Barefoot in the wilderness
in search of understanding

Breaking the limit

I’ve just checked the latest stats for this blog and I’ve had over 1000 visits (and over 1600 separate page views) in the month of June. That’s the first time I’ve broken the 1000-visitor barrier! So, after 6 months or so of blogging, I’m feeling quite happy about the blog ATM

Many thanks to all who’ve contributed to this great achievement by visiting me here. If there’s anything you’d like me to write about, let me know; if there’s anything you’d rather I shut up about, let me know that, too

pax et bonum

Googlism

Googlism is a nifty and fun little tool that will quickly do basic research on your name (or other things) and tell you what “the internet” thinks of you. For example, when I typed my name into it, I got:

john pettigrew is 29 and married
john pettigrew is always great at this real
john pettigrew is the horn master rosp@overflow
john pettigrew is another able director in the firm
john pettigrew is recorded as having been paid for both duty as horseman and foot soldier

The first result is probably me (from a while ago, naturally )

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Blogging survey

I’ve just taken part in a survey from MIT about blogging habits. They’d like lots of people to take part, so give it a go.

pax et bonum

A free society?

NO2ID quotes the Telegraph, which cuts to the chase of the ID debate – that the ID card offers no real benefits (every single reason put forward by the Government has been extensively debunked) but will fundamentally change the relationship between the state and its subjects in the UK.

There’s also a mention of the Bill on The Register, which deals with the more mundane questions of cost. Needless to say, the Government’s estimate (which has no public evidence supporting it) is far below even the lowest estimate that the London School of Economics could make. Far from £93 per head, the LSE estimates a lowest cost of £170 per head and a median cost of £230. The high end of their estimate is towards £300.

For a scheme with no clear objective (certainly no fixed objective), that’s two very high costs to pay.

pax et bonum

Music business

Interesting article on The Register about music piracy. In this instance, they’re actually talking about physical piracy – illicit CDs, copied en masse. After the analysis, the piece ends with this paragraph.

Kennedy said that the extent of piracy in Africa means that “there’s now no legal [music] business outside of South Africa, because there’s no investment.” This will come as news to all the African-based artists such as those in Abuja (where the venerable Today programme taped a segment in a nightclub for its Africa day on May 25th). What the IFPI means, of course, is that there’s no record business for its members in those countries – just people making music and enjoying it, because their audience can’t afford CDs. Or indeed CD players.

Which is surely the central issue – is the “music” business about making money from selling recordings, or is it about making and propagating music? For most people, I suspect that it ought to be the latter. It should be more “music” and less “business”.

pax et bonum

Drawings

I don’t do the proud-parent thing often on this blog, but sometimes I have to

Adam is 3 years and 4 months old, and he loves drawing. This morning, he did a picture of me and a fish.

And a picture of Anne when she was pregnant with Ruth (Adam’s description was “That’s Mummy with Ruth in her tummy!”).

pax et bonum

More home food

It’s not just black pudding around here – with the weather as hot as it is, slaving over a hot stove isn’t top of my list of things to do, however necessary it is. Anne, however, had a much better idea. She’s making elderflower champagne – a sweet infusion of elderflowers that you brew for a while. It ends up very refreshing and slightly fizzy. An excellent summer drink that we’ve missed a lot over the past few years (when we’ve not got round to making any!).

We’ve also dug up the first of this year’s new potatoes. The fennel and chard are going great guns. The broad beans aren’t as good as we’d hoped and the pea plants are still pathetically small. The runner beans have started coming up, though (we were stupidly late planting them :( ), though, and the squashes (courgettes, butternut squashes and cucumbers) seem to be doing well. Our first tomatoes should only be a couple of weeks away, and the sweet peppers are in their growbag.

Summer is a coming in!

pax et bonum

More black pudding

Having finished the last of our gluten-free black pudding a while ago, we were hankering after more. And today we made some. We varied the recipe slightly this time, using brown rice instead of white and brown rice flour instead of rice flakes, and they are slightly better than before – less light tasting, a bit more of the proper bulk. The other big changes this time were to use only 1 litre of blood rather than 2 litres (the original recipe) and to make the whole lot as blood cakes (baked in the oven) rather than proper black puddings (boiled in skins) because it’s just easier that way – boiling all the puddings takes quite a while, let alone the hassle of filling the skins! I’ve had various requests for the recipe I used last time, so I thought I should share it for anyone who’s interested!

