Virtual Methodist

Another round-up of internet articles that have caught my eye. Pope Benedict's Resignation...  If you have been away on a mission to Mars this week you may have missed the extensive coverage and may need the BBC produced   list of 10 helpful facts about the whole thing ... if not, you're probably bored with the whole thing and I'll not mention it again... But if you fancy going on a mission to Mars, you may get the chance soon , although you and your partner may appreciate this helpful article, also produced by the Beeb on how to avoid killing each other after 500 days in a confined space ... Lies, Damned Lies, the DWP and the Daily Mail...  I know, I know, I know, I said I would keep this positive over Lent... but there are some things that test my resolve to the uttermost... Especially the scapegoating of the poor, ill, infirm and immigrants for our economic ills... Yesterday the BBC (again) picked up on a report by the Methodist Church in Britain, t...

Following on from yesterday and  Peterson's   comments on the subversive power of parable, his comments on subversion itself are worth noting: "Three things are implicit in subversion. One, the status quo is wrong and must be overthrown if the world is going to be livable. It is so deeply wrong that repair work is futile. The world is, in the word insurance agents use to designate our wrecked cars, totaled.  Two, there is another world aborning that is livable. Its reality is no chimera. It is in existence, though not visible. Its character is known. The subversive does not operate out of a utopian dream but out of a conviction of the nature of the real world. Three, the usual means by which one kingdom is thrown out and another put in its place — military force or democratic elections — are not available. If we have neither a preponderance of power nor a majority of votes, we begin searching for other ways to effect change. We discover the methods of subversion...

There's a short Brian Friel play beloved of younger actors entitled "Lovers: Winners." I performed in it many times myself until I was far too old to fool someone into thinking I was a schoolboy... Actually "Winners" also has a partner-piece entitled "Losers", but it is often performed on its own... What makes one set of "Lovers" into winners while the others are losers is that in the former, (SPOILER ALERT) the young lovers die early... while in the latter the lovers live on into an acrimonious old age... Towards the end of last week a news story all over the TV was that 12 town centres were "Winners" of a government initiative aimed at regeneration, dubbed "Portas Pilots", because of the involvement of TV retail-guru Mary Portas. She is now dubbed the " high street Tsar " - boy I loathe the use of the word "Tsar", given that Tsars were autocratic despots - just what you need for a sustainable gras...

No supplement last week as I was a little too-pre-occupied to collate the few things that had caught my eye... But here are a few from  the past couple of weeks... First is this news that, in the midst of the Euro-meltdown, the Greeks have apologised to the rest of the EU with a huge wooden horse ...  I'm not an economic expert... indeed balancing my own chequebook stretches me to my limit (although I have to say I get a little frustrated with those who constantly compare maxing out their credit card with the management of sovereign debt... the two don't actually bear any relation to each other... unless we are using our credit cards to pump-prime potentially money-making ventures), so articles or programmes about economics and finance usually don't hold my attention for long... However, last September on Radio 4's More or Less I listened the whole way through a programme which explained the crisis in terms of Homeric myths and in the light of the above link I so...

We're taking a break from our reflections on the New Creation, just as the Biblical narrative has God resting on the seventh day and Christ's body is pictured as resting in a tomb on the Saturday of Holy Week. Which gives me a chance to do my usual round-up of stuff that caught my eye this week. And I suppose it is appropriate that I start with this piece in the Huffington Post about an attempt by a small group in the United Methodist Church in America affiliated to Answers in Genesis to rewrite that denomination's position on "Creationism" and science. Currently the United Methodist Church affirms scientific method, seeing nothing in conflict between science and Biblical Faith, and it expressly opposes the teaching of creationism within the public school system. The fact that they had to make such a ruling in the first place speaks of the depth of polarisation in the US on this issue, and should be a salient lesson to us on this side of the Atlantic about ...

There is a basic principle that underpins the theory of evolution by means of natural selection, and that is the survival of the fittest. The theory suggests that this is most potent at times of environmental stress such as an ice age or other global catastrophe. We are currently in the midst of an economic ice age, a global economic catastrophe. And nature, red in tooth and claw, will out. The big predators on the financial markets have been bringing down the slower moving beasts, be they banks or entire countries, while our esteemed political leaders seem to be applying evolutionary principles to their policies and exercise of power. The recently passed Welfare Reforms, allied with cost-cutting measures that disproportionately affect the poorer members of society, has produced a situation where people will be perfectly fine so long as they don't lose their jobs, get ill or grow old. It is, effectively survival of the financially fittest out there. Unless you make personal pro...

