The Barchester Chronicles

My latest audiobook listen has been 'The Chronicles of Barset', a dramatised version of Anthony Trollope's 'Barchester Chronicles', made by the BBC in the early 90's. The Chronicles is a series of six novels "set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester. They concern the dealings of the clergy, the gentry, and the political, amatory, and social maneuverings that go on among and between them." (Thanks to Wikipedia). Despite a slowish beginning it's turned out to be a real delight. I'll have to actually read the books next!

There are some fantastic characters in this series, from the gentle and harmless Warden, Septimus Harding, (who in this version has an endearing habit of humming softly in difficult moments) to the slimy Mr Slope (boo, hiss!) and the quite brilliant Archdeacon Dr Theophilus Grantly. Dr Thorne is my favourite story out of the six I think, with its predictable but ultimately satisfying ending, but the battles between the formidable Mrs Proudie and the horrible Mr Slope puts Barchester Towers a very close second! After a little deliberation my favourite characters - as in who I actually liked - were Lucy Robarts (who is adorably melodramatic and lively in this version), Dr Thorne and Miss Dunstable (who I warmed to immediately as a kindred spirit!), but I think I managed to resist the much-sought-after Eleanor Bold!

Thoroughly recommended.

Soup Experiment #2

This one's not too original either, but a first time experiment for me at least! And a very yummy one too...

Chicken Noodle Soup - serves 2-3

2 chicken breasts (left-over cooked chicken would have been better, especially dark meat!)
1 rasher of bacon, chopped
1 onion
1 leek
1 carrot, shaved with a peeler
2 sticks celery
2 portions of thin egg noodles
Chicken stock cube
Seasoning etc

I chopped the onions, leeks and celery and sweated them in some butter over a low heat, together with the carrot. When soft I added the bacon, then a splash of balsamic vinegar, some garlic puree and seasoning. Then finally I cooked the chicken.
I added some stock and topped up with water until the veg was covered. Then I brought it to the boil and left it to simmer for 15min or so. Finally I added the dry noodles for 5min until they were soft - and it was ready to serve!


I'm discovering that soups are really easy - and very yummy!

Any suggestions for something else to try? :-)

Fun with Sprouts

I've been testing out what Sprouts can do - and so far I'm quite impressed. Sprouts are advanced Flash-based banners or mini websites that can be loaded on websites or shared on social networking sites. Sprout Builder allows you to create custom-designed flash pages containing all kinds of media, feeds, links etc. My example multi-page Sprout below shows some examples of things you can use. This one is quite small but they can be as big as you like!

DOROTHY L SAYERS on Jesus the Man

"For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - he had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile."

From 'The Man Born to be King' by Dorothy L. Sayers

Fighting Spending

Lifehacker's Top 10 Ways to Trick Yourself into Saving Money has some quite sensible ideas - most of which are, refreshingly, about avoiding unnecessary spending rather than just tips for finding deals and messing around with interest-free periods on credit cards etc.

I particularly liked #9, #8 and #2.

What's your favourite?


"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke 9.23

Wounds of a Friend

In this month's Christianity Today, complementarian (men and women have equal but different roles in marriage and church life - W) John Koessler and egalitarian (God freely calls believers to roles and ministries regardless of gender, class or race - W) Sarah Sumner have an "unexpected exchange" on the women's leadership debate.

Complementarians need to recover a fully biblical view of women — and of handling theological disagreement. By John Koessler

Egalitarians should rely more on careful exegesis and less on political ideologies. By Sarah Sumner

Both articles are refreshing and graceful additions to the conversation and I found plenty to agree with on both sides of the discussion.

When God created humankind in his image, he created them to be male and female (Gen. 1:27). It is often said that men and women bear the image of God equally. But it might be more accurate to say that men and women bear God's image together. Men and women collectively reflect the divine image; one without the other is incomplete. In addition, the Book of Genesis affirms men and women's joint mandate to exercise dominion over creation. Men and women share this responsibility; neither can fulfill God's mandate alone. ...

Complementarians need to be on guard against the temptation to use the Bible as a sanction for social constructs. The Pharisees tried to protect God's commands by putting a fence around the Law. I fear that complementarians, too, have gone beyond the Scriptures in our effort to preserve God's design. Have we added our own traditions to the Bible's teaching in an attempt to preserve biblical manhood and womanhood?

John Koessler

Egalitarians often argue that since God commands his people to submit to one another, women leaders have the right to be submitted to by men. When this doesn't happen, they feel angry. Yet a truly Christian ethic would remember that women have the duty, not the right, to lead as God calls them to lead. When God calls a woman to step forward, she is to step forward, regardless of how others respond. ...

