The Most Holy Church of Rockall

This is worth a look if you'r ein search of a chuckle. I particularly liked the Ecumenism page. Rockall. for the more international readership, has long been a bit of a joke in the UK since it is simply a rock, claimed by the brits mainly for the purpose, as far as we can tell, of extending our national sea boundary further into international waters. The cut and paste monatery on the top is a hoot! It's a good spoof on all those silly funny little church bodies. And perhaps even the Anglicans!
The Most Holy Church of Rockall

Archbishop - reform parish system

This was published in November and I can't work out how I managed to miss it -being so germane to some of my recent blogging. It gets qualified however and so the ultimate seems rather less radical than the title might suggest, nevertheless, an important sentiment, let's hope it makes progress through the CofE!
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Archbishop urges reform of parish system

Will the real Celtic spirituality please stand up?

I've been writing and saying for years that we need to realise that most of what passes for Celtic Christianity nowadays is a mirror of our own desires. So I pass this article on to you for the next time you need an antidote to the slush merchandising and the newagery.

That makes me sound more cynical than I am, but I wanted to get your attention! I actually think that the contemporary phenomena going under the label are important, the main thing is that we don't look for too much in them by way of historical accuracy and authority. However, I think that it is fine to find a way to contain a set of Christian spirituality themes, provided we realise that this is what we are doing. IT seems to me the importnat themes are: creation affirmation, equality [especially gender], revival of creativity and 'folk' arts, contextualisation /inculturation ... maybe there's one or two more [what do you think?] ... but you get the idea.

There is a small degree of basis for these themes in the historical data but we should rmember that our romantic view of nature was not theirs, and they were as ascetic as any medievals, sometimes more so and the inculturation only went so far and mostly it was down to losing contact with mainstream Europe after the withdrawal of the ROamns from Britain and before the return of the Roman Church some four hundred years later; so more by accident than design really.

And before you think that I'm a bit sour-grapes-ish, remember that a goodly chunk of my ancestry came from Wales.

I'll leave you with a quote from near the end of the article:
What traditional Irish Catholicism, the Calvinism of the Highlands and the Calvinist Methodism of Wales shared, at least until recently, was a set of values hat would have most modern Celtic revivalists shuddering, namely a keen interest in theological nitpicking, spiritual severity, and a fairly hard and unforgiving attitude towards the flesh.
Or is that what the nasty English made them? ;-p
- Welcome to the Tablet

new words needed

I never really considered that there would be linguistic effects of climate change but there are: the inuit are having to do an Adam: name the animals that are now entering their territories for which there are no inuit words. This should prove to be a fruitful field of study for linguits, and incidently demonstrates that the postmodern idea that there is no thought outside of language needs nuancing at the very least [if not throwing over]; in order to name something it has to first be recognised and classified in a non-linguistic [pre-linguistic] way. Admittedly we shouldn't go too far the other way either since there is clearly a linguistic framework ready-made for such vocabules to fit into and the system of oppositions beloved of structuralists is formational too. So a dialogic relationship between pre and post linguistic thought is needed, but nevertheless a reality outside of the linguistic system is forcing the linguistic system to adapt here, not the other way round. Language does not entirely determine our world; sometimes at least our world determines our language.


It does all make the GW-deniers seem a little like the Dutch boy at the dyke.

News

Brazilian landfill precedent

Early indicators of positive effects of carbon trading -or at least, I think that is what underlies this.

Planet Ark : Brazil Garbage Dump Could Be Climate Trailblazer

Bucky Balls=H2 Storage?

Another possible solution to the difficulty of storing H2. It's tricky stuff 'cos it's such a small molecule it tends to leak out of everything eventually, but this might have it licked provided they really can produce a cheap process of production.



Green Car Congress: Bucky Balls for H2 Storage?

Lying's hard on the brain

Somehow this resonates with the stuff I think I first picked up from reading CS Lewis [though which book I couldn't now tell you] basically pointing out that goodness is more fundamental than evil which is parasitic on the good. In this research ...
"'We found a total of seven areas of activation in the deception (group),' he said. 'We found four areas of activity in the truth-telling arm.'
Overall, it seemed to take more brain effort to tell the lie than to tell the truth, Faro found."
Which is the kind of thing you'd expect I guess fromthe idea that goodness is inate to the cosmos whereas evil is the alien intruder. Isn't it?
Wired News: Lying Makes Brain Work Harder: