Amazing Newton

I'm looking forward to reading John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, a new biography of John Newton (which I reserved at the library some time ago). So I was interested to read an interview with Jonathan Aitken, who wrote the biography, on the Christianity Today website. When asked to sum up Newton's legacy, Jonathan Aitken said:

"I seek to alert readers to how colorful, how historically important, how politically effective, and how deeply spiritual a man Newton was. He understood perfectly about getting hold of Wilberforce and mentoring him spiritually.

The story goes that Wilberforce came to see Newton to say, "Mr. Newton, I think I want to go into the church." Newton said, "No, no, Mr. Wilberforce, stay where you are and serve God in Parliament."

...

It's often said there would have been no abolition of the slave trade without William Wilberforce, but it's absolutely fair to say there would have been no spiritually motivated William Wilberforce as a determined campaigner if it hadn't been for the friendship and mentoring of John Newton."

The theology of sleep

Following on from my post on changing the clocks, I've come across a blog post on the theology of sleep and a sermon to download on A Biblical Understanding of Sleep. The latter is part of a series called Sanctifying the Ordinary* and there are messages on sleep, eating, work and leisure. They are all based on 1 Corinthians 10.31: "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" . Finally, here are some Celtic prayers to help you prepare to sleep and a link to Night prayer from Common Worship.

* This links to a $20 CD but scroll down and you'll come to the individual free downloads

Fireworks

[Photos taken on Dec 31st 1999, Mountsorrel]

As we look forward to the annual Infusion Bonfire Party on Saturday 3rd November, here's some links to check out beforehand:

• Guy Fawkes: a Biography
• The Gunpowder Plot Society
  
• Bonfire Night recipes
• More recipes...
  
• Fireworks: the science behind the spectacle
• Government advice to encourage a safe and responsible understanding of fireworks, their sale, and use

Faith and science

Is faith an electrical anomaly? The latest attempt to find a "God spot" in the brain using an MRI scanner on Carmelite nuns is reported in an article in Scientific American . This discusses how researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith. The article ends by saying:

"no matter what neural correlates scientists may find, the results cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God’s interactions with them. After all, finding a cerebral source for spiritual experiences could serve equally well to identify the medium through which God reaches out to humanity. Thus, the nuns’ forays into the tubular brain scanner did not undermine their faith. On the contrary, the science gave them an even greater reason to believe."

For a very stimulating talk, that further discusses the issue of faith and science listen to Science & Spirituality - is Dawkins right? (or read the transcript) from Rev Dr Alison Morgan of Holy Trinity, Leicester. She concludes:

"Science is fascinating and wonderful. It’s brought us astonishing advances in knowledge. But it doesn’t help us make sense of what we know. Maybe we should give the last word to Professor Stephen Hawking, who probably understands the universe better than anyone. This is what he says: “Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question ‘why does the universe bother to exist?’. I don’t know the answer to that.’"

But as a Christians I think that we do have some answers. My experience is that we find those answers in a dimension of existence of which Richard Dawkins as yet has no experience. We find them in the context of a relationship with God."

Changing the clocks

A reminder that you need to turn your clocks back an hour on Sunday (otherwise you may turn up at church an hour early!). How are you affected when the clocks change? An article in The Guardian explains how our biological clocks are affected and how we can adapt to the seasonal shift.

Autumn foliage (Market Bosworth area)

Snapped on the Infusion walk round Market Bosworth on Saturday 13th October.

Marke Greene on tea and coffee

Spotted an article by Mark Greene, in which he ponders on the phenomenal growth in coffee shops (which are now more numerous than estate agents on our high streets) and asks whether this trend is a friend or an enemy to community. He also muses on the relative values of tea and coffee, and challenges us as to whether these trends lead to less hospitality.

