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Hot tip: In Adobe Acrobat Pro 7, I was getting the error message “You do not have permission to write to this file” when enabling commenting in Acrobat Reader. The solution was to rename the original file, removing all punctuation.
Koinonia Fund is an ethically-invested Kiwisaver fund for Christians
Daniel McClelland is playing Friday after next at Sub Nine
Well, I didn’t write any letters yesterday, but I did visit ANZ Lambton Quay today, and I brought along a printout of the Greens’ petition. I said I was considering following the Greens’ advice and quitting ANZ unless they quit investment in evil logging companies. The receptionist didn’t appear at first to have heard about the issue, but when I explained further said “we’ve been told that ANZ don’t have anything to do with them”, but that she didn’t know anything more than that. I asked her if there was anyone around who did know and she went away for ten minutes but couldn’t find anyone. I’m not sure what she was doing for the ten minutes, but I’d like to think that this is at least now on the radar of a bunch of people down there. Someone is going to give me a ring “to answer any further queries you may have”. So that’s nice.
CouchSurfing.com
“Discipleship as craft, church as disciplined community” by Stanley Hauerwas
Jonathan Boston showed us this more or less terrifying image during his presentation on Saturday. The white area is the extent of sea ice over the Arctic as at Tuesday last week. The pink line shows where the ice usually is at at this time of year (or more accurately, the median extent for Augusts from 1979–2000):
A poster I designed, in collaboration with Kathy, Esha and Erin:
EVENT: Jesus wants you to register for the Next Wave conference this Fri/Sat
Greens protest ANZ (my bank) over its support of rainforest logging
Consider pledging to close accounts with ANZ & National if they don’t quit it
Says Stanley Hauerwas in a recent podcast:
If you want to understand the Scripture, go find your worst enemy, and try and figure out what it would meant to forgive them. then you will be in a position to start reading the New Testament. You won’t get it from ‘the text’, you’ve got to be part of a community of forgiveness to even know what it would mean to understand this text as Scripture.
RDB take plenty good photo
Said Justin Martyr (100–165):
[The demons] struggle to have you as their slaves and servants … they get hold of all who do not struggle to their utmost for their own salvation—as we do who, after being persuaded by the Word, renounced them. Specifically in the baptismal renunciation of the devil and all his works. and now follow the only unbegotten God through his Son. Those who once rejoiced in fornication now delight in continence alone; those who made use of magic arts have dedicated themselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who once took most pleasure in the means of increasing our wealth and property now bring what we have into a common fund and share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another and would not associate with men of different tribes because of [their different] customs, now after the manifestation of Christ live together and pray for our enemies and try to persuade those who unjustly hate us, so that they, living according to the fair commands of Christ, may share with us the good hope of receiving the same things … The teachings of Christ were short and concise, for he was no sophist, but his word was the power of God. [via tSJCotACiANZaP]
2nd-century rabbinic riff on creation feat. speaking letters (“The light of the first day was of a sort that would have enabled man to see the world at a glance from one end to the other … It takes five hundred years to walk from the earth to the heavens. … There are also five different kinds of fire in hell.”)
Wes Jackson talks about the sins of agriculture
Interview with pin-up legend Bettie Page [via K]
Lately my non-religious friends are getting more apocalyptic than my religious ones.
From Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue [via], by which I make sense of my life:
In what does the unity of an individual life consist? The answer is that its unity is the unity of a narrative embodied in a single life. To ask ‘What is the good for me?’ is to ask how best I might live out that unity and bring it to completion. To ask ‘What is the good for man?’ is to ask what all answers to the former question must have in common. But now it is important to emphasize that it is the systematic asking of these two questions and the attempt to answer them in deed as well as in word which provide the moral life with its unity. The unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest. Quests sometimes fail, are frustrated, abandoned or dissipated into distractions; and human lives may in all these ways also fail. But the only criteria for success or failure in a human life as a whole are the criteria of success or failure in a narrated or to-be-narrated quest … A quest is always an education both as to the character of that which is sought and in self-knowledge.
It is making decisions with insufficient data and trying not to flee the results.
goodworks.co.nz: “find a job with a purpose”
Listen to Karl Barth on the powers, freedom, Judaism, etc., etc.