When Galatians 3:28 is used out of context, the egalitarian argument can easily be perceived as promoting a genderless church. Though most egalitarians emphatically believe that men and women are not the same or interchangeable, it is hard for the unconvinced to hear the wisdom of their message— and easy for others, like the gender-confused, to twist the meaning of their message into something it is not.

Sarah Sumner

Christianity Today's Timothy George also addressed complementarians and egalitarians in his excellent article 'A Peace Plan for the Gender War'.

I'm sympathetic to George's stated position 'I am not a card-carrying member of either party', finding plenty to agree with on both sides and probably falling somewhere in the middle of the debate. However, realistically, I know I'd fit in more easily on the egalitarian side, given my openness to women in church leadership roles. Also I personally feel more confident of having the opportunity in an egalitarian setting to argue in a complementarian direction, than I'm confident of being able to even talk about a egalitarian direction from a complementarian position. Whether you understand what I mean may depend on your experiences with both sides of the debate, whether positive or negative.

Walking in the cool of the day

It's summer evenings like these when I most crave something of the 'Eden experience' of walking with God among the trees in the cool of the day.

Evening walks are so delicious, especially on these light, warm summer evenings, when everything is touched with golden light and there's such a peaceful stillness in the air. I'd love to go out for more walks on evenings like this but it's not the same on your own. Walks are meant to be enjoyed with others I think. There's something about walking and relationships that goes together.

It's times like this when I wonder what it was like for the disciples to walk with Jesus among the trees on the Mount of Olives in the cool of the evening, away from the crowds of Jerusalem. I know that I want more of that intimacy with God. I want to walk with Jesus among the trees, to talk with him, to listen, to feel his hand on my shoulder and his presence beside me. It feels right to describe the Christian life and our growing relationship with God as a walk, but I find myself longing for more of those times among the trees. If only I had more awareness of the reality of that walk together and was able to relax more often in the Lord's presence, talk together and know that evening peace.

The food crisis, the price of oil and my weekly shopping bill

I don't pretend to know a huge amount about the current food crisis (see previous post 'Sheltered from a Crisis') and what's caused it but some of the things I do know have made me really angry about the way the world works. Below I've laid out some of the reasons, as I understand them, for the current food crisis. Reading them you'll understand - if you don't already - why some of these things make me so frustrated and angry, and ultimately I know make God angry.

Why is there a food crisis?

The current crisis is the result of a massive increase in the price of grain and a shortage of supply, both of which have fed into each other to create a rapidly escalating worldwide food crisis which is driving 'the bottom billion' further into poverty and starvation (UN). There have been a number of long-term factors leading to rising worldwide food prices over the last few years. More recently the massive price increases (especially in wheat and rice) have been caused by drought and investors hoarding supplies, triggering worldwide panic-buying, which in turn has pushed grain prices to their current heights.

Long and Medium-term factors:

Increased demand for food worldwide.
Economic growth in China and India has lead to a significant rise in meat consumption (closer to a Western-style diet). Meat production requires 4-10 times as much grain to produce the same amount of food. [This has been happening for a while and no one quite agrees about how importanta factor it is in this current crisis.]

Biofuel production
Food crops, especially corn and soya are being diverted to biofuel production. This year a third of America's (highly subsidised) corn crop will go to the biofuel industry. The Bush administration has pushed the development of corn-ethanol as a domestically-available alternative to petrol (the US enthusiasm for biofuel isn't about saving the planet but rather saving America. Biofuel isn't seen as an environmental -or even economic- answer to the fossil fuels question, but ultimately as the answer to the always-pressing national security issue of oil availability and cost). The UN estimates that the diversion of corn to biofuels has already contributed 10% to the current rise in food prices, while the IMF estimates it at 20-30% (FT).*

The end of cheap food?
US and European farm subsidies have long kept the price of commodities such as wheat and soya artificially low. For example, between 1995 and 2005 American taxpayers supported US agriculture by $165bn, most of which went to the huge US-based trading giants such as Cargill and ADM (The Guardian). Low prices have led to under-investment in agriculture elsewhere, something which the rise in prices may actually help to remedy in time.

The price of oil
The increase in the price of oil (it has doubled in the past year) has lead to a steep rise in the price of fertiliser, (assisted by increased demand from the US biofuel industry). Transport prices have also increased. These have increased the cost of growing and transporting crops.

Medium to Short-term factors:

Extreme weather conditions
Severe drought in Australia over the last few years has significantly decreased their wheat and rice production (National Geographic).

