This is a case of déja vu for me because exactly the same thing happened in 1999 prior to that historic defeat of the All Blacks by the French that was so totally unexpected. This was the historic defeat that would supposedly “never be repeated”.

I think I’m starting to understand something which may be indicative of a difference between French and New Zealand mentality (prepare yourself for a sweeping generalisation on that notoriously inexact science of cultural psychology…) : the French seem to do best, and are at their most passionate, when there is no real hope other than being defeated honourably. Being told that they will probably fail, which is, by the way, a standard pedagogical technique used by large numbers of French schoolteachers, seems to have the opposite effect of goading them on to success.

On the other hand, New Zealanders seem to do really badly when they have not fully grasped the strength of their opposition. I’ve noticed many commentators have already suggested that the run of matches leading up to the quarter-final where the All Blacks just walked all over the other team was psychologically very poor preparation for facing the French. Nobody in France expected the All Blacks to lose – along with 4 million New Zealanders!

I’m wondering if this is applicable to areas other than sport…

One thing for sure, there will be an interminable post mortem about this in New Zealand; the nation will be in sackcloth and ashes for weeks (it’s already started here at the country’s largest newspaper). Meanwhile, dans la patrie des Bleus, the celebration goes on…

Bravo les bleus! C’était un super match! All Blacks – great job. You didn’t lose by much. Take a break, go fishing – it’s only a little oval ball, after all!

We just got back to France yesterday after over 4 months away (I might do a post about our eventful voyage home once the jet lag subsides and the memory of the anguish of missing not one but three of our connections becomes a little less raw)!

People often ask us “what are the differences between New Zealand and France”, and I never know what to say. So now that I still have a bit of that “just-flew-in” objectivity left before it fades into the familiar, I’ll record some of those things that have left us in no doubt that we really are back in France.

• The mind-numbing circularity of Charles de Gaulle airport, which seems to have been designed as if it was intended as some vast Skinnerian behavioural experiment to test how long it takes for a human being to lose their sense of direction.

• The compassion of the people whose work it is to assist poor travellers who have been disoriented by such things as lost bags, missed connections, the design of airports, or (as in our case) all of the above. A bit of politeness, treating the person behind the desk as an individual human being and not just a cog in some wheel, and an honest sharing of one’s predicament goes a long way in France.

On the other hand, if you want to produce the Gallic shrug and a stubborn refusal to lift a finger to help, just be demanding of your rights and critical of that monstrous organisation that got you into your present sufferings (usually the employer of the person in front of you).

There are exceptions, however. One irate tourist, from a country just to the north of France that shall remain nameless, berated the cashier at a newsagents for not being willing to change her 20 euro note into “moneda“. This is the Spanish word for “change”, which was the only word in a language other than her own that she used – and that in a French railway station – go figure! She lamented in her own language (understood to me but happily over the head of the cashier), over how much she hates French airports and how inexplicable it is that the ticket machines didn’t accept her foreign debit card etc. etc. Judging by her accent the person in question comes from a culture where it is fairly common to accuse the French of being “arrogant”. It really made me stop and think how often we (myself included) accuse others of the same faults that trip us up.

In the end the lady got what she wanted, thanks to the long-suffering cashier who had probably heard it all before.

• Heather particularly noticed proof that chivalry is not dead in France, as we saw young guys competing with each other to look after elderly ladies struggling with heavy baggage.

• The children exclaimed over a very simple but very French breakfast in the hotel where we were obliged to spend an unexpected night due to delays and missing baggage. You’d think they’d just been served a meal in a 5-star restaurant the way they went into raptures over their orange juice, baguette with butter and jam or nutella, and hot chocolate (into which the aforementioned baguette, now slathered in jam or nutella, is dunked).

High speed trains, row houses with black slate roofs and terracotta chimneys, road works and roundabouts everywhere, hypermarkets, elderly ladies on park benches, hollyhocks, a bottle of Bordeaux left behind by our house-sitters – nothing very deep, but a bunch of small things that are a powerful reminder that we really are back.

