Potted guide to panentheism

I can remember a number of mailing list discussions about theism, pantheism and panentheism the net result of which seemed to be that panentheism was treated as a mediating term between pantheism and theism but understood so broadly that it was hard to tell whether it was really something distinct or simply a way to avoid conflict by agreeing to modify views and accept a third term to cover modified positions. So I think I will make this article my own official guide to and definition of panentheism along with its helpful guidance on the philosophical issues.
Science & Theology News

Green Solvents - Ionic Liquids

I suppose this is a kind of 'heads up', products to watch out for in coming years: ionic liquids for cleaning and solvent-replacement. the little worry is that clearly the work on whether there are carcinogenic properties in these things has not been done. I've no idea how long that will take, but a hopeful sign....

Treehugger: Millions of Green Solvents - Ionic Liquids

Finding Faith the SpiDir way

A tip of the Hat to Tom Allen as he reflects: "what we need to offer to SOME people searching for faith who would not respond or find faith in the more directive but no less appropriate approaches such as Alpha and Emmaus."

Which in various forums I have said pretty much myself: I think that this is a vitally important way forward for Christians to take on board. Especially in a world which is increasingly marked by the cusomisation of goods and services, in such a cuslture it makes les and less sense to go in for mass or group programmes like Alpha, we will need to offer prayer guides, meditation teachers, spiritual-life coaches and so on and so forth.

Significant? I think so

Bigbulkyanglican: Finding Faith 2:

Self sufficient 'ish', the urban guide to almost self sufficiency.

This site is almost a dead ringer in aims for part of what I'm trying to do on TheGreening, so now I've discovered it it simpl;y has to be linked to. I'll probably put it on the recommended sties at the side there in dues course.

Self sufficient 'ish', the urban guide to almost self sufficiency. Selfsufficientish.com by Dave and Andy Hamilton

Ozone layer most fragile on record

For me this is worrying. Australian research indicates blond/red headed people who have Celtic backgrounds as oppoesd to Scandanavian, are more likley to suffer from skin cancers. As far as I can tell much of my ancestry is pretty solidly Celtic ... So if like my you live in northern Europe and have Celtic ancestors, you need to heed this doubly: "Scientists yesterday reinforced the warning that people going out in the sun this summer should protect themselves with creams and hats."
And why is this happening; we were told not long ago that we'd done a good job as humans at reducing CFC's and that the ozone holes were reducing in size. And so it was. Problem is now "The pollution levels have levelled off but changes in the atmosphere have made it easier for the chemical reactions to take place that allow pollutants to destroy ozone. With these changes likely to continue and get worse as global warming increases, then ozone will be further depleted even if the level of pollution is going down."
Global warming, it appears, isn't just about warming but about UV radiation too. Baddest news.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Ozone layer most fragile on record

Will Britain go nuclear?

It just seems the more you look at it the worse the case gets. Apart from the fact that it is doubtful that new nukes could be built in time to make any difference to emissions targets, "There are far more jobs and early benefits in promoting renewables and energy efficiency measures. In fact, more carbon dioxide and money could be saved with energy efficiency than any other single measure, but the government has done little to promote it. One benefit of considering nuclear power would be to bring these contradictions into the public eye. It would also raise questions about the government's failure to solve the nuclear waste problem, including the hulks of old stations, and the costs — a hotly disputed issue. Do you count just the cost of generating electricity, or do you add in the large amounts of capital required for construction and the waste disposal, and lastly the thorny issue of insurance? The state has to underwrite the cost of nuclear insurance, but is that an illegal subsidy under EU law?"

Nuklearrik? Ez eskerrik asko.-As they used to say in the Basque country.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Will Britain go nuclear?:

Bill Gates' Business Dichotomy

Apparently, bill Gates has, wearing his hat as head of a charitable foundation, been saying that state schooling is failing kids. Presuably doing something about that will tkae public money to some degree, so it is interesting to learn:"Microsoft maintains a small office in Reno, Nev. -- a state with no corporate income tax. Sixty billion dollars in licensing fees for Windows and Office software has passed through that office, and an estimated $300 million in taxes has been lost to Washington for the sale of products produced in Washington.".
It's not just the USA that this affects, either.
I refer you to the campaign to redefine the legal status of corporations so that they are not only legally obligated ot produce monetary profit for shareholders but to act as good neighbours and responsible citizens. A corporation is defined as a person legally, they should have the responsibilities too.

It's an illustration of the parasitical nature of big business: willing to take the advantages that public infrastructure produces but seeking ways to avoid paying a share in that infrastructure at every point possible. As the article says: "Microsoft's familiar advertising slogan, "Your potential, our passion" is undercut by every transaction made in that Reno office. With every transaction, and with every unpaid tax dollar, Microsoft's (business) passion reduces children's potential, by making it harder to adequately fund our schools."
Bill Gates' Business Dichotomy:

"Rich impose terms on poor" -Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams does it again; says stuff that I really want an Archbishop of Canterbury to be saying, this time it's ... "The scandal of our current global economy is not simply that it leaves children dying, that it leaves over a billion in extreme need. It is that it rein forces a picture of the world in which rivalry and mutual isolation are the obvious forms of behaviour. The rich protect their markets while talking about the virtues of free trade."
I just pray that this will be heard.
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Rich impose terms on poor, says Williams:

'If it's melted, it's ruined'

(I enjoyed reading this article about how Ben and Jerry's have managed to retain their environmental and ethical agenda under ownership by Unilever. It's worth noting too the possibility of refrigeration without refrigerants -which I'd never heard of before."Under Unilever's management, Ben & Jerry's continues to publish an annual social and environmental audit. The company aims to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 10% from 2002 levels by 2007. Unilever has invested in thermoacoustic research, an alternative refrigeration technology that uses sound waves to create cooling and could eliminate the environmentally harmful gases used in mechanical refrigeration. "

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'If it's melted, it's ruined':

Papercrete

This would be a positive use for loads of what is currently landfill and a further idea to keep in mind when it comes to self-build housing. 'Padobe' what a wonderful word!
Treehugger: Papercrete : Recycling Paper into Concrete::building::

Exploding toads

This is one of those stories which if it were in a medieval almanac, you'd be tempted to think that it was the work of a lively and superstitious imagination and passed on by ignorance of the laws od nature. When I was an undergraduate a friend of mine poo-pooed the idea of a rain of frogs as reported in some medieval annals. He said it was simply the superstitious medieval mind at work, no such thing could happen. But of course, we now know such things can and do happen and we have worked out the physics ... Interesting reflection. What other things are there that we think unbelievable but which are in fact true? That's not an excuse to believe anything, but it is to reflect that a lot of what we think plausible is culturally conditioned and therefore we should have some humility before writing some things off. Miracles in the Bible are often dismissed, but quite often that dismissal is a cultural prejudice and says nothing of what may or may not have happened. That's not to say either that we should not ask questions of the miracles. Personally I think that there may be quite a lot in the explanations of the plagues of Egypt which suggest a volcanic eruption in the vicinity of Crete; I also think that this is quite consonant with believing that God may have used it to deliver the people of Israel from Egyptian slavery ... but it's something I'm willing to think, rethink and be persuaded over.

I will be interested to know what's causing toads to explode though but.
BBC NEWS | Europe | Mystery of German exploding toads

Peak oil meme gathers pace

"Mr Simmons told the meeting that it was inevitable that the price of oil would soar above $100 as supplies failed to meet demand. "

The important thisg here is also the warning s of how it would affect the global economy. Now is not the time to be doing nothing.

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society Environment | Analyst fears global oil crisis in three years:

Villagers drove out vicar, says church

My heart goes out to this man. I have been in situations where it is easy to extrapolate to what happened to this guy. I guess it must happen in other professions and jobs too. Sometimes people can be so unreasonable and so cruel. Also important is the way that the capacity for empathy is taken out of the picture: if people would only think about what their actions mean to the person on the receiving end of them .... Bad day for the human race.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Villagers drove out vicar, says church

A Different Kind of Revolution

George Monbiot seems to me to be writing consistently a whole lot of sense. When I read this article I recognised loads of concerns I had dimly articulated -or not- in my blog postings on TheGreening all rolled up into one well-expressed article. The tenor of the thing can be grapsed a bit from this quote. "Alternative technology permits us to imagine that we can build our way out of trouble. By responding to one form of over-development with another, we can, we believe, continue to expand our total energy demands without destroying the planetary systems required to sustain human life. This might, for a while, be true. But it would soon require the use of the entire land surface of the United Kingdom."

