I found lots of old Scrabble scores in the box, and had a look through them. Our last joint best score was 701, which we got 4.5 years ago, helped by a bingo each (RESIGNED and RIOTINGS). A few days ago we played and got 720, also including two bingos. We have improved over the years, but not vastly.

I’m setting up my lovely new Apple MacBook, and one of the good things is the Dashboard. I realised there might be a widget for posting to WordPress blogs, and sure enough there is. This looks heaps easier than opening up pages in Firefox, though it’s not obvoious how I can add tags this way.

For once, I’m feeling quite Christmas-y, which is a surprise. I’m normally a bit humbug-like at Christmas, and don’t enjoy messing with trees and decorations. But maybe because we’ve put the tree downstairs this year, and it looks gorgeous, I’m feeling more in the spirit.

I’ve listened to a few more talks-on-MP3 from Greenbelt 07 that I missed at the time. Pete Rollins’ Faith with/without God:towards a heretical orthodoxy was a rollercoaster of a ride. He delivered it in a fast, breathless way with sudden diversions and some sudden lurches (”I don’t believe 100% of what I say either”). He said up front that (in effect) as a continental philosopher (whatever that is) it might be a hard ride; and, yes, afterwards I was left feeling a bit thrilled and queasy at the same time. I think his message could be summarised as “God is the ultimate reality” so questioning God’s existence is a waste of time. But I couldn’t be sure how to persuade others of this, or what difference it should make.

Prof Keith Ward has completely different on Is Religion Dangerous?. Fast-paced and more analytical, it is still an excellent listen. He carefully took a hatchet to some of the arguments of the so-called ‘New Atheists’, particularly Richard Dawkins, who he knows from his time as Professor of Divinity at Oxford. I learned a good deal ranging from why Logicians will never be able to “prove God”, to how some particle physicists are bringing God into their thinking, to why almost no wars have been fought for religion, and that atheism is a clear contributory factor behind Stalin’s purges. Highly recommended.

I’ve been listening to Doug Gay’s excellent talk at Greenbelt 2007 Learning to be Church: Unpacking the Emerging Project. Knowing “emerging” is a hyped term, he deliberately kept it analytical. He sees it as not being a organisation, a church, or even a movement. Instead as more of a growing Sensibility particularly amongst low-church evangelicals.

He structured it this way:

1. auditing - the continual task of the church to listen to Spirit, to detect where continual reformation is needed to remain faithful to the gospel. He thinks a side-effect of the Reformation was that in worship we were robbed of our bodies and senses.
2. retrieval - getting over the post-modern desire to be ‘relevant’, deciding to look back into the church traditions - particularly the catholic ones. The Taize and Iona Communities have been ‘portals’ into catholic tradition for low-church protestants, helped by them being independent of the official Catholic church.
3. unbundling - picking apart the theology from the religious practice. For example, for many protestants, lighting a candle in worship meant you were praying for the dead. But the Emerging project questions the inherited packages, and has appropriated some other elements of catholic practices. Like children playing with a dressing-up box. “It’s about recovering the babies that the Reformers threw out with the bathwater.”
4. supplementing - his least developed section. Looking at the political, technological (eg, electronic music), theological (eg, anabaptist, feminist, missional, and priesthood of all believers) and cultural supplements that are being added. This is a part that isn’t just historical.
5. remixing - the low-church protestants bringing these parts together with some confidence but not stopping to ask for permission.

His summary of the Emerging project is “a new wave of bottom-up irreverent ecumenism, not waiting for permission … but seeking to mend their traditions to help them be church in the post-modern culture”.

My main disappointment was that he didn’t explore how Alt.Worship links with the Emerging conversation.
The best phrase of many was when we was asked about Priesthood and Emerging: in his reply he went personal noting “no-one could limbo under my view of priesthood”. Incidentally he was fairly dismissive of Don Carson’s book on the subject (”Becoming conversant with the Emerging Church”) favouring “Emerging Churches” by Brian Bulger and Eddie Gibbs instead.

