continues to evolve. She ministered in a wide variety of rural and urban parish-based ministry positions before completing a Master of Counselling degree in 2012. Her dissertation research explored ways in which women’s spirituality, reflected in their metaphors of hope, support them during times of significant identity transition.

She is now a Lecturer in the School of Public Health and Psychosocial Studies at AUT University, Auckland and is preparing to enrol on a doctoral programme.  
Describing herself as a 'closet artist', she loves to patchwork word and image together in ways that provoke questions, inspire growth and deepen spirituality.

The Rev. Iain Gow

Iain left South Africa when he was sixteen to go to school in Switzerland and then to university in the United States for six years where he did his MBA. Joining an international company, he worked for them in France Belgium and the UK.

Iain was ordained at Coventry Cathedral, having become a follower of Christ in his late twenties at Holy Trinity Brompton, London. He served as priest at St Martin in the Bullring, Birmingham for eight years and then he and his wife Linda, who is a Kiwi and a Clinical Psychologist/Family Therapist, came to NZ in 2005. They live with two hounds and their two boys Sam and Matt who are now young men!  Places that have influenced Iain recently are his working as a Chaplain at Hibiscus Hospice, and most recently, he and his wife lived in a monastic community for the last four years, which was a refuge for stranger and friend.

Iain has trained as a spiritual director with Spiritual Growth Ministries and has a deep appreciation of the story of grace for each person he meets.

His first book of prayers, images and blessings, Be Still, has recently been published in softcover, ePUB and Kindle.

Margaret Lyall

 Margaret's writing is informed by her experiences of teaching science and pastoral care, of local preaching and elder training, and of living life as a daughter, wife, mother and grandmother. She has recently initiated a 'Martha/Mary Group' in her local Anglican church in Tunbridge Wells, UK, which seeks to help women integrate the spiritual into their lives.

During a period of enforced rest after serious illness, she meditated on her garden and wrote many poems comparing the human condition to the changing seasons in nature.

Margaret wonders if her poetry is 'too secular for the religious and too religious for the secular.'

The Rev. Dr Paul McKeown

 Paul McKeown is from Ballymena in Northern Ireland and grew up within a stone's throw of Slemish mountain where St Patrick tended sheep as a slave boy. His background is in the sciences – he studied Chemistry to doctorate level - yet has always had a keen interest in the spoken and written word. For over 30 years, he has crafted poetry, purely for pleasure.

A career change into ministry in the Church of Scotland in 1996 has brought new challenges. After working in inner-city Glasgow, Paul is now minister for the rural parish of Belhelvie, just north of Aberdeen where he lives with his wife, Rhona, and three children – Ross, Mairi and Isla.

Paul counts Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, Norman MacCaig and farmer-poet Wendell Berry among his poetic influences. When he's not writing, he's usually found with a guitar in hand, or – following a New Year's resolution - lacing up his running shoes. Spiritually, he's inspired by the work of Eugene Peterson, Rob Bell, Fred Buechner and Brian McLaren and has benefitted greatly from training in Ignatian spirituality.

 

Susan Smith

Susan Smith, a Catholic Sister, has worked as a secondary school teacher in her congregation’s schools in New Zealand, and in congregational formation programmes in Bangladesh, Philippines, and Myanmar. She has spent one year in Ethiopia with the Jesuit Refugee Service, and also lived and worked for five years in Ruatoria. In 1994 Susan began lecturing in the University of Auckland’s School of Theology. She lives in Whangarei where she is involved in research and writing, and on-line tutoring for EIDTS and the University of Newcastle, NSW. Locally she works as a volunteer budget adviser, and is involved in environmental activities. She finds that her so-called retirement is quite a busy and rewarding time.

The Rev. Dr. Hilary Oxford-Smith

The Rev. Dr. Hilary Oxford Smith is a writer, poet, minister and scholar.

She has worked in the United Kingdom in various parishes and chaplaincy appointments including as Associate Minister at St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh. She was also Development Officer at New College, the School of Divinity, The University of Edinburgh.

She has divided her time between Scotland and New Zealand and for the past few years has enjoyed a creative relationship with Vaughan Park as Curator and Editor of Moments, the writing and poetry page on the Vaughan Park website. She also is the social media editor for the Centre.

She has recently returned to New Zealand to live and work and has been appointed Priest—Exploring Spirituality at Vaughan Park.

Hilary has lived and worked on Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland and is an Associate Member of The Iona Community. Her particular interest is in the field of Celtic spirituality and she gives retreats, workshops and teaches on this subject. Her website is ...www.spiritofbradan.com.

The Rev. Dr. James McPherson

The Revd Canon Dr Jim McPherson has served as an Anglican priest since 1978 and retired in 2014 to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. He was a Distinguished Academic Visitor at Vaughan Park in 2008 when he resumed poetry writing after a gap of many years.

His poetry mostly explores the spiritual and theological themes arising from his personal and parish ministry experiences and celebrates the natural, particularly in his poems about birds. 

He has recently published one collection of poetry, entitled To Tease Our Knowing. A wry look at awry which contains a number of poems already published here.

The Rev. Maren C. Tirabassi

Maren C. Tirabassi is the author of eighteen books, most published by Pilgrim Press, including the recent From the Psalms to the Cloud – Connecting to the Digital Age with Maria Mankin and forty-six contributors. She maintains the global worship blog Gifts in Open Hands at: http://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/

Maren has been a pastor for thirty-four years (intentionally bi-vocational with the writing ministry for the last twenty) and currently serves Union United Church of Christ in Madbury, New Hampshire. Maren leads workshops on creative worship and liturgical writing and memoir and poetry in a range of settings from recovery group to senior centre, correctional facility to English as a Second Language class. She lives with Don Tirabassi and Willie the beagle in Portsmouth, USA and loves hiking, swimming, reading, quilting, and writing science fiction or fantasy for fun.

 

The Rev. Erice Fairbrother

 Originally ordained priest in Dunedin nearly 20 years ago, Erice has served in national, regional and parish ministries, the latter two being in the Diocese of Waiapu. At the end of 2013, she left parish ministry and was vested as a Solitary Consecrated Life in the Benedictine tradition of the Order of the Holy Cross, of which she has been an Oblate since 2000. Prior to, and during her time in parish and diocesan ministry, Erice has continued to write and publish liturgy, poetry and feminist theology. Latterly she has been developing her role as Poet theologian, believing that prosody is not the only theological genre, with poetry often being more able to express the higher nuances of theological exploration and expression. Her work has been published by Mowbray, SPCK and IBRA in the UK and latterly by Pilgrim Press in the USA. Her Song for White Ribbon Day is used annually by international networks, and her current work is regularly featured on a blog site in the US. As a contemporary Solitary her work is growing across the dioceses as teacher of benedictine spirituality, leading retreats, spiritual companioning and pastoral supervision. 

Dr. Julie Thorpe

 Dr. Julie Thorpe received her PhD in History from the University of Adelaide. She was a Vaughan Park Scholar in Residence in 2014. Her first book, Aquinas Academy 1945-2015: A Very Personal Australian Story was published by ATF Theology in 2016. 

 

Tess Ashton

Peter Clague

Stuart Holmes Coleman

The Rev. Gayanne Frater

The Rev. Iain Gow

 Margaret Lyall

Pat Marsh The Rev. Joy MacCormick

The Rev. Dr. Paul McKeown

The Rev. Canon Dr. James McPherson

The Rev. Dr. Hilary Oxford-Smith

The Rev. Maren Tirabassi

Susan Smith

The Rev. John Fairbrother 

The Rev. Erice Fairbrother

Dr. Julie Thorpe