Artificial shortages due to stockpiling and export restrictions.
With prices climbing, there's plenty of incentive for those at every point of the food production chain to stockpile commodities, from traders to store-owners. Investors seeking a profit have driven up prices further by buying up the market for future sale. In recent months rice-producing countries have also responded to the rise in food prices by taking steps to protect their own markets. India and Vietnam, the world's second and third largest rice producers, have introduced export restrictions. This stockpiling by producers as well as middlemen has limited supplies of rice and driven up prices still higher (Business Week).

Financial speculation on food prices.
Rising commodities prices (and a slow-down in other markets) has dramatically increased the appeal of food futures to speculators. Speculators buy and sell stocks or commodities in order to benefit from fluctuations in price (without any interest in the product itself). Food futures contracts are agreements to buy or sell a given amount of food by a certain future date at a predetermined price. In trading futures speculators are gambling on the future price of food - i.e. that these will continue to rise. The speculators argue they are not driving the market, but cannot deny that the rising demand for commodities futures has amplified the price increases. In the past five years, the number of futures contracts for wheat has quadrupled (foreignpolicy.com).

So is this worldwide food crisis why my weekly shopping bill has increased so much?

The surprising answer might actually be 'no, not really'.

Although shoppers in Western countries have seen significant increases in the price of bread, rice, dairy products, eggs and so on, these have not in any way reflected the real worldwide increase in the cost of food. The supermarkets would like us to thank them for this, claiming to have insulated consumers with reduced profit margins. This may be true to a small degree but it's worth remembering that the real reason we have seen such a small increase in prices in comparison to world food prices is because such a small proportion of the price we pay for our food actually goes to pay for the ingredients. For example, if a loaf of bread costs £1 and 10p of that goes to pay for the flour, then a doubling in the price of flour will cause only a 10% rise in the price of bread (to £1.10). In fact the European Commission has argued that the near-doubling of the price of wheat should have led to only a 3% rise in the price of bread (FT) rather than the 10% we've seen (giving you an indication of the real proportion of the cost going on ingredients).

While they're certainly having an effect, supermarket food prices are affected surprisingly little by movements in food prices worldwide (although those buying direct from wholesalers, such as restaurants, are insulated much less. Indian restaurants have been hit particularly badly by the rising price of rice and subsequent shortages). In fact, the main factor currently driving up prices in Western supermarkets are increases in energy, labour and transport costs caused by the dramatic rise in the price of oil (which is also a major contributor to the worldwide crisis). And oil is not likely to get any cheaper. It looks like the days of cheap food are over - and no one knows quite what to do about it.**

* Corn-based ethanol is hugely controversial, even without taking the food considerations into account. Many have claimed that the energy required to grow and convert corn to ethanol is greater than the energy gained from the fuel (although it does reduce the consumption of oil overall). This MIT study attempts to bring some balance to the discussion. However it seems likely that the rising price of corn and soya have affected more than the price of food. Some claim that the rise in prices has led to increasing deforestation in places like the Amazon rainforest as farmers clear land for growing soya beans.

**I should add 'except God'. So perhaps it's time these world leaders got praying...

Soup Experiment #1

I've decided I'd like to learn to make more soups.

So last night was my first experiment. I went searching for ingredients in the cupboard and came up with some bacon, half an onion and a bag of continential lentils! And it turned out pretty yummy!

So...

Bacon and Lentil Soup (for lack of a more exciting title!)

2-3 rashers of bacon, chopped
Half an onion, diced
Chicken stock cube
Squeeze of garlic puree
3oz of continental lentils (sludgy green ones)
Seasoning

I 'sweated' the onions down with a little butter in a pan and added the bacon bits when the onions were soft. Once the bacon was cooked I added some balsamic vinegar, a squeeze of garlic, some pepper and a sprinkling of Italian herbs (I wasn't feeling that adventurous!). Meanwhile I brought the lentils to the boil in a separate pan of water, with the chicken stock cube added. The instructions on the lentils packet say to boil the lentils for 10min and then simmer for 20min. So once they had boiled I added them to the cooked bacon and onion mixture and added some more water, then brought it all back to the boil and left it to simmer for 20min.

The result was yummy and could easily have fed 2 or 3 people. Result!

Onto the next one... suggestions welcome!

Wordle-ing

Whoever thought text analysis could be so fun! Wordle creates 'word clouds' from text you provide - and produces some surprisingly striking images in just a few seconds! Try it yourself to see...

Here's one or two I made earlier.. (well actually, just now!)