In other words reducing energy consumption has to be part of the solution. Until we say this it may be hard to see the upcoming arguments between renewables and nuke power in a helpful frame. I suggest that this means several developments at once. Concentrating on things that reduce consumption [lower power lighting and other devices and also insulation and so on]. Changing culture -or rather emphasising cultural tenrds that are low-impact. Better design in the mode of 'Natural Capitalism' by Lovins and the others.



I think where I would fault Monbiot's argument is the equation of capital needing to expand energy use. The argument of Lovins etc is precisely that capital can conceivably be made to serve the biomimetic ends of maximally using what we have rather than the present norm of single inefficient use. Scarcity could drive whole new industries based on reclaiming and reusing. I think that the Green Party are arguing this too. Scarcity is actually a set of opportunities for capital and those with eyes to see the way that things will be going. Whether and how that's politically good is another matter ...

George Monbiot � A Different Kind of Revolution:

Do we need nuclear?

More nuke power debate. It's an interesting sleight of hand going on in these 'debate' pieces. On th eone hand they talk about how renewables are only £% of the present market, then how Nuke is 20% and how do we make up the difference. Then, without apparently noticing the irony we are told aboutt "the crippling cost of new nuclear power stations - estimated at about �10bn pounds over a period of about 20 years." without the corresponding thought that -just thinking out loud here- if we invested the same amount of government [that's your and my ] money in renewables over the next 20 years, including getting proper building regulations, encouraging domestic wind solar and other electricity generation we could achieve I suspect far more than nuclear would, we wouldn't have such a legacy of undisposable toxic waste, we would be more secure [it's harder to target decentralised power in a terrorist strike] and politically freer [just think about the civil liberties implications of keeping all that valuable nuclear material safe from terrorists as it zips around the country -if most of us knew what powers the Nuke police have we'd be very afraid]



No, friends, we're being softened up to hand over our liberties and our grandchildren's futures to something quite unsavoury.

Time to get the cute yellow sunshine badge out. Nuclear Power? -No thank you.

BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Election 2005 | Analysis: Do we need nuclear?:

Individual "sins" and collective action

Too often when we try to face our environmental impact, we are outfaced as individuals by the things that require collective action and yet our society seems radically untuned to the importance, in practice, of living within our footprint. So it is good to see this: "Already our culture works to atomize us, to make us feel like islands of consumer desire whose sole function is to accumulate as much as possible. It discourages us from thinking of ourselves as involved in communities that impose obligations and responsibilities. But if it is to mean anything substantial, a new ethic of sustainability must be collective. It's going to be about community, about our mutual bonds and mutual care."
One of the things that I used to encourage in collective worship was to bring this before God singly and together. It is important that we don't acquiescce too easily to the individualising tendencies of our culture, especially in worship, precisely because it means 'buying' the myth of atomisation and cuts us off from the possibilities of collective change, renewal and action. The issue then becomes how to recognise the individual and the collective poles of worship adequately and in ways that resonate for post-moderns and integralists.

I want to push this debate further, too. We need to recognise the spiritual personality of the collectives and 'corporations' [in the sense of symbiotic human organisations, not just businesses] and rediscover how to address them, call them to their God-given purposes and make them responsible to God and to human and planetary society. I think that the Pauline language of the 'Powers' is part of this. I crave your prayers that over the next year or so I can actually start to get my thoughts together on this properly.
Individual "sins" and collective action | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine:

Globish -pidgin English for the world

Technically a contact language without native speakers is a pidgin; it has a limited vocabulary and a simplified syntax and is focused on the task of enabling people who do not speak the same languages to communicate for the purposes of trade [usually]. If such a language makes it into a second generation by acquiring native speakers it's called a creole. So welcome to the latest pidgin: Globish. There's a whole branch of linguistics pretty much dedicated to studying pidgins and creoles and I'm sure they'll have a lot to say about this.
Personally I suspect a French plot to undermine the global 'dominance' of English by hiving off a non-standard version into pidgin-dom if you don't believe me and if you read French it may be worth looking up this site too. Otherwise try this under the heading 'debate'.
If you can't master English, try Globish

ecohomes LONDON!

Wow! Another piece of inspiration. The kind of thing to bookmark for when you talk to friends about practical ecological solutions in everyday life.

"The development meets all the requirements of a 21st century urban lifestyle, yet generates all its own energy from non fossil fuels from within its site boundaries. This development really is a vision of the future. The damage being done to our environment could be significantly reduced if more property developers were prepared to build in this way."



ecohomes from 4ecotips: LONDON’S FIRST TOTALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT APARTMENTS USE ROOF TOP WIND TURBINE

Rise of 'happy slapping' craze

What worries me is that this trend seems to involve a coming together of several 'forces'; the P2P panopticon thing where everyday life is surveilled by us and our peers, acts of violence modelled on advertising and films, violence as entertainment and the desire to be celebrities in the sense of starring on our own screens and those of our friends. It's a potent mix and has enough contributory factors in it to take on a life of its own through self-reinforcing feedback/reflexivity.

Most concerning is the objectivising of others into extras in scenes meant to be humourous where the perpetrators are the 'stars'. The humour is all to easily found in certain kinds of avant-garde comedy. Yeh, I know that there are studies that show no direct link between viewed violence and enacted violence, but I think that there is evidence to suggest indirect links. Given the imitative ['mimetic'] nature of human beings it can't be a coincidence that the forms of violence here are similar to things being shown on TV.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Concern over rise of 'happy slapping' craze

Episcopaganism?

Is that really a word? Apparently so since the 1970's. Recently it's been popping up in bloggerdom in relation to a controversy I blogged about a few days back, the strange incident of a couple of Episcopal priests and their relationship to a Druid Grove. I've managed to find out a bit more about what was going on, and if you're intrigued that tipp the hat to Jason Pitzl-Waters and his impressively comprehensive referencing of the issue, start at the referenced page.

Apparently I come over as a progressive Christian, now all I have to do is work out what that means! I must admit I do feel out of place in the company of all the fairly liberal Christians that this seems to put me in; perhaps God's trying to tell me something. Still, the company is not th pint. The issue is about doing justice and relating to neo-Paganism on a par with other religions. I an see no justification for dealing with it in a totally different way to Islam or Buddhism.

In fact, given that it is a somewhat synthetic thing that has grown up in the soil of early post-modernity, ther is far more, I would argue, that we can learn from it as Christians than from other religions in respect of how we might ourselves better engage the spiritual-cultural nexus of contemporary society.

Perhaps more of that another time.
The Wildhunt Blog

Scientists overcome 'fermentation barrier'

Looks like another development worth keeping an eye on for renewables. No idea what the lead-in time for commercial development might be: five years?

Scientists overcome 'fermentation barrier' - Newindpress.com: "The new process demonstrates, for the first time, the real potential in capturing hydrogen from renewable sources"

The Economist: Rescuing Environmentalism

Let's take some heart; it looks like the Economist is at last recognising the wisdom of prices telling the environmental truth -you read it first at Adbusters ...

The Economist: Rescuing Environmentalism | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine

Searching For A Better Way

I think this article by a Wiccan responding to the gospels is fascinating. It also reveals quite a bit about how we are or are not perceived as churches. It's a background that I kind of share, so I have a lot of sympathy. My question is how we can honour this kind of searching without being imperialistic and triumphalistic. How can we affirm what is really of lasting value in this search and gently challenge the stuff that gets in the way of the gospel -and what is the gospel for this person anyway? Sometimes our 'gospel' turns out to be nothing of the kind, merely a set of propositions that make sense to us and which we suppose, therefore, ought to be accepted by others. Really the gospel is surely about an encounter with Jesus Christ wich leads in a positively transformative direction? Surely transformation is not about denying the things that are consonant with that transformation but a reconfiguring of them?
I think that it is so telling that the writer can put this: "I don't see any Christ in many of the present day "Christian" churches. Instead they remind me of college fraternities where a select, chosen few are welcome and the rest are turned away at the door. I think of the megachurches (here in Dallas there is a church that is commonly referred to as either Fort God or, if they have a festival going, Six Flags Over Jesus) and am forcibly reminded of Jesus throwing the moneylenders out of his Father's house."