The religious authorities had a problem. A rabble rousing preacher was undermining their authority, speaking out for the poor and the marginalised, even bringing his message into the very heart of their temple, upsetting the tables of moneylenders and market traders who supported the work of the temple and made significant contributions to their own incomes. This was very popular with the people but ignored the realities of maintaining some sort of a balance in a world where all the real power lay in the hands of the imperial government who could crush them all on a whim. They were doing their best for the people. In the light of that their leader suggested that it was better that this one man should be sacrificed for the sake of the nation’s interests (and their own interests). So they took their problem, and that man, to the local imperial representative to ask him to pass judgement on him, because they had no real power to do anything with him, and described him as an ene...

Maybe it is part of my makeup that means I spend so much time sitting on the fence with various issues that I permanently have skelfs in my backside... But yesterday's union protests left me enormously conflicted on many levels. I suppose a lot of it goes back to a childhood where strikes were always in the news... at first over significant issues like equal work for equal pay, but building through the 70s, culminating in the winter of discontent, with the unions over-reaching themselves and effectively disempowering themselves and the labour party for a generation... Ushering in the Maggot Scratcher with her militant anti-union stance. Her wholesale dismantling of the industrial base of our society may have been inevitable to a certain extent because of the global marketplace, but the main problem was her laissez-faire approach to filling the employment gap. But nature abhors a vacuum and into the economic space stepped the financial, service and public sectors, with the financ...

Readers of this blog will know by now that I do a monthly stint on a local independent radio station, offering reflections on the Sunday newspaper headlines and a "Review of the Week" as part of an early morning religious magazine programme, which in its latest incarnation is called "Dawn Reflections". Today the headlines covered three broad areas depending on what papers you looked at. The Irish nationals (eg. the Irish Independent and Irish Times ) had stories critical of the past and present Irish governments' handling of the economic crisis, and reflected a spirit akin to Fraser from Dad’s Army telling us “We’re all doomed!” The erstwhile broadsheets of Britain , meanwhile, filled their front pages with photographs of a beturbaned Saif al-Islam Gaddhafi, who was captured yesterday trying to flee Libya... (Although the Observer also found space to highlight a letter from Church of England Archbishops and Bishops critical of the current indescrim...

Last weekend there was a whole hoo-haa about the injustice of 50 year old Dublin Tesco employee Mary Byrne getting axed on the X-factor ... Even prestigious Anglican bloggers have been vexed by it... However, I'm not convinced that the X-Factor being unjust is particularly newsworthy... Indeed, whether the decision as to who stays on is decided by a democratic phone-vote, or by a Cowell-dominated cabal, justice is unlikely to play a huge part in it all. But today, my thoughts are not primarily with a 50 year old singing Mary from an unprestigious area of Dublin, but a somewhat younger singing Mary, from an equally unprestigious village in northern Palestine. Carrying on the story from yesterday's annunciation, we turn to Mary of Nazareth's song of praise to God in the light of his promise of pregnancy to Elizabeth, her elderly cousin being fulfilled. This familiar song of praise, read or sung in various forms not only in advent, but throughout the year, should resonate powe...

A few days ago Crookedshore posted a typically perceptive post on the situation being faced by yet another generation of young Irish people, heading to London, New York, Chicago, Boston and other big centres of ex-pat Irish in search of work. There are those who suggest that this time it may well be disproportionatly those with higher qualifications who leave the sinking ship of the Irish economy, an experience which the majority community in the occupied 6 counties have had for years with young Protestants tending to go to universities across in GB, rather than staying in Ireland, and never coming back. I did read (and post on facebook) an interesting article by Matthew Lynn suggesting that this likely outcome is one of the reasons why it may be better for Ireland to go bust rather than accept the EU/IMF bail-out. I'm not economically competent enough to comment on that in detail, but he raises some interesting issues... But meanwhile, back at the Crookedshore, he cites one of my ...

