June 2004

I had a bizarre experience on the school trip today. We visited the village of Port Eynon. The weather wasn’t fit to start the day on the beach, so we spent the morning doing a geography project, walking round the village looking for various things. Nothing complicated, you understand. We are talking about 7 year [...]

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C.S. Lewis wrote, in The Problem of Pain, “On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgment must differ from ours on many things, and not the least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us [...]

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I detect a certain malaise in blogdom. People getting tired, taking breaks. Feeling disillusioned.
And in the middle of all that, I disappear for 2 days. My 3 regular readers might wonder if I’ve fallen victim to “bloggers’ wrist”, or whatever this present malady is. But rest assured! All is well here as far as blogging [...]

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I took my daughters to see Shrek 2 this afternoon. Lovely!
And I thought that Thunderbirds, The Invincibles and Spiderman 2 looked like they’ll be worth seeing too, if the trailers are anything to go by. Looks like I need to increase the “entertainment” budget.

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Once again, I’m just thinking aloud…
We take it for granted that the culture we grow up in sets our most basic beliefs patterns of thought. Not irrevocably, of course. But that our culture gives us our world view seems to me to be a given. Is anyone arguing?
Good.
I’ve been wondering if there is a deeper [...]

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GOD of all power, and truth, and grace,
Which shall from age to age endure,
Whose word, when heaven and earth shall pass,
Remains and stands for ever sure;
That I thy mercy may proclaim,
That all mankind thy truth may see,
Hallow thy great and glorious name,
And perfect holiness in me.
Thy sanctifying Spirit pour,
To quench my thirst, and make me [...]

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Steve Tomkins does his best to send up the Harry Potter leads people into witchcraft crowd, but as he says, when a group is so determined to parody themselves, what’s a satirist supposed to do?

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Ian’s Messy Desk asks
“What if the Hokey Pokey is really what it’s all about?”
Blasphemer! Everyone knows that it’s the hokey cokey that it’s all about.

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Our good friend Wood sent me this strange story of the ‘coronation’ of Sun Myung Moon on Capitol Hill. He asks “What ON EARTH is going on here?”
And I have no answer.
Does anyone?

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According to the BBC, the Archbishop of Canterbury is backing a new translation of the Bible:
The book, entitled “Good as New”, is aimed at refreshing the language and themes of the Bible for modern readers.
In the new version, St Paul’s advice that men and women should marry is replaced with they should have a [...]

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I watched a tv documentary last night about the prospects for face transplants. Surgeons in Louisville, Kentucky are expected to be the first team in the world to perform the procedure (though they’ve competition from surgeons in London and Paris). I have to admit, it made me squirm. Something about the idea just gives me [...]

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I’ve been messing about with rss feeds and javascript. Thanks to Feed2JS. Fun for children of all ages!

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When I was in the scouts in the mid-1970’s we went on camp, as scout troops do. This particular summer, we’d more or less finished pitching our tents when we discovered that the troop nearest to us on the camping ground was German. There was a real “edge” to that. Though Britain was in the [...]

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The Faithful Skeptic quotes Stanley Hauerwas
To try to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy is absolutely crazy. Islam has no understanding of the separation between church and state because they don’t understand Islam to be a church. The very idea that you could have separation between mosque and state from Islam’s perspective is the [...]

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The Science Museum has a worthwhile online exhibition, Climate Change: the Burning Issue. It’s in bite-sized chunks rather than extended analysis, but none the worse for that. One quote will suffice
The world’s biggest polluter is the United States. It produces 20.4 tons of carbon dioxide per person, per year. In the UK we release 9.5 [...]

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I’ve just “upgraded” to a newer version of WordPress, and for a while there it wouldn’t let me log-in. It seems to be working now, but only after I deleted the cookies from my computer. And i seem to have lost my cheery orange colour scheme by accident. But I have it safe, and can [...]

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Matthew 25:40 asks Please, take just a moment to pray “for these young people and their leaders who will very soon be doing a mission project. This coming weekend they will be traveling to an impoverished Native American (US) reservation where they will be doing important work for the folks there.”
So you know what to [...]

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via blogs4God I came across this version of “Arminian Grace”, a re-write of the popular hymn as it would be “if it was sung by an Arminianist”. The first verse will give you the flavour
Arminian grace! How strange the sound
Salvation hinged on ME
I once was lost then turned around
Was blind then chose to see
I’m sure [...]

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If you’ve a few minutes, have a read of this article I’ve submitted to h2g2 about The Rochdale Pioneers. I’d be glad of any feedback.

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