matthew henry john bartlett

The Philosophy of Love [54min RA, via Philosophy Radio]

Ooo it’s going to be a good year. Yesterday evening on the way home from Riversdale Beach Richie F and I were talking about our favourite numerals. Seems 4 is right at the top of the pile. I like to close the top (like a triangle with extensions) and he likes to leave it open (like a U with extensions).

A good percentage of my favourite people came out to celebrate New Years at the beach where my extended family have been staying for the past week or so. It was a very good one. We slept in tents in a farmer’s paddock just outside Riversdale’s liquor ban. We made friends with our paddock neighbours, and helped the farmer clean up all the bottles cans boxers and toilet paper in the morning. Sometimes i’m flabbergasted at the quality of my friends. We all laughed until our ribs ached on New Years Eve Eve.

Read some pretty neat books while at the beach. Volume 1 of Marcel Proust’s Rememberance of Things Past (proust + monty python), which i think is the exact literary equivalent of a Chopin prelude. David Foster Wallace’s Broom of the System (review) which can be summed up as “Ends in mid sentence, he grinned wryly.” Orson Scott Card’s Homebody and Earthfall (4th in the Homecoming series) – neither his best work, but pleasant enough.

This is the year of acheiving. The year of taking opportunities. No thinking without doing. No theorising without action. No reading before bed. Productive Saturdays. No wasted time to chronicle.

I forgot to say – I know it’s going to be the International Year of Matthew because on New Years’ Day at half past five i saw the green flash.

Tool/Parabola fills me with such UNHOLY ENERGIES!!

A group is it’s own worst enemy
Bruce Sterling interview [via /.]

I feel angry now because the Council decided not to waive my $200 infringement fee for having my car sitting unused on the road outside my house waiting to be fixed for a WOF. I will take the hint and go ahead with my plans to get a bike and sell the car. Upon Kathy‘s recommendation I asked the Customer Support Representative if I could perhaps do some community service, rather than trying to come up with the cash, but was told that that is not an option, though I can pay it off a little at a time.

I am reading Robert M Pirsig’s Lila: An Inquiry into Morals at the moment, which is a sort of sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I think that he has perhaps found the Holy Spirit and called Him Quality. Also, Pirsig’s Giant, for whose benefit all in New York City work, puts me in mind of NTW’s ideas about the Principalities and Powers (which he gets from one Ren Girard apparently).

Remember stories don’t have meanings. Stories are meanings. There aren’t any meanings that aren’t stories.

End of end of free
Past and future of the blogosphere
Inventing diamonds [1982, via my boss]

I visited the RCNZ National Youth Camp on Friday evening, and stayed up all night with the people playing volleyball basketball and Metallica. Matthew Baird and i got a bit of paper and wrote some things at the top, and by the end of the night (the morning) this is approximately what it looked like:

WRITE YE GOOD THINGS
Write something nice anonymously about someone else at camp. Pass this page on to someone else

Hmm… just a random comment… I like the way that Hamish can make people laugh :) hehehe.

I love Rebecca she is so hot.

I like the way that Josh keeps trying to ride the unicycle even though we all know he can’t.

Jason is very good at drawing and Becky has a lovely smile.

I like Dion, he knows how to make people laugh.

Waterguns are fun in the early hours of the morning. Weeee!!

I love the free time and sport.

There was this shoe… but no. Very many people at camp smile. Rachel the committee person always says hello. There was a man with glasses, he said hello once too…

Tim thinks my sister is “hot”. Then he said I was hot too and so was my mum.

The cam nurse is cool she made me all better.

I love Marlene’s smiling eyes.

Good things? They are a little too “good” for me! LIfe is a rich tapestry of manifold blessings, poetry, people are two significant features of the good life. I am certainly a fan of Jess’ heaven-touched smile, her celestial countenance sets my soul souring. Good friends like Matt & Jono, beautiful brothers like Si & Chris, and creation istelf contains ample food for hearts starved of happiness. Arise, witness the dew as it kisses the face of the earth in the morning, then, with immaculate adroitness, transcends its nocturnal lover to join its lofiter brothers.

Jason is very good at encouraging others in their artistic persuits. Many pretty faces and smiles around the place.

I appreciate the positive comments about what others think of my ability as a leader, as I thought I was only doing my duty and not particularly well either. Thank you, people, once again.

My best friend Simon bought me (and two others) tickets to Turin Brakes. We went and saw them on Saturday evening at Indigo. Sleepers Union played before them.

Sleepers Union sounded to me like Grandaddy turned up a notch, with a tone-deaf vocalist or three. Reasonably pleasant solid textures, quite structured songs. A little boring – (we will play this riff for eight bars, now we will play this one). After their last song all the gear was cleared off the stage and replaced with a keyboard and two acoustic guitars. This made me a little worried – how will I enjoy this without a flash drummer to watch? My worries were unfounded. They were fantastic. Two amazing guitarists and one amazing keyboard player. Usually when I know the words to a song a band is playing, I sing along, but their voices were so rich and their harmonies were so tight that I didn’t dare dilute them with my own. They pulled the nicest sounds out of their guitars. The keyboard player was a consummate musician also, backing up the guitars with piano, Rhodes and strings.

Joel G on intertextuality

Good ideas (creativity, inspiration) are communications straight from God. If you have a good idea, and you can’t think of any good reason why you shouldn’t, you should act on it as soon as possible. If you can think of good reasons why you shouldn’t act on it, it wasn’t a good idea straight from God in the first place. It is a terrible shame to waste these inspirations.

When i dance to try and impress girls i dance poorly, and rarely impress girls. When the calculating part of me surrenders control over my limbs and muscles to some other, deeper part, i dance beautifully, and impress girls.

My friend Lynton B (who turns 21 in a week) took me to the Big Day Out on Friday. It was nice. Flaming Lips, Basement Jaxx, Salmonella Dub, The Mars Volta, Shapeshifter, Muse and Flinns were highlights. Here we are just after getting in the gates:

Lynton’s brother Matthew writes poems to break bits off your rusty heart.

Latest issue of Credenda/Agenda

Yesterday I was granted the boon of meeting Deborah of Australia. Deb is a nifty restful complex thoughtful focused person, quite different from the very vague conceptions of her that I’d made from reading her blog. We talked and walked and bought some books, and it was all grand.

Yesterday I continued reading Hundertwasser on Architecture at the library for an hour or so. He is AMAZING. He thought and acted to break architecture’s back and press it into the service of humanity, and into harmony with the rest of Creation. I intend to photocopy some of the book. He was recommended to me by my darling sister Kathy.

Good church vision statements
Lyrics: Ben Folds Five/Fair
Chalk art [via chud & mefi]

Think over today, I don’t recall sinning at all. I grew up thinking that was impossible. It’s not.

My friends, I am pencilling in Friday, February 13 for a birthday celebration for me. My birthday was December 17, and i turned 24, but i was slack. I didn’t realise then that the International Year of Matthew was on the horizon. I aim to have dinner at The Jewel of Nepal in Newtown, and then head back to the flat in Oriental Bay for drinky-poos. Any objections?

John S II told me today that Grant Lee Philips has a shiny new album out soon. You can listen to the first few tracks of it in full at his site [RealAudio required]. After one listen, they haven’t grabbed me. It will be interesting to see if they do.

RDB‘s reply-paid txt messaging idea
Lyrics: Tool/Lateralus
The Night Air: Pranks [30min, RealAudio required]
The Night Air: Showtime [30min, RealAudio required]

Sitcoms tell me that every show of strong emotion warrants laughter.

When Worldviews Attack!
Colossians updated [PDF, 35k]
My idea at halfbakery.com
Lego, Han Solo, Carbonite

YO Isaiah: tell Israel what their problem is! -
They are very pious in church, and they fast regularly
But when they get back home, they beat their slaves and
ignore the needy
Do I the Lord care that you reguarly attend the proper services when you ignore the hungry and oppress the poor?
Instead – THIS is how you should worship me: free the slaves, share your abundance, house the homeless in your own house. Then i will bless you like you want me to, and answer you when you pray. Then you will live in the garden of eden, and last for generations. If you make your worship services no longer lies, if you extend the Sabbath rest to those who need it most, THEN I will raise you up, and restore you to your former glory.
[Isaiah 58 ESV]

Short angry movie reviews from JH Kunstler

One thing that never fails to make me happy is when i walk into the Italian bakery ten minutes walk from my house and the possibly Italian woman behind the counter reaches straight for one of their amazing $2 foccacias and sometimes it’s still a little warm.

Says Peter Leithart today:

Faith is not a knowledge, assent, and trust confined to one sector of life or one set of life experiences. It is the determination of ALL action by loyalty to Jesus.

One David Lodge said

Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having babies; life is the other way round.

[via Today In Literature]

Recently completed site of mine
RDB‘s new blog idea: IM-filter
Thomas Moore on the Irish Soul, Sex & Public Life

At the end of the day lovely Chaffers New World, tenish minutes from my door, mark down their yummy filled rolls to around $1.50. They also have delicious Chicken Teriyaki sushi for 85c each (is it still sushi without fish? what are individual units of sushi called? is all fish sushi raw fish sushi? should sushi be Sushi?) and they include a dollop of wasabi, tiny bottlet of soy sauce, and shavings of fresh ginger.

I am currently recording a food log, trying to figure out what i eat in a week, and what it all costs. I hope to find out whether it is financially a good idea to get a weekly weekly fruit & vege delivery from Yummy Tummy Organics, like David & Angela do.

BJW: Oppression, Truth, Postmodernism and St Paul
Work = Worship
BJW: Image-bearing vs. idolatry
Barbarians, Wimps and Men [via Sam M]
RDB: Drugs, learning, communication
tic tac tetris

Last month I got a ticket from the Council for having my car parked outside my house without a warrent of fitness. I haven’t yet paid that off. I got the things fixed on the car that it failed the warrant on last time. This cost $520 all up. I took the car back to the garage. Since I last went to get the warrant, the mechanics have gone on a course to make them better WOF inspectors. Hence my car failed again. This time with hundreds of dollars more work to do. This is a pity, as i was really hoping to sell it to a friend who was keen to buy it. That is a pity because i wanted to use the money to pay Massey for the summer paper i am doing. I will ring Massey after work to see if they might be gracious, but i’m afraid they won’t let me sit the exam next week Tuesday without having paid the whole bill. It will be interesting to see how this is all resolved.

Update: one of my favourite people has lent me the money for Massey, huzzah!

Last night we restarted our Tuesday night flat meetings. We sorted out all the little things that come up like why does the bathroom always smell, and won’t everyone please rinse and stack their own dishes. We read the first chapter of 1 Timothy and talked about that for a while. Best of all, we wrote down some things on wee bits of paper about each of us to pray about, and each pulled a bit of a paper out of the hat and resolved to pray for that person this week.

I’ve been listening to and singing along with Weezer’s song Say it ain’t so for ten years, and i never realised till today that it was a serious song. I went a-googling and found that Rivers Cuomo doesn’t talk about that song, cept that yes it is about his father and stepfather.

LifeBalance todo-list software
Gnoosic suggests new bands [thanks Aaron]
Weapon of Choice, stick-figure style [flash, via Sam E]

Eberhard Arnold said

We are now in a crisis; our actions no longer fit our words. Those who call themselves atheists bear witness to the future of love and to solidarity with the deprived and dispossessed, while those who call themselves Christians are for the most part the possessors and preservers of the status quo.

[via Bruderhof Daily Dig]

Wendell Berry – In Distrust of Movements [via Brian M]
Flash men in flash suits [via Sam E]

St Francis of Assisi said

A man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in action, and a monk is a good preacher only so far as his deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is known by its fruits.

[from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience]

I had a meeting with a web development firm today. It went rather well. They seem like great people, and they’re going to give me a trial project to complete in the next month or so. Lush.

I’m rather fond of the gently gorgeous girls Belle & Sebastian put on their album covers:

I spent about five hours tonight doing experiments for an introductory chemistry paper. Afterwards i played around for a bit with dye and bleach in water. I used a pipette to drop one drop of red dye into a glass of still water. I was amazed at the supercomplex prettiness. The world is too beautiful to be meaningless.

Eastborne today, from Sam E’s friend Robert’s sister.

BJW: Talking with trees
Photo by Jono of me and the sea
Hulls of public space
Lyrics: Grandaddy/The group who couldn’t say
Webcam: Courtenay Place
Fill in RadioActive survey, get 2 Reading Cinema tickets

The Wierengas gave me some music vouchers for my pseudo-birthday, so i borrowed Tim’s scooter and went and bought Air’s new album Talkie Walkie. It comes with a bonus DVD with a twenty-minute documentary about them. And if there’s one kind of TV I like, it’s music docos. The album name apparently comes from the telepathic communication the two frenchies who make up the band experience while working together. I think that’s great. I’m having first my proper listen now.

Auto-pick colours for your website
The Crimson Room [flash puzzle, via Deb]
Lyrics: Godspeed you black emperor/The dead flag blues

Yesterday evening Casey Aaron Jonathan Richie Mr Heeringa and I went to Chris & Elaine‘s and talked with and listened to Brian J Walsh for a couple of hours. He talked about his upcoming book Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. He identified what he describes as contemporary expressions of the ‘principalities and powers’, i.e. global consumerism/capitalism (greed a virtue) + pax americana. He told us that dualism is the enemy of a useful Church. And he liked Fast Food Nation!