I just wonder whether this sense of the counter-message of church structures and legalistic Christianity is part of what is going on in this story of an Epsicopal Priest reaching out to Druids [see also the sequel] ... it's hard to tell but I suspect that he was/is trying to affrim a real spiritual search which is rightly picking up important things that just do not seem to be representable in the church as it is currently configured and it makes it really hard to know how best to deal with it. Of course the guy could just be losing it, but I suspect -charitable interpretation as per 1Cor.13- that he's wrestling with some really difficult cross-cultural issues against a lot of misunderstanding and suspicion. At least that is a possible interpretation. I have to confess, that I could see myself trying to make this kind of outreach, particularly after reading Steven Lawhead's 'Patrick'

Searching For A Better Way: I've Been Reading The Bible

Alternative Christian Worship

An interesting and good interview with Jonny Baker about alternative worship. worth keeping for future reference.
Alternative Christian Worship

Ministers denounced for nuclear waste 'spin'

THought this might be of interest. Dirty tricks re nukes.

The Observer | Politics | Ministers denounced for nuclear waste 'spin'

UK low in social mobility league, says charity

I'm not totally surpriesed by this; as I've got older the more I have realised how privilege in Anglo societies works in various self-reinforcing ways. I have to say too that I think this is in actuality more important than the gender issue. It's all very well middle class women talking about glass ceilings but there is a great big wooden floor keeping loads of people in the cellar both men and women, before they can even aspire to the glass ceiling."The report focused on how education affected the life chances of British children compared with those in other countries. It put the UK and the US at the bottom of a social mobility league table of eight European and North American countries, with Norway at the top followed by Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Canada."
The interesting thing is that the Church of England works like this too; what the ordination of women has done is simply widen the number of upper middle class people to choose from when it comes to various church positions. And I expect that ordaining women and Bishops will be the same. There have been a few notable exceptions and so perhaps I am talking out of the back of my neck but 'one swallow does not a summer make'. I rather suspect feel-good tokenism is what drives the notable exceptions. Choose some people of exceptional ability or profile [not always the same thing] and give them high-profile responsibility partly so that you can keep them where you can assimilate them and partly to be able to say, in effect, 'look; we give opportunity to people from every background'. Truth is that less prominent, outgoing, tall, attractive or academic people from working class backgrounds lose out to those from upper middle class backgrounds, and it's often cultural -'they're not like us'.

It's a different proposition to take an individual who will naturally tend to adapt themself to the prevailing milieu around them to taking a group of people who bring their own cultural reinforcement by being something of a group and which culture might challenge the established order. That's why middle class women are a safer organisational bet than working class anybodies.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | UK low in social mobility league, says charity:

Gandhinagar: The World's First Solar City

Yet another sign of hope; this time of a leapfrogging project on a city-size scale. Worth watching for future reference

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Gandhinagar: The World's First Solar City

Pakistani Religious Scholar Endorses Women-Led Prayers

So while you digest the last blog entry on the dismal side of Islam, note this sign of development and progress: "Ghamidi said that Islam did not forbid women from leading prayers or from having separate mosques. He said many restrictions on women claimed by other Islamic scholars was situational. He said that women not leading prayers was only traditional and Islam did not bar it."
I'm not qualified to comment, but it does seem to me to be a hopeful sign.
Muslim WakeUp! Blog Pakistani Religious Scholar Endorses Women-Led Prayers:

Saudis arrest 40 Christians for praying

Funny how this kind of thing doesn't get much reportage. The reason that SAudi ARabia does this is "'Freedom of religion is not recognized or protected under the country's laws and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam,' the State Department said in an annual report."
And this is because of a particular interpretation of a decree that Muhammed made that only Islam should be practiced in the pilgrimmage cities. This has been extended to the whole of Saudi Arabia. When considering interfaith issues we need to recall this kind of thing as well as the positives. Somehow holding on to both the good and the bad, likewise wihtin our own traditions. Logs and specks ...
Religious Intolerance :: Saudis arrest 40 Christians for praying:

Seabed supplies a cure for global warming crisis

I'm in favour of any reasonable plan to get CO2 out of the atmosphere and this seems surprisingly well thought out, unlike the first appearance of the idea. "Under the scheme, carbon dioxide from power stations - instead of being vented into the atmosphere - would be liquefied, pumped back out to the North Sea via a disused gas pipeline and into the Miller field. Five million tonnes a year could be stored there for more then 10,000 years, say researchers. BP would gain because the carbon dioxide pumped into the depleted field would help to flush out its last reserves of oil, while Britain would be provided with a sink for its fossil fuel emissions."

My main concern is taht it could make people a bit complacent about the issue of global warming and fossil fuels etc and so put a brake on the changes that would stilll be necessary in th elonger term fo produce a society which lives within its ecological means, sustainably.

And what do we make of this?

"BP has warned ministers the scheme is currently uneconomic. To make it feasible, the government will have to ease its oil taxes. At present, the Treasury takes £7 from every £10 worth of North Sea oil. BP wants this reduced to £3 for the last Miller oil to make its storage plan viable."

There's an interesting comment on nuclear power at the end too.

The Observer | UK News | Seabed supplies a cure for global warming crisis:

A house to aspire to

I am collecting examples of green houses because I aspire to ge able to get one one day -when we cease being housed by the church on account of being clergy. Here's another encouraging example. THough I'm looking out for more British climate models [any readers got some examples?]

Treehugger: Sun, Wind and Straw: A recipe for Success

Ecosave Stops Standby Energy Leakage

I'd heard that there was an invention that could reduce stand-by power consumption virtually to zero [and when you look at the figures for how much standy uses it's a very significant amount -was up to 25% of USA domestic power is devices on stand-by?]. What this tells us is that we don't have to wait for integrated devices: you can fit it into you sockets straight off. PReviously what I've done is place timer swwitches in sockets so that the power goes off at night in case we forget to turn things of properly. This may make it to a lot of people's top ten convenient energy-saving devices.

Treehugger: Ecosave Stops Standby Energy Leakage

What the warming world needs now is art

An article asking why it is that we are producing no great art about the climate crisis or environmental degradation. And once the question is raised it's a case of 'there's a point'. Yes there is art that is environmental but none of it really leads to action in the way that Dicken's fiction did with urban poverty in the Victorian period. "Art, like religion, is one of the ways we digest what is happening to us, make the sense out of it that proceeds to action. Otherwise, the only role left to us -- noble, but also enraging in its impotence -- is simply to pay witness. The world is never going to be, in human time, more intact than it is at this moment. Therefore it falls to those of us alive now to watch and record its flora, its fauna, its rains, its snow, its ice, its peoples. To document the buzzing, glorious, cruel, mysterious planet we were born onto, before in our carelessness we leave it far less sweet."What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art | By Bill McKibben | Grist Magazine | Soapbox | 21 Apr 2005:

A Converted Pope?

Interesting coment from Sojorners: "As Cardinal Ratzinger, he did not meet the qualifications of what the church needs now. As Pope Benedict XVI, I pray that they will say of him what they said of Salvadoran Archbishop Romero - that he was a "converted bishop."
May Benedict XVI be a "converted pope."
I will add my 'Amen' to that. This is my prayer.
SojoMail

Out of curiosity ...

"When has the federal highway system ever turned a 'profit'?"

Good question which applies across the Atlantic as well. Road funding and profit vs public transport subsidies; why don't we label road subsidies as such? It says a lot about our culture and attitudes to transport.

Out of curiosity | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine:

Blessing those who persecute -the Pope and Hans Kung

I mentioned in a previous post a couple of days back that the new Pope had in his previous role given Hans Kung a good metaphorical and doctrinal kicking. So I think that it is significant that said theologian writes irenically of Benedict XVI "Theologian Hans K�ng, also writing in Corriere, adds: 'He is conservative but maybe that will change. Experience tells us that we have to wait. Some people enter into the post as conservatives but then become progressive, and vice versa.'"
I am challenged by the humility and grace of this comment and feel suitably chastened. Thank you Hans for demonstrating a proper Christian attitude to those who 'despitefully use you'.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | New shepherd splits press flock:

"We don't have a liturgy" '-Yeah right!'

