So you're up for a challenge?

High Fidelity both in the mainstream church and in mainstream social sciences.

Not the most feminist song...

... or maybe in it's own way it is. I know too many "strong" women. Or "strong" men for that matter.

She can kill with a smile
She can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child,
But she's always a woman to me

She can lead you to love
She can take you or leave you
She can ask for the truth
But she'll never believe
And she'll take what you give her, as long as it's free
Yeah, she steals like a thief
But she's always a woman to me

Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

And she'll promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best
And the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself
Cause she's always a woman to me

Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

She is frequently kind
And she's suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases
She's nobody's fool
And she can't be convicted
She's earned her degree
And the most she will do
Is throw shadows at you
But she's always a woman to me

Billy Joel, Always a Woman.

A great quote

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in.

H.D. Thoreau: Walden (link to full text).

I really want to see you
Really want to be with you
Really want to see you Lord
But it takes so long, my Lord

George Harrisson, My Sweet Lord.

Now there's a cool blog!

They say learning German is worth it just to understand J. S. Bach's music. I'm starting to think that I might pick up Swedish just to follow Jonas Lundstrom's blog. I like the blogs he reads and I really like his comments. The other day, our guy was commenting on Jesus Manifesto, and he left a link to this little gem of a blog. Now wait... a cleverish blog, with 700+ posts on the topic of "ecclesiology, especially the purpose of the gathering of the church". By Golly, that makes me happy!

The Gospel Bug

For reasons largely unforeseen, I have spent the last two and a bit weeks immersed in a conventional, low key and fairly tolerant expression of Church. This experience brought my own contradictions to the fore in a BIG way.

See, I usually stay the hell out of conventional churches, which I see as lukewarm Laodiceas. I’m worried about Cheap Grace. I’m worried that these churches just reproduce mediocrity, or worse, that they provide spiritual capital and social reinforcement to people who already possess quite a lot of forms of capital. I stay out because I think I would like it, I could go with the flow. I could end up making my home in the general consensus, and I’m scared of that.

At the same time, I profess to love the Marie-Antoinettes of the world: the shallow westerners who are deep into their own problems and have never been exposed to anything better church-wise. Also, I have published quite a number of posts in here, in which I praise the “barely churched” who baptise their kids and make it to church about once in five years.

Yet I know. I know about people who have to sell their own organs to the black market so that their family can survive for another couple of months. I know about trafficked prostitution. I sort of grasp the horror of the Aids epidemic. I can guess the anger of God when nobody cares. For the people involved are first and foremost His Children. One day He will assuredly call them, by their name, out from the tomb. And woe to us if we never knew their name, and never cared.

So were does that leave us? I still don’t know. Sometimes the despair is so great that I wish a huge rock would fall on me and crush my head under its weight. I hate us westerners and at the same time I love us. It’s weird. That combination of passionate Love with passionate Anger may well be the “Gospel bug”.

Still I’m realising that, in terms of loving the mainstream, I’d never put my actions were my words were, I just avoided most forms of engagement. So I say there’s hope in the mainstream? Does it look like I have ever believed this? Hope in the mainstream?

The miscreant's blog

I said I would not blog about this, but it’s just too hilarious… Our local Anglican chapel is a wooden structure, it looks pretty good, but it’s not the most thermally insulated building in the world. It does have direct heating –those solarium type lamps- but it’s fairly useless. Every morning at nine, the faithful few walk up there for mass.

For a couple of days it’s been so freaking cold that the candle that’s supposed to burn all the time –I forget the name- is frozen on the outside. It still burns down vertically of course, but the outside edges of the wax are freezing up. And so are the two guys that turn up for church.

It’s pretty much all they talk about for twenty minutes afterwards, which is very funny if all you’ve done in the morning is dunk some Italian biscotti into your cup of tea and read some blogs.