I read today that US has a national debt of $7 trillion. I wonder who to. I found a table of NZ national debt through history which appears to show that current NZ debt is approximately $6.5 billion. NZ’s population is approximately 4 million. The US’s population is about 292 million. So US debt per person is about USD24,000, and NZ debt per person is around NZD1,600. Feel so free to check my working.

Menstruation, the Pill & Dualism [via Deb]

I made pumpkin soup again yesterday. Here’s the recipe I made up:

Get a pumpkin. Peel and cut into wee pieces. Boil in water. Fry up some red onion, garlic, fresh basil and cummin seeds (I’d add bacon too if I had some). Drain off the water when the pumpkin is soft. Chuck the onions and stuff in there with about a cup of milk. Add a load of curry and boil the crap out of it for a while. Done.

WikiCourt idea
A creed i could align myself with
Kit robots [via /.]
Short story: Slow Glass
The world as a blog
Amusing ad for NZ-made vodka [flash, via my boss]
Utility: PC off after X number of minutes/winamp tunes
Trouble in Moscow, Idaho

My nice boss gave me a nice bonus today and I had green tea with my sister Kathy and went to a play which wasn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe and bought some new shoes behold my new shoes:

sister Kathy & I (good-looking cats)

Lent started yesterday (thanks Aaron), so no more booze till Easter Sunday.

Today I have been blogging for one year. Fancy that. I would say that it has been a pretty much thoroughly worthwhile experience. The first post. This time last year there was a war on. And that was about all of the outside world (apart from a new album here and there) that made it into my posts.

I’ve been recording some of my FruityLoops’d experiments lately. Here are two which would work as backing tracks for some solo instrument or voice:

Sarah.mp3
Welcome home Tonga.mp3

Consider downloading them and recording (Goldwave works well) something to float over the top.

watch woman age [QT, via consumptive.org]
The sound of one hand clapping, solved!
Dan McC drops evolution
Peter Leithart on The Passion

The answer to the Problem of Pain is – Where does it hurt? Can I help?

Star Wars III spoiler gallery [via /.]
Some ideas for Christian uni students

I was browsing in a second hand bookstore last night (hooray for bookshops that stay open late) and came across CSL’s A Grief Observed. I read half of it before bed. It is almost a journal of Lewis’ thoughts in the weeks after his wife died of cancer (which his mother and father had also died from). So far it is actually the saddest and most honest book I have ever read. I fear I won’t be able to see death as a natural part of life by the time I’ve finished it.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Deep sea fish gallery [via mefi]
Doug Wilson gets honest about preaching stories
Improving worship music & poetry
Heavy Seas
J Begbie on Gospel & music [17MB RA, via Kevin Bush]

I passed my summer Chemistry paper with a B. I’m rather stoked with that, as I did a terrible rush job on the experimental section of the course.

Complete works of George Orwell, online
Flyguy [via kathy]

I am really enjoying OSC’s pseudo-biography of Moses’ life at the moment. A quote:

“Look for his hand in the road behind,” said Jochabed. “And when you’ve learned to see it, then look for his hand in the road ahead. Take his hand, follow his hand. Only in his hand will you be free.”

My boss sent me a new phone yesterday. It’s quite pretty:

My new number is 027 211 3455.

I like the feeling of slowly falling asleep while reading. Or being just awake enough to memorise my page number and put my book somewhere safe (from dribble), knowing that within seconds I will no longer be. There is also having the words slide past at exactly reading speed, but being too preoccupied with my own dramas to notice theirs, waking from the sleepless dream and having to backtrack a page or two. Falling asleep is trust and civilisation; I am the Noble Civilian. Hot and cold running water comfort me in a bath where sleep ruins library books. Bath sleep is death sleep, immoblised dreamless in porcelain. Waking is birth breaking the waters, disorientated, brand new wrinkled baby skin and a clean slate.

[thanks Dan]

The course of antibiotics prescribed by my dentist has worked well. The hourly toothaches of last week have disappeared, leaving a small amount of residual ache. The tooth is still coming out on Friday. I am brushing thricely or more, and flossing twicely or more every day. A friend told me to eat acidophilus yoghurt while I’m on the medication. A side effect of the antibiotics is that they upset my stomach, by killing organisms that keep something called Candida under control. The yoghurt is meant to restore the balance of Candida and the other stuff. My stomach feels disconnected at the moment, I can hardly tell when I’m hungry or full. I eat about the amount that I remember needing to eat in the past to feel full. Presumably that’ll go back to normal shortly.

One Mary E Ashcroft on the pitfalls of being a firstborn academic [17MB RA]

Woe betide us if in our commitment to winning yesterday’s battles we ignore today’s and tomorrow’s.

Vote for best redesign of Project Gutenberg
My favourite Mormon Christian on The Passion
Command line best for newbies?
Lois Weisberg [via kathy]
Sphere Sovereignty 101
there are no evils in nature, only in man

The taste of blood in my mouth. The first irrevocable physical down-hill step. The yawning gap a foretaste of the yawning grave.

But also: A decay exorcised. A resolution to tend these remaining teeth. A couple of weeks learning empathy for people in physical pain.

If you would like to see some pictures of my tooth, do email!

We went to the Law School Jazz Shindig yesternight. My friends wore fake moustaches. I shaved off my beard to reveal the awexome spectacle you see before you. Actually it looks a lot cooler (though still pretty whackdaddy) in real life than it does on the scanner, as I have balancing sideburns and a winning smile.

Though it took a little while to get going, and faded into aimless wandering after leaving the shindig proper, it was a standout evening. I met lots of nice girls who gave me their numbers and caught up with some people I haven’t seen for a while. The band (Shaken Not Stirred (or something)) was grand and made good dancingtimes. I wasn’t drinking but got all hyper after looking in the mirror and seeing that beautiful mo.

I have a new friend. Her name is Jennifer. She lives on my top lip, and sometimes answers my cellphone and talks to shopkeepers when I’m busy.

The Ten Commandments, Birdman-style
Nice design: South Gin [flashtastic]

The best thing that’s ever been in our church bulletin:

HOSPITALITY
HOMEC is conscious that sometimes our wish to be hospitable is limited by what is currently in the pantry at home. Help is at hand. If you have the urge to invite someone over after church on a Sunday and need a little extra supply of food or drink please feel free to take from the box in the kitchen marked “Pantry Supplies.” You are welcome to replace food at a later date if you have just used it as a convenience but if you are on a budget don’t worry. Your gift of hospitality is appreciated by the church.

The best-selling artist of all time [via Scott C]

Exile is for learning, to prepare for return. Adam & Eve sent out of the garden, Jacob flees Esau, David chased out by Saul to prepare for kingship, Moses from Egypt to the desert to learn to lead Israel out of Egypt to the desert, Israel to captivity until she remembers God, Jesus to the desert, Prodigal son, excommunicated brother.

The earth is a gift to be cherished and looked after, not an x to be y’d.

Meridian Energy plan to divert part of Waitaki River in Southland into a canal to generate power to meet NZ’s growing demand. Learn more at waitakifirst.co.nz.

You know what to do.

What does it mean to be saved? [360k PDF, via Kevin Bush]
Alistair Cooke sends last Letter from America
Wendell Berry on War & Peace
TM Auction: C++ Data Structures textbook
Destiny’s child vs. Elbow vs. rathergood.com [via Sam E]

Quoting one Rabbi Bunam, one Phil Baker said

A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed, “I am but dust and ashes.” On the other, “For my sake was the world created.”

VUW‘s student mag Salient is usually rubbish, but this current issue (#02) is a minter. It’s got some really good columns (especially Craig Cliff’s), isn’t all crass, and alerted me to that Project Aqua thang.

Lyrics: Air/Biological
Wendell Berry on Life after September 11
Cellphones rotting brain
Pornographer makes anti-porn ad [via xxxchurch.com]

walking with walkman
I try not to dance
best. musicvideo. ever.

Romantic advice from a friend of mine:

Just don’t do anything simply because you are bored

Michael Moore answers detractors [via DMcC]
Mad Farmer Manifesto [via Gideon S]
Local blogging software
Webcam at the South Pole [via Phil Baker]
Calendar of US casualties in Iraq [via consumptive]

My flatmate’s guitar student wrote a song, and we’ve been recording it over the last few days. It’s the best fun. I’m petrified of singing into a microphone, even just to do la-la-las and oo-oo-oohs. This (1GHz overclocked) PC is pretty much at the edge of it’s capabilities playing seven or eight WAVs at once with about fifteen effects (vocal, strummed guitar and bass EQs, trippy phaser and delay for the ‘colour’ guitar, reverbs here there and everywhere, compressor for the drums), causing frustrating glitches. I’m happy that my endless hours of midnight FruityLoopsing are being redeemed. It is great to be learning how to record and mix.

I’m currently reading Small is Beautiful by Schumacher, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, The Victory According to Mark by Mark Horne, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism by Philip Benedict, Something So Strong: Crowded House by Chris Bourke, The Saga of the Volsungs [cheers Deb], The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula le Guin, A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway.

Finding out the Northern lights [via Phil Baker]
People-centred web design [via DigitalWeb]
Geocache @ Castlepoint [via my boss]

The extent to which modern technology has taken over the work of human hands may be illustrated as follows. We may ask how much of “total social time” — that is to say, the time all of us have together, twenty-four hours a day each — is actually engaged in real production. Rather less than one-half of the total population of this country is, as they say, gainfully occupied, and about one-third of these are actual producers in agriculture, mining, construction, and industry. I do mean actual producers, not people who tell other people what to do, or account for the past, or plan for the future, or distribute what other people have produced. In other words, rather less than one-sixth of the total population is engaged in actual production; on average, each of them supports five others beside himself; of which two are gainfully employed on things other than real production and three are not gainfully employed. Now, a fully employed person, allowing for holidays, sickness, and other absence, spends about one-fifth of his total time on his job. It follows that the proportion of total social time spent on actual production — in the narrow sense in which I am using the term — is, roughly, one-fifth of one-third of one-half; i.e. 3-1/2 per cent. The other 96-1/2 per cent of “total social time” is spent in other ways, including sleeping, eating, watching television, doing jobs that are not directly productive, or just killing time more or less humanely.

The whole chapter

I’m thinking of letting the beard return to keep Jennifer company. I’ve had the feeling for the last few weeks that shop keepers and people on the street are less friendly slash chatty when they behold the awexomeness of my upper lip. If apathy still reigns after a week or so of beard, it’s coming right off again.

RM Schuchardt on Hugh Hefner

The various Bible books were written to particular audiences. I read them, get a feeling for what was going on then, talk to friends at our Wednesday night Bible study, hear occasionally useful sermons, participate in a skeleton liturgy, read this list, read and write on various websites, read books, watch movies, listen to music and from all that get in some mysterious way get hints and guesses as to what my part in the story is. I lose the plot from time to time, but a feeling conviction of vocation (not unlike NTW’s answer to – Did Jesus know he was God?) grows in me and I walk through my days doing what my heart tells me, more or less. Is more or less required?

A grid or specified set of layers of meaning divides up the experience of reading a book in ways that feel artificial, and obscure obliterate the gray.

If the Bible has power in itself, I don’t need to read it differently (except perhaps more attentively closely) than I read Anna Karenina, yeah?

[posted on Wrightsaid first]

An introduction to Speech Act theory
Ambivalent review of ZatAoMM
DMcC touches a wall

Korg Electribe ES-1 on TradeMe

Harmony Central review.

Please someone buy this for me so I can start Fat Freddy’s Drop version 2 with my flatmate.

I have read a lot of science fiction. Although many are dickheads, science fiction writers come up with a lot of cool ideas for new technologies. One of my favourite has always been sub-vocal speech control, where you issue commands to a computer (usually in the heat of some kind of really intense lasgun battle) by forming key words with your tongue and vocal chords without moving your lips or making any noise. This morning I read that NASA have been working on the same idea.

Deb mentioned some talks from one Keith Birchley a little while ago. I’ve listened to them, and they’re pretty nifty. They’re all in MP3 format:

The Egyptian Hallel (Psalms 113 – 118)
The Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120 – 133)

Happy news – Meridian Energy’s plan to divert the Waitaki has been cancelled. Read more at the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB. [Thanks Dan]

I think it would be worthwhile to try and live in a way that didn’t require any more power generating stations.

TradeMe auction: Some near-new tyres of mine

I am distraught. Jessie is off NZ Idol. Evidentally the one vote she got from me didn’t cut the mustard. I just wanted to give her one more chance, I’m sure she would have been fantastic next week.

I am too excited to sleep; I’m bright eye’d and bushytail’d even though it’s 5.30 and I went to bed at 1.00. A friend offered to pay for most of the previously featured Korg, so that should be turning up in the next few days. Thankyou, Lord of my lush life.

I remembered a thought I had the other day: The harder you think about some pain your experiencing, the worse it gets. The harder you think about some pleasure you’re experiencing the more likely it is that it will disintergrate. I remember Berwyn used to say something like that about eating chocolate and thinking ‘why is this nice?’ and then it’s not so nice anymore.

