matthew henry john bartlett

David Koyzis on Christians in politics in North America
Buddhism moving with the times

The death of environmentalism, Orion-style

Joel W on the LDS scriptures: 1, 2, 3, 4
Chesterton and RF Capon on motherhood
Paul Graham on open source business

Stephen Batchelor on secular, agnostic Buddhism

RDB & MHJB do decree:
If you are in a no-car household you will get free local bus usage from now on.

Lyrics: ‘Penetration’ by Pedro the Lion

I read Stephen Batchelor’s account of his meeting with the 14th Dalai Lama and I’m sad and I think “a lost man in a lost world.” And there’s no group I know of that I’d exclude from membership in the lost world. There are I suppose glittery gems here and there. Part of me wants to say that’s OK, we can retreat from these troublesome groups and all just try and be the glitteriest gems we can be, but I feel that in giving up group identities we might be participating in the troublesomeness by ceding political power to anyone in a machiavellian mood.

Well, that is Matthew #2. Matthew #1 is still optimistic & cheerful & wishes to recruit workers for his infinitely helpful army bringing incremental improvement to every hurting sphere of existence. Sign up now!

Faith, Hutus and Tutsis
Shooting an Elephant, by George Orwell [via reddit]
WIT elections forum – 29/08/05 [90KB PDF]

The kingdom of heaven is like the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.

…o y’know, it’s a wellspring (like Te Puna Karaiti). It’s a safe place in there. Special care in one particular place with benefits overflowing to the surrounds. Where I live in Brooklyn we’re like one or two hundred metres away from the fence. I guess the tui who hang around here daytimes go home there to sleep at night. It’s also a picture of way things ought to be, could be everywhere. I think it’s a flawed picture – humans there are visitors, not natives, we go home at night, but maybe that’s something addressed further down the track in the 500-year plan. This is a bit of a stretch, but like Micah 4, it’s also somewhere people make pilgrimage to, to learn how to live aright.

Says James Skillen (in Public Justice & True Tolerance):

…the biblical view of justice for every earthly creature will mean instead that Christians will work politically for the achievement of governmental policies that will protect, encourage, and open up life for every person and community of people, whatever their religious confession; it is a community of public legal care for all people which must not favour or persecute any particular group or society.

[quoted in A Reformed Christian Perspective on Global Justice and Political Economy by Fred Van Geest, 1.8MB PDF]

Russell Brown gets David Lange’s nuclear weapons speech online

I’m voting Green.

Fighting Protestantism [via Gideon]
Jürgen Moltmann intro
Principled pluralism, discussion

Eating with full pleasure
Why oil is 100% more expensive than a year ago

Aaron’s voting National/Act/United Future

LAUGH OUT LOUD BEAUTIFUL

Matthew’s second sermon: the gift of love [70KB PDF]

Accessible discussion evenings on postmodernism start Thursday week
Thoreau: Life without principle [via w-berry list]

The Graphing Calculator story [via SvN]
Lyrics: ‘Options’ by Pedro the Lion

I vote A Perfect Circle’s version of ‘Imagine’ Best Remix Ever.