Posted in church, learning on 20 June, 2008 | No Comments »
Mother Ruth is giving flower pots to her congregation to help the church grow one pound at a time. And it may be that she hands out Growing Season challenges too.
Get your Gold Stars ready: The Growing Season 2008 is about to begin. In Dunoon and Rothesay, we will have new challenges. [...]
Posted in learning, theology on 15 April, 2008 | 10 Comments »
Last night was another session of the bible study which I should have named ‘A Reckless Romp through the Old Testament’.
Reckless because we have been going too fast.
Reckless because so much depends on the overview given in week one, and not everyone was there.
Reckless because I am fascinated by the OT, but it is not [...]
Posted in church, learning on 29 February, 2008 | 14 Comments »
I am a perpetual beginner. A generalist, an amateur. The sort of person who will learn to knit every stitch in the book, but will never complete a project beyond ‘cat-nip mouse’ (which was itself a creative exercise: I had no pattern, and it was the first time I’d decreased stitches to a [...]
Posted in learning, prayer, recipies, theology on 1 February, 2008 | 5 Comments »
sometimes, the thing that seems selfish is necessary.
rare birds are worth pursuing.
it doesn’t always matter whether people understand.
on reading Luke through, one wonders why the documentary hypothesis took so long.
The start of Luke is wonderfully gracious. As pain and conflict increase, it gets wordier, more didactic and tries harder to explain. (’all [...]
Posted in learning on 7 January, 2008 | 40 Comments »
There’s an interesting article by Martin Smith at Episcopal Cafe on the subtleties of racism.
Smith is reflecting on a racism study in the States in which a group of black and white people have a conversation. The blacks then tell the researchers which of the whites spoke to them as equals, and which [...]
Posted in books, church, learning on 4 January, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Once a year, or so, I make a point of browsing at length in a section of the bookshop I don’t usually go to. Business, home, New Age, Self-help, science, biography — anything other than fiction, poetry, cookbooks, or religion really. And then I come home with whatever strikes me. Good or [...]
Posted in learning, prayer on 12 November, 2007 | 10 Comments »
One of today’s tasks was to plan a set of prayer workshops that begin tomorrow in one of my congregations. Last minute as always. But I convinced myself that it was right to delay so that I could include a visiting ordinand in the planning process.
So, as darkness fell, I gave her [...]
Posted in learning, poetry on 22 October, 2007 | 1 Comment »
The announcement came tonight of the creation of an artificial life form.
The official announcement, at least. When I went looking for links, I gather this has been known for a few months, but I had somehow missed it.
Craig Ventner, who was at the heart of the human genome project, has created a synthetic [...]
Posted in learning on 1 October, 2007 | No Comments »
More search string amusement. Today: ‘holy trinity for homework’.
As in ‘come to Holy Trinity: all the homework you could ever hope for’; ‘Hermione Granger always welcome here’.
ad maiorem dei gloriam
Posted in blog, learning on 8 September, 2007 | 20 Comments »
Here are some of the things people tried to teach me today:
all wars are caused by religion
young couples today want to get their children baptised, but can’t because the words of the service claim that their precious little ones are full of sin.
new mothers can’t go out till their babies are churched.
new mothers can’t go [...]