Nice little piece from my former colleague Tom 'BigbulkyAnglican' Allen over in Oakworth [Railway Children fame]. He writes something that I would like to get off my chest too. I mark work for students studying through St.John's College Nottingham as distance-learners.
One of the courses I tutor is Christian Worship, and it is not infrequent that I feel I need to point out that 'liturgy', strictly speaking, is the order that we do things in worship and not just a written-down order with set prayers. So for example, a liturgy might be the normal routine where a bunch of worship songs is sung prior to a talk or similar activity followed by prayer ministries. And, as Tom points out, when you actually try to change the order or develop it, you discover that it is every bit as liturgical as something written down, In fact sometimes it is often more inflexible for [a] being unrecognised, [b] having a kind of unexamined folk theology to justify it [c] not being written down as a matter of ideological principle makes it harder to change because you have to mess with people's heads. Oh and [d] because of a, b & c it can also be a means of exerting power or influence or giving certain people a buzz because it creates an environment that they feel comfortable with. That's not to say that such a thing never happens with a more 'formal' liturgy, it just happens differently!

Of course, sometimes we have to recognise that for many people 'liturgy'now simply means 'a written order of service and set prayers'. But I like to remind myself and others that it should be more than that because then we can open up informal liturgies to scrutiny more easily.

And if I'm honest, I like getting my own back on people who are sniffy about 'liturgical churches', it's great to be able to point out how their own tradition has similar pitfalls, just differently configured. Of course that should only be a prelude to creating greater understanding, dialogue and respect. Naturally ;-)
Bigbulkyanglican: We don't have a liturgy!

Holy Listening

Img src="http://prodigal.typepad.com/prodigal_kiwi/koru.jpg"
Paul over at Prodigal Kiwi has a helpful book review of this book...

I agree that the book is goldmine of useful insights and the like. I even cite it in my bibliogrpahy for my MA. There is a certain irony about it though. Rightly it seeks to recover feminine imagery and insights for spiritual direction. The irony is that, if my observations particularly at SpiDir training courses is representative, we are actually beginning to experience a crisis in finding male spiritual directors. The feminisation of spirituality is a cultural 'problem' for males in the Anglo world [something I touch on in my study of couples requesting 'Christenings'].

We need also to address the issue of appropriate ways to affirm masculine/male spirituality. I agree that there has been a problem needing the redressing of linguistic issues relating to masculine/feminine imagery and metaphor etc. However, we need to beware of thinking that if we are doing that, then we are doing all that we need to do. We will also then need to take stock of the reflex of that action back into our culture and be aware of what dynamics it sets up or alters.

In a [western] world where women are getting more degrees than men and where the feminisation of the workplace is becoming a reality, how are we to connect with men?
Richard Rohr has been addressing male spirituality quite a lot, but not everyone buys the Jungian and mythical heros sort of approach that he does so well, interfacing with the 'Iron John' thing. But I am concerned that if I am right that the future of evangelism has a big component of initial and individual spiritual guidance to it [cf Life Coaching], then we need to be able to produce skilled male soul friends with an awareness of issues around male spiritulity and personal growth that get past the level of 'Home Improvements' and 'Tool time'. That's not to say the women can't do that or that it may not be appropriate sometimes for a woman to soul-befriend a man, however, many times it will not be appropriate. Do we have the resources to deal with it?

That said Guenther's book is about far more than feminine approaches to spirituality and is useful way beyond that issue, but i do think that we need to keep masculine spirituality in maind as an upcoming issue.
I hate to see baby's going out with the bath water.
Prodigal Kiwi Blog: Margaret Guenther - Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction - Book Review

things that p*** me off about christians

You know, the guy's right.
a badchristian blog... - things that piss me off about christians

The end of oil is closer than you think

If you don't know what 'peak oil' is, then maybe this will get you to put the phrase into your search engine and find out. "'About 944bn barrels of oil has so far been extracted, some 764bn remains extractable in known fields, or reserves, and a further 142bn of reserves are classed as 'yet-to-find', meaning what oil is expected to be discovered. If this is so, then the overall oil peak arrives next year,' "
Why should you care?
"The issue is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and gas dominate our lives, and their decline will change the world in radical and unpredictable ways,"
Also try "Hubbard's Peak"
Guardian Unlimited | Life | The end of oil is closer than you think:

Being fat 'lessens risk of early death'

'Pleasingly plump' may actually be the optimum kind of weight. Hmmm, who'd 'a' thunk it? It makes me feel a bit better, but I still want to lose a bit more weight so I can be more like my 30 year old figure. Vanity I know but now they've stripped my of my health pretext. Though I think I'd like to see the study replicted and cross-referenced before believing it to whole-heartedly. One of the good things about it is that it may at least give some wirhgt [!] to the lobby calling for us to get less iconographically hung up on stick-insects. There are implications here for people with eating disorders and body-image issues. There is still a lot to check out.
SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society | Being fat 'lessens risk of early death'

The Pope -the Jury is counting the preliminary verdict

I voted that he was likely to be an impediment to reform, I was torn between that and him being a pragmatic choice given the RC church as it is. I think that I baulk as the words 'good pragmatic choice' ...
Which statement best represents your view of the election of Benedict XVI? | open source theology

iPriest

I think I would like to use this for my blogger profile... wonder about copyright though ... looks like a RC podcaster design. Respect to Vaughn at Ichtus for showing it.
ICTHUS: iPriest

More than 30 million cars – and nowhere to park them - Newspaper Edition - Times Online

If this is true, "The lack of spaces contributes to congestion because up to 80 per cent of traffic in city centres is made up of drivers searching for somewhere to park. Some 20 per cent of motorists are regularly unable to find a parking space outside their home and one in ten has had a row with a parking warden.", then I wonder how come it isn't more of a deterrant to car use? Personally after a couple of times not finding parking spaces and hearing 1 in 5 of compatriots complaining that they also had failed to find a space, I woud be using public transport. So how come that doesn't appear to be happening? Answer, seems to me, is that the figures are exagerrated, in whose favour? I wonder whether the fact that the RAC commissioned the report has anything to do with it? I may be wrong, but I'm also suspicious ...



More than 30 million cars – and nowhere to park them - Newspaper Edition - Times Online:

EU Software Patent Directive selon Rocard

This is good, on the face of it. It appears that Rocard has found a way to legislate to protect computer invention without making software patentable [merely copyrightable]. Light at the end of the tunnel, I hope. Maybe it'll even persuade the USA to change its legislation giving a way out of the morass of trivial and pre-emptive patenting going on there.
"Rocard's outline contains all the necessary ingredients for a directive that achieves what most member state governments say they want to achieve: to exclude computer programs from patentability while allowing computer-controlled technical inventions to be patented. Already in the title of his paper, Rocard proposes to replace the misleading term 'computer-implemented inventions' by 'computer-controlled inventions', and the report itself goes to the heart of the matter. Rocard explains the difference between applied natural science and data processing, and, from there solves the legislative problem in a consistent and adequate manner, delivering what programmers, economists and the vast majority of companies in software and related industries want to see. It is unusual for an economist and former French prime minister to take up a fairly special, difficult-to-communicate problem with such seriousness and moral courage."
Rapporteur Rocard publishes preview of Parliament's Software Patent Directive Position:

Probiotic appraoch to Anti-HIV

This is one of those things that illustrates the power of creativity. Most people would think that combatting HIC+V is going to be an antibody/ vaccine approach or possibly drugs. BUt how about the probiotic approach. It turns out that a humble lactobacilus with which we have a symbiotic relationship already, may quite like to dine on the HIV. We'll have to see whether the lab research works live, but it's hopeful. OF course, of interest to Africa, this is a potentially 'grow your own' solution. Just what the doctor ordered.
Wired News: Anti-HIV Bacterium Isolated?

Who Should You Vote For?

Sad sap that I am, I like filling in forms about me -narcissistic? Moi? Anyway, this is a fun little quiz to identify you voting on the issues and match it up with the party that most closely resembles your posiiton. You could be in for a surprise. A friend of mine, Labour supporter, discovered her ideal party was the Greens [actually, I wasn't surprised]. I was surprised not to come out Green but it came down to my attitudes on tax and university fees, and as I don't have a Green candidate in our constituency anyway ...

THis is how it came out.

