Gray Ruffell

It's interesting how one part of your life can play a dominant role, even if you don't mean it to. Well, that's how my life has worked anyway.

At around the age of 17 I was asked by a close friend to be involved in something that came to be known as Disability Education '94. Inside this adventure we visited various schools in the Hawke's Bay region and spoke with kids about living with things like cerebral palsy, spina bifida and muscular dystrophy. We told our stories and let the kids ask questions about our daily lives.

It was inside this experience that I truly began to grasp the power of honest communication in community life. And everything that you read on this website is coloured by that fact.

Since those days I have filled many varying roles that all revolve around communication and community life. Some other things I've done include lay preacher, educator for the Human Rights Commission, and of course creator of Community Investigation.

I was raised in a family that was all about service and community. One of the challenges you face when you have an identifier like cerebral palsy is to find ways to express yourself and to find yourself in activities and connections that aren't related to that identifier.

After I became a Christian when I was about 18, my father casually asked me: now that you've found this faith, how do you choose to live it out? Of course being the age I was at the time I had no idea. It was about 10 years later, I was between projects with nothing to do, and I remembered my father saying that he thought I would make a good justice of the peace or celebrant.

So in 2009 I was registered, and I have the great privilege of helping people celebrate their relationships by officiating their marriages.

You can probably see a theme developing, yes?

I've always had a love for not only communication but also for the creative process - in terms of either physically creating something or just even the idea of creating an idea in somebody's mind. That's where radio plays a role.

When I was a younger man the heroes of my world were entertainers and DJs. My mornings were filled with waking up to go to school and listening to breakfast radio and being inspired by their wit, their take on the world, and the place they developed as part of people's lives.

I have been involved with community radio in various forms for 30 plus years and I studied media with a focus on radio and broadcasting skills in New Plymouth.

Lights, camera, action!

I've always enjoyed the process of watching something you're involved in come to life. Aside from my workshop life, nowhere is this more tangible to me than on stage.

You connect with cast and crew over a page, and within two months that page has become something that you helped create and those around you can enjoy.

Over the last 20 years or so I've had the great privilege of being involved in many shows with various theatre groups across the Hawke's Bay region.

One idea that keeps being affirmed again in my life is the value and power of communication, and of course as a byproduct of that, being listened to.

One of my more recent undertakings is to become a volunteer for Samaritans New Zealand.

I have been a born-again Christian for over 30 years now. And I have made my spiritual home at various churches in that time frame.

To say my faith journey has been interesting in relation to the church is an understatement to say the least. Currently I serve as a preacher in the parish of greater Hastings, Hawke's Bay.

My faith has shaped everything else you see on this site - how I approach community, how I listen to people, and why I believe that honest communication matters as much as it does.