Virtual Methodist

I'm probably not going to get a chance to blog as much about 4 Corners Festival Belfast this year as I would like or normally do, because I have barely enough time to write the stuff I absolutely have to write and do for the events I am involved with this week (and my day-job)... Indeed yesterday morning's service on Radio Ulster (which you can listen to on  BBC Sounds for the next month until it self-destructs Mission Impossible-style) was a metaphor for my week, in that we ran out of time and had to axe Mylie Brennan reading my poem/meditation based on St. Francis' " Canticle of Creation ". Of course St. Francis' poem was also part of the inspiration for, and the source of the title of "Laudato si'" the encyclical by Pope Francis about caring for our common home, the Earth. Dr Lorna Gold, our preacher on Sunday morning and lecturer last night in another stimulating event at Jennymount Methodist Church, was, only this week, appointe...

In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan… That’s the first line of one of the most loved (indeed it managed to make it TWICE into the list of the nation's top five favourite carols this week), yet probably most inaccurate Christmas carols in the English language… Snow probably did not fall, snow on snow, snow on snow on snow on the first Christmas in Bethlehem… But it has certainly fallen in England and western Europe over the past few days, messing up people’s travel plans… particularly those who had booked to travel on Eurostar… Including some who had transferred to train from British Airways flights because of a threatened strike, which was subsequently ruled illegal. Others have been stranded abroad or had their Christmas holidays cancelled because of budget airline Globespan being put into administration and the Allbury Travel Group going under… Indeed it is almost as if Christmas itself has been cancelled for Globespan employees, some of whom not only don’t know how the...

Yesterday was Charles Darwin's 200th birthday! So I half expected to be buried under assorted Darwinania and various mailings from the fundamentalist wing of evolutionary biology... But no, instead they stood back and left the floor open for "the other side." And true to form, the first piece of news to come across my RSS reader yesterday referring to Darwin was from the same brains-trust that gave us a NI Enviroment minister who doesn't believe in Man Made Climate Change... with a news story from the Guardian referring to DUP MLA Mervyn Storey who is threatening to mount a legal challenge to the Ulster Museum under equality legislation if they go ahead with a Darwin Exhibition... I despair... But... what if their bluff was called and, under equality legislation, they were given exhibition space proportional to the properly peer-reviewed scientific research in support of either evolution or Young Earth Creationism, or even Old Earth Intelligent Design? I'm sure t...

The recent cold snap has lead to all sorts of jokes about the so called "greenhouse effect". If only climate were as easy to understand as saying more carbon in the atmosphere, leads to higher average temperature, leads to less snow. No... an unstable climate with an atmosphere saturated with carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" will actually lead to less predictable weather patterns... it may make for less ice at the poles during summer, but it could lead to a disruption of the jet stream and gulf stream, making us in Northern Ireland as snowbound as Newfoundland in winter. In the light of that the announcement on Monday that, in contravention of his party's and department's stated commitments, Northern Ireland environment minister Sammy is seeking to enforce a NI-wide ban on Westminster-funded ads and programmes that are aimed at reducing carbon emissions, is not very funny. His actions are apparently based on his personal belief that Man-Made Clima...