Praise for Pilgrimage Aotearoa
Praise for Pilgrimage Aotearoa
Here's a selection of independent reviews and endorsements for
Pilgrimage Aotearoa | Haerenga Tapu Aotearoa
Your Guide to 100 New Zealand Sites
By Jenny Boyack and John Hornblow
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Book Review
By Bishop Kelvin Wright
in Anglican Taonga 18 December 2024
https://www.anglicantaonga.org.nz/news/our_heritage/review100pilgrimage
“Pilgrimage Aotearoa by Jenny Boyack and John Hornblow is a beautiful and useful guidebook to 100 pilgrimage sites in Aotearoa.
The authors note that while New Zealanders are keen participants in the flourishing international pilgrimage industry, they sometimes fail to value our own heritage.
This guidebook offers some redress for that. Arising from the authors’ extensive experience with holy places both here and overseas, they have listed 100 places throughout the country which speak of our cultural and spiritual heritage and thus help us understand our present.
The places listed include the sites of historic events, important buildings, the graves and memorials of significant people and others, chosen for their ability to address the deep questions of our national, personal and cultural identity.
The book is arranged geographically, with holy sites in each region of Aotearoa grouped together. For each of the significant places there is a brief history of the site and an explanation of its significance. There are instructions for finding it and suggestions for finding further information.
A short and place-appropriate reflection, aimed at prompting prayer or contemplation, ends each site description.
There are photographs and a map for each of the sites. The book’s layout is clear and attractive. It is a book which invites browsing. Apart from its use as a handbook of our country’s sacred spaces, this book is an informative and succinct account of some of our history and geography.
There is a brief introduction, in which the importance of pilgrimage is discussed, and a final chapter outlining ways in which a personal or group pilgrimage can be planned.
The book ends with a useful glossary of Te Reo terms and an appendix suggesting ways in which the book might be used. This final appendix raises some of the most interesting, to me, questions of the book. What exactly is a pilgrimage? When does a trip stop being a mere piece of travel from point A to point B become something bigger and deeper?
In his foreword Archbishop David Moxon quotes Thomas Merton: “the geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey.” Pilgrimage is a spiritual practice in which the journey is actually of more significance than the destination.
Someone may spend 40 days walking the Camino de Santiago and spend only an hour in the Cathedral of St James, which is the purported reason for the walk. If I have a criticism of this book, it is that the concept of pilgrimage is sketchily stated at best.
In the introduction the phenomenon of Hikoi is mentioned as a synonym for pilgrimage, but I think they are slightly different things. A pilgrimage is purposed; it acts as a spiritual practice because it is costly enough in terms of time, comfort, resources and money to push us to the edges of our self-imposed limitations.
It will usually follow a path laid down by others and incorporate us into the timeless fellowship of pilgrims. Where pilgrimage is mostly about the journey, Jenny Boyack and John Hornblow have given us a guidebook to destinations. This is the book’s weakness but also, oddly, its great strength.
I think it is difficult to design and manufacture a pilgrimage. Pilgrimages grow, organically, from the culture and spirituality of people as they respond to the holy in the places where they live.
They arise as people recognize the “thin spaces” and wish to go there, to experience what others have experienced before them. Pilgrimages may be about the journey rather than the arrival, but to exist at all they need some longed-for destination.
And Pilgrimage Aotearoa gives us 100 of those. As a useful and beautiful guide to some of our spiritual and cultural heritage this book is well worth the purchase price.
I believe that, also, it might be the seedbed for pilgrimage in our beloved Motu.”
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Review in Tui Motu InterIslands March 2025
by Thomas and William Hassan Walker
"Pilgrimage Aotearoa is about visiting places in New Zealand and looking at them in a new way. For each place, the authors include a story, directions and a reflection. The places in the book are not necessarily “holy” places — some are churches but there are also memorials, monuments and places in nature.
To try the book out, over the school holidays we walked into Dunedin city and visited three of the places: the Thomas Bracken Memorial, First Church (Presbyterian) and St Paul’s Cathedral (Anglican). We found the “story” sections really helpful — we’ve lived in Dunedin all our lives but we never knew the national anthem was written in Dunedin or that St Paul’s was built because one priest and the community campaigned for it.
We used to think going on a pilgrimage meant travelling a long way to holy places. Now we know that you can go on a pilgrimage in your hometown — you just have to think about the place you’re going to and why you’re going.
This book would appeal to people who love to walk, who are curious about Aotearoa, and who might not be keen or able to go on an overseas pilgrimage but still want the experience."
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Review in Touchstone February 2025
By Rev Tony Franklin-Ross
https://hail.to/methodist-church-of-new-zealand/publication/9G2NQHu/article/HyHvGen
We might associate pilgrimages with overseas locations, often being a multi-day physical walk covering long distances – such as the famous Camino in Spain or St Cuthbert’s Way in England. Or even a day walking a ‘pilgrimage’ in central London in the footsteps of John Wesley, comprehending something of the context of his life and ministry.