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Book time

For my last birthday (in October) I was given a book token by my parents in law, and it took my until a few weeks ago to manage to spend it (Amazon won’t take them so I have to actually go to the bookshops in town with some idea what I want and find it in stock!). I stocked up on a mixture of books – some by authors I’d read before, others by authors I’ve heard of but not read. The first two of these I’ve now finished – The Martian Race by Gregory Benford and Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo (edit: this book seems to have been retitled Unto Leviathan for some odd reason).

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Lawns and houses

Last Thursday, I was helping a friend move house. E has just finished training to be a priest in the Church of England and he’s getting ordained as a deacon next weekend (that’s kind of like a final training time – you can do some priestly stuff but not everything, and you get to be curate, which is an assistant to a vicar). So, he was moving out of college and into a ludicrously large house (for one person) in the wilds of Cambridgeshire. Amidst a pile of boxes, we scrabbled to find televisions, computers and the all-important cables to connect everything up. Fortunately, only one thing seemed to get broken (his dining table…). The house itself is nice, although the decoration is slightly odd (one bedroom was bright green, pink and blue!), with a small garden, complete with old Bristol sink. Next thing is to get myself off to Ely cathedral this Saturday afternoon for the ordination service!

Saturday morning, I was mowing our lawn, because Anne had invited friends from the BabyCentre boards over for the day. Our lawn being long and the weather warm, we thought mowing was a good idea. Sadly, after only 5 feet, the mower gave up the ghost, so I had to dash into town and buy a new mower (thank you Argos for stocking cheap and, yes, nasty lawn mowers) before picking up said friends from the railway station. Quite a nice day, except for the ridiculous heat this weekend has given us.

Still, at least we caught the last episode of the new Dr Who series – we forgot to record it on Saturday (clashes with children’s bathtime) but remembered to record it on Sunday. Thank goodness for BBC3! I thought it was good. As long as you remember that it’s primarily children’s TV and don’t expect too much depth in the plots, it’s been an excellent series. Billy Piper (who plays Rose) has been a revelation, if you remember her teeny-bopper days a few years ago. It’s a shame to bid farewell to Christopher Eccleston after only one series, but that episode did show that the departure wasn’t quite as unexpected as the media made out – they had time to write it into this episode as a fairly crucial part of its structure. A shame also to bid farewell (apparently) to the Daleks, although never say never!

pax et bonum

Resist the database

A reminder of what’s wrong with the current ID-card legislation in the UK.

Ironic Justice

Nice cartoon from Tom Tomorrow here.
(_Thanks to Chris for the tip_)

Flash thing

Here is a nifty little Flash thing – “The Very Model of a Modern Labour Minister”

WindowsXP licence

Ever wondered what that WindowsXP Home licence really means? Well, here is a translation into normal English. If you’re a WindowsXP user, go and read – you might be rather surprised by how little MS promises, and how much you give away (like the right to lend your computer to a friend or the right for MS to install any software they like on your PC without notice, or to remove any function they like from your PC without notice or recompense).

If you want a choice, consider Linux – it’s powerful and yet cheap (even free if you download it), without restrictions (you actually control your own PC rather than signing it away to a corporation) and extremely easy to install and use (contrary to what you might have heard from certain sources). You can even install it alongside Windows on your PC – no need for a hard break. And you can run Windows applications on it as well; for example, I spend all day working on my Linux PC using MS Word (although there are excellent alternatives, my particular job requires MS Word).

pax et bonum

Brawn

Our latest foray into traditional and interesting foods (following on from black pudding, sausages and haggis) is brawn. This is a sort of semi-preserved coarse meat paste made from the head of a pig. It’s not as disgusting as you might think – there’s lots of proper meat on a head (the cheeks in particular), along with fat to lubricate the meat and some other bits and bobs to give it texture. So, you get your butcher to quarter the head, you clean it (including the teeth…Mmmmm), brine it for 24 hours to give it some hammy flavour, then boil it gently for 4 hours until the meat is meltingly soft, with onion, herbs and spices (I used bay leaves, oregano, thyme, coriander, peppercorns, cloves, fennel seed and mustard seed) and a pig’s trotter if you’ve got one to help make sure that the stock will set solid. Once it’s cooled, roughly chop all the meat (including as much of the fat and skin as you fancy – or as little!) and add some of the rich stock you boiled it in to moisten and help it set, then press into a terrine dish and put it in the fridge to set, covered with a weighted plate to compress it.

