Arrived in Stoke Newington in London! I am reading both Harry Potter and Terry Pratchett... it is an interesting mixture. ...we are with Melissa in London in a flat above the pub that feels like we are in a house boat! It is floating on the brew downstairs or the London mud, or is it just Pratchett imaginings going wild? Wizards toppling walls and floors... it is a lathe and plaster construction with wild, and awake, floorboards!

So tomorrow The Eurostar, and Paris awaits.

musings before we leave

The excitement and the work are crowding in. No French done tonight. But Women in Black still, tomorrow. Last Sunday I had to get my pen out while Ray was preaching.

He was doing the last of three sermons on the liturgy, the communion service. They are available now from http://www.stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons_index.html (Download Word doc from that page.)

But communion; it makes us family; we eat together... now the "Anglican communion" needs a covenant to make us family. do we? Do we need anything else other than that statement that we will take communion together? What does it mean that we do not? Such is the scandal of the broken communion between various christian groups. Always there are those who will judge, there are those who are not welcome.

And this week too, looking at the various groups that are increasingly out of communion in the Anglican church I heard another familiar theme. "We are the victims"... to me it comes from people whom I perceive as having the power and using it unwisely. But perhaps there is something more here. Are we all victims in a war, in an argument? It is only after one side has won that they can say they were the victims and responding to aggressive action on the part of the other. There is probably a whole academic field on this. The science of mediation and conflict resolution.

But last week Australian ABC TV audiences saw news from Sderot; there are still rockets being fired from Gaza and we had a long essay in the effect that they have on the people of this area. Yes, victims, but...

ABC did not show Gaza. (a later story was about vacation summer schools teaching young boys to be terrorists though.)

We are all victims, but that means we do not, cannot act.

Anglicans need to talk to one another. Break bread with one another. Take communion together.

If there is an impassable gulf between people, then it needs to be bridged. not easy; not comfortable. (Taiwan's suffering in last week's cyclone shows us that.)

and to be a bridge means to be walked over and stretched. pulled every which way.

that is something to which we could all aspire perhaps.

may you be pulled and stretched and walked over!

Stuff ups

A post on Michael's blog perhaps cuts through some of the issues that have been troubling me. One state or two state solution in Israel and Palestine; and the Anglican church division.
He has some thoughts on human brokenness at:
http://michaelcardensjottings.blogspot.com/2009/08/some-thoughts-on-human-brokenness.html
and concludes:

Perhaps then a key way of reading the biblical texts for the purposes of liberation is to explore the way they reveal us, reflect us in our frailties, our vulnerabilities, our brokenness. And not to condemn either but to understand, to empathise, yes, to love.

Mary told me of this interview on Palestine "one state solution" at http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5723 I can see problems and realities here.

And an address by Bishop Lawrence at http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/24779/ confused me. (I admit my brain and my body is (yes it is a singular)  not working well at the moment.) I count myself as an angry anglican when the covenant is discussed but there is something missing in this defence of the anglican way that would still exclude me, my parish and my friends. Somehow Michael's post on brokenness says it. There is a human brokenness that needs to be acknowledged.

We have stuffed up, all of us, from Sharon to Arafat, from Akinola to Schori, we have a broken world to live in.

together.

thank god.

Angry Anglicans

http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2009/08/angry-anglicans.html

Anglicans and a covenant

I don't take a lot of notice of how the church organises itself these days. I am not on Synod, or even Parish Council. It is like the freedom of being sixty. I don't need to know. It is a freedom I relish.
Except that other people make the decisions!

I remember fondly that Canon Laurie Murchison (may his name be forever remembered), told us at All Saint's and St Mark's that the fundamental unit of governing the church was the diocese. (governance was not a word in use then,) The diocese (and its Synod) was where the decisions were made. Later on in my life I discovered Provincial Synods and Primates.

But a covenant to keep "the communion" together; this comment worth reading is from Pluralist:
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/08/thirteen-unsure.html He stirs my unease. We are in communion, because we take communion at each other's tables. We break bread together.