The Rosalie Gascoigne exhibition on at the City Gallery in Wellington is good and free.

Diary of a person

Earlier in the week Matthew Baird recommended a trilogy he’s been reading of late by one Kim Stanley Robinson. I wandered down to the library and found only the last of the trilogy was available. Also on the shelf was The Martians, a compendium of short stories by KSR set in the same universe, so I’ve started that, and plan to read the others in reverse order.

KSR is great. The way he talks about human colonies on Mars gives me lots of good ideas for life here. I really appreciate it when an author will give me an appreciation for a whole new aspect of creation that I didn’t have before. In The Martians he’s done this for me for rock climbing, surfing and baseball. Which is pretty nifty for someone working in the science fiction genre. He mentions the book A Pattern Language (whose sequel was recently reviewed in Comment), and seems to have read Schumacher for sure.

It’s rare to find a sci-fi writer who isn’t a dickhead. Thanks Baird.

Alistair Cooke is dead

CRAFTSMANSHIP!!

I saw a schnippet of a TV news item about trouble a decade ago in Rwanda. I don’t remember the trouble then, and the item I saw is fading fast. I got annoyed at the TV for telling me again about all the crap in the world without the slightest hint of an idea of how to fix it. The germ of an idea came to me – a website (I don’t really like websites anymore, but they’re cheap and fast) that ran in parallel to say TV One news, and attempted to provide people with pointers on how they might help alleviate the difficulties highlighted in each news item.

O most esteemed visitors from Google, please allow me to present you with all the lyrics for Goldenhorse’s fine album Riverhead.

Project Aqua discussion at Maxim
Hella tight new photos from Jono
Truth exiled in debating

CRAFTSHANDSHIP
WOMAN CRAFTSMAN!!

CREATION AND RECREATION ONLY IS GOOD
FOR YE ARE GODS!!

On Saturday I did $300 worth of damage to my flatmate’s trumpet in the space of four seconds. Yesterday the guy whose van I rolled called me up “I’ve found a replacement, can I have $1,200 please”. I ate fresh salmon sushi for the first time today. Exciting times.

Lyrics: Pearl Jam/Man of the Hour
PJ Leithart on Feminism & Identity
Ezekiel is so cool
Pims from Baird: one two
A social history of wanking [via PhilBaker]
Situated Software

By the mighty power of eMule I am gradually downloading all the good CDs I’ve lost over the years. Today I got Pink Floyd/Meddle and Radiohead/Hail to the Thief back o yeah.

Eric S Raymond: The Cathedral and the Bazaar [via Sam M]

I recommend The Passion of the Christ.

Korg is here

On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam
by Hayden Carruth

Well I have and in fact
more than one and I’ll
tell you this too

I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against

Korea and another
against the one
I was in

and I don’t remember
how many against
the three

when I was a boy
Abysinnia Spain and
Harlan County

and not one
breath was restored
to one

shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not

one
but death went on and on
never looking aside

except now and then like a child
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.

addendum [via consumptive]

Some one running
Motorcyclist in Chernobyl
Good spyware deleter
Normalise your mp3 collection

Press release at Scoop

Once every month or two I come across a new author or speaker who makes me happy and expands my horizons and gives me hope for better things. Recently: Wendell Berry, Brian McLaren, Brian Walsh, E F Schumacher. (All boys, interesting). Today: Dr John Patrick of Ottowa. Consider listening to his Meaning and Purpose in Medicine [22MB streamable MP3].

Telford Work, down on blogs
Building a search engine

GOD
or
OUR GOD
WHOSE?
ONUS
ON US

I was tempted to give up, but despair is a lazy kind of pride (so says Wendell Berry), so I’m re-reading that creed thing to see if my mutterings might help John to see that I am on the Lord’s side too.

Following Andrew’s points:

1. This to me is nicer than believing in God because of say the ontological proof. I think the doctrine of Creation (God saw that it was very good. Woman and Man messed it up early on. Creation looks and waits for God’s true children to treat it right) is one of the key ones that people around today need to hear.
2. Seems there’s a missing middle eight to this point about the role of those who do have particular knowledge of God.
3. Amen.
4. Yep, makes sense to me. Perhaps worth emphasising that’s not the end of the story, except for for Israel. Resurrection should probably be slotted in here.
5. Oooo yeah, like a hen sheltering her chicks.
6. The devolvment of Israel’s defining symbols onto Jesus is an important theme Reformed theology AFAIKA has missed.
7. I like the incompleteness/tentativeness Andrew shows after this point. Humility.
8. Wow, that’s a great summary.
9. Stimulating and inspiring to work. Evidently has been reading NTW.
10. Ah, that’s what I was looking for at point four. 10b feels like the ‘swept from off the land’ of our versification of Psalm 1.

As you were.

Consider coming to the eco-justice seminar being put on by the Anglican Chaplaincy at Victoria University. It’s going to be held on Saturday 8 May from 9am – 3pm at Ramsey House, 8 Kelburn Parade, Wellington. Register ASAP by emailing chaplaincy-ecojustice at vuw dot ac dot nz or calling them 04 463 5499. The cost is $25 for students/unwaged, $35 for everyone else. The AngChap events I’ve been to so far have all been rather good, and I’m going to this one. More details [430k PDF].

I recommend John Caputo’s book On Religion, which Dan Mulholland lent me for the weekend.

The peasants demand moire! [via mefi]

In some bars you can smell the loneliness and it gets on everything and maybe they have to rinse it off in the daytime.

Who loves God in The Lord of the Rings?

I don’t recommend Starsky & Hutch.
I do recommend 21 Grams.

Doug Wilson’s blog [thanks Aaron]

I’m going through some of my oldest CDs, having a bit of a prune. Right now I’m listening to Transmission volume 5, which David gave to me. Transmission, if I remember correctly, was a NZ-based Christian music magazine which ran for a few years, a few years ago. They included a CD with each issue. The music is OK at times, but it mostly seems really thin, dualist and escapist (please Jesus get me out of this terrible world). I feel like they aren’t grounded, rooted in the forms they’re playing in. It’s more like floating on top like oil on water, and (to change gears) mining others’ riches to ‘get the message out’.

moments after I flushed my mullet down the toilet
[photo by Jono]

I made pumpkin potato onion and mushroom soup for my flatmates. David Jono Aaron and I went out for tea to Deluxe and talked about blogging, blogging about theology, and theology. ‘Theology’ is probably the wrong word. ‘Theophilia’ might be better. We talked about what it means to love God, and if there’s a substantial difference between doing good and loving God. On the way home Jono bought a bottle of eight dollar Shiraz which turned out to be a nice way to celebrate the return of all my flatmates.

Andrew Basden on
  having Asperger’s
  Christian Philosophy and Information Systems

Have you ever experienced intellectual vertigo?

Probably every writer making a secondary world …every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality; hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world …are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

Brother William says:

Beware email and instant messaging and blogs, especially when they seem to be supporting momentous conversations. The body remembers sitting in its usual room at its usual computer and easily forgets the words and the persons behind them.

Alan Watts quotes:

One day, a farmer’s horse ran away, and all the neighbors gathered in the evening and said ‘that’s too bad.’ He said ‘maybe.’ Next day, the horse came back and brought with it seven wild horses. ‘Wow!’ they said, ‘Aren’t you lucky!’ He said ‘maybe.’ He next day, his son grappled with one of these wild horses and tried to break it in, and he got thrown and broke his leg. And all the neighbors said ‘oh, that’s too bad that your son broke his leg.’ He said, ‘maybe.’ The next day, the conscription officers came around, gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. And the visitors all came around and said ‘Isn’t that great! Your son got out.’ He said, ‘maybe.’

New Credenda/Agenda out
The Magic Roundabout [via mefi]
ESV lets you turn off verse divisions

A few minutes ago I finished Wendell Berry’s book Remembering which I highly recommend.

For good or ill, Transit NZ has said yes to the Wellington inner city bypass.

This morning’s breakfast at the Leuven was great. There were perhaps a dozen people there. I would list them but I have forgotten the name of Peter’s friend. Most of the troops arrived quite a while after 7.15, and we waited for everyone before we orderd. I had a big waffle with fruit and maple syrup on it. Next week I aim to be there at approximately 7.30 and order immedaitely. This is, I hope, the start of something that will develop its own momentum.

Block most web ads with a customised HOSTS file [via /.]
Robots and unemployment

a cat came and slept
in my shadow as I sat
waiting for the train

Clay Shirky: Communities, Audiences and Scale
John Patrick on ‘Free’ Healthcare

The Reverend Kavanaugh led the services at church today, so we sang from the old blue hymnal. #68 (by Isaac Watts, from Psalm 39), which we’ve not often sung, I found particularly worthwhile:

Teach me the measure of my days,
Thou Maker of my frame;
I would survey life’s narrow space,
And learn how frail I am.

A span is all that we can boast,
An inch or two of time;
Man is but vanity and dust
In all his flower and prime.

See the vain race of mortals move
Like shadows o’er the plain;
They rage and strive, desire and love,
But all the noise is vain.

Some walk in honor’s gaudy show,
Some dig for golden ore;
They toil for heirs, they know not who,
And straight are seen no more.

What should I wish or wait for, then,
From creatures earth and dust?
They make our expectations vain,
And disappoint our trust.

Now I forbid my carnal hope,
My fond desires recall;
I give my mortal interest up,
And make my God my all.

Whis puts me in mind of the following (#205, by Charles H Gabriel, from Psalm 103), which is my forever favourite:

The tender love a father has
For all his children dear,
Such love the Lord bestows on them
Who worship Him in fear.

The Lord remembers we are dust,
And all our frailty knows;
Man’s days are like the tender grass,
And as the flower he grows.

The flower is withered by the wind
That smites with blighting breath;
So man is quickly swept away
Before the blast of death.

Unchanging is the love of God,
From age to age the same,
Displayed to all who do His will
And reverence His Name.

Those who His gracious cov’nant keep
The Lord will ever bless;
Their children’s children shall rejoice
To see His righteousness.

A friend told me recently that although he doesn’t claim to understand it, he finds the Gospel of John rather beautiful. This morning Mr Oosterbaan read the first chapter or so of it, and I knew what my friend was talking about. It seemed to me John probably rushed home and wrote it the second he got back from the mountain of Transfiguration. Checking it out now, it’s interesting to see that Jesus instructed his disciples not to tell anyone the vision until after his resurrection.

wedding story

Richard came over yesterday afternoon after uni. We made dinner and it was rather tasty. This is what we had:

1. White and red new potatoes, boiled.
2. Peas, steamed.
3. Lamb steaks and lamb sausages with red onion, pineapple, rosemary, cummin, olive oil, salt and pepper, fried in a wok.

After dinner we watched Cube²: Hypercube, which was great if you enjoy being pissed off by movies (we do).

Soren Kierkegaard said:

Silence is the measure of the power to act; that is, a person never has more power to act than he has silence. Anyone can understand that to do something is far greater than to talk about doing it. If, therefore, a person has a plan or idea and is fully resolved to carry it out, he does not need to talk about it. What he talks about in connection with the proposed action is what he is most unsure of and most unwilling to do.

[via Bruderhof]

Growing replacment teeth [/.]
Background reading for Saturday’s eco-justice seminar
Calculate your personal ecological footprint

IT”S A SMALL WORLD BUT
THE EARTH HAS NEVER BEEN BIGGER

How to lie like Jesus [via Deb]

Thursday Breakfast #2 at Leuven this morning was nice. The waitresses were really friendly and prepared for us ditherers this week.

NT Wright (if I remember correctly) says that doctrinal statements are always shorthand for narratives. This is a rather helpful notion. Without it, doctrinal statements have a tendency to get loose from their moorings and float out to sea. It takes the whole Bible and all our lives to give content to ‘Jesus is God’.

I listen to Doves/The Last Broadcast and feel strong feelings I can’t name.

The diary of Stuart of B&S

Martin Buber said:

I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me.

Theological forum on the Foreshore issue, Monday 10 May

Richard B on Americans and Maoris
Deep sanity for the GE debate
Welcome to blogdom, Lynton

ONLINE PEOPLE ARE QUASARS

A key difference between flatting and living with family is that unlike flatmates, family members have a vested interest in one’s success or failure in most every endeavour.

DW’s parables get better
Lyrics: Catatonia/Why I Can’t Stand One Night Stands
Engineering textbook online, free

Today I say a culture is nothing more or less than a set of shared traditions. A church that wishes to challenge the predominant culture needs to develop or harness better traditions. Eucharist is one that springs to mind. Eucharist can be central and deep because it involves elevates and grounds a tradition that all cultures everywhere share, because our bodies require it of us: eating and drinking.

Today I begin an epic journey into the world of vermicompost.

Today’s Bruderhof enail:

A rabbi asked his students, When is it at dawn that one can tell the light from the darkness?

One student replied, When I can tell a goat from a donkey. No, answered the rabbi. Another said, When I can tell a palm tree from a fig. No, answered the rabbi again. Well, then what is the answer? his students pressed him.

Only when you look into the face of every man and every woman and see your brother and your sister, said the rabbi. Only then have you seen the light. All else is still darkness.

Calloo callay! Yesterday evening at Part I of the foreshore issue forum I met a dutchman whose hero is Wendell Berry.

