At this point in the Hāhi’s year Te Rā Kakenga—Ascension Day—can feel a little quiet. It doesn’t shout—like Kirihimete or te Aranga. But it doesn’t need to. Coming after the empty tomb of Easter and before the fire of Pentecost, people miss it sometimes. But it matters.
It’s not about leaving. Ihu didn’t just walk off into the sunset. He didn’t pack up and say e noho rā. No. He rose. Not away from us, but with us. With our kōiwi. With our toto. With our hā. Our tinana—hale, strong, broken, tired—were carried with him. Into the very heart of te Atua. That’s what Te Kakenga means. Not less human. More. Glorified.
So, it says something to us, all of us. That this tinana of ours, this weariness, this grief, is not beneath heaven. It belongs there. It’s not escaped. It’s lifted. The whenua too. All of creation. Our whakapapa. Our scars. They are taken up, not left behind.
We want an Atua who sits with us. Who stays close. Who doesn’t flinch when we cry. We want a Karaiti who walks beside the sick, the poor, the weary. And we have one. Te Kakenga doesn’t change that. It makes it truer. Now te Karaiti is not just in one place. He’s in every place. At the pā. In the hohipera. In our kāenga. At our mahi. In the waiting rooms. In the dark. Everywhere.
And for us, that matters. When our reo is silenced, when our taonga are taken, when the weight of colonisation still presses hard, Te Kakenga says this: none of it is lost. Te Karaiti has carried our whole selves into the heart of divine aroha. Our pōuri, our hari, our tapu, our mana. Lifted. Never cast aside.
Te Kakenga then is a call to action, not to sit passively gazing into the clouds. As the ānahera said to Ihu’s ākonga, “He aha tā koutou e tū, e mātakitaki atu na ki te rangi?” This is a time to move. To carry that vision—clear and true—into the world. To see with the eyes of heaven. To know this whenua, its people, are already part of the rising.
Kua kake ake te Karaiti. Our story continues. And so, let us rise too.