As Pluralist says:

Here is my 'but', and it is as if these organisations do not yet get it. It is this:

We will work to ensure that if the Church of England is to sign up to the Covenant, it has potential for rapid progress on this and other issues.

No! Work to ensure the Church of England does not sign up to the Covenant. The Covenant is no good for anyone interested in Anglican flexibility and the inclusion of all its people liturgically and in ministry. If you sign the Covenant, you get the two track approach at the very least, which this joint statement rightly rejects. It would mean having to defy the Covenant and linking up with those Churches that are more flexible, which would not be possible structurally in the Church of England. Also if the Covenant fails in the Church of England, it means it won't constrain other parts of Anglicanism either, except those Churches that want to draw up agreements with others (and nothing surely wrong with that - part of the decentralised or confederal way of doing things).

as I say, he is worth reading.

Mystery

Colin Coward has this quote in the Changing Attitude blog.
http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2009/08/cloud-of-unknowing-living-with-mystery.html

The way Henry Morgan speaks reminds me of a favourite quote of my fathers from HG Wells which was something about the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder... This paragraph seems to say much the same, but adds that touch of change and shift. As the trip approaches, it seems to me that I need to ponder this mystery some more!

The Revd Henry Morgan writes that:

“... what humankind will ever know is but a small island among a vast sea of unknowing and mystery, The edges of the island will shift as new things are learnt and old things are forgotten, but mystery remains huge and overwhelming and touches us everywhere, wherever we look.”

"I don’t even know very much about God. God by definition is beyond our knowing: a vast, silent emptiness. We may sense God’s presence from time to time. We may believe that Jesus has shown us something of his nature, sufficient of God’s nature, even. But, in another sense, however true that may be, God will always remain beyond our knowing.”

“So, maybe we could usefully learn to approach all of life with a sense of mystery, wonder and reverence. It might usefully teach us a little humility.”

[The God You Already Know, pp95-96]

The Pentatonic Scale (some links)

http://gimundo.com/videos/view/a-singing-science-experiment/

A video that music teachers should see. (hence the email to radford not home!)

something for a student concert perhaps? But who can jump around like this man?

This is another site for the exercise freaks amongst us:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9ccp8_bachduo_music

then there is the Sound of Music in Antwerp (ideas for larger groups)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k

Posting photos on blog

Patricia wants photos in the blog. And there is a new camera in the house, a dinky little one that isn't too small for my clumsy fingers.
A Lumix Panasonic. So I have been taking photos of flowers and birds.

the Daphne at St Philips is blooming and wondrous to smell!
('O taste and see' was in the psalm on Sunday.)

Caruso (I think this is her) waiting for some muesli.

This is a bit difficult. I will only be able to do it when at home. Obviously I am missing something! (Probably a Picasa account!)

Antony Loewenstein's blog

http://antonyloewenstein.com

unlike this blog, Antony's is very focussed on Palestine and Israel. An Australian Jewish contribution to the debate. You can also hear Antony discussing these issues on Late Night Live on Thursday 6th August 2009. Hear or download the segment from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2648169.htm

For the sixtyfourth time....

Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Our World

by Frida Berrigan

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/04

The Death Count

In Hiroshima, Little Boy's huge fireball and explosion killed 70,000 to 80,000 people instantly. Another 70,000 were seriously injured. As Joseph Siracusa, author of Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction, writes: "In one terrible moment, 60% of Hiroshima... was destroyed. The blast temperature was estimated to reach over a million degrees Celsius, which ignited the surrounding air, forming a fireball some 840 feet in diameter."

Three days later, Fat Man exploded 1,840 feet above Nagasaki, with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT. According to "Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered," a web resource on the bombings developed for young people and educators, 286,000 people lived in Nagasaki before the bomb was dropped; 74,000 of them were killed instantly and another 75,000 were seriously injured.