ChristianPolygamy.com [via Hans]

A cartoon about going to Mars [feat. naughty words]
1993 Kim Stanley Robinson interview

Here is a theory which needs work and involves a sort of liberal view of the Old Testament:

Various people and peoples through history have volunteered themselves as God’s representative(s) on earth. God lets them have a go at that for a while. From time to time there are crisis points, when there is a face-off between the volunteers and their enemies. At these points God steps in and either vindicates the volunteers as his true representatives, or visibly rejects them and ‘promotes’ the enemies.

This notion came to me when I came across Ezekiel 31, where Assyria and Egypt almost seem like proto-Israels, that is, proto-True-Adams.

I learned this morning that President Bush once declared that his favourite political philosopher was Jesus Christ, and I wonder if I can use this theory to predict future calamity for the United States.

[Update in response to a comment from John]
It’s possible this whole idea won’t prove helpful, it’s very sketchy at this point. Here is where the liberalness comes in: The theory is that Isaiah & Ezekiel are speaking from Israel’s POV as The Chosen One, but from say Babylon’s POV perhaps there was a time when they thought the same thing about themselves. This occured to me when I noticed Babylon (Ez 17) and Egypt (Ez 31) are described using the language of big tree with lots of birds nesting in it’s branches. Langauge which is later used by Jesus to describe the kingdom of God. So that makes me think perhaps those countries were in a way failed attempts at being the kingdom of God. And then I think, well did God fail? No, it was people grasping towards Him but failing in the end, after a promising start. Like with Israel – they were rejected in the end, did God fail? No, Israel did.

The imaging stuff comes from my idea that the most basic fact of people’s and peoples’ existance is that they are “made in the image of God”, which I understand to mean “made to image God”, that is “made to represent God”.

Novel sans verbs [via antipixel]

I recommend Unity Pacific‘s album From Street to Sky for quality New Zealand reggae. The lead singer Tigalu Ness is Che Fu’s Dad.

All of you who don’t care about sport, read no further. Unless of course, you want to admire my writing skills.
It’s semi-finals time in the Super 12. Tonight (Saturday) Crusaders v Stormers, Brumbies v Chiefs.
The Crusaders Stormers game will be tight. While the Crusaders have not been playing like a team who has won the Super 12 four times, I really can’t see them losing to a South African team playing away from home and under pressure. No South African team has ever won the competition and tonight will see their only finals contender bite the dust of Jade Stadium.
The Chiefs Brumbies game will be the match all of NZ (apart from most of the people who read Matt’s blog) will be watching. If Waikato wins they will be one step closer to a fairy tale finish to the season. I doubt this will happen. They lost last week to the Brumbies on their home turf, and it is unlikely that result will be reversed. The Chiefs don’t have finals experience or the game breakers to beat an on-fire Brumbies side.
The final next week will be Crusaders v Brumbies in Canberra. The way that game goes will be influenced strongly by who can stay injury free tonight.

The Black Caps are touring that place where the queen lives at the moment. Anybody slightly interested in cricket will be thrilled to know that the king , Shane Bond, is back in action and in scintillating form leading in to the first test. How can you not be filled with awe and wonder when you see that man in action? His perfect bowling technique leading to breath taking pace and accuracy sends a chill down the spine of any onlooker (apart from most of the people who read Matt’s blog). Shane Bond provided me with one of my most beautiful memories when he ripped the Australians apart in 2002, I look forward to seeing him in all his magnificence as he destroys the Poms next week.

May edition of Comment

Last night I dreamt that I had a day or three left before my death. I was worried that when I’d tell people “I don’t think I’m going to make it through the night” I’d still be embarrassingly alive in the morning. I wanted to write everyone letters to tidy up all the loose ends, but I didn’t. I didn’t know who was going to get my money. I smoked a lot in my dream, inside.

On Saturday (a very good day) I bought Zero 7′s album When it falls from Slow Boat Records. I’ve listened to it three times so far. It is very pretty. Lush strings and horns. Nice vocalists. Similar vibe to Beck’s magisterial Sea Change. It’ll be interesting to see how it wears.

Bodega has some swell gigs coming up this month: Tuesday People (my flatmate’s band) on Wednesday the 19th, Goldenhorse on Wednesday the 27th ($20 from Real Groovy) and Stylus 77 on Thursday the 28th. Woot.

TUNNEL VISION, TINY DRAMAS IN A HOMEMADE CANDLE

THE ANSWER CANNOT BE WRITTEN IN
WORDS WORDS WORDS; MAYA x MAYA

Said Francis Thompson:

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others’ pain,
And perish in our own.

‘Knowledge’ in the Knowledge Economy is gnostic. It’s facts and statistics and marketing nous and sharemarket savvy and scientific manipulation, not sacrifice or service or faith or hope or love.

fine Finnish photos [via consumptive]
April edition of First Things [via John Patrick]

The Canterbury Crusaders will win the Super 12 final on Saturday night. Stirling Mortlock is out for ACT and there are two other injury clouds hovering over their training camp, while Canterbury has a full contigent. Crucial.

Mozilla Calendar, free alternative to MS Outlook Calendar
Shirky: the future of p2p filesharing
Kim Stanley Robinson’s utopian fiction
Rituals and culture in Christian history
Homosexuality and totalitarianism in Canada
The Ecology Psalm
Alzheimer’s & Grace

Someone once said:

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

Interview with my hero

Lyrics: Belle & Sebastian/Roy Walker
BMcL: The Passion, America, Lent, Ps 73 [RA]
Current Welly waterfront Artbox

AN ELLIPSIS IS THE TRUEST THING YOU CAN EVER WRITE

This afternoon my sister Kathy and I watched Lost in Translation (Roger Ebert review). When the lights came on afterwards Kathy turned to me and I thought she said “That was crap” so I said “Well I really liked it”, but I’d misheard and she’d really said “That was great”, in fact “That was great”. It is nice that we agreed. It is a beautiful movie. Tokyo is so strange.

Paul Simon said ‘“Kathy I’m lost” I said though I knew she was sleeping. “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”’ You know that line written down needs some special kind of punctuation mark at the end, but English doesn’t have one that will fit. I don’t suppose any language does.

My flatmate Shannon is moving out shortly. If you would like to be considered for the room which has been freed up, do contact me. We each pay $120 per week which includes rent, power, gas and a few other bits and pieces.

Deb on Troy, women & homosexuality
Blogging software compared [via /.]
Sustainable living in Wellington [via James K]

Online
I wrote a comment on someone’s blog saying that I didn’t know where to start to try and get into Bach. Someone saw it and emailed me suggesting I try out choral recordings made by the Bach Collegium in Japan, which I shall at some convenient juncture.

Offline
I met a workmate’s neighbour while I was in Masterton yesterday. He dropped me off at the train station. On the way, we talked about his work – he’s a philosopher working on the mind-body problem, is fond of Wittgenstein and has written a few books published by MIT. My workmate told me he gave him a book to send down to me, which is on the courier now.

Most movies piss me off because they forget they’re movies and try and encapsulate pin down trap reality (ugly word) all-that-is onto that flat screen. They’re closed circles, imposed categories and forget the mystery and crazy-go-nuts-ness of it all. They have to point away from themselves or it’s claustrophobia city, like taking tea with someone who won’t shut up. The real stuff is in the gaps and cracks silences between sentences. Lost in Translation doesn’t piss me off at all.

DUALIST CHURCH ATROPHY* CULTURE AND COMMUNITY BY CELEBRATING ONLY SMALL SLICE OF LIFE

*COLD SILENCE TENDENCY

Augustine said:

…when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves.

[from Gideon's site]

The aforementioned book has arrived. It is Wittgenstein & Modern Philosophy by Justus Hartnack. I have started it, and it looks quite exciting and will likely compete well for my attention with the eleven other books currently in progress.

Inspired by an article Richard pointed me at, I counsel companies with vehicle fleets to consider purchasing or leasing hybrid cars. Toyota’s Prius apparently gets 55 mpg (23.5 km/l). Of course they’ll still crash into things and kill people quite a lot, but one step at a time, yo.

I tried to tell DOC but couldn’t find any useful email contacts on their very nice looking website.

Pirsig vs. Wittgenstein

From Adbusters #45 (ALL READ ADBUSTERS):

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enourmous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

There are little and bigger fish in the shallows of Chaffers Marina, round near Te Papa. There are lots of starfish and some of them glide very slowly over the sea floor if you watch long enough. Evidentally they don’t mind the taste of diesel.

Goldenhorse played well. Some of their new songs are hot to trot. I bumped into Robert from Christchurch, and that was nice. It was an unusual crowd; none of the regulars.

In Psalm 104, sin is an afterthought, a glitch, a pimple, an abberation in the overwhelmingly good world that God made and makes.

In a rather worthwhile talk on theology and the arts [RealAudio: Part 1, Part 2] Jeremy Begbie said:

I was deprived. I never had the unhappy childhood necessary for greatness. The worst things that happened to me were shopping at weekends, unfinished homework and the ghost beneath the bed. My one regret in life is that I was not born on the bad side of town. At 14 I wanted to be the heavyweight champion of the world, but I was 70 pounds to light, and had no criminal record. I could have been the next John Lennon, but my parents couldn’t misunderstand me. My first novel dried up through lack of trauma. No skeletons in my cupboards, no ghosts to exorcise. Now I’m going to be a poet, I’m looking for the net that could be the key, the chip that could be the spur. If only things had been different. If only I could have been like the rest. All I ask of life is some poverty to flee from and a pit to climb out of.

my role is KONNECTOR
i know a little about ALL TOPIX
so that i can KONNECT people TOGEHTOR
to ACHEEVE big THINGS

TO SAY “THERE ARE MANY TRUTHS”
DOES NOT SAY “THERE ARE NO LIES”

Make the IE status bar stay put in Windows XP
Interview with Sofia Coppola & Ross Katz
Map of Springfield [via Richard]
Creating the play Meeting Karpovsky [650K PDF]

Adbusters #51
Dad (happy b/d fo’ yesserday)
Happy hollow and very tired
Jono, Rebecca, Ingrid
Mr & Mrs Heeringa
My scarf
My teapot
Staying up all night
Reconditioned shoes
Ride/Rolling Thunder
Tonga’s discman
Tranz Metro
Whisky

scared of God

LOVE IS ONLY PROXIMITY
CHIMERA DEADLY COMPLACENCY

Aaron’s weekend (feat. me)

Massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling [via /.]
Mechano Difference Engine [via /.]
All about Death Stars

LiT has a scene with 4:20 shown on a clock ahehe.

I recommend Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Shirky: Fork World, Nomic World
Clay Shirky interview

Here’s my starting XV after watching the trial:
Kees Mueews
Andrew Hore
Greg Somerville
Chris Jack
Jono Gibbes
Jerry Collins
Richie McCaw
Xavier Rush
Justin Marshall
Andrew Mehrtens
Daniel Carter
Tana Umaga
Joe Rococoko
Doug Howlett
Nick Evans

JH Kunstler on the Abu Ghraib thing [scroll to May 24]

I got published this week. In our church bulletin, that is:

I sat in church last Sunday morning listening to John read the preparation for Lord’s Supper and I had an idea. I thought I’d write down some of what the Lord’s Supper means to me. Maybe you’ll find some of it helpful:

When I eat the bread and drink the port, I remember the King gave up His life so that we might live. Jesus our food and drink, God’s Spirit the air we breathe: our lives’ most basic needs. I don’t eat alone. My family are here; my true brothers and sisters, and my true Father. Sometimes I remember the challenge too: I eat the broken body and shed blood and I know I’m committing myself to the same bloody path He trod. I’m supposed to be a sacrifice too. Sacrificing my life, my ambitions and goals for the sake of God, His people and His world. Living and maybe dying to bring God’s comfort to a mourning world. Where on earth will I get the strength to live like that?

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

I recommend Rainbow Laundry Powder, made by Clorogene Supplies in Petone. It’s cheaper than most, biodegrable, and my clothes are sweeter smelling and the colours are noticably brighter than when I was using Cold Water Surf.

Lyrics: Belle & Sebastian/Stay Loose
Odd old ads

The chosen All Black squad is perfect. Highlight for me was the inclusion of Mehrts and Nick Evans. The only player I believe is lucky to be there is Muliaina who was only picked because of the distinct lack of good quality fullbacks in this country.
The more I see of Graham Henry, the more I think John Mitchell was a complete (expletive). See John, talking to the media like a normal person isn’t that hard!

Some people at Vic have started Eco-justice Wellington, o yeah. I’ve joined them, and tonight I made us a blog. Hopefully this will become a useful resource, alerting people to nifty events and linking to hot stewardship/ecology articles.

I’ve noticed that lots of my friends regularly villify practically every separate thing that I like or love or put my hand to. That’s wierd. Often I find myself thinking thoughts like “I never take this attiude with things *you* like”.

Wednesday night was a great night. Jenny had a going-away dinner. I was late, I went to a communion service at St Peters with the chaplaincy people, and learned quite a bit about prayer which I can’t yet put into words. I didn’t get to the dinner part, but the coffee and sweets part was super. Some of us went to Syn bar afterwards and had a grand wee boogie: “Ladies ladies ladies ladies/I got whatcha need/so tell me whatcha need“.