(from the -slightly edited- Wikipedia entry for Durham)


(from an old essay - can you guess what on?)


(from another old essay!)


(from a well-known song...)

It's a bit addictive really!

Here's one I didn't make:

(the complete text of the ESV Bible)
Isn't it interesting what words come up?

[Thanks to Matt!]

Iron Man

The movie Iron Man was a surprising pleasure recently - so much so I saw it twice!

I admit I'm a soft-touch for superhero movies to start with, but it didn't take long for Iron Man to gain another fan in me. A big part of that was down to Robert Downey Jr, who was as droll and gorgeous as ever in a part that seems made for him. The film gave me plenty of smiles and chuckles - enjoying the story with its angsty character development and humour, and, of course, charmed by Tony Stark's relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow's 'Pepper' Potts ("Tell me you never think about that night.." ahh). The romantic in me can never resist some good ol' UST (reminds me of those heady X Files days :-). I haven't seen a superhero movie with this much wit, heart and charm since Spiderman 2. Come on the sequel!



Robert Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times explains Iron Man's appeal (and its super-fit to RDJ) well in his review of the film:

Downey's performance is intriguing, and unexpected. He doesn't behave like most superheroes: he lacks the psychic weight and gravitas. Tony Stark is created from the persona Downey has fashioned through many movies: irreverent, quirky, self-deprecating, wise-cracking. ... Some superheroes speak in a kind of heightened, semi-formal prose, as if dictating to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Not Tony Stark. ... He's flippant in the face of disaster, casual on the brink of ruin. ...
At the end of the day it's Robert Downey Jr. who powers the lift-off separating this from most other superhero movies. You hire an actor for his strengths, and Downey would not be strong as a one-dimensional mighty-man. He is strong because he is smart, quick and funny, and because we sense his public persona masks deep private wounds. By building on that, Favreau found his movie, and it's a good one.

Church Politics and Chess?

I've just recently (re)discovered Dave Walker's cartoons on his Cartoon Church blog. Made me laugh lots despite (or perhaps because of) not being an Anglican!

So many to choose from - here's a few of my favourites:



The last one, in particular, reminds me of the cartoons my brother Brendan used to draw when we were younger - draw some more Bren!

Fun in the Playground

I missed church on Sunday, being away, so I was glad of this paraphrased excerpt(?) from Ruth's talk on Ben's blog:

Some people think of God's will, the plan God has for them, as a tightrope. You have to be really careful to stay on, otherwise it's a disaster. I think God's will is like a playground. It has a fence, and there are limits. Outside the fence it's dangerous as you could get hit by a car. Inside, there's slides, roundabouts, see-saws, swings - you can play on what you want. Sometimes God might say 'that's enough sliding for now, have a go on the swings'. You might enjoy some bits more than others, but you can have a go at different things. As long as you stay inside the fence, you're safe. But you don't have to walk a tightrope.

I like playgrounds!

(Thanks to Benbo Baggins!)

Healing on the Streets in Dudley

Here's hoping we have some testimonies like these at June Project!

The revival in Dudley seems to be an off-shoot of what's happening in Lakeland, Florida with Todd Bentley. Peter Kirk's been keeping up with events in Florida and the UK response on his blog 'Gentle Wisdom'.

Cell Poem

This is a poem we made in our cell - each person putting together a few lines based around a word taken from an alphabetical list of names for God. This is the (alphabetised!) result.

I really enjoyed the result and was impressed by how creative a group we are :)


Forgiver of debts;
Everything we owe
You paid yourself.

Glorious God, do we see you in your full glory?
If we saw your glory could we stand?
How overwhelming, Lord, that we can, like Moses, see you in your glory
and live.

Your awesome Holiness is so beautiful,
Revealing your pureness; showing your love
In the greatest way possible.
You are Holy; you are like no other.

Immanuel
God with us.
God: huge, universe-creating, nation-toppling, miracle-causing God
with us
In our weakness
In our pain, our brokenness
In our joys & in our sorrows
In our humanity.
Now alive within us,
Bringing life to dead bodies,
Light to dark recesses.
Immanuel.

Teacher: patiently explaining,
Gently upbraiding;
Sharing understanding,
Righteously demanding.

Unchanging One
You are still the mighty God
That spoke the world into being.
Forever you will be powerful.
You are still the merciful God
that sent his Son to die for us .
Forever we are yours.

Lord, you are the
Unchanging one.
From everlasting to
everlasting you are God. Unshakable,
dependable, always faithful.
Circumstances change, but you
remain the same.