Barefoot in the wilderness
in search of understanding

Overachiever

I don’t do the proud parent thing too often here, but this one I had to share

Adam is 3 and a half years old, and yesterday, he managed to write his own name – entirely unprompted and unaided!

Somehow, I don’t think that this means he’ll be the next Shakespeare or Keats, though…

pax et bonum

Making chutney

Another domestic weekend. On Saturday, we went to the local Farmers’ Market and stocked up (this one only happens once a month). In addition to the usual things, one stall was selling not just wild rabbit but also hare! So, one of each (the last hare!) went into our bags – at £3 for a rabbit and £6 for a hare, it had to be done! Sadly, what with everything else going on, both have had to go into the freezer for casseroling (or jugging in the case of the hare) at a later date. Not ideal, but better than nothing

On Sunday, we picked all our remaining tomatoes, because the plants are starting to look ill (probably potato blight), which produced quite a lot of green fruit. Added to the two marrows and the pears that are starting to get ready for picking, we had quite a pile:

Of course, we didn’t use all of that – only one marrow and the cherry tomatoes (the plum tomatoes are destined for fried green tomatoes and other good things!). That was still 4 pounds of tomato and the same of marrow, though. Once they were chopped into our large pan, plus onions, sultanas, sugar, vinegar and spices from the shops, it all got a good boil:

And, after 4 or 5 hours, it had turned into some rather delicious chutney:

The recipe was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s, from his River Cottage Year, which is basically “chutney made from whatever is in glut in your garden”. Which described our situation perfectly. It already tastes pretty good, so it will hopefully be even better after a couple of months of maturing.

With that lot out of the way, the only fruit left to deal with will be the pears. If we can find enough jars to jam them or freezer space to freeze them!

pax et bonum

Making a mockery

NO2ID reports that the UK Govt is making a mockery of its claimed plans for a “voluntary” ID card by encouraging 30 of the country’s largest companies to require all employees and job applicants to have one of the cards.

23rd post meme

Anne passed along one of those “blog meme” things. You have to take your 23rd blog post, then post the 5th sentence of it, in this hopes (I guess!) of surreal or funny results. Sadly, mine is rather boring – my “23rd post” was rather short and only had 2 sentences So, the 2nd sentence was:

There’s always a danger with trendy translations that they become too trendy for their own good and read oddly as a result, but they can be very useful sometimes for shedding new light on familiar passages.

Anyone fancy a try? Let me know if you do! Anne’s version was rather better than mine, and Kathryn over at Good in Parts has also had a go!

pax et bonum

Another week down

Apologies for sparse blogging recently (if anyone cares!). The new job has meant that I haven’t really settled to a new rhythm yet, and blogging is having to take a back seat. Today, for example, I had a rivetting time copying and pasting stuff between huge sets of tables in MS Word and MS Excel. And, of course, you can’t copy and paste trivially between them because paragraph breaks within tables in Word are not the same character as line breaks in cells in Excel. Nuisancy things! Isn’t MS Office supposed to be an integrated office suite? Anyhow, life goes on…

pax et bonum

One week down!

So, I’ve survived a week at CUP And it’s quite a nice place to work. A few niggles, of course, like having to dial a 14-digit number to access my own voicemail from my own phone, but nothing major. I’ve even managed to get some real work done, which is quite good for my first week, I think. From the comments that have been made, they obviously need someone who can land running and get serious work done asap, and that sounds good to me. Few things are more frustrating than starting a new job and spending a month reading manuals.

It looks like the daily routine will be manageable, too, having been through a whole week of it. Dropping children off at childminders and nursery, and picking them up again all seems to be going OK (thank goodness!). Going out to work does mean, though, that all the housework I used to do during the day now doesn’t happen until the weekend, so we had quite a domestic weekend. I did get to spend an hour or so playing with the children at the playground on Sunday afternoon, which was nice, and we made jam, too. Yes, more jam – we had a large marrow that just kept growing, so we made marrow and lemon jam. And very nice it is, too

pax et bonum

Fun with Google

I recently found out a load of stuff I didn’t know you could do with Google, so I thought I’d share it.

~
Put this symbol before a word and Google will use all its known synonyms for that word as well (e.g. “~help Powerpoint” will also search for “tips”, “hints” “advice” and so on).

+
Google, by default, omits various small but common words, such as “and”, “but” and “to”. Sometimes, though, you need these to narrow your search. To force Google to include them, put a + sign before the word (e.g. “War +and Peace”).

-
Conversely, to force Google to omit pages with a certain word or phrase, put a hyphen/minus before the word (e.g. “tanks ‘-think tanks’” will return pages about tanks, but not pages about think tanks).

(click for more)

Babylon5Scripts.com

JMS is putting out books with the complete scripts to the Babylon 5 TV series. Sign up here.

Not in our town

Father Jake reports that police actually fired their guns to stop people escaping from New Orleans into their nice, well-off suburbian paradise.

Dampness

Anne has blogged about our mini-drama last Friday.