The result is something like this:

Eat cold with bread or in a salad, or fry it up so that it goes nice and crispy! Lovely

pax et bonum

Who's using what

Here’s a breakdown on what people are using to read my blog with.

In the browser wars, Internet Explorer is still in front, with 64% of people still using it (mostly version 6). However, Firefox is catching up rapidly with 23%. Safari is doing well at 8% and Mozilla/Netscape can only scrape 5%.

In the OS war, Windows still leads the pack with 83% (XP taking 57% and 98 still at 9%). MacOS is at 12% (mostly OS X) and Linux/Unix at 4%.

pax et bonum

McLibel 2

The Storyville episode on the McLibel case is being repeated on terrestrial TV tomorrow night (Sunday 5th, 10:30pm, BBC2). Heartily recommended to anyone interested in big business, ethical protests and the legal system.

pax et bonum

Food silliness

Stephen points out this link for how to make underpant toast, and offers his own suggestion for satsuma elephants.

Odd linkage

We all get used to people finding our sites with odd search-engine queries, but I’ve been getting tons of hits in the past few days based on just a single image that I posted a while back, of the gluten-free haggis. And the strangest thing about this is that these links seem to be coming from the Italian version of Google. Why the Italians should be so interested in my haggis, I can’t imagine, but there you have it!

pax et bonum

Rocky start

Today is the feast of St Peter and St Paul – the day when the Christian church remembers its two main founders: Peter, the apostle to the Jews, and Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. The thing is that we have almost no writings by Peter and yet most of the New Testament was written by Paul. Peter was the disciple of Jesus – he spent three years alongside Jesus during His ministry – and yet, to all appearances, Paul is more important to the church and Christianity than Peter. However, in today’s reading for Morning Prayer, we heard the story of Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, followed by Jesus’ statement: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Mt 16:18).

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Helping others

WorD has a couple of excellent quotations today.

“Bono’s in love with the world. He wants to embrace it. I want to punch its lights out. We’re a psychotic Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
Bob Geldof, Live 8 organizer

Let everyone understand that the real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which we often long, just because they console us, but in serving God by serving those around us, in justice, fortitude of soul, and humility.
Teresa of Avila

Love in action can take startling forms.

pax et bonum

Torture

WorD is talking about torture in the USA.

Nunc dimittis

Waiter Rant posts a memory that is beautiful, sad and moving, all three.

A great dream

I found this again today – a transcript and mp3 audio file of what is, in my opinion, one of the finest speeches ever made. And every word is as true now as it was true then, which is cause for both joy and sorrow.

When this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

pax et bonum

The Anglican Consultative Council

A little cartoon to explain this vexed issue.
(_Thanks to Maggi for the tip._)

Evangelicalism and Orthodoxy

Sven has an excellent discussion of Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy and scripture, comparing the two approaches. Required reading for anyone serious about how the Bible fits into the church.

Yet another quiz

I promised myself that I’d lay off these, but couldn’t resist one more.

Are you going to Heaven?
You scored as Purgatory.
Purgatory: The place you go after you die to get cleansed of your sins. You are fairly good to God, but haven’t led a sin-free life. Only people who are going to Heaven are allowed to go to Purgatory- People who are sent to hell have committed too many sins.

61% Purgatory
58% Heaven
17% Hell

Are you going to Heaven?
created with QuizFarm.

Needless to say, I don’t think they’ve got Purgatory quite right but, hey, it’s only an internet quiz

pax et bonum

Is God Male?

I am a Christian Too provides some interesting thoughts on the issue. Nothing too surprising, but cogently argued.