François is a young friend from Nantes, an engineering student who, instead of fulfilling his foreign work placement requirement somewhere sensible like England, he came all the way to NZ where he ended up working in a pulp and paper mill in the exotic (ahem!) little town of Tokoroa. If you read French you can find out here about his NZ adventure.

It was an ideal weekend as we had a dinner to get together with old friends, and gave a presentation in church on Sunday morning, part of which was an interview with François about his life in Nantes and what it’s like being a full-on Christian in such a secular educational environment. François is very active in Agape Campus – a student Christian movement in Nantes. It was great hearing his impressions of our homeland – seeing it through French eyes.

As we were travelling at 100kph along the motorway north of Auckland in our white diesel van on loan from OM New Zealand (yes, that great OM tradition of getting about in ageing but faithful vans has even made it to the bottom of the world!), when a big bang, a loud warning siren and a lot of smoke alerted us to the fact that something was not quite right. To make it even more exciting, the brakes failed, and my wife told me afterward that my face went even whiter than the van (which needs a good clean, actually – the van, not my face). At that speed bringing the van to a stop was a tricky manoeuvre, but a couple of hundred meters later I was able to safely pull off the road, as it turned out, right beside an emergency phone.

Little tip if you ever happen to break down on a New Zealand motorway: look for an emergency phone rather than using your cell phone. If you call from one of these, the motorway authority will have you towed free of charge to the nearest garage (something about keeping the motorway secure).

As it turned out, the nearest garage was in a town where we happen to have some good friends who were away overseas – such good friends that we actually know the door code to get into their appartment! We were able to camp there while the van was being fixed (broken fan belt and blown out radiator). It was a bit of a pain being delayed for two nights, but we made good use of the time.

It could have been so much worse. I know that just because God is looking after us it doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen. But in this particular instance we were pretty impressed by his care for us, in the way that a potentially disastrous situation turned into a reason for thanksgiving (the prayers of a faithfully praying mother-in-law also probably had something to do with it!)

[posted with ecto]

The first has the intriguingly descriptive title of His International Mission, a dynamic AG church in which we were the only white faces in a big group of brown. Great to see the passion for God and for mission amongst our Polynesian brothers and sistas. The second was Pakuranga Christian Fellowship, a church with a long contact with OM, and had the great bonus of being the church of our friends Greg & Joanne who were helping lead churches in the north of France for many years. As a kiwi family with four children, they were our “inspiration” – when we met them, we thought well if they can do it, maybe we could too! They’re still very active in ministry, currently church-planting amongst international students in south Auckland.

The third was West Hamilton Anglican, which we wrote about in another post on reinterpreting traditions. Our friends here have done such a marvellous job of facilitating our stay in New Zealand. As a teenager I left an Anglican church in which if you wanted to learn about Jesus you had to really dig deep, and it’s like I’ve gone full circle as our Hamilton church family is also an Anglican church, but one in which the gospel is preached loud and clear.

It was a relief to finish the message on Sunday morning, after 5 straight weeks of preaching, and now we begin to set our sights on the long trip home. Can’t believe it’s gone so quickly.

New Zealand is a fascinating country in that, although relatively small and geographically isolated (to some of our French friends, we might as well say we’re from Mars), it is like a microcosm of what is happening in the wider world, globalisation being what it is. This is particularly true in the church – wherever we go we meet with people who are at once passionate for the church, and extremely frustrated with it, longing for a simpler, more authentic expression of a church that is a visible reflection of God’s kingdom in society. That’s very vague, but I can’t very well catch you up on all the conversations of the last month.

This weekend we are with dear friends in Lower Hutt (“Lower” in the sense of being on the Hutt river downstream from “Upper Hutt” – named after one Mr Hutt I suppose – we are not staying in some kind of inferior cabin!), and we will be sharing at Lower Hutt Baptist tomorrow – the church where my journey in God started 22 years ago. I’ll be talking on Mary and Martha – again!! Can’t get away from that story. Will do a blog post on it one of these days.

Check out Flickr for some new photos. Now that my “blog fast” is broken, there should be some more regular offering from now on…