(His careful delivery and Scottish accent also helped make it a joy to listen to. I normally have the same reaction to John Bell, for the same reasons. What is it about that accent that makes it so much nicer (to me) than the Gloucestershire one I hear around me a lot?)

I’m kicking myself. I posted a short thought about the Golden Compass movie, but then I’ve read 2 other bloggers on it. Both have said things I realised or thought, but was too lazy to push through into words. And they’ve said it better than I would probably have done. Clearly I need to work much harder on my writing, which is part of the point of this blog.

Kester Brewin at Signs of Emergence says:

I think that Pullman is more interested in critiquing the ‘power religion’ exemplified by historic Catholicism and institutional Anglicanism. … If we try to protect our faith from criticism like this, we seal it from the tricksters, and prevent it from being refined. If we truly believe it, we should allow our children to see the film, and trust that the truth will out. … I hope the God believe in is more robust than that.

And then someone else pointed out how some of the intrigue and suspense in the beginning of the book is lost, as the film starts with a voiceover fully explaining the nature of the daemon/souls. ‘Tis a better example of how the book is superior to the film.

We saw The Golden Compass at the cinema yesterday. The book does give much more depth to the interplay of the characters’ daemons and the growing and changing relationship between Lyra and Mrs Coulter. But still, I enjoyed the spectacle, particularly the airship design, and the altering shapes of the childrens’ daemons.

It’s reminded me that I need to read the last book in the trilogy: The Amber Spyglass. That can be my Christmas light reading. The first film is supposed to have toned down the book’s anti-church sentiment, but it was still there at times. The last book is supposed to have much more of it …

Last Sunday I preached on “Suffering as a Christian” - available to hear online for 6 months. I was pretty happy with the content, but as ever I worry about the delivery. Feedback on the night was positive, though I do land up wondering if there’s more to the comment than meets the eye. (Does

You clearly put a lot of preparation in

also mean it was too dense or long or …?) I’d practised it in private at home, and it’s amazing how odd it sounded. Despite writing it to be read out, many sentences were too long, and some phrases just didn’t work. So I scribbled a lot of changes to my script. It also felt poor, because I was having to refer to the script too much. But on the night, after praying (obviously!), I was able to rely on the script much less, and it flowed much better. And I think I only noticed a few phrases that were still really awkward.

Talking with Mike later, he clearly goes through exactly the same re-write stage after the first rehearsal - though he says it takes him 25% of the total preparation time on this last step. I didn’t leave enough time for this, so that’s something to allow for next time. Vicar Marc has very kindly offered to sit down with me and listen to my sermon and one of his, and work out what can be improved. This will no doubt be a difficult learning process, but if it improves our preaching, it will be worth it. I’ll hopefully report back what we find.

I’ve just finished The Righteous Men. I’m sure Jonathan Freedland or his publisher chose the Sam Bourne pseudonym because it’s structurally similar to Dan Brown, and allows for a similar style on the front cover. He can make you turn the pages in the same way that Brown does, and he’s picked a religious myth theme. But thankfully, the writing style is superior to Brown’s with more believable characters, and (ISTM) built on a much stronger set of facts, rather than than fiction-as-facts of The Da Vinci Code. The one thing that did jar was part of the ending which seemed a coincidence too far.

I really enjoyed it, and it’s been good to relax with a thriller again over the last month. Thanks, Dad, for the loan You got any others by him?

John made an interesting observation last night. He said he didn’t like getting tied in to weekly/biweekly/monthly commitments that could go on for years, preferring shorter-term commitments. That rang bells with me, as most of what I’ve done in the last year has been more like a project. Formal projects have a start and end when a particular objective or outcome has been reached. Mine haven’t been that formal, and most have some form of continuing or sustaining activity, but they don’t repeat each week/month. These have included the prison chaplaincy visiting (3 months total), the visual system upgrades, and the occasional preaches. These have felt easier to work on.

Is this because I can’t finish things, or because I get bored with things? True to some extent. But I think the larger reason is that I want to see some outcome from my time and energy, and it’s harder to see this when something’s a very regular activity. Is this a good enough reason?