New job starts

Today, I started my new job at CUP. It’s quite a shock, after 6 years of working from home as a freelance, to don a shirt and tie (effectively, for the first regular reason since my schooldays) and go into an office. Fortunately, the folks are nice. Unfortunately, the nearest Gents’ toilets are beyond 2 security doors. Go figure!

First day, of course, was mostly taken up with meeting new people, finding the photocopier and stationery cupboard, and reading guff from Personnel. In the next couple of days, I can look forward to being given some real work, once they’ve brought me up to speed on the processes and workflow patterns. That, and reading lots of GCSE and A-level science textbooks and CD-ROMs, so that I can get a better idea of the sorts of things I’ll be working with. Somewhat of a change from the academic journals I’m used to editing – but, then, that’s part of the appeal. After over 8 years effectively doing the same thing (!), it’ll be nice to learn some new stuff.

pax et bonum

World's greatest failure?

Google is reportedly currently listing GW Bush’s biography as its top result for the search term “failure”

Charles Clarke, privacy and security

Charles Clarke (the UK Home Secretary) has been addressing the European Parliament. In his speech, he said that Europe must trade civil liberties for security. We must, must we? He also said that the European Convention on Human Rights might need to be changed. Even though he admits that the case for these laws has not been made!

Is anyone else getting more worried about the British presidency of the EU? Not content with trying to pass draconian, unnecessary and almost-certainly pointless anti-privacy laws in the UK, they are now trying to harmonise this process across the EU. Human rights be damned!

pax et bonum

Everything I needed to know...

...I learned from folksongs

Evacuation planning

Father Jake posts about a National Geographic article on what might happen if a Category 4 hurricane hit New Orleans. Written in October 2004, the report is chillingly close to what actually happened.

Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level – more than eight feet below in places – so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

(click for more)

New pics of Saturn's rings

The Cassini space probe has sent back a new set of photos that provide fascinating details of how Saturn’s rings change.

New Orleans and "preparedness"

Tony at Storyteller’s World makes some good points about the US government’s actions after the terrible flooding around New Orleans.

Leaving the charismatic church

Sven shares his thoughts on leaving the charismatic church, in his usual amusing but honest style. Welcome back to blogging, Sven!

Cartoon Guide to Greenbelt

CartoonChurch brings their Guide to Greenbelt – if you missed it, now you know what you missed

Mind Body Spirit

Steve at On Earth as in Heaven: Mind Body Spirit reminds us that the Church has no monopoly on “spirituality”.

Turning back

This morning’s reading for Morning Prayer was 1 Kings 19:15-21 – the calling of Elisha by Elijah. This is where Elijah is told to go and anoint a couple of kings, and then appoint Elisha to be prophet after him. Elisha basically says he will follow Elijah, but first he wants to go and say goodbye to his father and mother. Elijah says OK, and all is well.

What struck me was the contrast with Jesus. In two gospels (Matthew and Luke), there is the story of the disciple who says that he will follow Jesus, but first he wants to go back and bury his father. Precisely what this means (whether his father was already dead and just needed burying, or whether he was asking to wait until his father had died) isn’t what got me. The contrast, it seems to me, is that Jesus’ response is quite different to Elijah’s – Jesus says “No”. His followers were not to turn back for anything.

And this is important because Jesus is constantly referenced in the gospels as echoing the acts of Moses and Elijah (as the giver of the Law and the greatest of the prophets). This saying of Jesus’ isn’t just about the calling to follow being urgent – there’s something in there about a change between the old world and the new.

pax et bonum

The 100-Minute Bible

Two disparate views on the new 100-Minute Bible. Tony at Storyteller’s World is vehement that this is a bad thing. Maggi isn’t so sure – she can see a few good points about it. Personally, I can see a value in it as a taster, but it can be no more than that. Context will have to be almost completely missing from it, and without context we cannot make proper sense of the Bible.

pax et bonum

In my pants

Storyteller’s World recounts a wonderful story about a Toaist hermit and his pants.

The God Who Drowns

Waiterrant shares feelings of helplessness and despair at our weakness – and God’s weakness.

How rich are you?

Ever wondered just how privileged you are? The Global Rich List will compare your annual income to everyone else’s and tell you how many people earn more or less than you do. FWIW, my new job apparently puts me in the top 3.93% of people on the planet (and the top 19.05% of people in the UK). What does it mean to know that, though?
(_Thanks to TallSkinnyKiwi for the tip_)

pax et bonum

Jesus had stern words for people like me

dissonant bible writes about how we are not the people to whom Jesus was talking when he said things like “the meek will inherit the Earth” or “God will provide”. Rather, we Western Christians are far more likely to be those to whom Jesus said “woe to the rich”! He quotes from Conrad Gempf’s book Mealtime Habits of the Messiah.