I spent the long weekend at Queens Birthday Camp. It was a nice time. It was fun being one of the old guys. It is hard to remember what it was like going to youth camps as a small person chock full of insecurities. The camp theme was Stewardship, which chuffed me. The end of Exodus 35 is choice, where CRAFTSMANSHIPly abilities are ascribed to the Spirit of God being in the craftsmen and women. I enjoyed pulling out some generic questions to good effect: “What is one of your favourite places in the world?”, “What are five of your favourite things?”, “What’s one thing you’re really good at?”. Five of my first cousin twice removed Helena’s favourite things are Going To The Pool, Going To The river, Playing Piano, Going To Friends’ Houses and Eating Dessert. I think she is six. The three older angels at my table listed Chocolate as one of their Five Favourite Things.

The Rev. Kavanaugh said he thinks the fire St Peter talks about cleanses rather than destroys the earth, else the whole creation would be groaning to be destroyed, which is nuts. That’s a cool point because it means our work here is worthwhile, looking after the world is an excellent thing to spend our energies on, it’s a new Heavens and Earth we’re promised, not just a new Heavens.

The little guys are funny, but they aren’t as funny as we were back in the day. They told me when they talk to old people at church they have to be fake, either goody two-shoes fake or funny-guy fake. I was scared for them driving home in Holdens and prayed no one would die on the way back. I’ve been driving since I was fifteen and it’s not my fault I’m still alive.

I am back home now and polishing off my $6 bottle of Queen Adelaide Riesling. Some music is just right for slightly boozed. David Gray, Keane work well. Nothing too demanding.

I would like to borrow Paul Marshall’s Heaven is Not My Home and Brian J Walsh’s Truth is Stranger Than it Used to Be if anyone has them.

NO ABORTED BABIES GO TO HELL

SAYS THE GOOD REV K:
TO YOU GOD’S GREATEST GIFT
IS YOURSELF

SAYS I:
YOU HAVE INFINITY INSIDE
DON’T TRY AND IMITATE OTHERS’ FINITE OUTSIDES

Comment on James Howard Kunstler
Martin Buber’s two ways of being
The Beatles: Come Together [Flash animation]
Lyrics: Massive Attack/Prayer for England

Tonight at St Peter’s Tim (following NTW, I think) said that it is a constant temptation for us to think of our God in terms of various philosophical traditions, traditions which are in no way shaped by Jesus or the cross. While he was speaking, I was thinking “It is difficult for me to read even just the Old Testament – let alone the New – and understand how language like ‘without parts or passions’ is appropriate for talking about our God”. Tim presented the doctrine of the Trinity as the product of the early Christians trying to bring together Jewish monotheism and this man Jesus who did what only Yahweh can do. I was thinking “Yes, this makes sense! The Doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t dropped from heaven like flyers from a propaganda plane, it’s part of our God’s working in real history”. Before communion, we said the Nicene Creed together, and I said it with rather more gusto than previously.

Quoting Tim’s handout:

Moltmann says in The Crucified God: people are right to disbelieve in the impassive God, because only a suffering God can love. But God is not impassive: he loves, he suffers. On the Cross, the Son dies, and the Father suffers the death of his Son. Father and Son are therefore in loving solidarity with suffering of the world: the Holy Spirit flows out from this experience to the world.

Everything is nice. Especially walking to breakfast along Oriental Parade and Taranaki Wharf watching the sunrise over the Tararuas and the Hutt Valley, and horizontal fire on Wellington Harbour. But especially breakfast with good friends. But especially walking back home again to work, feeling a little sorry for the people going slower than me in their portable coffins, watching hazy sunlight spill down from the mountains to the valley into the harbour like a waterfall.

08/06/04 NT Wright interview [via Kevin B]

In an audio lecture James Skillen says that ‘Humans as God’s image-bearers’ is more basic than the ‘Creator-creature distinction’.

I don’t know what the Orthodox mean when they use the word ‘divinization’ but perhaps it’s that as we image God by the power of his Spirit we are almost drawn into the Trinity, become part of the internal communication of love between the Persons. Yeah that’s nice: the Son says “I love you” to the Father, and we’re the words he uses, and back again.

Also, Wikipedia on theosis.

If you know Kamran Nazir you may be interested in this letter from him [430k PDF], and his plan for reforming the churches in Pakistan [340k PDF].

I stayed the night at Mum & Dad’s. We shared dinner with Jonathan & Kelly. They’re great people, it will be nice when they move down for good in a few months. Jonathan chuffed me thoroughly when I learned he really liked Lost in Translation.

Jerry Falwell, when the Moral Majority was founded said:

God created America for two purposes: to make possible the evangelisation of the world, and to protect the state of Israel.

If you want to be more than just a commenter on this site, feel free to register, and maybe I’ll upgrade your membership and let you write your own posts.

Also, if you do register, to aid my deliberations, feel so free to email me and tell me how you feel you’d be able make this site a more glorious place.

James Howard Kunstler: What I live for
The glorious Social Gospel

Orthodoxy’s theosis, with fasting understood in terms of Isaiah 58 is AWEXOME, and the greatest and most beautiful synthesis you will see this week. I guarantee it.

Dear Inland Revenue

Thanks for the tasty tax rebate.

Love,
Matthew

St Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14 [via Rance D]

I recommend photospace gallery‘s current show ‘Exposed’, which finishes on Monday.

The All Blacks treated New Zealand to an exquisitely titillating performance on Saturday. I can not think of anything to critisise. Unfortunately the English School Girls XV could have been more challenging opposition. The Poms did not do the English rose proud, they played like a bunch of pansies. Some of the tackles on Joe Rokocoko were about as effective as a slap in the face with a wet flannel. What a shame they didn’t play like that 6 months ago.
The worst part of the game was the 3 Sport commentary. Quote, Hamish McKay: “3 Sport, bringing you free to air coverage. We don’t charge you, and the All Blacks charge all over the opposition”…what a cunning linguist.

Dear Wellington City Council

Thanks for the seasonal Hosting Guides and the Oriental Bay beach and planting natives in the town belt where the pines have gone bad above my house and in the grassy bits between Brooklyn and Newtown.

Love,
Matthew

I went to a party, and there were lots of gay men there, and I was ill-at-ease and frightened in some sense.

Doug Wilson on the image of God
Freya Mathews: Good home-making (Full article)
Big plasma arc made by a friend of mine

TOURISM IS EVIL DEATH STINKYPOO

The man who was closest to a mentor to me when I lived in Masterton told me his best and deepest evangelism question was “What do you do with your guilt?” Tonight I say mine is “To whom are you thankful for all the good things?”

Reasonable estimates of the population of an average Death Star suggest that the Rebel Alliance probably killed a similar number of people when they destroyed the Death Star II as the Galatic Empire did in the destruction of Alderaan.

I have had to read six novels and several short stories this trimester for university. Three of the novels contained descriptions of man-love or bi-sexuality, and many of the short stories followed similar themes. The latest made me angry. The Golden Gate by Vickram Seth is a superb piece of writing until…

…Phil thinks, “Why
Be so uptight? He’s a great guy.
I’ve never bothered with convention.
God! It’s a year that I’ve been chaste…,”
And puts his arm round Ed’s waist…

I can’t repeat what follows. It’s not that I’m a homophobe, I just don’t see why 50% of the material I am required to read should involve sodomy. Am I being unreasonable? They could at least provide a disclaimer as warning.

For some balance on the currently hot topic of homosexuality, read this from Rance D which I first posted about a year ago.

A good way to make exams and essays easier on one’s constitution, is to write with the aim of including a certain word or phrase regardless of it’s suitability. Example: I once challenged myself to include the phrase, ‘women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them’, in a Classics essay. I succeeded. For single words, pretentiousness is the key. Perhaps people could offer suggestions to help students with upcoming assessments.

At the foreshore fora I was introduced to the Catholic idea of subsidiarity, part of their catechism :

A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.

Read more here, here and here. It is a fundamental principle of the EU consitution too.

The news floated down the hall from the TV room: one in four fetuses are aborted in New Zealand.

Both Matt and I are involved in a Mentoring and Discipling Team in our church. On Saturday July 31 we are conducting a seminar on ‘working with God as your employer’. 3pm start. Venue yet to be decided but probably Wainuiomata Reformed Church. There are some restrictions…you have to be over the age of 15, and not dead. People are coming from as far away as Auckland so don’t be afraid to travel if you live outside of Wellington. Bring some cash to pay for the delicious dinner that we will feed you.

Aaron and I went to the From Plato to Nato seminar at Vic taken by Dr Peter Vardy discussing the Problem of Evil, with a particular focus on assisting RE teachers. It was rather worthwhile.

Dr Vardy is a brilliant and affecting orator. At one point he had us imagine standing above the lime pits looking down at the bodies of Jewish children and adults, at the point where philosophy, theory, rationality end, with Ivan Karamazov on our left, and Job on our right. With Ivan, we can choose to reject this God who allows tiny children to suffer miserably (what greater good could possibly justify that evil?), turn and do as we please, or we can with Job be silent, fearing, uncomprehending, take the step of faith and trust Him anyway.

Dr Vardy had us think quietly to ourselves for two minutes and ponder: “Imagine for the sake of argument there is an afterlife, and a judgment, and you are called to account for your life, and you fail the test (whatever the test is). What is it you have done or not done, do you think, that was the key failure?” He suggested we likely answered that question for ourselves with things like incidents of adultery, fornication, lust, theft, etc. He proposed that there was a larger category of evil we’d likely missed, but which is a key part of much of the misery of the world. This category he labeled institutional or structural evil. The kind of evil that let ordinary German citizens, churchgoers even, participate in a society which murdered as many people as it did. That kind of systemic evil, the evil of going along with the crowd is perhaps the hardest to fight.

I am excited by the idea of ordinary young people in New Zealand schools lifting their heads for a moment from the interminable soap opera of teenage life and facing some of the big questions of what it means to be human.

Today is the day. Trinity Roots’ new album Home, Land & Sea is out. I am excited.

George MacLeod, who founded the Iona Community is quoted by Vinoth Ramachandra in a lecture about the Gospel of John, the cross and public theology [streaming/downloadable 17MB MP3] as saying:

“I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the Church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town’s garbage heap; at a crossroads so cosmopolitan they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek… at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died, and that is what He died for, and that is what He died about… that is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen ought to be about.”

As husbandly headship is to be understood in terms of Jesus’ example (self-sacrifice, feet-washing &c.), so ideas about dominion rule subjugation of creation by humans (the ‘creation mandate’) have to be viewed through the lens of the cross.

In a lecture about kenosis, Trinity, life and Philippians 2 [streaming/downloadable 22MB MP3] Dallas Williard defines salvation as ‘being caught up in the life which Christ is now living on earth’.

So-shu dreamed,
And having dreamed that he was a bird, a bee, and a butterfly,
He was uncertain why he should try to feel like anything else,

Hence his contentment.

Music by numbers [via /.]
Exciting news from the wonderful world of weapons research

After one listen of Trinity Roots/Home, Land & Sea I am a little worried.

Doug W on homosexuality (among other things)

Isaiah says

…Zion said,
“The Lord has forsaken me;
my Lord has forgotten me.”

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.”

A poet sent me all his poems today to pore.

Two of my friends speak like handmowers in tight corners: two words forward one word back. “I guess you’ll… you’ll just have to do what he says”.

Some songs have pursued me like purgatory hounds or some kind of drug addiction. Some I’ve hunted for years, catching last verses on AM radio. I have a list I could list, but what’s the point?

Doves say

Through the streets and on your own
Almost lost and almost home
We’ll be looking all we can
We’ll be searching for the sulphur man

I can’t sleep.
I am losing endless games of spider solitaire.
I’ve a smile on my dial.

Brian McLaren: An Open Letter to Chuck Colson

I was thinking yesterday in church that whenever you forgive someone you are absorbing the hurt/damage they have caused. Putting away your rights and taking blows you don’t deserve. So perhaps when we forgive we’re being most like our God.

They (I don’t know who) say actions speak louder than words. That’s not always true. Yesterday somebody said something to me that put a lump in my throat…and it wasn’t a girl. It was far more effective than if they had offered to do my dishes or something.

All day I have the feeling I have forgotten something or am missing an appointment or have inadvertantly left something behind.

I went to Masterton today on the train. I slept there and back and had three pieces of my old boss Ted’s 70th birthday cake to eat all day. It is nice having Aaron flat here. The landlord is visiting tomorrow to fix a leak in one of our second toilet’s cistern. I finished Richard Prebble’s short book I’ve been thinking and found it worthwhile. I’m tempted to vote ACT again, though various online quizzes tell me I’m centrist these days. I didn’t hear any recorded music all day. I sang some to myself walking to the train though. Mum dropped me home this morning (I’d stayed the night at Mum & Dad’s) so that I could get better clothes for work but my boss didn’t like my winter season outfit much. I finished Norman Maclean’s A river runs through it which is I think deeper than me. He doesn’t do the reader any favours. I think he is being respectful of the limits of language. Perhaps Dave will appreciate it when I give it to him, being about fly fishing and brother troubles and all.

