Friday marked Matariki, or the Māori new year. Like Easter, the date changes each year based on the rising of the Matariki (Pleiades) constellation, and an appropriate lunar phase.

Some of you might have taken time to lift your eyes to the skies this week. While Christchurch will always have a little light pollution, even here there is something magnificent about star-gazing. Douglas McKelvey has written a beautiful stargazing liturgy that you might like to engage with as you stare upward in this season

O Great Architect of these intricate heavens, we have assembled under open skies this night to ponder your handiwork, to be moved to wonder at the poetry of your thoughts revealed in endless patterns of light.

How limitless the creative power of the One who first scattered these star-fields as a sower flinging bright seeds.

How fathomless the thoughts of the One who named and remembers each burning star and who also names and remembers each of us.

Now you, his people, lift your eyes to the heavens and consider his handiworks. (Silence is kept)

Constellations rise and descend the staircase of the night at your command, O Lord. Galaxies spin like dancers. Space and time bend and bow to the gravity of your great will.

In such holy wonders, baptise our imaginations, that we might ever be a people shaped by awe at your eternal power, and a people moved to worship by revelations of your divine nature.

Awaken our hearts now to beat in rhythms to the dance of your creation. Tune our ears to hear the songs of stairs in their trillion-fold choruses, bearing witness to your glory, your power.

Use these bright expressions of your extravagant beauty to stoke our holy longings, whetting our appetites afresh for all that is eternal and good.

You made this vastness, and by your love you placed us in it, fixed amongst the wonders.

So let us be stirred, O Lord, by night skies such as these, lifting our thoughts to you, our Maker, and to the vast and beautiful infinitude of your designs.

O Spirit of God, draw praise from us, here in this cathedral of creation, beneath this starry done.

Awaken our adoration in this place where we are so very small – and yet so greatly loved.

Amen.