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Green

Your actual outcome:

Labour -17
Conservative -46
	Liberal Democrat 76
	UK Independence Party 18
	Green 42

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For
Who Should You Vote For?

papal malarky

One of my sons has really found fascinating [though frankly rather unbelievable] a set of purported prophecies attributed to St Malachy [which one etymology links to the word Malarky]. It concerns the a succestion of popes the 111 who will be pope after Malachy's time. See what you think but some of them look a little contrived. For a start. like a lot of these things -see Nostradamus's for example- they are so vague that they're only really any use after the event- so no use as prophecy at all. And even then it's a bit forced. Take Pius VI, whose Malarkey tag is Aquila Rapax, where the only link to a 'rapacious eagle' is Napoleon Bonaparte who was kind of around for some of Pius's papacy. But Napolean was not the pope, I think ... And the interpretation of 'religion laid waste' for Benedict XV [1914 ff] seems tendentious to say the least, a Eurocentric view of the matter, given that worldwide religion was hardly being laid waste, but the Christian religion was expanding as never before. And in any case the interpretaion with regard to Russia seems odd given the RC context of the prophecies. Why this conern about the orthodox all of a sudden. Whatever next? Concern for protestants?
I also wondered whether the interpretation with regard to Pius XI wasn't a bit shaky.

Of course some of them seem quite good, which is what makes something like this credible and enduring. But then some of it seems wide of the mark. Much of it is so genral it is conceivable to fit all kinds of things to them. If you want to see how wide open the interpreations are without hindsight, just do a search on the prophecy of St.Malachy and see how many sites there are pre-election [do it quickly before the sites are updated] talking about a black pope or a Benedictine pope being prophesied. That'll convince you...
so
Move away from the prophecy, there's nothing to see here.
St Malachy's Prophecy of the Popes | Catholic-Pages.com

Happiness Is the Best Medicine

I imagine that quite a number of you may have seen the headlines about happiness correlating with a longer life. This Wired aretilce goes into a bit more detial about the studies than most newspaper reports. And there is an interesting and overlooked fact that the studies showed up too ... "We learned that the patients with higher levels of spirituality or higher levels of religiosity may have a significantly slower progression of cognitive decline,"
This didn't get reported in most reports I saw in the UK -probably a bit too uncomfortable to the comfortable secularism of most British media. It is interesting also because it probably corresponds to the actuarial fact that clergy tend to live longer on average than the average for the rest of the poulation [though whether that will still be true in 30-50 years when the current clergy who seem to be suffering stress more than used to be the case, is another matter]. At first this looks like a good thing, but what it tends to mean is that there is something of a pensions crisis for those bodies responsible for clergy pension arrangements who planned on clergy being like the average citizen when it came to shaking hands with the grim reaper. The reason for a pope holding office till he dies may be his pension scheme ...
Wired News: Happiness Is the Best Medicine:

Plan to vary congestion charge levies

The London [and Durham, it should be said] congestion charge is a big success. Of course there are difficulties with effects on central businesses but overall it seems to be a good thing. Certaily I enjoyed my lsat trip to London far more as a result of clearer roads -and I'm a pedestrian. What I wanted us to notice in this article though is that shape of the new developments about to be teted and the futire impact. "'This is a stepping stone towards developing a distance-based charging scheme not only in London but across the UK.'"

So maybe not a carbon tax but a fairly effective pay-as-you-go road tax. Let's the arilines off, though.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Plan to vary congestion charge levies:

Benedict XVI: Some background

If you want a bit more lowdown on the tenor of the man that is to be pope, this is helpful. "His conservative actions include a letter of advice last year to U.S. bishops on denying communion to politicians who support abortion rights, which some observers viewed as a slam at then Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. He also accused the media of fueling the priest sex abuse scandals of recent years. 'I am personally convinced,' he one told an interviewer, 'that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the U.S., is a planned campaign.' And Sister Jeannine Gramick, a nun who he ordered to stop ministering to gays and lesbians in the United States, called his election 'devastating' for those who believe the Catholic Church needs to be more tolerant."

We should recall too that he is the guy mainly responsible for preventing Hans Kűng from teaching at Roman Catholic institutions and making sure that the party line is toed on doctrinal issues. So he will continue the conservatism of the last pope but without the charisma, I suspect. I suspect that what the liberaller RC cardinals are hoping that without a charismatic, personable face, the conservative approach will pall quickly. I personally think that he has been chosen in essence to be a short-term caretaker pope while the RC church takes stock of the legacy of John-Paul II. We'll have to see, of course; man proposes, God disposes.
Benedict XVI: German cardinal elected pope - Election of a pope - MSNBC.com:

Sites Unseen - Earth's Mightiest Alternative Christian Link Portal

Does what it says on the box. One of the best sets of links I have come across if you have the knd of intersts I do. It'd take a week to follow them all up.
Sites Unseen - Earth's Mightiest Alternative Christian Link Portal

And the SPirit hovered over the face of the waters ...

Actually I don't really want to say that this is the meaning of the headline quote from Genesis 1. However, it is too great a similarity of 'appearance' to pass up the comment. What's the buzz? It may be that one of the first things that happened before the big bang was that the sub atomic particles formed a super fluid like mass ...
hmmmm .... suggestive.
Science News Daily

A Festival of Ideas

Waht can I say? What a brilliant idea -especially when you look at the featured speakers list.... drool ...
Creative Bristol

Ratzinger = Pope Benedict XVI

CAn't say that I am overjoyed: I really hoped that they would go for a non-European and that 'God's rotweiler' as Ratzinger has been nicknamed, might be bypassed. However, there was an argument, I suspect, for a caretaker papacy while the RC's 'absorbed the impact' of J-PII. Ratzinger is 78, and although he might live another 20 years, it's unlikely. Perhaps a 10 year papacy and then ... maybe then the two thirds world gets a look in.

Part of me hopes that his conservatism will push RC's to breaking point over various issues and begin to shift the whole church to complete the aggiornamento begun in Vatican II. But I'm a lapsed Catholic whose childhood was marked, unknowingly, at the time by the failures of the RC church to follow-through ... but that's another story.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Ratzinger named as Pope Benedict XVI

Do we really need an election?

A set of more off-the-wall alternatives to representative democracy, of which I liked 'demarchy' best: "a randomly selected group of citizens would debate and decide on policy. Randomly selected groups would also run the business of government - looking after schools, the health service, transport etc - on a local level, although these groups would be selected from volunteers with expertise in their particular area. You would be expected to serve on a 'citizens jury' for a set time every few years. FOR: The jury system has worked for hundreds of years in criminal cases. AGAINST: Things might get a bit too random."
If the argument of The wisdom of Crowds is to be believed, this could actually be a pretty good system. I doubt it would be random though; the problem would be, in reality, that politically naive people would be lobbied until their heads hurt and so their ability to perform within the parameters of the wisdom of crowds would be severely curtailed. The reality is also that most people don't have the kind of heads for detial than some legislative debate needs -mind you; most MP's don't either except when it's their hobby horse ....
BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Election 2005 | Do we really need an election?:

Why no nuclear?

Here's why -a simple political and economic proposition: "Labour's position - shared by the other two parties - is that nuclear is currently off the agenda because the high costs of decommissioning stations (allied to still unresolved questions about what to do with radioactive waste) make new-builds uneconomic."

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Election 2005 | Election 2005 | Parties will not lead on nuclear:

A quick environmental audit for Britain

The question here is why has the environment be touted by Tony Blair as the most important issue and yet figured so little in the election campaigns? I susepct things like this -"100 tons of CO2 will be released by each of the main party's helicopters during the campaign, say the Greens" are part of it.

News:

12 step campaigning

This is really good and deserves wider publicity. I really liked the argument about the place of education [step 2] versus mobilisation: "Information is not power until it leads to effective mobilisation. If it were, the world would be run by librarians."

Edication comes by doing: something I do recall trying to say to a colleague about environmental activism; that the important thing was to get people doing even small things because then they have a stake in it and natural curiosity and communication will do the rest.

Point 8 is on how to pick up the best focal point and why: "Look at your issue. It will be full of shades of grey, like an aerial photograph of a city. Zoom in on your chosen areas. Blow it up until there is just black and white - that is what to communicate. Go to that point to make your case."

One of the most useful little articles I've read for a while.

News:

Flying Cars Ready To Take Off

Hmmm. The one thing I notice about all the designs touted here is that they appear to take fossil fuels for granted and cheaply at that. Will these things really fly when the price goes sky high? I am wondering whether anyone is doing anything with personal helium ballons, for example, which could be powered by electric motors using sunlight, say. Just thinking out loud ....

CBS News | Flying Cars Ready To Take Off | April 17, 2005�23:34:36

Beeb goes CC

Good news for Creative Commons, for the BBC and for those of us interested in video content for, mong other things, multi-media worship. Watch this space for developments, cos I'll be keeping my eyes open.
Wired News: Flexible Copyrights Hop the Pond

Developing Nations Ripe For Wind, Solar Energy - UN

'Leapfrogging' they call it. The idea that developing nations should miss out the messy fossil fule stage of development and leap straight to the clean technologies of the future. Now the UN says this is a good idea. May help focus attention. The numbers are interesting. I'm wondering whether it will effect investment decisions.

