Matthew Henry John Bartlett

I’m listening to Beck’s new album Guero for the first time just now. My first reaction is “O no, he’s back to being funny again.”

Peter Leithart’s translation of 1 Kings 21

Thomas Storck on the 60s

Telford Work speech to university candidates
The education & Catholic conversion of EF Schumacher
Daniel Nichols: The Wounded Tree
Lyrics: Nina Simone/Mississippi Goddam

I am trying to learn Russian by translating Anna Karenina. I have the cyrillic alphabet almost internalised. I came across the word ????????? which transliterated is ekonomkoy. It means housekeeper, which reminds me of Wendell Berry’s idea of the economy as we normally talk about it being an extension of families’ household economies.

In Jesus and the Victory of God, NT Wright says:

As a prophet, Jesus staked his reputation on his prediction of the temple’s fall within a generation; if and when it fell, he would thereby be vindicated. As the kingdom-bearer, he had constantly been acting … In a way which invited the conclusion that he thought he had the right to do and be what the temple was and did, thereby implicitly making the temple redundant. The story he had been telling, and by which he had ordered his life, demanded a particular ending. If, then, the temple remained for ever, and his movement fizzled out (as Gamaliel thought it might), he would be shown to have been a charlatan, a false prophet, maybe even a blasphemer.
   But if the temple was to be destroyed and the sacrifices stopped; if the pagan hordes were to tear it down stone by stone; and if his followers did escape from the conflagration unharmed, in a re-enactment of Israel’s escape from their exile in doomed Babylon-why, then he would be vindicated, not only as a prophet, but as Israel’s representative, as (in some sense) the “son of man”.

I spent this morning with my Substance compatriots walking the new stations of the cross. There was silence about. In the selections from the Gospel of St Mark I found evil, weakness, weakness sliding into evil, mob evil, evil for hire. It was a lot to carry. I was moving too slowly early on to spend any time in front of the empty tomb at the end. Perhaps if I had I would have a better idea of what difference it makes.

The development of magazine cover lines
The decline of magazine cover design [both via Ben]
Russell Brown vs David Cohen on Destiny Church in the media

Islam past and present

I am off, with David and Joel, to Auckland for Sybrand & Karina’s wedding. We’re driving up in David & Angela’s Humber, and I think it is going to be a very good trip. I’m very much looking forward to staying at the Flinns’.

Happy birthday Isis Jasmine.

Bell-bottoms [via Sam E]

Yesterday evening at Substance we read Psalm 15 together. The line about not lending money at interest struck me. I wonder how all the Christian and Jewish bankers have got around that.