Might we miss the opportunities for pilgrimage within our own Aotearoa, unexpected gems? Admittedly there are not many multi-day walking pilgrimage routes in Aotearoa New Zealand (excluding national park hiking tracks). But there are many sites that the warrant a stop while touring by road, or knitting together a series of visits while driving in a region. There are even possibilities of urban day-walk pilgrimages in our major cities.
To aid this discovery, Pilgrimage Aotearoa / Haerenga Tapu Aotearoa offers readers a unique guide to 100 sites in Aotearoa New Zealand, blending history, culture and spirituality. It invites you on an inspiring journey of reflection and discovery, uncovering rich stories that make these places significant to our country’s identity and soul.
The authors, Jenny Boyack and John Hornblow, write from an outworking of their own learnings and insights from undertaking their own pilgrimages, and leading groups on pilgrimages. The seedbed in preparing this book is their exploration of the beauty and spirituality of our country and the special places, often unnoticed, that are rich in spirituality as well as history.
There is truly an incarnational spirituality engaged with the earliest and enduring Christian presence in the country, while others tell contemporary stories. Some sites record terrible injustice and suffering and are a cause for remorse and repentance. Others are inspiring and heart-warming and reflect foundational values of respect, justice, peace and restoration.
The underlying question of the book invites is to consider how God works through the places and the people associated with the site, past and present.
Each entry tells a little of the story, the people, directions to find the site, and a short reflection. There are beautiful photographs and poems, prayers and artwork contributed by locals or people earthed in the story of the site.
More than a simple travel guide, the touchstones add breadth to the work whether you are visiting the site, or reading as an ‘armchair pilgrim’ remembering a previous visit, or being introduced to a site for the first time.
I found myself doing just this: visiting a site for the first time, reading about a site I have visited previously and appreciating a new (re)connection, or pondering a site previously unknown to me and making a note to visit one day. It is a treat to reflect through the words and photos on familiar sites such as Rangihou/Marsden’s Cross and the range of mission stations in the far north, and to read of places I knew of but have not yet visited myself."
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Review in Touchstone February 2025
By Gary Clover
Having realised that despite a significant tradition of Māori and Church-led protest hikoi and “informed and prayerful walks with God” (including cathedral labyrinths and stations of the cross), New Zealanders have “little knowledge of the riches on our own doorstep”. So with experiences of Christian pilgrimages here and overseas (including the Camino), and since 2013 making “intentional visits” to “significant historical religious sites [all around] Aotearoa-New Zealand”, the authors (John Hornblow, retired Anglican priest and younger brother of Max and Edgar Hornblow, and his wife Jenny, organist and choir director at All Saints, Palmerston North) published this book late in 2024.
Archbishop David Moxon’s introduction, two extracts on Christian and New Zealand pilgrimage, a sites by region map, and a contents list organised by region and district from Northland to Rakiura and Rēkohu, lead the reader into “engaging with a site” using questions from a framework developed by Archbishop Moxon to assist “a deeper engagement with each site”. Then follow 99 site entries from Oihi Bay and the Rangihoua Heritage Park, Bay of Islands, to the last entry, Maunganui Stone Cottage, Rēkohu/Chatham Islands.
Most entries follow a typical pattern that helps with planning and access: the story, directions, further information and reflection. Many fascinating and insightful entries include most Christian denominations, Ratana and Ringatu historical sites and churches, many significant pā and Māori memorials, two Orthodox monasteries, retreat centres, New Zealand Wars and WWI monuments and sites, Kate Sheppard’s childhood home and a plaque commemorating Thomas Bracken.
Within the Northland region are short biographies of Ruatara and Henry Williams, and significant entries on Kaeo and Mangungu and their Wesleyan mission stories. In Auckland, under an inner city walking pilgrimage, Pitt Street church has an entry; likewise in Wellington, Te Aro Pā and Park, and Wesley Taranaki Street have paragraphs. Durham Street is mentioned under the Christchurch earthquake walking pilgrimage.
Under Otago there is the Watkin memorial stone at Waikouaiti labelled as at Karitāne, but no mention of the Otago Methodist mission or the exquisite little Māori concrete church at Ōtakou. Likewise, Waikato, Kāwhia coast, North and South Taranaki Methodist mission sites are omitted. There is nothing about the Pukearuhe Whiteley memorial site or Whiteley Memorial Church, Ngāmotu mission and the Grey’s Institute, in New Plymouth; nothing of the mission plaques scattered about Hāwera, or the Kaitoke farm mission near Waitōtora. Fortunately, the Waikato coast has Robin Astridge’s 2013 commentary and photographs in, A Brief Outline of Wesleyan Mission Stations in the Waikato, and Alan Leadley’s, A Pilgrimage to Kawhia, to cover this omission.
These disappointments aside, this guide book is a beautifully and elegantly-crafted first attempt to awaken New Zealanders of all races and creeds to the numerous possibilities for our own New Zealand-based pilgrimages. It is a work of art, printed on glossy art paper, which should find a hallowed place in backpacks and motorists’ glove boxes, for exploring our country’s rich religious and secular monuments among numerous city highways and country by-ways."
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