Virtual Methodist

Well, I'm back in harness this week after a short period of aestivation, both in the real and virtual realms. This morning saw me start the day at BBC Radio Ulster doing Thought for the Day (if you didn't catch it you can find it approximately 26 and 86 minutes into Good Morning Ulster on the iPlayer for the next week) and this is that thought, more or less in written form... I’m not very athletic… I can’t play a musical instrument… I’m useless at arts and crafts… and I’m never going to be offered a modelling contract… But I am supposed to be moderately intelligent, if IQ tests and exam results are to be believed… So I was interested to read a report last week suggesting that religious people, tend to be less intelligent than self-professed atheists . This led to some crowing by atheists on social networks, although the study emphasised that it probably wasn’t a simple case of cause and effect. Rather, as well as asking more searching questions than those who are less in...

Yesterday I shared Maggi Dawn's introduction to the "O Antiphons" better known through the hymn "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". However, as I said yesterday, most versions of the hymn omit 2 of the original verses, and we actually begin with one of those missing verses, which Alan Luff recently translated as: O come, thou Wisdom from on high Before whom all our follies fly; Give thy sweet order to all things As through the world thy prudence wings. Alan Luff (born 1928) translated from Veni Emmanuel © Stainer & Bell Ltd. For Latin purists Maggi Dawn posted the original Antiphon as: O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. In the modern world we value knowledge and information... and we have never had so much of it at our fingertips, floating around in the ether, ready to download at any time. But Glenn Campbell over at Kilroy C...

Who is allowed to say what on the Beeb these days? On Friday night I turned on BBC1 QI which stands for "Quite Interesting"), with Stephen Fry et al, a programme which I really enjoy, being a trivia nerd, although some of the guests sadly often go for cheap and not quite so interesting laughs. On this episode they asked a question concerning the number of commandments in Exodus 20 (answer according to Fry is 14... been back to Exodus 20 and don't quite get what he means), and during that part of the show Stephen Fry told the sort of non-PC joke that would have been common in the days of Bernard Manning. Apparently God went ot the French and offered them the commandments, but they weren't interested because of the command no to commit adultery... He went to the Germans, and they weren't happy about being told not to kill... He went to the Italians and they weren't happy about being told not to steal... He finally went to the Jews, only to be asked "How muc...

This has been a week for me embarrassing myself over words. For about a month now my wife has been regularly hammering me at a wordgame called WordTwist over on Facebook, then this week I was challenged by 3 other people to a game... The result was that I finished in a humiliating 4th place... Nothing wrong with coming fourth given the competition... the humiliating thing was my score which would have embarrassed a dyslexic goldfish... But anyone who has persevered in reading this blog will know that my spelling can, at times be erratic, especially when I have been blogging late at night... Perhaps any American friends haven't noticed, since your spellings of most words are wrong anyway!!! Last night, however, I committed the biggest blooper yet... I've had a very full week and didn't get round to editting my sermon until 8.30 pm. I finished that by about 11 pm, then set about putting together the powerpoint slides to accompany it. By 12.45 am I was done in more ways than o...