Planet Ark : Developing Nations Ripe For Wind, Solar Energy - UN

When is aid not aid?

Interesting article by
Naomi Klein, outlining how disasters are seen as opportunities for capitalist entrepreneurship and how certain governmental and non-governmental agencies are promoting that approach. Sobering.
Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Allure of the blank slate

5 Questions I Need to Ask

When it comes to self examination it can often be useful to read or hear what questions other people ask themselves and I would like to commend Justin Baeder's questions to our reflections>

1. What am I presently doing that I expect will be helpful to my faith formation?

2. Am I being more or less realistic in my thinking than I was three years ago? Is this a good thing?

3. How can I make my level of personal and spiritual happiness less dependent on the season? Things always seem to get tough in the winter.

4. What about my life would make someone who knows me well become more interested in also being a follower of Christ?

5. What the heck am I going to change to get out of debt (at least, credit card debt)?

6. (bonus) Why did it take me so long to get around to this post, and why do I forget so many of my great resolutions?

My comments:

1the first question is a good one: it is very easy for us to bump along with practices that cease to be useful in growing our spiritual life but it is important also to notice what is contributing, especially those things that may not be traditionally thought of as spiritual disciplines; good question especially if we think outside the box.

2. Faith, dealing with unseen things, can all too easily be subvered by fantasy -even more so than more materially-based parts of our life- so reality checks are good. Though we do need to be aware that what constitutes realism is very dependent on our view of the world. This question has the potential to become viciously circular. Best approached as a reflection on what has happened in relation to what we believed, hoped or expected.

3. Actually I'm not sure how realistic this one is! There are neurochemical reasons why winter is hard on a number of people. Perhaps the more interesting question would be how to give ourselves permission to explore the less 'happy' areas of life. What do they have to teach us and what can we do to balance them? Rather than eliminate them how do we integrate them?

4. Actually I think that I'm wary of this one: I wonder whether this kind of question doesn't implicitly lead to the temptation to do things for show rather than because we should be doing them. Perhaps it should be to ask ourselves whether we are living out the insights and callings we have already discovered, so that then we have something to share ...?

5. I reckon the debt issue is quite important. In order to be available maximally to God ties of debt need to be lessened.

6. Procrastination is laways an issue for most of us in at least some areasof our lives. Asking why is helpful. Asking why with a trusted soul-friend is even more helpful and planning to be accountable aout specific things with that soul friend is even more helpful.



Good questions, pleanty to think about. Thanks Justin.

Radical Congruency � 5 Questions I Need to Ask:

Matthew 7:6

"Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you"

This really needs to be read along with the preceeding words. It's an interesting contrast to the idea of not judging, because, in terms of how the previous verses are misinterpreted, it is a very judgemental passage! It reinforces interpreting the foregoing in terms of what today we would call prejudice and stereotyping.



So what's this bit about? It certainly seems to imply that we do have to make assessments regarding how other people are likely to receive what we have to offer. 'Dogs' and 'pigs' are considered unclean animals -not at all appropriate recipients of holy things or precious things. The second half of the verse seems to have the human antitypes more in mind than the animal prototypes. IT does seem to me to fit the kind of situation where we have precious and holy things to pass on to others but sometimes, on the basis of experience, we know that they are not going to be received. In such circumstances we should be prepared not to share them, and to await a time when perhaps they might be appreciated for what they are.



This is part of mission strategy: you learn enough about your 'audience' to know who will be likely to listen and how. You don't spend time trying to open up the hardened when there are many who are ready to hear. You see Jesus working by this strategy; going to other villages also, leaving becasue he knew what was in people's hearts and giving warnings to those who persistantly refused to engage with what he was saying.



Crosswalk.com - Matthew 7:6:

Green skyscrapers?

Wow, what a good set of iddeas. I wonder whether this could also help us to think about retrofitting tower bloks. I particularly like this "The organic spaces are intended also to ramp up from the street level to the top of the building, effectively integrating the sky-scraper’s 26 stories into the surface landscape. This extension of the horizontal plane into the vertical space is further promoted by drawing the street-level shops and pedestrian activities up to the sixth floor along the system of landscaped ramps."

Treehugger: The EDITT Tower by Dr. Ken Yeang

Not all fitness is fit

Interesting this: "New research from Teesside University found that 77 per cent of those taking part in a half-marathon suffered flu-like symptoms afterwards. "
Moderation in everything seems to be coming out as still an important watchword.
The Observer | UK News | Athletes bare their soles to beat injury:

Biomimicry: Athletes bare their soles to beat injury

THis is another plank in the argument for biomimicry. "A barefoot runner's foot hits the ground at a much shallower angle than if a shoe is worn, distributing the pressure more evenly and enabling the foot's 26 bones to interact. "

The Observer | UK News | Athletes bare their soles to beat injury:

Electric gadgets get the brushoff

Me: I've laways been a little suspicious of battery gadgets that do what we can do for ourselves relatively easily. It's also a matter of adding more batteies to landfill. So I was interested to knote this: "an exhaustive review of 42 dental trials, involving 3,800 participants, shows the old-style brush is just as effective." Only one type of electric brush showed up better. However, the rider is also that you need to brush for c 2mins not the average 40 seconds and you need to brush into the gum line [therefore a softer brush may be in order or you'll lose some gum like I did at one point].



The Observer | UK News | Electric gadgets get the brushoff:

Going Home - Our Reformation

I'm going to be thinking over this for a while to come. An article that imagines the way that social software can reconfigure our life-worlds. The comparison is to the Reformation -enabled by printing. Our reformation will be enabled by social software; most noticibly the blog. "We are going home again to the place where humans fit. Just as people at the end of the Middle Ages rediscovered the wisdom of the Classic world, so we are re-discovering the experience of tribal life. I don’t mean by this that we will have to take up hunting and live in caves. For we have made a Great Return before and we know how it will play out. Renaissance men did not put on togas. What they did was to remember the wisdom of the classic world that had been forgotten in a millennium dark age and applied this wisdom to the world of their time. So, we too will begin to experience a new way of living and of being and apply this experience to our own time and to our own challenges. "
I think I may find myself returning to this one.
Robert Paterson's Weblog: Going Home - Our Reformation:

Winning the Great Wager

This is a must-read article if you are at all concerned with building a truly sustainable future without a return to the dark-ages or worse. You get a flavour of the thing from this quote: "We need a new model which allows unprecedented prosperity on a sustainable basis. We need a new model which will let everyone on the planet get rich and stay rich, while healing the planet's ecosystems. We need to create what some Brits call 'one-planet livelihoods' which are so prosperous, so dynamic, so enticing that the alternative of chasing the old model of green follows gold seems simply moronic."

By the time you read this you will have been exposed to the current options in their positive and negative spins.The comments at the end should be read too.

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Winning the Great Wager:

Googling the Future

I'm a scenarios junkie and love alternate timelines science fiction so this was bound to get my attention, interest and get me thinking. It has a degree ofplausibility about it; basically that the way we consume media, particulalry news media is about to change and reconfigure the global media scene. Heck, I'm doing some of this stuff already: I rarely buy a newspaper -I feed of RSS and blog the stuff that catches my interest.

When I read stuff like this, though, a part of me wants to ask, how it will affect spiritual formation and corporate spiritual life [usually churches] -not to mention parachurch activity. It's worth following up the links from this page. They are pretty informative.

