matthew henry john bartlett

This has been my week of wheat. I thought it might be a good idea to try it out again just to make sure I haven’t been fooling myself. I’ve had foccacia, croissants, pasta, noodles, Weetbix, ficelle, hot chocolate roll, apple turnover, olive cheese & spinach roll, and (the crowning glory) a steak & cheese pie in the rain while waiting for a bus. But, I have one to two fewer hours of wakefulness every day, and I get up every morning with what feels like a hangover, so it’s back to No Wheat Land for me. Thanks for listening.

That we now find ourselves required to discuss and investigate care specifically, and can no longer get by simply speaking of the more general prophetic call, can only mean that care (And thus also Christianity) has already become something other than what it should be. This is why we should try very hard not to talk of care, or at least not care in and of itself.
   Whew! Let me try to unpack all this a little better with an example. A friend of imine who is Maori recently noted that many pakeha Christians now seem constantly to talk about community, whereas Maori rarely do. Without wanting to take this too far, it would seem that for many Maori community is pretty much self-evident, or presumed, and thus doesn’t require much discussion. In contrast, for most pakeha Christians community is talked about constantly, but is rarely actually apparent. This act of speaking about community, then, this invocation of the latent promise within language, is an attempt to speak into being something that is absent. Language here becomes an attempt to come to terms with something that remains elusive, remain difficult even to conceptualise and formulate. Given all this it might be useful to consider the amount we must speak as a measure of how we we are actually doing, or, more precisely, the extent to which we have actually internalised the spoken, whether it be community or care. When we need to discuss something specificaly, in order to try and bring it into being, then there is an acknowledgment of its absence. Moreover, the act of speaking of something also puts it forward as only an option. So long as we speak specifically about community or care, soa s to bring them into being, we also acknowledge the absence, and therefore their contingent or optional character …

[from Mike Mawson's article "Why I try not to care (and I don't want to talk about it)” in the August 2003 edition of Stimulus]

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If you’re going to get Chuck Taylors anyway, why not get No Sweat brand sneakers from Trade Aid? I got some for $80 this afternoon and they’re swell (and they don’t appear to be soaked in blood or tears like my other shoes).

Carl Jung said

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throught the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul.

[via Idiolect]

RIP, Karol Joseph Wojtyla
Peter Enns on the Apostles’ hermenutic [via Wrightsaid]

In my world, Christianity is a benign conspiracy plotting good behind the world’s back.

Interview with the director of a film on St Paul

Peter Leithart’s translation of 1 Kings 22
Brian McLaren on Jesus the sage [RA stream]
Dallas Willard: Jesus the Logician

LBR personals [via Deb]
Understanding Wendell Berry [60K PDF]

I came across a quote today which might interest those of you who participated in the recent discussion on interest and lending. It’s from Muhammad Yunus’ book Banker to the poor, which one of you fine humans bought me for my birthday last year.

Many Islamic scholars have told us that the Shariah ban on the charging of interest cannot apply to Grameen, since the Grameen borrower is also an owner of the bank. The purpose of the religious injuction against interest it to protect the poor from usury, but where the poor own their own bank, the interest is in effect paid to the company they own, and therefore to themselves.

I recommend the book. It is inspiring. Muhammad Yunus appears to be someone who knows how to get things done, and I like the things he chooses to get done.

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi’s and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

I have not padded through the Taj Mahal,
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But I

skimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stone’s inertia
spend itself against the water; then sink.

I have not toyed with a parachute cord
while perched on the lip of a light-aircraft;
but I held the wobbly head of a boy
at the day centre, and stroked his fat hands.

And I guess that the tightness in the throat
and the tiny cascading sensation
somewhere inside us are both part of that
sense of something else. That feeling, I mean.

[via Idiolect]

I was sad yesterday early on because I broke the email at work and it took hours to fix and even when it was fixed it was still half broke and it was in my mind underneath all day or pressing down in the way but then I walked up to Kelburn and helped out at Newswatch and the lady from China and the man from Indonesia and the girl from Japan were happy to see me and I was happy to see them though sometimes I still speak too fast & mumbly for even Mum to understand.

Brian Stableford: An Introduction to Place in Literature

Icons by Daniel Nichols

The one-room (+ bathroom/laundry) flat next to our house is vacant at the moment. It’s tidy, with harbour views and a deck. Rent is $150/week. If you’d like to live next to Bartletts, give me a yell before Wednesday.

JH Kunstler on Tom Wolfe
JHK’s memoir, 1972-73

Recent talk about the coming world oil production peak makes me think that perhaps for those nations like ours whose way of life is largely dependant on oil the axe is already at the root of the tree.

I’ve recently finished Ngati Toa School’s website.

Adobe acquires Macromedia [via Antipixel]
Wellington inner-city bypass simulation video [11MB AVI]

Where did Turkey get it’s name? Did Ataturk give it, or borrow it? What’s the connection (if any) with Turkmenistan?

Dooyeweerd’s theory of entities
Nick Cave on the Gospel of St Mark [via Deb]

In A Generous Orthodoxy, which my friend Fred lent me, Brian McLaren said:

Some people I know once found a snapping turtle crossing the road in New Jersey. Snapping turtles are normally ugly: gray, often sporting a slimy coating of green algae, trailing a long, serrated, gator-like tail and fronted by massive and sharp jaws that can damage if not sever a careless finger or two. This turtle was uglier than most: it was grossly deformed due to a plastic bottle top, a ring about an inch and a half in diameter that it had accidentally acquired as a hatchling when it, too, was about an inch and a half in diameter. The ring had fit around its midsection like a belt back then, but now, nearly a foot long, weighing about nine pounds, the animal was corseted by the ring so it looked like a figure eight.
   My friends realised that if they left the turtle in its current state, it would die. The deformity was survivable at nine pounds, but a full-grown snapper can weigh 30. At that size the constriction would not be survivable. So, they snipped the ring. And nothing happened. Nothing.
   Except for one thing: at that moment the turtle had a future. It was rescued. It was saved. It would take years for the animal to grow into more normal proportions, maybe decades. Perhaps even in old age it would still be somewhat guitar-shaped. But it would survive.
   A ring of selfishness, greed, lust, injustice, fear, prejudice, arrogance, apathy, chauvinism, and ignorance has similarly deformed our species. When I say that Jesus is Saviour, I believe he snipped the ring by judging, forgiving, suffering, dying, rising and more. And he’s still working to restore us, to lead us, to heal us. Jesus is still in the process of saving us. Because I have confidence in Jesus as Saviour, I’m seeking to be part of his ongoing saving work, sharing his saving love for our world.

Kuyper is quoted in Lew Daly’s article on Bush, Kuyper and faith-based initiatives as saying:

Whenever one uses the phrase ‘social question’, one recognizes, in the most general sense, that serious doubt has arisen about the soundness of the social structure in which we live. One thereby acknowledges that public opinion is at war over the foundation on which a more appropriate—and therefore more livable—social order may be built. Merely to raise the question in no way implies that it has to be answered in a socialistic manner. The solution one reaches can be of a totally different kind. Only one thing is necessary if the social question is to exist for you: you must realize the untenability of the present state of affairs, and you must account for this untenability not by incidental causes but by a fault in the very foundation of our society’s organization. If you do not acknowledge this and think that social evil can be exorcised through an increase in piety, or through friendlier treatment or more generous charity, then you may believe we face a religious question or possibly a philanthropic question, but you will not recognize the social question. This question does not exist for you until you exercise an architectonic critique of human society, which leads to the desire for a different arrangement of the social order.

[via Thinknet]