Partnership

At my niece's wedding the pastor said something that stuck with me, a marriage isn't about meeting your partner halfway, there's no 50:50 in marriage, it's about giving yourself to them and them to you 100%.

A partnership is not about becoming one single entity, losing who you are, becoming identical beings though. Recall the story of how Tane separated Rangi and Papa. At First Rangi and Papa were as one, but there was no space between them for their children to move or grow. Then Tane put his shoulders to Papa's body and his feet on Rangi and pushed them apart and light and day emerged and a space for all things to grow in.

Also recall how innovation, creativity and learning occurs in the space between order and chaos, between rules and structure, and randomness.
The structure gives form to the creative thought of chaos and helps it hold it's shape. To much structure and thought becomes stagnant, to little and it floods everywhere and goes no where, just breaking apart continually changing.

Physicists understand this. Every thing has two states, that of a wave and a particle. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

So it is in a partnership, each partner brings their own uniqueness, that gives strength to the other as they are strengthened in return. Just as a two strands of DNA help to mask each others faulty traits, two cords bind to make a stronger rope, two musical notes resonate to make a chord.

But being in a partnership is not about staying the same either. Two musical notes may create a harmony or a disharmony, the singers must be constantly listening to each other adjusting their tone to blend with their partner's. To do this successfully you must learn each others songs and music, so you can learn to anticipate each other as one or other takes the lead and jazz together. Your structure gives direction to their creativity and vice versa. (Remember sharing the lead to increases the innovation.)

Thus it is with te tiriti of Waitangi a partnership, not a rigid one set in stone (even that carved in stone must grow moss and change as it weathers the sands of time), but a dynamic one. It's meaning is no longer what either set of parties originally conceived, but has grown and changed, just as the meaning of words change over time, old meanings lost new ones found, just as it will continue to grow, the harmony depending on how well we listen, how well we share the lead with each other, both sides giving 100%. Looking not at the chip on the others shoulder but at the log in our own eyes, treating each other as we would want to be treated.

Nor was it two individuals that signed the treaty, it was two parties. The many different and diverse, culturally distinct tribes of the Maori people represented by their Rangitira, and the many different and diverse culturally distinct groups of the new colonial peoples represented by the British Empire and Crown.

Two sets of parties binding themselves together to strengthen each other and form a new whanau made of both.

With that in mind I welcome you the peoples of this isolated land to this week of Te Reo Māori. Nau mai ra ngā iwi o te motu, nau mai ra ki tēnei wiki o te reo Māori.