Spiritual formation becomes interesting in a context where individuals and groups have access to loads of info -more than we can process really- and so we employ trusted aggregators, commentators etc. Power moves from the traditional gatekeepers of church worlds to those who produce trusted comment and guidance. Actually, this isn't so new: this is the way things aldready work but they do so around print and conferences. We actually do it with reality as a whole: we not only sense only a small amount of the possible data/inputs available to us [eg we don't seee infra-red radiation or ultra-violet, we cannot unaidedly sense radio waves, and so on] and wha't more we are only really wired to attend to some of what we can sense [eg movement in our visial field is priviledged]. Then we are wired also to interpret it in particular ways as a first response. So our repsonse to the huge data-flow that becomes available is to make it manageable. The difference is, though, that we can make choices about what we will and won't attend to and how we will attend or exclude it. Being social animals we will tend to negotiate it through social means: gatekeepers of data. There is a potential for understanding to grow and for previously excluded perspectives to find exposure, but -like now- it will be subjec to the vicssitudes of our filtration systems. Data may be available but it may not be appreciated, or wanted under current filter paradigms. The filter of the local congregation or leader may be passing [I call as witness the growth of dispersed Communities of Christians through email groups, blogs, spirituality commonalities such as the Northumbria Community, and so on where the energy of corporate discipleship is found trans-locally]

The real need is to find ways to sytematically expose ourselves to 'alteridata'; the stuff that we would not normally notice because we didn't think we wanted to or because it hasn't got the kind of prioritisation that others might give it that would result in us picking it up from them. This is a bit like with the techniques for sparkihng creative and lateral thinking that Edward de Bono proposes. If we learn anything from the 'Wisdom of Crowds', it is that we need to allow people to bring together their information and ideas in ways that do not seek consensus but free up responses and then aggregate them. I suspect that in seek ing God's will we need to think similarly: find ways to empower people to listen for themselves and only then begin to aggregate and discuss and then let people freely respond. All the time we have to be wary of building 'group minds' based on partial information.

The churches are bad at this. We have tended to confuse consensus with the voice of God without realising that consensus can just as easily be [in a fallen world] the voice of unexamined assumptions or the leadership influence of strong personalities. The gospel surely encourages us to listen to the marginal and the powerless. We are at a point when we can perhaps see how that will be more easily done than before. The question is whether we will take our responsibility to be global disciples of Christ seriously, or whether we will simply let gatekeepers [software or persons] evolve who will tell us what we want to hear or find doctrinally conducive. Will we allow our spirituality to be exposed to the uncomfortable voices of the marginalised or will we continue to marginalise them?

In my first hint of tackiling a controversial subject, I will relate this to the debate on gay people and Christian faith. I think that it really is important that we learn how to listen to experiences we don't find convivial, whether that be the experience of actively gay people [for want of a better term] or non-practising gay people. At the moment it really is/seems a dialogue of the deaf and yet the Anglican church leaders have called for a proper time to hear and reflect on the issue with the people who are most directly affected. I don't know what the proper outcome of that listening should be [that's the point, isn't it?]; I can see/hear good points from both sides and none. However, I do think that we should be learning both how to listen and to aggregate our listening in ways that can lead us forward to a provisional understanding that just may be right. I do know that it will have to result in something where people on both sides feel that they have really been heard by the other, that each side can demonstrate to the other that they understand and have weighed what they have to say.

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Googling the Future

Super-modernism

Post-modernism is so last year. Say 'hi' to super-modernism...

MODERN POSTMODERN SUPERMODERN

18th c - 1960s 1960s-1990s 1990s-present day

International Multinational Globalized

Nation-States Multinationals Market States

Philosophy Theory Actionable Intelligence

Discovery of Truth Uncovering Repressed Truth Datamining the Chatter

Essence Simulacra Plausibility

Play Journal

LED evolution could spell the end for light bulbs

LED lights are starting to appear all over. My wind-up torch uses them and I intend buying LED bicycle lights for me bike. I notice that loads of traffic lights are no LED's. Why? cos they are robust, use little electricity and are glare free. Soon they will be domestic too ...
USATODAY.com - LED evolution could spell the end for light bulbs

Green Manifesto

Just FYI: where the Green Party UK keeps its manifesto. I'm recovering from the disappointment of having no green candidate this time: It's strange because in urban Bradford I did and here is semi-rural Durham, no.

Manifesto

Blackspot Sneaker V2

Now this is a shoe I can go for, not only do I like the look, but I love the fact it's part of the black spot anticorporate 'unbrand', that it is not sweatshop labour and that the soles are recycled tyres. Me? I've put me name down to get some when they are ready.
Blackspot Sneaker V2

Re-thinking urban car journeys

I don't own a car and hate the idea of owning one, however, maybe I don't have to contemplate it if this took off and it has all the signs of something that might work well. Rent a car for the times you need a car. "It is less hassle, as well as more environmentally friendly, and it costs him less, he says.The lease on my car was up and I compared the costs and I figured, with all the expenses, I spent $400 a month on a car. So I figured I could do that for a lot less if I just booked the car by the hour. It was just cost effective.'"

GOt a lot going for it. Wonder whether we could do similarly with other stuff we only need occasionally? -Lawnmowers, for example.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click Online | Re-thinking urban car journeys:

Live for 'Today'

A year or so back I was challenged to produce a list of 15 things that I would really like to do or to achieve in my life. I've still only got five and one of those is under review -do I really want to do it or is it simply doing duty for somthing deeper? So the page referred to in this article got my interest. Basically you are presented with a list of 50 possible things to do before you die [you have a date in mind?] and you are to choose 5. I found five from that list quite hard. Most of the things were a bit ho-hum and more than that most of them were so trivial and consumerist: where are the things like 'write a book' or 'paint a picture' or 'modify a house to be more ecologically sound', or 'plant a church' [both on my my possibles list], or 'learn how to grow organic food', or 'build houses for homeless labourers in Mexico', or ... well you get the point: where were the things that challenge people to grow as human beings and to leave the world a better place. Most of the list was tourism of various kinds. It represents a disturbing shrinkage of the imagination to be bounded by the travel brochures. It looks like they just said in the office "We need a list of 50 things to do before you die, what we got?" and a whole load of people who hadn't really given it much thought came up with a whole load of ideas of things that they'd seen advertised or heard of someone else doing and had thought 'That sounds nice', and that's what they said.

I'd love to challenge them to push it further and do an investigation on say, what life coaches discover about people's hopes, dreams and ambitions and use those things as a basis for a poll. I guess though, it'd be harder to tie in with advertisers. It's easy to find advertisers to fund the programme when all you need to do is get travel agents and the like on the case.

One of the things I come across in life coaching is the need to help people cross the consumerist ad-formed imagination boundary and get in touch with the deeper things that motivate and change. There's something of spiritual direction in that too [Yeah and I'll plug my MA again, some of which deals with that stufff]
Live for 'Today' | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine

Going Nuke correspondance

There's some really good correspondance over thr nuke power issue here. The first letter is a classic in putting the problems with the nuke option in 'what they don't mention' terms.

Quotable quotes: "If even a fraction of the public funds used for developing a new generation of nuclear reactors and securing and disposing of nuclear waste was devoted to hydrogen production from clean renewable sources, we could abandon coal entirely in a matter of years. And no terrorist has ever attacked a windmill."

And.

"if nuclear energy is so great and so cheap, why aren't private entrepreneurs lining up to build nuclear power plants instead of gas-fired power plants? My understanding is that without massive government subsidies, nuclear power would be prohibitively expensive compared to other energy sources after taking into account all the construction, insurance, uranium mining, and waste-disposal costs."

They don't mention either that it would take c 10 years to get new capacity on line, whereas we can be building turbines now and getting already proven technologies, including energy saving measures, right out there with instant effect.

Umbra's N-power column and Grist's giveaway raise ire and interest | Grist Magazine | Letters | 15 Apr 2005

Nike -trying harder

See the previous posting on Starbucks for comparison with this: "Nike is now publishing a full list of its suppliers on its website. The list shows that problems remain, but the move toward transparency by such a massive industry player is sure to have positive ripple effects."

Okay they haven't got it all sorted but it looks like they're givin git a go; if they were going to change, how else would they start?

Me likey Nike | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine:

Starbucks takes fancy to wind energy

Minor victories to people working to throw the spotlight onto corporate misdoings. Because of it, trading on the fact that Brands need to keep a good reputation in order to make money, certain companies are startingto make sure they are doing things right. Okay it could be greenwashing, but some are recognising that greenwashing can't be a long-term strategy because the bad-stuff will catch up eventually. So genuine reforms begin to be made. Here's one, Starbucks' energy use: switching to renewably-sourced energy. Check it out.

Starbucks takes fancy to wind energy | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine

oldest known Bible

Note the date for this: "The 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, arguably the world’s most important Christian manuscript." Got that? Note also "Written in Greek on vellum around the time of Constantine the Great" and "Contained the entire Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, but half of the Old Testament has been lost"
The reason I mention it is because some Muslims claim that the Bible has been altered. Mainly because when they read it they find things in it that do not tally with the Qur'an. Understandably, being Muslim, they would rather believe the Qur'an than the Bible so they assume that the Bible has been changed. The difficulty here is then that the Qur'an actually supports the Bible as trustworthy in the time of Mohammed [lots of passages which are mentioned here but Surah 5:65-69 should suffic for now]. So the question is when did the Bible become corrupted? It can't have been before Muhammed's time or it would have been part of the argument of the Qur'an and it isn't. It can't be after, because we have manuscripts like the one referred to in the article referenced which date back to before the Islamic period and which we can show to be the Bible we use today in every way that relates to the issues between Christian faith and Qur'anic faith today.
I hope by mentioning this to alert my readers to one of the issues between the faiths and to point up documentation to access the arguments about them. You never know when you might need them.

