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Saturday Supplement

To keep you going incase you have nothing better to do on a Saturday here are a few links to material that has made me think this week.
First on the whole "Fasting from Facebook" malarky, Steve Stockman went off on one... I posted the link in a comment earlier in the week, but incase you missed it, here it is again.
Here in Northern Ireland there were three big news stories in the past week. 1) The death of Frank Carson - who, whilst he seems to have been a genuinely nice man, I was never really a fan, so I didn't really follow up on any of the stories, 2) The effective collapse of a £6 million "Supergrass" trial against loyalist paramilitaries, which has generated a lot of ill-informed ranting on all forms of news media, but doesn't fit my current "whatever is good" filter, and 3) The passing of permission to build a golf course near the Giant's Causeway. This too has generated a lot of comment across the board, and frankly I have no particular opinion on it as I don't like golf, but don't really think it will majorly impart on the Causeway itself... However, you can always rely on Prof. Billy McWilliams over at 1690 an' All Thon to offer up something to shine an alternative perspective on something like this. Before you click on the link, however, don't do it if you are easily offended...
If you are tired of reading at this point maybe you should check out Lindsay Allen's Thought for the Day for Friday on Good Morning Ulster. You'll find it around 25 minutes in and then again at around 84 minutes... As my wife said this morning, "Well, he didn't miss and hit the wall..."
Last Sunday in the Orthodox calendar was "Forgiveness Sunday" and I was doing a wee bit of reading on the subject in the light of that which may find its way into another post at some point, but then yesterday John Coutts posted this piece based on Hannah Arendt's perspectives on forgiveness... It shows up my own thinking on the subject to be relatively shallow...
Yesterday I quoted from John Wesley on the subject of busy-ness... it was a quote originally stolen from a friend's facebook status update, but the place she found it was this piece by Fred Sanders on "Wesley the Worker"... it's worth a read whether or not you are a Methodist.
Finally given that I intend spending a substantial period of today and tomorrow watching rugby and football (come on Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Liverpool in that order) I thought I would post this video of rugby union ref Nigel Owen exercising discipline in a Scarlets v Leinster game. I posted another video of him earlier in the week on facebook and both illustrate the difference between refereeing in rugby and football... And why,  9 times out of 10 I prefer the former.

Enjoy the weekend.

Shalom
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