Belle and Sebastian say

And I know it could be me
I’m always asking for more
I keep running round in circles
I keep looking for a doorway
I’m going to need two lives
To follow the paths I’ve been taking

Their Dear Catastrophe Waitress is the front runner for album of the year.

I liked the book. I liked his ideas about the impossibility of value-free education. I liked his creative problem-solving get-things-done approach. I like that he came from a Labour background and identified institutional evil in the form of statist inefficiency and corrected it where he could, rather than having a prior ideological commitment to libertarianism. I don’t like that he doesn’t appear particularly aware of the possibility of institutional evil in private corporations. I don’t like the unquestioned idea that exporting/importing is great. I don’t like that economic growth is an unqualified and unexamined good.

Sunday Star Times article on Destiny Church [via David H]
Melvyn Bragg’s BBC series In Our Time [RA links]
Wendell Berry: The Idea of a Local Economy

Huzzah – National Radio is available in Wellington on FM 101.3 & 104.5 now.

I collect stories of intellectual vertigo. A man I met yesterday evening said he experienced what might be called spiritual vertigo upon realising that suffering pain hardship is not optional. It was a shock to him when he realised God didn’t make it easy for even the best man, Jesus. God didn’t even give him a choice. Terrifying.

I ENJOY PHILOSOPHY INSOFAR AS I ENJOY A CLEVER JOKE

Art machines [via RDB]

You’ll no doubt be pleased to learn that TrinityRoots/Home, Land and Sea is growing on me.

It appears trite at first, but I think the question at the end of this quote (from ZMM) is very profound:

The South Indian Monkey Trap
The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey’s hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped… by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it. The villagers are coming to get him and take him away. They’re coming closer — closer! — now! What general advice… not specific advice… but what general advice would you give the poor monkey in circumstances like this?

In an interview, Wendell Berry said:

Nothing exists for its own sake but for a harmony greater than itself which includes it. A work of art which accepts this condition and exists upon its terms honors the creation and so becomes a part of it.

Today I got to touch a little blue penguin. It had tiny blue feathers really tightly packed on its back.

I think I’ll make a whip today, tip some tables over, maybe rub some clay & spit into someone’s eyes.

In a good article The Open Source Paradigm Shift, Tim O’Reily says:

I have a simple test that I use in my talks to see if my audience of computer industry professionals is thinking with the old paradigm or the new. “How many of you use Linux?” I ask. Depending on the venue, 20-80% of the audience might raise its hands. “How many of you use Google?” Every hand in the room goes up. And the light begins to dawn. Every one of them uses Google’s massive complex of 100,000 Linux servers, but they were blinded to the answer by a mindset in which “the software you use” is defined as the software running on the computer in front of you. Most of the “killer apps” of the Internet, applications used by hundreds of millions of people, run on Linux or FreeBSD. But the operating system, as formerly defined, is to these applications only a component of a larger system. Their true platform is the Internet.

Gordon McLauchlan: Dear God: What’s going on here? [via Dan]

On two consecutive Saturdays I visited the Wellington City Gallery with friends to have a look at the Telecom Prospect 2004 New Art New Zealand exhibition. I found it very hard to not adopt a distancing wry uninvolved stance towards most every item in the show. I couldn’t get a handle on anything. Nothing made any sense. I came away feeling disorientated. There are so many beautiful things around to celebrate, and so many horrible things to challenge, why are these artists all wasting everyone’s time being clever and quirky and self-involved?

Flat 4b is looking for some more lounge chairs/couches. If you know of anyone hiffing any out, do let me know.

Gomez are playing in Wellington July 9, tickets available from PostShops for $57. I intend to go. Feel so free to join me.

Demons, angels, anthropomorphisms of agglomerations of people, prinicipalities, powers, The Economy, consumerism, Pirsig’s Giant, loneliness, fashion, forces that oppress or uplift.

Perhaps mental illness is possession by the demons of the age, at least as much about societies’ sicknesses than any particular sufferer’s.

Says Walter Wink (quoted here):

So formidable a phalanx of hostility demands spiritual weaponry, for it is clear that we contend not against human beings as such (“blood and flesh”) but against the legitimations, seats of authority, hierarchical systems, ideological justifications, and punitive sanctions which their human incumbents exercise and which transcend these incumbents in both time and power. It is the suprahuman dimension of power in institutions and the cosmos which must be fought, not the mere human agent. For the institution will guarantee the replacement of this person with another virtually the same, who despite personal preferences will replicate decisions made by a whole string of predecessors because that is what the institution requires for its survival. It is this suprahuman quality which accounts for the apparent “heavenly,” bigger than life, quasi-eternal character of the Powers. Naming the Powers, pp. 85-86.

Edmund Burke said:

A clear idea is another name for a little idea.

Freya Matthews: Letting the world grow old
H*R: Senor Cardgage Mortgage

I resolve to treat Asian people as persons from now on.

It was really nice to have Lynton stay Friday Saturday.

I read the first four chapters of Michael King’s Penguin History of New Zealand in my brother James’ bed. So far, it is very excellent.

I think I might attempt to engage the author of the recent Faith in Focus article on twice-a-Sunday church attendance in dialogue.

Telford Work: News failure, truth
Michael Moore: download my movie
Photos from QBC04
Tears from Archbishop Rowan Bears [via David N]

He enters the tall church alone
and leaves quickly, weeping with visions
of us —
quiet children holding hands against the dark.

Buber says dialogue is the most basic form of thought. Even when we are ‘thinking in our heads’ we are usually (maybe always) talking to an imaginary dialogue partner, practicing to tell someone something.

Fractal Gallery [via Psybertron]

Today was exactly the most beautiful day since the beginning of the world.

Thomas Merton said:

If you want to identify me,
ask me not where I live,
or what I like to eat, or
how I comb my hair;
but ask me what I am living for,
in detail, and ask me
what I think is keeping me
from living fully for
the thing I want to live for.

[from Bruderhof]

In an article in C/A Douglas Jones said:

Over a lifetime, the goal is to match our emotional mythologies to the colors of creation, to the color of judgment with which God has dyed every event, person, and thing.

In The Philosophy of Martin Buber I read today of a conversation between Buber and an old man. Said the old man to Buber:

“What word of human speech is so misused, so defiled, so desecrated as this! All the innocent blood that has been shed for it has robbed it of its radiance. All the injustice that it has been used to cover has effaced its features. When I hear the highest called ‘God’ it sometimes seems almost blasphemous.”

Buber replied:

Yes, it is the most heavy-laden of all human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for this reason I may not abandon it. Generations of men have laid the burden of their anxious lives upon this word and weighed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears their whole burden. The races of men with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their fingermarks and their blood. Where might I find a word like it to describe the highest! If I look to the purest, most sparkling concept from the inner treasure-chamber of the philosophers, I could only capture thereby and unbinding product of thought. I could not capture the presence of Him whom the generations of man have honoured and degraded with their awesome living and dying. I do indeed mean Him whom the hell-tormented and heaven-storming generations of men mean. Certainly, they draw characitures and write ‘God’ underneath; they murder one another and say ‘in God’s name’. But when all madness and delusions fall to dust, when they stand over against Him in the loneliest darkness and no longer say ‘He, He’ but rather sigh ‘Thou’, shout ‘Thou’, all of them the one word, and then they add ‘God’, is it not the real God whom they all emplore, the One Living God, the God of the children of men? Is it not He who hears them? And just for this reason is it not the word ‘God’ the word of appeal, the word which has become a name, consecrated in all languages for all times? … We cannot cleanse the word ‘God’ and we cannot make it whole; but defiled and mutilated as it is, we can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour of great care.”

And then:

The old man stood up, came over to me, laid his hand on my shoulder and spoke: “Let us be friends”. The conversation was completed. For where two or three are truly together, they are together in the name of God.

Gomez was neat. They’re a really talented bunch. Good showmen, tight harmonies, really interesting rhythms and they rocked quite hard. Starlight Ballroom is a stinky venue though; too big, bad sound system and sticky floor.

Making friends on the telephone [via /.]
Yeah, I’m fairly awesome

What do people think of Peugots? The 106, 206, 306 range. Any horror stories? Any super amazing experiences? Should I ever consider buying one?

I’m thinking Radiohead’s Life in a Glass House is Adbusters in a bottle.

The other day a friend told me that New Zealand currently has 60 troops in Iraq, and Australia has 90 (though it has many more in the surrounding countries). I had the impression that we are pretty much neutral in this particular conflict, while Australia is fully on-side with America, but if those figures are accurate, we are three times more committed (per capita) than the Aussies.

TutorMe.co.nz
I can’t believe it’s Decemberween in July!

Google recruitment billboard/math problem

My favourite contemporary apocalyptic prophet, in this week’s update [naughty words]:

Michael Moore gives me the chills and the creeps. I see America’s future in his ponderous, slovenly, lurching figure, stalking congressmen with his video camera and his childish rhetorical questions. I see a nation of feckless, clueless overfed crybabies building up to tantrum.

Thinking about the ‘principalities & powers’ in Ephesians 6 before going to sleep the other night, I realised I’d forgotten the previous bit ‘we don’t wrestle against flesh & blood’. And I wonder if it’s fair to paraphrase Paul thusly: We’re not fighting individuals, the people on the street. They are to a large extent pawns in larger systems of evil, and it’s the systems that need to be battled.

I have two (2) Gmail invitations left. Sing out if you’d like one.

My nose used up one (1) whole toilet roll a square at a time yesterday.

For those who don’t take part in the ridiculous Ford vs. Holden battle:
I have read mixed reports about TX5s like this. Feel free to judge and comment from past experiences/rumours/hearsay etc.

Andrew Basden: The Beauty of Original Sin

In an excellent sermon [Real Audio or MP3], Brian McLaren points out that the Hebrew word shamar is found in both the following passages, and translated ‘keep’. I would say that this is significant. Our relationship with creation is analagous to God’s with us.

Numbers 6 –

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Genesis 2 -

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

If you like, help me write a glorious poem.

I start:

I ran aground on the sandbar of your love,

Lyrics: Beck/Little one

Rest homes for old people and car parks for churches are similarly abominable.

UPDATE: I don’t say cars are similarly abominable. I say of all places/times, surely a church service should be a small picture of ‘how things ought to be’, God’s will done on earth according to the pattern of heaven. Presumably the gathering of God’s people on Sundays is the symbolic high point of the week – we have a chance to slow down, plan it ahead of time, think about how this time will direct coordinate focus the rest of our lives.

Thank you all very much for your contributions to this post and all the others too, I appreciate you all, and I’m not just having a laugh.

Not overheard on the bus today: “My good man! Three of your finest sections, please!”

From Lamentations 3:

For men are not cast off by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to the children of men.

Ursula Le Guin: Mother Tongue, Father Tongue

Wednesday I went to Richie’s ENGL 249 “Special Topic: Creating and Destroying Worlds in Children’s Fantasy” lecture on CS Lewis’ life. It was great. The lecturer (who described himself as a ‘pious agnostic’) obviously really likes Lewis. He mentioned something interesting: CSL used to debate and win against all comers at The Socratic Club until he met his match, a Catholic woman who was a follower of Wittgenstein. Lewis, defeated, apparently gave up debating and argument as a means of proving Christianity, and turned to story instead. This is approximately when he started writing the Narnia series.

typoGenerator [via Richard]
New album for Bjork soon

Said Thomas Merton

The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we might prefer to people. Wherever things have become more important than people, we are in trouble. That is the crux of the whole matter.

(in a recent Daily Dig)

Trouble with The Purpose Driven Life

Said Fyodor Dostoevsky:

At some thoughts one stands perplexed—especially at the sight of men’s sin—and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.

Every day and every hour, every minute, walk around yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. If you pass by a little child, and pass by spitefully, with ugly words or wrathful heart, you may not notice the child, but he will see you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You may not know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him, and it may grow, all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself an active, benevolent love.

Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire; it is dearly bought; it is won by slow, long labor. We must love not only occasionally, or for a moment, but for ever. Everyone, even the wicked can love occasionally…

[via dd]

2004 Industrial Design Excellence Award winners
Unusual things from Japan [via Richard]

I can’t find my notebook. This is distressing as approximately 40% of life is in there, my vegetal memory.

Doves song Far From Grace by itself is worth the $24.95 for the Lost Sides b-sides & remixes 2-CD set.

The notebook came back by some anonymous angel’s efforts, huzzah!

I’ve just finished the Archbishop of Canterbury‘s book Lost Icons. It was worthwhile. Quite esoteric language, but perhaps that is necessary when making the kind of sytem-wide critiques of ‘North Atlantic society’ that he does. He concludes the book with the following:

The ‘lost icons’ of this book have been clusters of convention and imagination, images of possible lives or modes of life, possible positions to occupy in a world that is inexorably one of time and loss. But as the discussion has developed, it has hinted more and more at a single, focal area of lost imagination, what I have called the lost soul. And this loss, I’ve suggested is inextricably linked with the loss of what is encoded in actual icons of Christian tradition and usage – the Other who does not compete, with whom I don’t have to and can’t bargain; the Other beyond violence, the regard that will not be evaded or deflected, yet has and seeks no advantage. What has been culturally lost, the sense of being educated into adult choice, the possibility (tantalisingly both political and more political) of social miracle, active appropriation of a common good, the possibility of letting go of a possessed and defended image of the moral self, abstractly free, self-nuturing – all this will remain lost without a recovered confidence in the therapeutic Other, not ‘there’ for examination, for contest, even for simple consolation; so hard to say anything about without risking the corruption of the consolatory voice. But sometimes, whatever the risk, we have to force ourselves to talk, not of consolation but of hope, of what is not or cannot be lost. We can choose death, but we don’t have to. What we are present to is neither created nor extinguished by our will. The iconic eye remains wakeful.