Britain may have to give up oldest known Bible - Britain - Times Online

Dead man's family pray for his killer

This is what the wife of the policeman who was killed by Kamal Bourgass said."'When we had the first press conference I said something ... that I would forgive the person who was alleged to have killed Steve.Seeing him in court I have been praying for him, and so have the family, every day since. We feel so sad that a young man like that has got into this position in life.'"
Let's make clear some background to his quote. Lesley Oake [the widow] is a Christian and is returning a blessing for a curse by praying for someone who has hurt her and her family. Her 'enemy', that is someone who made himself her enemy in effect, is a would-be Islamist 'suicide' bomber.
It's an interesting picture for inter-faith relations, isn't it? I will be praying for Mrs Oakes and her family and also for her intention to bless her husband's killer. and I will join her in praying for Mr Bourgass. Among other things, I pray that he may see in Mrs Oakes' action and atitude a sign of the true nature of the One he calls Allah and comes to repentance.
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Dead man's family pray for his killer See also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/14/nbour214.xml:

The Ink-Jet Future

"the technology that makes it possible to squirt minute quantities of ink in precise patterns onto a sheet of paper is perfect for spraying out other materials (such as resin, plastic and even biological tissues), assembling them into solid objects. In some cases, the only significant difference between an experimental fabricator and the cheap printer that came free with a box of cereal is the content of the 'ink' cartridge."
The FIY future ['fab it yourself'] may be very significant a part of a society where increasingly things are made-to-order and manufacture is decentralised. This helps to create or reinforce a mentality of consumerist personalisation [See Michael Moynagh's Book, Changing World, Changing Church].
How can our mass evangelism [even Alpha] really survive in such a world? Only at the margins. We really are going to have to explore the idea of evangelism as initial spiritual direction [see Speaking of God -my review of it in the Books section of the AltW site] and find ways into individual spiritually-significant conversations [I suggest reading Beyond Prediction to really get you started on that one]. "It's faith-sharing Jim, but not as we know it".
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Plastic Electronics and the Ink-Jet Future:

Pastor as Corporate Spiritual Director

Prodigal Kiwi blog: All too often though, leaders as “managers and/or CEO’s”, rather than enabling and encouraging a congregation to labor to birth something that is both unique and precious (God-gifted) to themselves, expect a congregation to “adopt” the leaders ‘baby’, the leaders vision
This is so right: So much of the management-style ministerial thinking is about vision-casting but without any real sense of ownership from the congregation. Now I know that the books [eg Barna's] will tell you otherwise but we know that in practice, a lot of church leaders have ideas that they want to run with and a lot of congregations just want someone to take responsibility for doing something esciting enough for them to feel like they're part of something bigger and significant and that they can be proud of when they're at work or Spring Harvest or whatever. This is how we collaborate [ie collude] in keeping the congregant as consumer and the Vicar as CEO.

For it to be different several things have to happen. One is that the leaders have to learn to sit lighter to their own agenda's and that will mean learning to understand their own motivations and drivers and how to disinvest emotional energy from their own good ideas. It's not easy but it can be done. There is an ideological side to it too: we need to get out of the idea that leadership is about having the inspiritation and persuading people to follow. This means a real,true, recovery in confidence in the idea that God speaks to the congregation and that God speaks to the leaders but that neither will have the whole picture. In turn this means learning the arts of corproate listening; listeing to the hopes and fears of the people individually and corporately, listening to the history, listening to the 'angel' of the church. It is corporate spiritual direction.

Another thing that has to happen is that congregations will have to learn to grow out of the consumer mindset that is our culture's default setting. For this to happen we perhaps actually need to come up with some metaphoric bases that reframe a person's self-image as a congregation member. The result of this reframing should be that the person sees themselves, along with their fellows, as co-active in the mission of the church. I am not sure what the metaphors should be and suspect that it may need to be part of what would emerge from the listening process mentioned above.

Another thing and related to the last paragraph's item is that we need to redefine the church out of the leisure time paradigm that western culture assigns it. Now this is a key cultural change. Basically it would mean defining a church's mission[s] as much in relation to the everyday work [paid or otherwise] of its members. Parish churches and the like in Britain [and elsewhere?] are really selfish; if it doesn't happen on their premises or with their logo on it, it doesn't exist. This redefinition would mean listening to what memebres know about where they work [or whatever] and listening with them for what God is doing and askingthe question: how should this church be involved in this work or supporting this person or person's. It means turning the church inside-out. It is the tools of spiritual direction which can help that to happen.

Do we have leaders courageous enough to lead by engaging in corporate spiritual direction and supportive and enabling ministry beyond the formal boundaries of the church? It'll be hard because it won't look like what we've come to think of as successful and it won't be rewarded by denominational strokes. ...
Prodigal Kiwi Blog: Pastor as Spiritual Director as Midwife

More than 30% of our food is thrown away - and it's costing billions a year

Tesco recently announced huge record profits and part of the BBC report pointed out that Tesco accounted for £1 in every £3 spent on groceries in the UK. Put that together with this report and it is like saying that the equivalent of everything that Tesco's sells grocery-wise in the UK is landfilled [or occasionally composted].
As the report points out, that's a terrible waste in a world where there is hunger and concern on how to feed the growing poulation of the world.

The problem is in part the way that we buy food. I recall that once when we used to go food shopping less, we would waste things because we didn't get round to eating them before they went out of code or even spoiled as a result of over-buying on our once in a while shopping trip. I've noticed [I'm the chief shopper in the house] that there has been less waste since I have gone shopping often solo with a back pack and walked. So I buy less on Saturday [normally] and then simply top up during the week with what we really do need. Result is less money spent and more of what is bought really is eaten. It's also healthier because I tend to by fresher food. There's something to be said for the 'old' habit of the chief shopper [once upon a time, it used to be the 'housewife'] going every day or two to get the shopping for the next day or two and carrying it in bags in their own hands.

Of course to encourage that to happen means putting into reverse the social revolution caused by the car, resulting in out-of town shopping etc.

It also means addressing the fact that supermarkets make money by what they sell and so it is in their interests, in a sense, to encourage waste -that's what those BOGOF offers are partly about. They don't care if you eat the stuff, just buy it and take it off their hands. I don't mean we should outlaw them selling us stuff, I do think though, that it is clear that we could pay more for food and that might help us to value it better.

As it is, we are externalising the costs of food into the environment which means our cheap food is going to be paid for in the future when it comes time for the planet and human society as a whole to pick up the bill for what we are doing now. Food production is heavily implicated in fossil fuels, for example, part of the reason it is cheap is that it is effectively subsidised by fossil fuel exploitation which is not paying its true costs to the earth. Carbon taxes might help. Yes it might mean higher food prices, but that might mean less waste and less fast food. The first is fairer to the planet and potentially to the poor, the latter is better for our health and so we don't have such big healthcare costs in 5-50 years time.

Swings and roundabouts: we pay more for food now and less therefore in the future for environmental costs and health costs or we pay less now and have big helath and social dislocation costs [including warfare?] in the future.

PS another tip for shoping to avoid waste. If you only intend to buy a small number of items, don't take a basket or take a basket rather than a trolley. They wnat you to take a basket or a trolley because you will tend to buy more if you do ... get them out of your head; no basket or no trolley!
SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society Environment | More than 30% of our food is thrown away - and it's costing billions a year

Risk assessment

The market can be an ally on the road to a juster and more ecologically sustainable society. This is because, once you factor in risk and insurance and actuarial stuff and cost it out and apply it to doing business with a risk management head on then ... well, have a look: "The risks posed by climate change have so far proved particularly fertile ground. The Carbon Disclosure Project is a case in point. The initiative asks FTSE global 500 companies to disclose 'investment-relevant information' on carbon emissions, and to explain how they are managing carbon risk. This year, it had the backing of 143 institutions with $20,000bn under management. Now that's market clout"



Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Risk assessment: