Friday 30 May 2008

Wednesday 21 May 2008

On the programme

The lectionary of the United Reformed Church has got a pretty interesting Gospel reading lined up for next Sunday (Matt 6:24-34, of all things!). The guest preacher at that church will be someone I know, and I just can't wait. Derya, wanna come?

The best thing about writing a specialist thesis

... is that you freaking can't wait to be done with it and read the stuff you actually want to read!
For me, this will involve (re) reading some of the classics of political economy: Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Jean-Baptiste Say, Josef Schumpeter, Thomas Malthus, Edmund Burke (Thoughts and Details on Scarcity), David Ricardo, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx.
I'm getting pissed off with that free market ideology embraced by very nearly *all* political parties in the Western World. If you look at the US candidates, they all say the same, except that the democrats add a little caring touch to it, as if: "we will insist on fairer conditions", we'll do the same but nicer.
It drives me nuts because there is no way they will ever wipe out the exploitative tendencies of capitalism in that way. We'll exploit the two-third world more nicely, now there's a programme! And there is no way any of them can account for the lumpenproletariat, the people that an efficient capitalism does not need, and therefore leaves behind in squalor.
And I'm so frustrated that I don't have the answers. I'm sad that one of my favourite scholars died shortly after raising the crucial question: you guys have to do something about this hegemony of free-market thinking, this "area of implicit agreement" which is eating up our democratic debate.
An empirical analysis of the trajectory of the advanced economies over the longue duree suggests, in contrast, that ‘globalisation’ is not a new phase of capitalism, but a ‘rhetoric’ invoked by goverments in order to justify their voluntary surrender to the financial markets and their conversion to a fiduciary conception of the firm. Far from being -- as we are constantly told -- the inevitable result of the growth of foreign trade, deindustralization, growing inequality and the retrenchment of social policies are the result of domestic political decisions that reflect the tipping of the balance of class forces in favour of the owners of capital.
~Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant: Neoliberal Newspeak, Notes on the New Planetary Vulgate.

Tuesday 20 May 2008

Some things never change

"High tax rates are driving many businesses and jobs overseas -- and, of course, our foreign competitors wouldn't mind if we kept it that way. But if I am elected president, we're going to get rid of that drag on growth and job creation, and help American workers compete with any company in the world."
"The tax laws of America should also promote and reward innovation, because innovation creates jobs. Tax laws should not smother the ingenuity of our people with needless regulations and disincentives. So I will propose and sign into law a reform agenda to permit the first-year expensing of new equipment and technology... to ban Internet taxes, permanently... to ban new cell phone taxes... and to make the tax credit for R&D permanent, so that we never lose our competitive edge".
"When new trading partners can sell in our market, and American companies can sell in theirs, the gains are great and they are lasting. The strength of the American economy offers a better life to every society we trade with, and the good comes back to us in many ways -- in better jobs, higher wages, and lower prices. Free trade can also give once troubled and impoverished nations a stake in the world economy, and in their relations with America".
"I know that open markets don't automatically translate into a higher quality of life for every single American. Change is hard, and while most of us gain, some industries, companies and workers are left to struggle with very difficult choices. And government should help workers get the education and training they need -- for the new jobs that will be created by new businesses in this new century".

~ Republican candidate Senator John McCain

Monday 19 May 2008

Love it !!!!

The ghetto church service

God will provide?

I've been having debates with friends in which they said that yes, there is a God, but no, God does not intervene supernaturally in the natural order. I found this point of view interesting, because if you believe that God will provide, you have to account for all the instances in which God does not provide.

To be blunt, I never understood why God would supernaturally find me a job and not intervene supernaturally to help people whose need is far greater. It just doesn't make any sense -unless like C.S. Lewis, you think that what happens to you is for the best, and that dying at 15 is lucky because you get to meet God sooner.

I'm not referring to recent natural disasters: humans have the technology to foresee cyclones and earthquakes and warn the population. And we have enough food to feed everyone.
That is why my favourite grace before meals is a century old Jewish one: "Blessed are you, LORD, our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth". (I'm including a transliteration from Hebrew for the extra-keen reader: Baruch atta ADONAI Eloheynu melech ha-olam ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz. I like to think that these words -a very common Jewish prayer- would have been said by Christ, but maybe I'm just wrong).

So anyway, let me quote from the progressive atheists (i.e. this website) because I find their view a lot more helpful than waiting on God's supernatural intervention, which does not seem to happen very often. Maybe if we believed hard enough mountains would move themselves supernaturally. But I'm not convinced that's what the passage means. Maybe if we believed enough we might actually be transformed and enabled to make the decisions that move the mountains. And in this, I would agree with atheists, humans definitely contribute to changing things.

"Many of our problems on this planet are human fault. Gotta have our big cars, gotta have all our electricity, our garbage piles high. We don't think about it because we won't be here. Let the next generations worry about it. People killing other people. Greed. War. Violence. All caused by humans and only humans can change all this. No god is going to clean up the mess. Nature is at "fault" of [sic] most natural disaster. It's just the way things are. NO god causes these things, no god prevents them. They just happen and no help comes from any god to clean up the mess.

No messes get cleaned up unless humans intervene and take action. No god waves a magic wand and makes things all better. No god cures the cancers and disease in little children and adults, no god feeds those who are starving to death in third world countries and no god prevents the exploitation of the poor and impoverished. No god keeps a president and leaders of nations from starting wars and killing innocent people who have no say in the matter. No god prevents perverts from molesting and murdering children. No god stops the gangs from murdering, stealing and killing each other. No god comes. Humans struggle to find cures for disease. Humans attempt to fix what other humans destroy. Humans strive to sort out the messes other humans make. But no god causes it, no god cleans up the messes".


As an aside, it's one year today since my first post on this blog. On Thursday it will be 20 years since my first communion. H. is threatening to wax lyrical about it to the three students that will turn up to the college mass he's presiding. That's because he assumes that I'll be going. Let's see.

Wednesday 14 May 2008

A great quote

"We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had too much." ~John Kenneth Galbraith

This made me laugh...

"Ce document évoque notamment, en termes très mesurés, une hospitalité eucharistique possible pour des anglicans en manque eucharistique et perdus dans la nature française" (from this website).
It works more or less like this (I think):
Encyclica Ut Unum Sint, point 46, states that: "It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church but who greatly desire to receive these sacraments, freely request them and manifest the faith which the Catholic Church professes with regard to these sacraments".
The obvious "certain particular cases" are: danger of death, persecution, imprisonment etc.
But the 1983 Code of Canon Law states that episcopal conferences or diocesan bishops are able to identify additional situations of grave and pressing need (from this website)
And the French (RC) Episcopal Conference, stretching it a bit, gave official permission for Anglicans living in France to be able to avail themselves of any of the sacraments, should they be geographically far from an Anglican chaplaincy (from this website).
So if you're Anglican and you find yourself "perdu dans la nature", get in touch with the local papists!


Ummm, it looks like nobody gives a rat's about Eucharistic hospitality on the web! Fifteen minutes after publishing this post my very amateurish blog is already number five on Google for the search "hospitalite eucharistique". And this is actual formal terminology, not something I made up.

Half-awake post

Your proclamation springs from your life
Your life springs from your love
Your love springs from encounters with God

Therefore, keep praying
Keep loving
Keep doing
Keep proclaiming
in that order.

Proclaim less than you do
Do less than you love
and love less than your pray.

Open your eyes, go get coffee.

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Quick notes

Je rêve son visage je décline son corps
Et puis je l'imagine habitant mon décor

These are the first lines form a very kitschy song, but they made me well up like nothing had in months, so I thought I'd record them here. I haven't been blogging much lately which is a shame because I've got plenty of ideas and then I end up forgetting about them:
"Authenticity" is H's favourite word. We used to talk past each other because he said my stuff was "not real". I retorted that if the tangible suffering of others is not real to us we have a bit of a problem. He liked my point - that one should care deeply about strangers- and I liked his. At some point I had refused to engage with people I did not immediately like, because I thought I was being unreal and that it was unhelpful. Then I took a new approach. And yet it is possible to go too far in the other direction. So "authenticity" might be a bit of a corker topic.
Some of my friends have dark "no go zones", zones in them which are raw and hurting, big areas of unhealed pain. Having been in counselling for a little while as an undergrad, I know of methods which bring these "no go zones" into healing and forgiveness. I used to think that people who had these zones were "non regenerated" in a way or another, and that they needed to confront that stuff. Then I noticed that the friends with the "no go zones" had a level of empathy which totally eludes me. Happiness is dangerous.
(One may say that -of course- these zones are "no go" for me, Dany, and that this just proves what a useless listener I am. Maybe that's true. But the status quo is that I am aware of them because my friends have cracked the shell in the first place and put their vulnerability in my -untrustworthy- hands. I treat them as "no go zones" and never mention them unless they do)

Sunday 4 May 2008