"This is your home," wrote a Wellington artist, and "you should have been safe here."

But the flowers will, eventually, wither away. It is up to us to make sure that when they do, what they represent will endure. That all New Zealanders will not only feel at home here, but be safe, regardless of their race or religion.

Already, we are seeing how an evil act has been met with love, how the precious lives lost have brought us closer together—how our hearts have broken yet our bonds of aroha stronger than ever before.

Our Prime Minister has been a shining light amidst the darkness, radiating both strength and compassion in equal brilliance.

Her leadership has been a salve and shoulder to those mourning, and, I believe, will help hasten the healing of our collective wounds.

Our scars, however, will remain.

We must continue as we have begun. We cannot live as if these scars don't exist going about life how we did before, but most importantly, we must not respond in a spirit of fear.

For fear is the ultimate motivation of this attack—the white supremacist ideology fueled by terror, ignited by hate, and justified by ignorance.

The deepest ignorance is the desecration of human dignity, the idea that some humans aren't as inherently valuable as others.

That, certainly, is not "us."

But Brenton Tarrant is also not a nameless monster who came from nowhere, an anomaly we can shake our hands from.

He was alone during his attack, yes, but spurred on by the howls of faceless others in shadowy corners of the web—some, assuredly, logging on in our own country.

He isn't mentally unwell, just extremely deluded.

And just because he didn't grow up here, doesn't make this not our problem.

He is human too—and in that sense part of "us"—and the moment we begin to dehumanise and distance ourselves from this, we are falling right into his trap.

We must paradoxically be vulnerable ourselves by seeking and cherishing relationships with those who are different to us

We need to seek to understand so we can prevent others doing the same.

This is New Zealand now, and us is a diverse group.

Views must be confronted, not shut out and ignored.

We must get serious about so-called casual racism, and at the same time ensure reasonable democratic debate around issues like immigration and national values are not silenced.

Policies like banning semi-automatic weapons and cracking down on irresponsible social media giants will make our shores less vulnerable to hate.

But to be a true stronghold, we must paradoxically be vulnerable ourselves by seeking and cherishing relationships with those who are different to us—kanohi ki te kanohi: face to face. A nation marked by these encounters will never be overcome by terror and division.

The flowers will wither and the scars will remain.

We must honour those who lost their lives and defy the ideas of the man that took them by fervently seeking to uphold and protect human dignity in Aotearoa New Zealand.

• First published by the Maxim Institute.
• Kieran Madden joined Maxim Institute as a researcher in 2012 after graduating with a Master of Public Policy from the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University.
• Image: Maxim Institute

Is it having plentiful sofas, nice neighbours, or perhaps super-fast Wi-Fi? Believe it or not, they all make the list according to a recent study cited on the Be Home Blog.

As well as some (perhaps more surprising?) factors which would seem to make for less family time, but do play a part in preventing tension - for example, everyone having their own phones, or having a lock on the bathroom door.

These above points might seem trivial, but there are others on the list (of 50 - see the full list here) that do resonate with me. Here are my favourites:

Keeping the home tidy

Seems unnecessary? Not so! There's something about being in clean, neat surroundings that calms a person. I've heard it said that the state of your wardrobe reflects the state of your soul - wouldn't it make sense then, that the state of your home affects the state of your mind? It's so much easier to relax in a tidy home - you actually want to be there rather than escape it. I'd say it's one of the foundations for fostering a pleasant environment.

Knowing when to say sorry

There's nothing quite like rising tensions and long-held grudges to kill the mood of a home. If people are upset at each other, everyone can sense it, that's for sure. Admitting being at fault and then apologising is certainly a hard thing to do, but if you're brought up doing this in the little things, then it's easier to do it in the bigger things. I've always tried to apologise and making peace before going to bed. "Don't let the sun set on your anger" and all that. Continue reading

• Tamara Rajakariar in MercatorNet

Tamara Rajakariar lives in Australia and is a Journalism graduate from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Meat defrosts slowly on the bench for the evening meal that Nicola will prepare for husband Randal and children Samalah, 23 and Daniel, 21. After dinner, there is no television to distract from evening activities, conversation or a good book at the kitchen table.

A humble space, the kitchen is clearly the heart of this Renwick home, reflecting the lifestyle and beliefs the Gray family hold, beliefs based on traditional Christian values and a determination to retain close family bonds in a fast-paced world.

The Grays took seven years to build their ideal home, which began life as part of St Mary's Catholic Church in Blenheim.

Nuns taught singing and music underneath the sharply pitched roof, the sound tempered by acoustic tiles almost 5m high.

An elderly nun once told Nicola that among the many voices that rang out between the old walls were those of the Vienna Boys' Choir, which gave a private performance for the nuns.

In the late 1980s the music room, along with two other buildings, became surplus to requirement and were put up for tender to be moved off the site.

For Nicola and her husband Randal, the timing could not have been better. They had bought a patch of bare land on the eastern end of Renwick's High St and were looking for a way to build within their financial constraints. Those constraints were severe, as the Grays do not believe in mortgages, so everything they bought came from money already earned.

When Nicola and Randal inspected the music hall they found an empty, unfurnished building that was long and narrow and would certainly provide a challenging layout for a family home. They put in a tender and sat back to wait for the answer in a manner so fitting for the building: "We're Christians so we left it up to the Lord really," says Nicola. Read more

Sources

• Article and image: Stuff