The obstacles Bishop Victoria Matthews daily encounters in overseeing the Diocese of Christchurch would be well-nigh intolerable – if these were normal times.

Consider:

• Her own home has been red-stickered, and could collapse in the next jolt;
• She had to sleep in many different beds for the first three weeks after the quake;
• She can’t use her own office. The Anglican Centre is at the centre of the no-go area;
• She can’t get her own car. It’s parked behind the Anglican Centre;
• She’s having to rely on her Blackberry phone to run her diocese. That’s because she’s operating from a church hall where internet access has been a problem.

So how does she feel about all that?

“I consider myself,” she says, “uniquely privileged.”

Bishop Victoria is acutely aware that she has power that others in the wreckage of Christchurch don’t have.

Three Sundays ago, for instance, she became seriously concerned that her big two-storey home was in imminent danger of collapsing into her neighbour’s house.

So she sent texts to the Earthquake Commission, and called her insurance company.

“The insurance company said: ‘We’ll send a loss adjustor’ – and I said: ‘No.’ I knew it was more serious than that.

“I hate doing this – it’s against everything I believe in – but there’s a very senior structural engineer who is a good Anglican.

“I called his office, and was told: ‘Oh, he won’t be able to get back to you for weeks’.

In fact he got back to her within the hour, and promised to be at her home at 6pm that evening.

They walked over to the corner of her home that most alarmed her – and his first words were: ‘We shouldn’t be standing here.’

He arranged for the next-door house to be evacuated that night, put red ‘Do Not Enter’ tape across Bishop Victoria’s gate, and had a contractor come at 7am the next morning to shore up the most damaged corner of her home with 20 large steel props.

Bishop Victoria isn’t placing blind faith in those props.

She saw heritage buildings similarly propped up in the wake of the September quake – and in many cases, those props were scattered like pick-up sticks by the February 22 quake.

But the props on her own home will buy her some time, and have led her to reflect that she is “the most privileged of people.”

“I know what other people are trying to deal with.

“I know what the people in Dallington, Avonside, Aranui, Bexley, New Brighton, North New Brighton, Opawa, Lyttelton, Redcliffs, Sumner – I could go on – are dealing with.

“They probably don’t have my sense of general confidence.

“If I get into a really bad spot, I probably know who to call. And they actually return my call, God bless them.”

And as Bishop Victoria reflects further, she returns to a theme she’s outlined before:

“We’ve got to look after each other.

“It’s the oldest story in the book. It’s the way God made us to be.

“But that actually is the bottom line.

“It’s not about rebuilding the cathedral, or rebuilding any other church.

“It’s about looking after each other.”

Footnote: Thanks to what Bishop Victoria calls “the extraordinary welcome and support of the Ven John Sheaf and parish of Upper Riccarton” the Diocesan office has been temporarily relocated to the St Peter’s parish hall at 23 Yaldhurst Rd, Upper Riccarton.