I saw the second half of Troy a couple of weeks ago on pirated DVD. I really liked it. The fight between Achilles and that other guy outside the city walls was choice. I even liked Achilles’ wee speech (“the gods envy us”) to his really pretty girlfriend.

Zen and (neo-) Calvinism
BJ Walsh: Education for Homelessness or Homemaking?
Wes Jackson: The Genius of Place

Suzuki RAN, ’90, 50cc, just had exhaust system cleaned and choke fixed, red, cool ‘retro’ shape. “A real goer”. Offers welcome.

Woot! all food poisioning or whatever it was is gone and I am going to work SO HARD today.

This site, although not on the same deep philosophical level as many of the other links referred to on this blog, is nevertheless good for understanding a few of the Psalms. In fact, for my tired brain it was refreshingly simple.

Zero 7 videos: Somersault, Home, Full concert [QT]

Aaron and I went to Richie’s CS Lewis lecture this afternoon. Today Harry Ricketts focused on The Last Battle. Very stimulating again. I was particularly struck (between the eyes, even) when he read a quotation featuring the stable which is bigger on the inside, and Lucy mentions a stable in our world that once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world. That bit had always seemd a bit trite and obvious to me in the past, but today it hit me that we are living in the Narnia world, everything that’s true in the books is at least as true here. So the books are bigger on the inside too.

You’re probably as excited as I am

Cars with body language [via Psybertron]

“Love for God that does not result in Christian education for Christian children is not love for Him at all”

- Douglas Wilson, The Case For Classical Christian Education

Paul Graham, in Taste for Makers said:

Strangely enough, if you want to make something that will appeal to future generations, one way to do it is to try to appeal to past generations. It’s hard to guess what the future will be like, but we can be sure it will be like the past in caring nothing for present fashions. So if you can make something that appeals to people today and would also have appealed to people in 1500, there is a good chance it will appeal to people in 2500.

[via Psybertron]

1. Perhaps the Parable of the Prodigal Son (which Doug Wilson, and I suppose Kenneth Bailey too, would call the Parable of the Running Father) tell us something about the reason for the Fall. God lets humanity run away from Him for a while so that we can know His love a lot more deeply when we return.
2. Reading Phillipians in church yesterday I came upon this:
   

   Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe…

   which is a beautiful image and is perhaps intended to bring to mind God’s promise to Abraham, that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens. It is possible that this is a false connection though, as the where the NIV has ‘stars in the universe’, the ESV has ‘lights in the world’.

Off to Mt Ruapehu tonight o yeah.

Though it took me almost half the day and a change of rental skis to get in the zone, Turoa with Richard, Sam & Jess was choice. The mountain, morning frost and sunset were very beautiful. Bluebird day. Nice sandwiches from Mrs Steenhof. Amping epic AFI Sing the Sorrow for the way up. A highlight: singing snatches of half-remembered songs in a singularly facetious fashion with Richie on the T-bars.

On the halves debate: One of the principle arguements against the Mehrtens/Marshall combination is the fact that they have never won us a World Cup. Fact: Mehrts and Marshall have never played together in World Cup finals. 87 – they weren’t around. 91 – ditto. 95 – Graeme Bachop was halfback. 99 – Byron Keheller played in the infamous semi-final loss to France. 2003 – Marshall didn’t finish the game after being taken out by George Smith, and Mehrts wasn’t even there.

Discussion on CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters [Real Audio]

After about three years of being 202.0.34.69, with a shiny new cable modem I’m now 203.96.154.125. I was 202.0.34.69 through four different phone number & physical addresses, and two different web and email addresses, and I guess I’d kind of assumed I’d be 202.0.34.69 forever. All flesh is grass, however, and all things must pass.

NTW on The Passion (full interview) [via Aaron]

Kiekergaard: Eulogy on Abraham [via Dan M]

Said Stuart Murdoch of B&S:

I’m thinking about Lewis; about The Screwtape Letters, which I’ve just finished reading again. I’m thinking about the world, but I’m trying to think about God and timelessness. Don’t tell me to shut up! Come on, acknowledge there’s something else going on, embrace a little mystery, be pricked by guilt and plead forgiveness and move on. Wonder what’s going to happen to you when you die. Don’t fear death. Know that all the really good things that people come up with as regards ideas, dreams, stories, pictures, music come straight from heaven. It’s not boring!

That thing I wrote about Lord’s Supper a while ago published again, this time in Faith & Focus, in the bulletin gleanings section.

Translucent concrete [via /.]

Norman Maclean, who wrote A River Runs Through It said:

At sunrise everything is luminous, but not clear. It is often the same with those we live with and love and should know: they elude us. Yet you can love completely without complete understanding.

[via bdd]

I’ve edited my sprawling 13 and a half minute epic into a tight 7:40. I think it’s better for the cut: Dark epic boredom.mp3 [7MB]

John lent me Grant Lee Buffalo’s Mighty Joe Moon. It’s majestic. I really like Fuzzy and Copperopolis, but I think John’s right to say this is their magnum opus. Sounds like music that might have play at night in old National Geographic magazine stories about the hot wide open good rough places in America.

Lyrics: Rock of Ages, Honey Don’t Think

3D online church [Shockwave req'd]

Bruce Waltke, in a lecture about Biblical Theology says that in some church services the climactic moment – the thing that everything leads up to – is the decision, existential leap, conversion or recommitment to Jesus. In other churches the climactic high point of the service is Communion, a gift, sacrifice, grace. That made me wonder if our services have a climactic moment. If they do, I think it is probably the sermon. Which I regularly have to fight to stay awake in (by which I mean no disrespect to the Pastor, you know I have to fight to stay awake at parties too). If our worship service liturgy is important, if it moulds shapes directs our lives, how do you think our Reformed way of doing things shapes us?

Thinking a bit further – we’ve got three strands of worship style here, maybe I could call them Contemporary, Sacramental and Reformed. I’ve experienced all three, though the first two only a dozen or so times each, compared to about 2060 times for the last. Looked at from the outside, as a visitor from space with an interest in anthropology might see it, in contemporary services the most important person is the individual who walks to the front and has all sorts of amazing fireworks going off in her heart. In reformed services, the most important person would at first seem to be the man at front centre on the raised podium. The alien listening for a bit would after a while decide that actually, the most important person was actually God/Jesus, whom everyone present should be holding in their minds. In sacramental services the most important person seems to be some bread and wine, which the congregation is eating and drinking, quite bizzarely.

Another thought sparked by the Waltke lecture: historical criticism seeks to establish a new authoratitive canon defining *what really happened* in competition with the Bible books. And the new canon is of course *at least* as open to deconstruction as the old. Question is, how do we (or an outsider) decide between them? Where do we Christians get the authority to say the old canon is true?

“No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead”

John Stuart Mill

GK Chesterton apparently spent much of his energy in his last few years promoting an alternative to capitalism & socialism called Distributivism. I learned that EF Schumacher is in the same broad movement, which is (for me) an exciting connexion. I aim to find out more about Distributivism.

Communion service @ St Peter’s tonight was rather worthwhile, as it often is. At the end of his talk David gave us a task:

Much of the imagery used in these texts [Isaiah 8:11-15, 28:1-17, 1 Peter 2:1-12, Ephesians 2:19-22, Mark 12:1-12] to describe the church (rock/building stone, temple/house, priesthood/sacrifices, nation/race), are alien to our own way of life. We are called to proclaim the story of God’s mighty redemptive acts. Can you think of any contemporary image(s) or stories indigenous to our own culture(s) that capture the same truths?

Richard D Bartlett is moving into Flat 4b this week, which will be pretty cool, I reckon.

I have recently finished Greg Egan’s sci-fi novel Diaspora, which was recommended to me by Bryan T. I enjoyed it, though felt unsatisfied by the ending. Like Arthur C Clarke’s Rama series, it ends by revealing ‘the meaning of life’, which turns out to be trite and uninspiring. Reading it I realised that I read sci-fi looking for something completely different than what I look for in other novels. In regular fiction I want plot, interesting characters, perhaps a glimpse of a better way for me to live. In sci-fi, I want to marvel, to feel the ‘sense of wonder’, vast worlds of imaginative creation & history independent of our own.

Gmail via pop3 [via RDB]
Photo: On a tree in the Botanical Gardens
Jeremy Begbie interview

MEMORY & MEANING DIE IN MY HEAD,
BUT LIVE IN THE THINGS & PEOPLE
THAT SURROUND ME

Removing road markings [via Psybertron]
Trouble with worldview tests
Fast food for a week [via Deb]

In a videotaped lecture which the Port & Theology group watched last night, Richard Hays drew attention to the way Matthew frames the opening genealogy of his Gospel: Abraham -> Babylonian Exile -> Jesus, called Christ. I’d never noticed that before. It’s important because it sets the scene for what Jesus is going to do – bring the faithful remnant back from exile, fulfill the promise to Abraham (“and in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed”). To me this vindicates a lot of what NT Wright (and Aaron) have said on the topic. This exile and return is stuff is really key to understanding Jesus’ work, it’s not an artificial framework imposed on the text, it’s right there.

Is corporate prayer a chance to give up control of my internal monologue for a while? Also true engagement listening in conversation, or singing with a favourite song.

Stewart Copeland

I am excited that the flatmates have agreed to let me move my computer and desk to the lounge, where are the sun and the warm and the window on the harbour. It’ll be nice to have something to play music on in that room too.

Aucklanders, Meeting Karpovsky is currently showing near you.

Thank God for healthy baby Lucy born yesterday and mum Angela, and I guess it’s quite nice that David is alright too.

Reading old stories, Bible stories frees your imagination from its captivity to the narrow narratives of modern public life.

Says Philippe Bnton in Equality by Default: An Essay on Modernity as Confinement, of which a chapter is included in the most recent edition of The New Pantagruel:

All over the world, in New York, Paris, Istanbul, or Beijing, McDonald’s restaurants welcome you in the same way (automatic smile, guaranteed hygiene, industrial food), whether you are of the left or of the right, Turk or Kurd, Chinese apparatchik or dissident, a child or his grandfather, a policeman or a criminal, a racist or an antiracist. McDonald’s is the missionary of a new humanity, the builder of a new world, in collaboration with all the other businesses set to conquer the world market and sharing this great cause with a view to the greatest profit. This new world is undifferentiated, destined to unify itself on the basis of uniform consumption—an egalitarian world, except of course for the only distinction that matters (money), a world called to achieve unity by the grace of the market. The political problem par excellence, the problem that arises from differences among human beings, is finally about to be resolved: consumers of all lands, unite over a Big Mac!

Such spirituality finds its ground in the abiding reality of goodness, a goodness sourced in a Creator who is present, and who sacramentally draws those who drink of his goodness into a manner of living that more faithfully and wonder-fully reflects our creaturely estate. Because goodness presides and prevails, we gain the courage to pursue another way, defying the common sense of the day with acts that testify to another wisdom, a different vision, a deeper justice: acts as simple as planting a garden, writing a poem, or walking to a church; acts as grand as running for office, starting a grocery store, or having another child. In living our faith in such ways, we place always before us the reminder that the miracle that deserves our deepest respect and allegiance is not what we as a civilization have done with the gift of life, but rather the enormous, mysterious fact of life itself.

[from Realism Against Reality]

Today I have bitten the proverbial bullet with butterfly wings and am working in my sleeping bag.

I got to hold Lucy for ages yesterday which was nice. I was having difficulty working out what the name is for her relationship to me until I found this chart from a helpful website:

therefore:

Wendell Berry: Christianity and the Survival of Creation

I recommend Elbow’s album Asleep in the back. Simon has lent me his copy for a couple of weeks. The lead singer has a distinctive, slightly nasal but pleasing voice. They’re britpop I guess, in the same vein as Ride and the Charlatans. It’s a sonically adventurous album, with unusual rhythms and occasional little wisps of jazz.

Brian McLaren‘s new book A Generous Orthodoxy goes straight to my wishlist.

Trouble with worldview tests, take two
Wendell Berry on the Gulf War
Wendell Berry: The Agrarian Standard

Now this month this website is one year old, as is my paper-journal-keeping habit. It is tres interesting to me to read the entries of a year ago in both and try and remember what I was up to then. Seems I may have been treading water.

Yesterday afternoon I bumped into a guy who asked me for a dollar and then we recognised each other. Almost exactly a year ago Paul’d hitched a ride to Hamilton with me. He was disappointed to hear that I’d got rid of my car.

Psalm 104 chuffs me out, so I did a study on it for our Monday night Bible study group tonight. I want to develop into something to use with the WRC youth group. You can read my notes here if you like: Psalm 104 notes [35k PDF]

This afternoon before lunch with Dad I returned Terenesia – the second Greg Egan book I’ve read – to the library. Like Diaspora, it is full of amazing ideas but tails off towards the end. It feels like the books need some overarching ‘point’ to tie them into a satisfying whole.