Evangelical Priorities

Sven has an excellent article on the clash between the priorities Christians espouse and the ones that Christianity actually teaches.

John Sentamu to be Archbishop of York

Maggi passes along some wonderful personal stories about John Sentamu, recently appointed Archbishop of York.

PledgeBank

Ever felt like one person can’t make a difference? Go along to PledgeBank and help lots of ones turn into something big.

Those theologians explained

Sven has kindly written a description of the theologians in that theologians quiz I posted recently. If you were wondering what your result meant, that’s a good place to find out

A Challenge to Fundamentalists by Keith Ward

Sven has written a review of What The Bible Really Teaches: A Challenge to Fundamentalists by Keith Ward. This sounds like an excellent book, both for those who think that fundamentalism has the “correct” understanding of the Bible and hence of the Christian faith, and for those who try to talk to fundamentalists. In this book, Ward is taking on fundamentalism and showing how its “biblical” beliefs are actually nothing of the sort but instead arise from a very selective picking and choosing of verses and interpretations.

I have tried to set out what the Bible teaches on a number of issues that fundamentalists get wrong…On all of these subjects the Bible actually teaches the opposite of what fundamentalists say…They impose an authoritarian interpretation of the Bible that is as dogmatic as any medieval Catholic theology, and usually less informed. They make their faith even more exclusive than that of those Catholics who claimed that there is no salvation outside of the church. And they make intellectual assent to ‘sound’ doctrines a more important test of Christian faith than life by the Spirit…The greatest tragedy of fundamentalism is that it gets the Bible wrong. (Quotation from the book.)

pax et bonum

What's your eschatology?

Sometimes, the blizzard of opinions about “the End Times” and “the Second Coming” can be daunting. Sven has produced another quiz (the last one for the moment, I promise ) that will help you decide what brand of eschatology you believe (“eschatology” is the study of the end of time, the Second Coming, all that stuff).

My results were like this.

You scored as Amillenialist.
Amillenialism believes that the 1000 year reign is not literal but figurative, and that Christ began to reign at his ascension. People take some prophetic scripture far too literally in your view.
100% Amillenialist
85% Moltmannian Eschatology
70% Preterist
35% Premillenialist
30% Postmillenialist
20% Dispensationalist
10% Left Behind
What’s your eschatology?
created with QuizFarm.com

pax et bonum

Proof-texting

Greenflame has a good story illustrating the dangers of proof-texting instead of engaging with the text properly.
(_Thanks to Maggi for the tip_)

Which theologian are you?

Another quiz from Sven, this time to test which of the great theologians you are most like.

You scored as Jürgen Moltmann. The problem of evil is central to your thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about.
53% Jürgen Moltmann
40% John Calvin
40% Karl Barth
27% Anselm
20% Charles Finney
20% Paul Tillich
20% Martin Luther
13% Augustine
7% Jonathan Edwards
7% Friedrich Schleiermacher
Which theologian are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

pax et bonum

Theology worldview quiz

Sven has created a quiz that assesses your “theological worldview (allegedly ). I came out like this:

You scored as Roman Catholic.
You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you.
75% Roman Catholic
71% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
71% Neo orthodox
68% Emergent/Postmodern
43% Classical Liberal
25% Modern Liberal
18% Charismatic/Pentecostal
14% Reformed Evangelical
0% Fundamentalist
What’s your theological worldview?
Created with QuizFarm.com

Which is interesting, given that I said the Pope wasn’t the universal head of the church! Still, it validates a label I’ve often used for my approach to faith – catholic evangelical

pax et bonum

More on Purgatory

There’s an interesting article at Jesus Creed with further thoughts on Purgatory. He takes a different approach, thinking about a “second-chance” at salvation after death, which is explicitly not what I was talking about in my article, but the two are related nonetheless. It’s an interesting debate.

pax et bonum

Blogging around the world

Quite a few good posts have come up in the past few days.

Sven has an excellent post supporting pacifism, emphasising the point that “Christianity” must be focused on Christ or it is no longer Christian at all. He also quotes N.T. Wright talking about how claiming that the Bible is “inerrant” is actually hugely arrogant, placing one’s own tradition, knowledge and understanding against any disagreement.