Here are a few quotes but do read the full article:

"Employers wanted higher productivity, more people spending more time at their desks and more flexibility for workers to time their caffeine hit to their own bio-rhythms and ‘fatigue curve’. And in this they were aided by what one might call ‘the cultural values of tea’. Tea was about stopping work whereas coffee never was. Coffee was a stimulus to work and had somehow retained its connection with the intellectual fertility of the early coffee houses. Tea, though perhaps more significant in the early centuries than coffee, lost its connection with productivity. Coffee means activity, tea means leisure. Coffee makes work better. Tea is a pause from it. Coffee is an aid to workaholism, tea an antidote. Similarly, if you have had a terrible day at work, just discovered dry rot in your roof, subsidence in your kitchen, been abandoned by your spouse and knocked off your bike, your neighbour won’t offer you, “A nice hot latte” but rather “A nice hot cup of tea.”
...
“If coffee is about activity and adventure and tea is about rumination and comfort, no wonder church is associated with tea. At the same time, more and more churches are serving ground coffee, partly because more and more people have experienced ground coffee and are less content with instant. And partly because it’s simply nicer."
...
"Perhaps the growing number of places to have a cup of coffee with friends or acquaintances is not so much a sign of the regeneration of relationships in our culture but actually their decline. It’s convenient, it’s true, to pop in to a coffee shop. And it’s often refreshing to get out of the house and delightful not to have to tidy the place up to make it presentable enough to say, “Oh, sorry, it’s such a mess.” But still I wonder whether choosing to treat ourselves in the neutral arena of Starbucks is also a way to avoid inviting people into the revealing realities of our homes and the more intimate connections that can be forged by serving them tea or coffee or frog and nettle infusion, or whatever it is you happen to have in the cupboard that might change the colour of boiled water and serve to nurture a relationship."

EU Anti-Trafficking Day

Today is EU Anti-Trafficking Day. In this bicentenary year since since the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, led by William Wilberforce, there has been increased publicity about the fact that slavery continues to this day, in child labour, people trafficking and other forms of oppression. Many churches have chosen to promote Stop the Traffik, a global coalition working together to help stop the sale of people. Check out the Stop the Traffik website lists practical ways in which you can get involved.

An inconvenient truth?

First the Oscar-winning film made by former US Vice-President Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, was distributed to UK secondary schools. Then a Kent school governor attempted to ban the film from secondary schools. Subsequently a High Court judge ruled that the film can be shown in England's secondary schools. It was subsequently reported that the judge said that the film contains "nine scientific errors". Mr Justice Burton said the government could still send the film to schools - provided it is accompanied by guidance giving the other side of the argument.

Then last week Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the UN were jointly awarded The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". In the accompanying press release, the Nobel Committee said: "By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control."

If you haven't already done so, then watch the film - and decide for yourself whether words of the mealy-mouthed High Court ruling or the 2007 Peace Prize citation are more likely to encourage individuals to act on global warming. Want to do something now? Then download 10 simple things to do to see ways you can reduce your carbon footprint.

Countdown to Christmas (2)

After considering ways to make Christmas special for children with very little, I spotted an article in The Guardian entitled Meet the new face of Christmas which discusses what will fill Santa's sack for children in the western world this year. According to toy manufacturers who made their annual prediction of Christmas best-sellers last week, games based on films and TV characters will be the best-sellers. Retailers said a surge in the popularity of entertainment characters could be due to the summer's bad weather, which led to increased cinema attendance.

The article links to a gallery of what retailers expect to be the dozen best-selling toys this year. Included is a Dalek Sec hybrid voice changer mask, which changes your voice to sound like a Dalek (until the batteries run out...)

Organ donation a Christian duty

The Church of England has told the House of Lords that giving oneself and one’s possessions voluntarily for the well being of others and without compulsion is a Christian duty - and that organ donation is a striking example of this. The Church’s Mission and Public Affairs Division was responding to the Lords’ EU Social Policy and Consumer Affairs sub-committee’s inquiry into the EU Commission’s Communication on organ donation and transplantation: policy actions at EU level.