Just read this report by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in England, which I presume is the same one reported on the BBC , telling of significant pessimism in the charitable sector in the face of public sector spending cuts. For once we in Northern Ireland are ahead of our friends on the other island as that pessimism has been pervading the community and voluntary sector here in Northern Ireland for some time... And perhaps for more reasons... The squeeze that is hitting English charities will hit us too as the assembly departments and local councils need to find ways of cutting their budgets... and since the recent RPA debacle has shown the reluctance of public sector turkeys to vote for Christmas there is no doubt that in order to retain staff and resources for themselves, they will reduce funding to outside bodies... Even though the community and voluntary sector adds a huge amount of value to any investment (the "voluntary" element obviously allows the de...

Statistics... Don't you love them. As a long term participant in the Northern Ireland Household Panel Survey (I'll do anything for a £10 gift voucher... well, I'll spend half an hour answering relatively simple questions anyway...) I received the latest findings today. This is based on the 2008 returns, before the current economic downturn really gathered momentum here, but already it has shown a leap in those feeling financially worse off than the previous year (up to 31% from 14%), which in turn has manifested itself ina decrease in the number of people going to the pub once per week or more, down to 14% from 22% back in 2002. However, that trend may be exacerbated by the smoking ban in pubs in the intervening period... although I for one have been happier to go to a pub since that legislation. Whatever the reason these statistics certainly lend substance to the licensees bleating about the downturn in their business. That is until you look at some of the other findings. ...

This is not a story to read immediately after your breakfast, but apparently a Serbian union official has cut off his little finger and eaten it , in protest at unpaid wages. Zoran Bulatovic used a hacksaw to cut his finger off and said "it hurt like hell". Surprising that! The prophets in the Old Testament realised that words were not enough at times, and did some dramatic things to make a point... Isaiah walked around naked for 3 years while Ezekiel lay on his left side for over a year before turning over onto the other side for a further 40 days, and Ahijah tore his coat into twelve pieces, giving 10 to Jeroboam. But this is something that may even have given the most fervent Old Testament prophet pause before doing it. Apparently some workers at the Raska Holding textile factory in Novi Pazar haven't been paid for years, and currently have nothing to eat, so he ate his finger to make an example. His colleagues threatened to follow suit, one at a time, but further au...

Not having read the book behind the Wizard of Oz , I was blissfully unaware that the whole thing is an allegory about the economic plight of people in the US just over 100 years ago. Oppressed by the Wicked Witches of the East (Bankers and Industrialists) and the West (the harsh environment) the woman, the scarecrow (farmer), tinman (industrial workers) and cowardly lion (William Jennings Bryan the leader of the Populist Movement) head along the yellow brick road (the gold standard) to the Emerald City (Washington DC, the source of greenback dollars) to seek the wisdom of the Wonderful Wizard (President) of Oz (either a corruption of US or the symbol for the Ounces of the Gold Standard). It all sounds very plausible, though, as we were always taught in theological college to beware of intragesis as opposed to exegesis, ie. reading things into rather than out of the text. As I said, I haven't read the book as of yet, though this might prompt me to... Until then I cannot make any jud...

My friend Spike posted this wonderful picture on his Facebook wall, with the comment: "Now who can remember what happened to this banknote? 100,000 Reichsmarks? Anyone? You at the back? Scotsman, big fellow, rumpled suit, grumpy face? Yes. I'm talking to you!" It was prompted by an earlier dialogue between us on the announcement that the Bank of England, as well as dropping the interest rate to "half of one percent" (ie next to nothing), have decided to try some "quantitative easing," the wonderful new euphemism for printing up a few billion extra pounds. This brought to mind thoughts of the Weimar Republic and ultimately the oft quoted need for a barrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread... But for Spike it drew to mind Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" when the useless one third of the population of Golgrafrincham crash land on Earth and decide on leaves as currency... "But, we have also run into a sma...

You just have them sometimes. Weeks, months or even years that you would like to not only eradicate from your memory, but also ceremoniously delete from all the world's diaries and calendars just to make sure that you would never, ever be reminded of them. September 2002 was one of those for me. I should have seen what was coming when I came out of church on the first of September turned the key in the ignition of my car and nothing happened… It took a new starter motor at £140 to sort things out. Then during the next week I was working in my study and heard howling from downstairs only to go down and find that my eldest son Owain had fallen off his bike and had split his chin open. I took him to hospital only to find that he had also broken his left arm. The next Monday I woke up feeling not quite right… My skin was tingling all over… and my joints were aching. I went to the Doctor’s to be told that I might have shingles, but that he couldn’t tell until any rash came out… But that...