Father Jake also has a post about how Scripture containing “all things necessary for salvation” should actually be understood.

Storyteller dwells on the strange fact that the rich Western economies are actually supported by the poorer economies in the East and South, and asks whether this is really capitalism or just exploitation.

I am a Christian too has an analysis of more of the Ted Haggert story, including interviews with a church member. Very worrying stuff.

Circle of pneuma has a good, clear explanation of “apophatic theology” – the Eastern way of thinking about God, which is far more than the common simple caricature of “negative theology”.

Maggi has some excellent thoughts on spontaneity in worship and how, far from being its enemy, liturgy can actually support spontaneity (rather than having “spontaneity” run away into chaos). She’s also got a nice post about how sexuality and desire must be taken seriously (and in fun!) before we can appreciate much of what God says to us (as well as how some people simply can’t hear it when someone talks about sex in church).

Jason has posted a response from the emergent conversation to its critics. It’s a very nice document and stands as a fine example of how Christians should respond to criticism.

Finally, there’s a very funny story at Ekklesia about the way that the media can rustle up a story from nothing – turning a hospital’s worries about bedside Bibles transmitting MRSA into “UK hospitals ban Bibles”.

pax et bonum

Why Parables?

Excellent little story passed on by Storyteller’s World about why Jesus used parables – and why people think He did.

Preeminent question

Another excellent post on why all our theology (and life) should be centred only on Jesus – and why we mustn’t try to do theology without talking about Jesus.

And ne'er the twain...

Sven has an excellent post on how we ought to carry out our theology – in discussion, not from fortresses.

Theotokos

Interesting debate going on at Beliefnet about whether Jesus was ever an embryo, as Tom DeLay (the right-wing US senator) has said. Now, much as I hate to agree with DeLay, I have to side with him on this one – one of the things that was thrashed out early in the church’s history was whether Jesus was truly God and truly Man. The conclusion was that Jesus’ divinity was part of him from the very beginning – God didn’t descend on a human being and take him over or join with him. So, the eternal God was not just a babe in arms but a foetus in the womb of Mary.

And this belief is what is expressed by one of the titles given to Mary, Jesus’ mother – theotokos. As with most of the titles of Mary, it is actually talking about Jesus, not Mary. Here, the Greek word theotokos means “God-bearer”. That is, the child that Mary bore was already God, just as much as the adult Jesus was. So, giving Mary this title is affirming the full and true divinity of Jesus, the Christ. Certain parts of the Protestant church have disowned Mary completely, and this is to our loss because it robs us of the ability to express things like this easily. We need to reclaim Mary as the mother of God – the one who acceded to God’s command and bore the child who was already God and who would grow up to live, die and rise again as our saviour.

(_Thanks to Maggi for the pointer._)

pax et bonum

Christian Carnival

This week’s Christian Carnival is hosted at A Physicist’s Perspective. I’ve had some good discussions with David so have a look over his site as well as the many posts in the carnival itself!

pax et bonum

Live 8

So, Live8 is happening – five concerts across Europe and the USA to raise not money but awareness of the issues of global poverty and trade justice.

Interestingly, Bob Geldof et al. are in trouble in the UK media for suggesting, first, that people travel to Edinburgh for the G8 meeting as part of a large protest to ensure that the representatives of the rich nations there can’t ignore the issue. Edinburgh, apparently, can’t cope with that many people. Well, I suspect that the only answer is “Tough”! This is democracy in action – people going out of their way to make their opinions plain. Perhaps, though, those going to need to plan ahead for possible problems…

Even stranger, though, Geldof and friends are in trouble for suggesting that people take the day off work or school to attend. Now, I’ve no idea why taking a day’s holiday to go is a problem (or do they think that people will “pull a sickie”? In which case, the actual problem is quite different – the attitudes of workers to their jobs, not the campaign itself), but I can understand the issue with schoolchildren. We have a responsibility to educate our young, and they have a responsibility to learn. However, is one of the most important lessons not to take responsibility for ourselves for the decisions that our political leaders make? In which case, spending a day to support the protest in Edinburgh might be the best day of education that someone could have.

pax et bonum