The response repeats the Church’s opposition to selling organs for commercial gain, while accepting organs being freely given by living donors, with no commercial gain. However, whether organ donation should be arranged through an "opt-in" or an "opt out" system is not a question on which Christians hold a single set of views, the C of E response explains.

Spam weapon helps preserve books

Fascinating story on the BBC News website about how a spam weapon is helping to preserve books! CAPTCHAs are an automated test to tell computers and humans apart when signing up to an account or logging in. Created as a tool created to foil spammers, the test consists of typing in a few random letters in an image. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is using this test to help decipher words in books that machines cannot read by letting sites use them to authenticate log-ins. A common complaint is that Internet users "waste" time while trying to interpret heavily distorted CAPTCHAs. However, the CMU research team has devised an ingenious system - reCAPTCHA - to put the time used interpreting CAPTCHAs to good use in the cause of preserving old books and manuscripts. [More info on the reCAPTCHA website]

Religion and Radio 4

After a Thought for the Day on the BBC marking the 40th anniversary of the reorganisation of its radio network, the Church Times looks back at Radio 4 and religion over the past four decades. In the article, "Wireless, but not yet faithless", David Hendy notes that Radio 4 was — and remains — ecumenical in the broadest sense: "a conduit of information, contemplation, surprise, familiarity, provocation, and escape". He concludes that Radio 4's essential purpose remains "a gently civilising mission, to show us the crooked timber of humanity — and that the world is broader than people sometimes think".
[This week's Church Times is available online because of the postal strike]

Cookin’ With Google

I mentioned Cookin’ With Google to a friend recently, and realised that it could perhaps do with a bit more exposure. Its a simple idea: you input a list of ingredients into the search box and get back a list of recipes that Google finds for you. Great for the day before you supermarket shop when there is an odd combination of food in the fridge! It is an American resource so you may need to use this English - American Food food dictionary if you have some spare courgettes (zucchini)! So take a look at the Search Tips, then get cookin’!

Friends and Heroes brings Bible Stories to BBC2

A new series of animated action adventure series focusing on Bible stories is currently running on BBC2. Friends and Heroes, the UK-produced cartoon, aims to bring Bible stories from both the Old and New Testaments to a new generation of children (6-10 years) who may never have heard them before, with thirteen episodes running from September to December. They feature state-of-the-art 2D and 3D animation to tell the story of two first-century young people, Macky and Portia, who meet when they live in Roman-occupied Alexandria. Their idealism and friendship leads them across the ancient world from the besieged city of Jerusalem to Rome.

The series has been produced to the highest standards of biblical integrity with Revd Stephen Gaukroger, Senior Minister at Gold Hill Baptist Church, as senior biblical advisor. It has also been endorsed by members of the Catholic Church’s Bishops’ Council for use in Catholic schools. Scheduling details and further information found here.

Lingua Latina

Sections of Wikipedia now appear in about 250 languages, serving communities across the world, making it one of the world’s most translated documents. However, one project serves a language most people think of as "dead": Vicipaedia. Contributors to the site have translated more than 15,000 Wikipedia entries into Latin! The Wall Street Journal offers a profile of Vicipaedia’s editors, who admit that the project is “a slightly odd thing to do in this century”. The site’s content is eclectic as most readers and contributors use Vicipaedia to test their language skills, rather than to conduct real research. There’s plenty of debate about neologisms as editors can’t seem to agree on the proper Latin word for “computer”! [Spotted in The Wired Campus]

TFTD as Radio 4 turns 40

As Radio 4 turned 40, this morning Colin Morris looked back at Thought for the Day over the years. He likened speaking on TFTD to "tiptoeing through a minefield" and continued:. "If you are fervent, you'll be called preachy by the generality of listeners but approved of by the devout; if you are undogmatic, that may be more congenial to the generality, but the devout will write you off as wishy-washy". Very true! If your schedule doesn't allow you to catch TFTD every day you can listen / read it on the Radio4 website or get it as a Podcast.