One of the most important things is very simple but very neglected: you shouldn’t focus on those passages in the Bible that contain answers you resonate with. Instead, focus on passages that address situations that resonate with your situation. So it’s not, “Are there any biblical characters who received the kind of message I want to hear?” but rather, “What does the Bible say to characters who are in a similar situation to my own?”
For instance, too many rich people name and claim promises like “God will provide”. Instead, maybe we should make little religious knick-knack vases with dried flowers in them and “Woe to the rich” embossed in gold letters. Yes, Jesus loves us all dearly, but we’re told he disciplines those whom he loves (Prov. 3:12; Heb. 12:6). Where are the T-shirts with the motto “Jesus had stern words for people like me?”

pax et bonum

Connections

This is the big lie the world tells us: that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, and the seeking of profit – nothing else. Whereas this is the truth of God: all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; that creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts, because its true destiny is joy.
Julie Polter

The kicker there is “nothing else”. Whenever someone tries to tell you that something is “nothing more than” or “just the same as” or “reducible to”, you know they’ve missed something. Because everything is more than it seems, no two things are identical and reductionism is not the answer to all problems.

(_From the Daily Dig, via WorD._)

pax et bonum

Christian Carnival

I’ve got another article in the current Christian Carnival. Go see what else is there!

Battle for Islam

I just finished watching an excellent programme on BBC2 called Battle for Islam. This was a muslim’s journey round the muslim world, looking at the different ways Islam is engaging with the world and the different ways in which it is understanding itself. The fundamental message of the programme for non-muslims is that there is no single worldview that is “Islam”. Rather, there is a wide range of ways of understanding both Islam and the world.

The programme visited five Islamic countries, all outside the Middle East – Pakistan, Indonesia (home to a fifth of the world’s muslims), Malaysia, Morocco and Turkey – looking at how Islam is dealing with the tensions of the modern world and the pressures of new ways of thinking. A central point was the role of women and how this is being redefined. The most important thing, though, it seems to me, is that there are three things that are often confused when thinking about Islam: religion, culture and law. The three are often thought of together as a single package (“Islam”) but in reality they are separate but connected aspects of life. Islam exists within a huge diversity of cultures, from completely secular (as in Turkey) to rigidly commercialist (as in Malaysia) to theocratic (as in much of the Middle East). Even sharia law isn’t a static entity that remains fixed through time. There are many different legal systems that can be drawn from the Qur’an – Morocco, for instance, has recently changed its law in line with Qur’anic teaching so as to give women many of the same rights as men, especially in family law (marriages, divorces, children etc.).

The most dangerous thing that faces us, after recent terrorist outrages, is to imagine that all muslims are the same and that they are all terrorists. Fundamentalism isn’t a universal among muslims any more than it is among Christians or any other group. Rather, fundamentalism arises when culture and religion come into conflict; those who retreat from the external culture and take refuge in their religion become fundamentalists, basing their whole belief systems around excluding the world. In doing so, they invariably lose the heart of the religion they claim to follow. The very name of Islam derives from the Arabic word salaam, which means “peace”.

pax et bonum

Greenbelt pictures

During the Greenbelt festival this year, my camera batteries died rather quickly (my own fault for not checking they were charged!) so I only got two pictures, from the Sunday morning service.

Adam colouring in the Tree of Life image inside the order of service

The crowd, showing the White Tree that we dressed with red leaves for the intercessions (worked very well IMO)

(More about greenbelt2005.)

pax et bonum

One side can be wrong

The Guardian has an excellent article on the clash between those who demand that Intelligent Design theory be taught in science classes alongside evolution, and those who say that it belongs elsewhere because it’s simply not science.

If ID really were a scientific theory, positive evidence for it, gathered through research, would fill peer-reviewed scientific journals. This doesn’t happen. It isn’t that editors refuse to publish ID research. There simply isn’t any ID research to publish. Its advocates bypass normal scientific due process by appealing directly to the non-scientific public and – with great shrewdness – to the government officials they elect.
The argument the ID advocates put, such as it is, is always of the same character. Never do they offer positive evidence in favour of intelligent design. All we ever get is a list of alleged deficiencies in evolution. We are told of “gaps” in the fossil record. Or organs are stated, by fiat and without supporting evidence, to be “irreducibly complex”: too complex to have evolved by natural selection.
In all cases there is a hidden (actually they scarcely even bother to hide it) “default” assumption that if Theory A has some difficulty in explaining Phenomenon X, we must automatically prefer Theory B without even asking whether Theory B (creationism in this case) is any better at explaining it. Note how unbalanced this is, and how it gives the lie to the apparent reasonableness of “let’s teach both sides”. One side is required to produce evidence, every step of the way. The other side is never required to produce one iota of evidence, but is deemed to have won automatically, the moment the first side encounters a difficulty – the sort of difficulty that all sciences encounter every day, and go to work to solve, with relish.

(_Thanks to Infinite Wisdom, Absolute Stupidity for the tip._)

pax et bonum

Muslims condemn Indonesian church attacks

Indonesian muslims condemn Indonesian church attacks. Although this doesn’t have the force of a fatwa, it is an unequivocal statement.

First black CofE Archbishop speaks

John Sentamu, the first black Archbishop in the Church of England has said that the church must face its institutional racism.