The coach journey from Picton finished bang on time in Christchurch and we were picked up by Jill (cousin of a lady we were in the same church as 19 years ago) (on this trip that counts as a super close connection) with whom we’d be spending two nights before getting “The Beast” (our camper van for the three weeks on South Island).

Christchurch is an extraordinary looking place. Hit by a devastating earthquake 4 years ago it still shows the gaping wounds of a city centre torn to pieces. You’d be mistaken, walking around, if you thought that the earthquake had only happened a couple of months ago. Huge plots of land are empty. Half-torn-open buildings, mammoth chunks of masonry and long stretches of boarded up facades surround you. And you keep being able to see much further than you are used to seeing in any city. You look around and you expect to see office blocks, bank headquarters and department stores: not far off hills. It’s a place whose disaster currently defines it. Everybody talks about it. All of the time.

(A typical Christchurch city centre scene – 4 and a half years after the quake)

Many people here have mentioned the container “city”, a small area where 40 or so shipping containers have been put so that people could open small shops and coffee bars. We were there at the same time as Prince Harry who drove past us on a tram (he has been in Melbourne, Wellington and now Christchurch at the same time as we have and we get the distinct impression he’s stalking us).
More people talk about the “cardboard cathedral” – a structure that is causing huge division and upset and will lead to court cases and make people shake their heads in despair at the church in general.
Here’s the view of a (reasonably though partially informed) outsider. The cathedral in Christchurch (built in the exact centre of the city when the city was started to be being built (if that’s a tense) in the 19th century and a huge undertaking when there were only a couple of thousand people there) was damaged when the quake struck. It was at first thought that the whole structure would have to be demolished and a new cathedral built. The bishop of Christchurch went public and said this would have to happen but meantime a new temporary structure would be built half a mile away on the site of a demolished parish church – rapidly built and nick-named the cardboard cathedral because its main visual internal struts look like wellying great big cardboard tubes. Which, indeed, they are, but these are just convenient wrappings for the stronger-than-steel wooden poles within them which keep the whole structure ship-shape. The rest of the building materials are pretty standard – a properly weatherproof metal roof and polished concrete floors. And really ugly canvassy curtaining along the insides to form little rooms in the eaves – it has the feeling of a marquee inside.
Over 100 structural engineering experts have since stated that the damaged cathedral is restorable. None has been found to say it’s not. The cost of restoring the original will be a lot less than building a new one. Donations for restoring the original will be a lot more likely to arrive than donations for a new one. I don’t think it helps that the bishop is Canadian (no offence, Canada) and had only been in post a short time and by being Canadian therefore wasn’t a New Zealander and as such is seen as an outsider with different traditions and views (and is also much quoted as saying her cathedral in Canada looks like a grain silo so you don’t need a beautiful, old building as a cathedral). This is probably a deliberate quote out of context by the traditionalists who are agin her.
Anyway, the bishop’s dug heels in, those who want the original restored have mounted a campaign – everything is stalled and lots of lawyers will get fat on the proceeding court led stalemate and meanwhile what could have been an opportunity for the church to bear witness to God amidst calamity is just becoming another calamity.
Draw a line in the sand. Get a new study done in the light of new evidence as to the soundness of the original building and make a thought through choice.

(Inside the cardboard cathedral)

(The container city)

(And just behind the container city, right in the middle of town)