The snowflake process for writing a novel [via Psybertron]
Lyrics: Ben Folds: Songs of Love

New Credenda/Agenda: God the Dangerous

Not walking & separation
Beck doco on BBC [audio]

Bedshaped – Keane

Aaron says dressage is more absurd than synchronised swimming and I strongly disagree.

A short story about buying lottery tickets

Have to stop watching TV news. Every event I or anyone I know has been involved in that was televised got completely garbled and completely misrepresented by the time it got to the news. And it’s that simplified filtered and altered version which becomes the raw material (the ‘facts’) of subsequent public discussion.

I have an idea that a network of trusted bloggers might be a solution. I have been fairly unimpressed with Aotearoa Independent Media Centre so far, which seems at least as narrow as the mainstream.

Who can I trust to interpret happenings around here?

Said Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

If we could read
the secret history of our enemies,
we would find in each person’s life
sorrow and suffering enough
to disarm all hostility.

[via DD]

In a newspaper clipping from a friend in the States, Father Anthony Ugolink says:

I am an Eastern Orthodox priest. My church marries only people of different genders.

A few passages in Scripture provide our justification. To find those quotes, you have to sift through thousands of passages which preach a bold advocacy for the poor and the condemnation of the rich who don’t help them out. They’re not often in letters to the editor. Perhaps they look too much like ‘class warfare.’

But Christians can’t be selective in their choice of revelation. God no doubt repeats the messages to which the stubborn are most resistant. It’s easy to amend documents forbidding sins we see in others. It’s harder to spend real money (yes, even tax money) to alleviate human suffering.

So I don’t marry gays. But oddly enough, whether Massachusetts marries gays or not doesn’t cause a stir in my congregation. You see, I have parishioners
without health insurance.

I have retirees whose health benefits have been slashed by former employers whose headquarters have fled abroad. I have working mothers who can’t get their teeth fixed and who can’t find day care. We are praying for one uninsured friend who has a tumor which prevents him from speaking. He has to wheeze through a tracheal tube and beg for chemo-therapy treatments, the cost of which will ruin him and his small business. (The president could have made his ‘small business’ speech from his front porch.)

So what stirs the church to action? Same sex marriage (and lots of campaign money).

What I see growing here in Lancaster County is not Christianity, it’s a cult of civil religion that defiles the church by making it a base for a political party. The cult infects and it corrupts. It feels good to be congratulated for your ‘values,’ especially when you have to do so little to prove them.

I pray the church here will not sell its soul. The Democrats have no monopoly on sin. No party is perfect—especially any party which promises you quick and easy virtue in return for your vote.

Why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry?

I have a Gmail invite to give away.

Integrity and Integration: Loving God with Heart, Mind, Soul and Strength

Doug Wilson on globilisation

Today I discovered a second word that can be its own antonym. (The first is ‘cleave’ – ‘cleave from parents, cleave to wife’.) My one is ‘certain’. As in: ‘there is a certain sense of solidarity between us’. Which could mean either ‘there is undoubtadly, definetly a sense of solidarity between us’ or ‘there is a particular, limited sense of solidarity between us’. It’s a technical call, certainly.

From Le Nouvel Observateur January 14-21, 1998, quoted in Adbusters #53:

Le Nouvel Observateur: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Zbigniew Brzeezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soveit regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was oging to induce a Soviet military intervention.

LNO: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

ZB: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

LNO: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

ZB: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralisation and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

LNO: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

ZB: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Interview with NZ dancer Michael Parmenter

Who coined the phrase, ‘to coin a phrase’?

Album review: Bjork/Medulla
Geography quiz

It was death! It was death!
Now it’s life! Now it’s life!
It was death! It was death!
Now it’s life! Now it’s life.
Behold the man,
the hairy man
who has made
the sun shine!
Up this step,
up that step,
Up this step, then up that step,
Up this step, then up that step,
Into the blazing…
…sun!

[from here]

A year ago I really couldn’t see how the Gospel of St John fit. Since then things are gradually falling into place, helped along quite a bit last night by watching a video of a Richard Hays lecture at Port & Theology at Vic. If I were on the Committee to Recognise the Canon back in the day, I’d vote for John’s book, no troubles. I have an idea the Transfiguration might be the central thing that ties it together. I aim to put some effort into mapping the book’s metaphors over the next little while. I’ll try and record my progress here.

I made word frequency table for the Gospel of John, based on the ESV. I think this may alert me to themes in the book that I might otherwise be blind to. I’ve trimmed out the unhelpful words – i.e. the, Jesus, will, around, etc., and collapsed similar words into one – i.e. talk, speak, spoke, tell, say all become spoke. See the results here as a GIF.

Church & business

Wikipedia is apparently growing by about 185 words a minute [source]. There is a bit of a debate happening at the moment about how authoritative it is.

US/Iraq war by the numbers [via Junior]

The bible the big story the question the big question arching over the question set up is how can we how can Adam humans get back to the garden back to God’s presence back to walking with God back home from exile. There is a gap in me and then israel in egypt in the exodus the tabernacle with the flowers and trees carved and the cherubim guarding and the temple in israel one man once a year back inside on very limited parole kings told not to enter no kings back in the garden and the exile again and again, far away even from the sketchy symbolic garden home babylon and even the symbol smashed and a corrupt replacement put in there instead. But then Jesus comes and says ‘come home’ and he is the garden and home and walking with God and the seed is planted dies rises and grows a tree with healing leaves to fill the earth.

O and death is exile Proper and there is Home to come to from there too, Jesus first.

Ben Hoyt recently wrote a short piece [60k PDF] for the Wairarapa Times Age in response to a vitriolic column by one Hugh Barlow. Of course, Abigail did write her letter without parental assistance.

I went to the Ernst Plischke: Architect exhibition at the City Gallery yesterday afternoon and saw lots of photos and architectural drawings of very ugly, very square houses and buildings.

Mike King art
Deborah on studying Australian history

Upon the recommendation of Deborah and Madras I am reading William Dalrymple’s book From the Holy Mountain. Christianity Today has a very good review of it.

A couple of years ago a friend Tim McKenzie wrote a letter describing a model for Christian ministry in a New Zealand university environment. You can download it here [45k PDF]. If I could articulate an analogous vision for our own church, I’d be tres happy.

Who thinks they’re not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she’s open-minded. Hasn’t she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they’ll say the same thing: they’re pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong. (Some tribes may avoid “wrong” as judgemental, and may instead use a more neutral sounding euphemism like “negative” or “destructive”.)

When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don’t know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite. Remember, it’s the nature of fashion to be invisible. It wouldn’t work otherwise. Fashion doesn’t seem like fashion to someone in the grip of it. It just seems like the right thing to do. It’s only by looking from a distance that we see oscillations in people’s idea of the right thing to do, and can identify them as fashions.

[from Paul Graham's essay What You Can't Say]

You might also enjoy his list of idea-supressing labels.

Paul Graham: The Age of the Essay [via /.]
Poem by Jonathan Marinus: My Sweetness
Mark Twain: Corn-pone Opinions
Home-made Segway
Paul Graham: Great Programmers

Scrubs! Scrubs! Scrubs!

O and then I’m like today I gave blood at St Johns and it was nice and the nurses were very efficient and I had vomited recently but seeing as it was alcohol-induced it was OK but they still made a note on the chart, but it was good to lie back and see the steeple through the narrow window and everyone genially benevolent you’re all right you’re all right too and some crackers and cheese and a gem a crystalised gem of the treasures of the West.

Poor American voters having to choose between Bush & Kerry.

Dick Hubbard for mayor of Auckland.

Tim O’Brien for mayor of Wellington.

I really like Wellington City Council, but I’m told that the Absolutely Creatively Wellington thing is only empty marketing. I.e. new council money is not going to artists writers photographers galleries etc but instead is going to pushing the *image* of Wellington as a really creative place.

Stuart of B&S: One tone lullaby
Story, narrative, business [via Psybertron]

Just like last year, it took me most of the day to realise it was September 11.

Tonight, inspired by Paul Graham, I started to learn LISP. I found an open source implementation that works on Windows at sourceforge, and a nice tutorial. I hope to be able to write some software to help me analyse the text of John’s Gospel.

Paul Graham: Design and Research

TIME AND HISTORY ARE MORE
LIKE A FLOWER BLOOMING
THAN A TRAIN ON ITS TRACK
OR A WHEEL ON ITS AXLE

Metafilter thread from 11/09/01

Further to this, the kingdom of heaven is like…

…plants in cracks in an abandoned lot
…open source software
…the NZ Blood Service

(do add your own)

Jonathan Vandenberg (Angela’s brother, my second cousin) has recently written a rather worthwhile paper on youth ministry which you can download here [130k PDF]. It will be published in the Reformed Ecumenical Council’s journal Focus shortly.

NYT on the dualism battle [via Dan M]

Kunstler:

Both candidates seem to be telling the public that if only we take care of this terror thing, then everybody from sea to shining sea can just kick back and enjoy the scenery on cruise control.

Said Henri J.M. Nouwen:

Our lives as we live them seem like lives that anticipate questions that never will be asked. It seems as if we are getting ourselves ready for the question “How much did you earn during your lifetime?” or “How many friends did you make?” or “How much progress did you make in your career?” or “How much influence did you have on people?” or “How many conversions did you make?”

Were any of these to be the question Christ will ask when he comes again in glory, many of us could approach the judgment day with great confidence. But nobody is going to hear any of these questions. The question we all are going to face is the question we are least prepared for. It is: “What have you done for the least of mine?” As long as there are strangers; hungry, naked, and sick people; prisoners, refugees, and slaves; people who are handicapped physically, mentally, or emotionally; people without work, a home, or a piece of land, there will be that haunting question from the throne of judgment: “What have you done for the least of mine?”

[via dd]

Stanley Grenz: Homosexuals and the Church

Beatboxing from Bjork’s new album [streaming QT, via RDB]

A combined Reformed Church rugby team will be tackling (excuse the pun/cliche) a team from The Street this Saturday (25 September) at 12:30pm at Evans Bay Park. Come one, come all! Scream, shout, or nervously chew your nails as these two denominations battle it out for the title of Top Denomination in Wellington (well, not really…in fact I think The Street is non-denominational). Inter Reformed Church quarrels will be laid aside. Rugby will act as the glue of love that binds our churches together. Players from Wellington will reach between the legs of Silverstream members in a scrum of unity. South African shorts will be lovingly grasped by Dutch hands. Canadians will also take part in some sort of powerful metaphor. Various other forms of symbolism will be bandied about. Bring a handkerchief folks, this one’s gonna be a tear jerker.

Warmest regards,
Captain T J Sterne

Dr Paul Ford wrote:

I believe in the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea who has put within time the Deep Magic, and, before all time, the Deeper Magic.

I believe in his Son Aslan who sang into being all the worlds and all that they contain: Talking Beasts and humans, dumb animals and shining spirits. And I believe that Aslan was a true beast, the king of beasts, a Lion; that for Edmund, a traitor because of his desire for Turkish Delight, he gave himself” into the power of the White Witch, who satisfied the requirements of the Deep Magic by killing him most horribly. At the dawn following that darkest, coldest night, he was restored to full life by the Deeper Magic, cracking the Stone Table and, from that moment, setting death to work backwards. He exulted in his new life and went off to rescue all those who had been turned into stone by the Witch’s want and to deliver the whole land from everlasting winter. He will be behind all the stories of our lives; and, when it is time, he will appear again in our world to wind it up, calling all of his creatures whose hearts’ desire it is to live “farther in and farther up” in his country which contains all real countries.

I believe that upon us all falls the breath of Aslan and that ours are the sweet waters of the Last Sea which enable us to look steadily at the sun. I believe that all who have thrilled or will thrill at the sound of Aslan’s name are now our fellow voyagers and our fellow kings and queens; that all of us can be for ever free of our dragonish thoughts and actions; and that one day we will pass through the door of death into “Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on for ever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

[quoted in his lecture on the theology of Narnia (RA video)]

Stop Motion Studies [via Deb]
Chris Gousmett: Faith in the unseen [40k PDF]
Chapter One of Steve Chalke’s The Lost Message of Jesus [90k PDF]

Saturday 16 October the Wellington Institute of Theology is holding a symposium ‘Approaching the Bible’. Tim McKenzie (who wrote that letter I posted a little while back) is one of the speakers. The topics look really interesting: “The idea of revelation in a post-modern culture: The revelatory role of story & the history of God as one who reveals”, “Scripture in Christianity and Islam: a comparative study of the role of sacred scripture, tradition, and the principles of interpretation” and “Fundamentalism: the word and the phenomenon”. Download the full programme [50k PDF] if you like.

No song in all the world is so suited to interpretive dance as Parabola by Tool.

Fractal gallery [via Ian G]

Pacifier are Shihad again
Piano poem by Stuart

Said Vincent van Gogh:

Because I see so many weak souls trampled underfoot, I am reluctant to believe in the truth of much that is called progress and education. I do believe in education, but only in the kind that is based on a genuine love of humankind.

[via dd]