Electricity

We produce electricity and supply it to the grid. (and at the times we don't produce from our photovoltaic cells, the grid supplies to us.)

Some of the details are on my web site at http://members.pcug.org.au/~lindafrd/

The company (Country Energy) charges a service availability charge which means that we need to produce nearly 4 Kilowatts every day to pay that cost. Then of course we need to produce enough to pay for the appliances that we use. Since our usage is close to 4 KWs, an average production of 8 KWs will be our break even point. (which means "free electricity"). More than that and we become producers and actually get paid! :-)

so, yes, we are producers; but it is a fine line. (average production is 8.37KW over the year says Fred.)

Speaking differently into this world:

A sermon from Jeremy Pemberton ...about the Archbishop of Canterbury's Reflection on General Convention. Preached in Southwell Minster on Sunday 2nd August 2009. The full sermon is found on the Changing Attitude blog at http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2009/08/sermon-preached-last-sunday-in.html
Will it ever be "possible for the church to find a way to speak differently into this world"? The sermon concludes:

"Paul wanted an extraordinary quality of relationship – a unity that transcended their differences – to characterise the way the Christians of Ephesus grew together. No one is imagining, certainly not him, that this was easy. Forbearance is one of the qualities he singles out to achieve this, and humility and gentleness. We face a world of sexual living that is very very different to the world of fifty years ago. I wonder if it would be possible for the church to find a way to speak differently into this world and encourage the qualities of living that will lead people, heterosexual and homosexual alike, towards the fullness of life that God wants for them. But that is, perhaps, only possible if we exercise a forbearance, a gentleness and a humility that so far the official pronouncements of our church have been unable to get anywhere near.

Jesus said, in everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Matt 7:12

May God give us grace to exercise gentleness and forbearance, and to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. Amen."

another gay hate crime?

The Independent reports on the Tel Aviv shootings
http://trc1.emv2.com/HS?a=A9X7CqnkUzEk8Xnaxq18U_7iaA

Nir Katz remembered as a caring volunteer.
The 26yr old killed in the Tel Aviv shooting on the weekend was volunteering at the youth club which had been targeted by the gunman.
I post these links because the news here in Australia didn't even identify the club as a youth club. The other victim (Liz Tarabushi) was sixteen.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1104771.html

Ha'aretz has a lot of comment on this incident.
Police are following leads, and can't call it a hate crime. (The law can't do that. They have their job to do.)

Ian Thorpe beyond sport

A Eureka Street article:
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=15360

Ian spoke at in the UK  at the Beyond Sport Summit in early July.

His speech (well worth a read) is on crikey.com
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/23/ian-thorpe-australias-dirty-little-secret/

(Ian's foundation is
http://www.ianthorpesfountainforyouth.com.au/)

and a quick response to what he is saying might be to sign an open letter to visiting United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur, Professor James Anaya.
After his visit, he will be providing the UN Human Rights Council with a report on his assessment of human rights in Australia.
The Australian government will be expected to respond.
http://antar.cmail3.com/t/y/l/kjjla/hykujultd/j

The grace of salvation

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Katherine Jefferts Schori on grace and salvation.
(With thanks to Brian at http://www.nottoomuch.com/)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IxG96wpx60&feature=player_embedded

It would seem that Bishop Katherine is avoiding the cobwebs and dust in the corridors of power!

Climate Action (sign the Climate petition)

This petition is to be submitted to Ban Ki Moon at the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009.

At
http://www.sealthedeal2009.org/

http://www.sealthedeal2009.org/petition/
The Climate Petition
"We the Peoples of the World Urge Political Leaders to:

Seal the Deal at COP 15 on a climate agreement that is definitive, equitable and effective.
Set binding targets to cut greenhouses gases by 2020.
Establish a framework that will bolster the climate resilience of vulnerable countries and protect lives and livelihoods
Support developing countries' adaptation efforts and secure climate justice for all."

(7,206 signatures so far)