"Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still."

C.S.Lewis.  [Allegory of Love.]

Could I ask for your urgent prayers and action for Burma today?

Yesterday, I met with Burmese friends here in Bangkok to get the latest news on the Cyclone Nargis disaster and to ask how UNOH could best help with the relief effort. Dr San Aung, Maung Maung and Zin Linn are part of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB). Led by elected Burmese MPs from the National League for Democracy (NLD), this is the peak body of Burmese leaders working for democracy.   

As I heard their tragic news and saw the latest photos I felt a wave of nausea hit me. The death toll is now over 100,000 people, but over 2 million survivors are still homeless, living in makeshift camps and monasteries. Many survivors have not eaten food or drunk water for a week. Children are being found alive among their parents' dead bodies. Water-born diseases are now starting to gain momentum, taking their deathly toll. Yet, the junta are still saying 'Only the Burmese can help; we don't need foreigners'. They even went ahead with a constitutional referendum to enshrine military power on Saturday.

But, what can we do? After listening to these Burmese leaders, I believe we can best support the relief effort by supporting NCGUB. 

UNOH is setting up a UNOH Burma Cyclone Appeal so that Australians can donate on-line to help the relief effort through NCGUB/NLD Burmese workers on the ground. This has been approved by COCOA for tax-deductibility and online donations can be made by clicking here.  If you would like a hard copy of this letter and a donation form to print and return by mail, please click here. 

The UNOH Board has already given $10,000 from UNOH general funds to NCGUB/NLD workers inside Burma for travel to disaster areas and for the buying and distributing of basic food and medicines. These workers can get food and medicines to people within 2 days. NCGUB/NLD will give UNOH receipts, photos and reports of where, to whom and when the relief action took place.

UNOH will also be working with Dr San Aung and other NCGUB/NLD workers to connect with both those inside Burma and those on the Thai-Burma border. These include the newly-formed Relief Committee led by Dr Cynthia, based in Mae Sot. This group will make further recommendations regarding the best utilisation of UNOH Burma Cyclone Appeal donations.

Please consider doing all you can to help our Burmese neighbours in their time of disaster and grief. We can save lives.

God bless,

Ash Barker

Here are links to the following articles: Zin Linn's latest reports from NCGUB contacts inside Burma and a Press Release by NCGUB Should you have any further questions please click here to email us.

The latest forore over the film is coming from all people Yoko Ono.

On a related matter Dr Caroline Crocker, the former biology professor at George Mason University, explains a little of what led to her removal. [Both featured in this clip.]  [Thanks AB.]

Coming soon to the big screen: Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed.  

Seeks to investigate the intellectual censorship exercised in defence of Darwinism.

See the trailers here. 

I have long been convinced that what we think is happening to us is far more powerful than what is actually happening. This short clip illustrates the point beautifully and will make a great video illustration next time I'm preaching on the subject.

[Via]

The following is part of the latest interview with Andrew Adamson, director of the latest Narnian film. [He also talks a little on the next one in the series 'Voyage of the Dawn Treader' with new director Michael Apted...

Before Lion/Witch, a USA Today story referred to you as the son of "associate missionaries" in Papua New Guinea. Can you tell me more about that?

It's a difficult thing to get into. I'm sort of in the public eye, and I don't think it's fair to drag my family into it. So I don't talk about it a lot. But yes, we did move to Papua New Guinea when I was 11. My father worked at the university there, and my parents were involved in the church there as well.

Living in Papua New Guinea is an important part of my story in another way. When I tried to understand the Narnia stories from a kid's point of view, I realized that the Pevensie kids were going through something I'd gone through. I went to this country when I was 11, and Papua New Guinea has changed significantly since then. When I was there, I'd ride my cycle all around, a huge amount of freedom. Now there's a lot of violence and corruption. Basically, the place that I grew up in doesn't exist anymore, and for me, there's a sense of loss. I realized that's something the kids go through in returning to Narnia [in Prince Caspian]. They try to go back to a place they spent 15 years in, and now the place they knew is gone. And ultimately at the end of the story, for the older Pevensies, they have to let go.

It's something we all go through in our passage from childhood to adulthood, when we realize we can't go back to the innocence of our childhood. We can't get back to the house being as big as we thought it was when we grew up. And at some point you have to say I accept that—and move on and become an adult. To me, that was the heart of this story from Peter and Susan's point of view. And my own experience provided this sort of bittersweet, nostalgic framework for that.

How many years were you in Papua New Guinea?

From 11 till I was 18. So I still consider it kind of my home, because those years are so formative.

And then you moved back to Auckland at 18?

Yes, and I was there till I was about 24, and then moved to San Francisco. And I've lived between San Francisco and Los Angeles for the last 15-16 years. And now I'm in the process of moving back to New Zealand.

[Via]

The English fry up is ok on the rare occasion...Like when I visit my mum in Cornwall and stop at the 'Egg and I' an hour out of Heathrow, however anything more is deadly.... This from Giles Coren in the Times.

"....I'm not exaggerating about the effect of fried breakfasts on working-class health. I made a film for Channel 4 in 2005 called Tax the Fat (which I truly believe we should) in which I visited a truck-stop café just outside Pontefract. With a public health nurse at my side, I tested two dozen random truckers and found that none was less than 3st (19kg) overweight. Some had body-mass indices of around 50, which is double the level at which you are defined as "overweight" and only five points short of the score that has you reclassified as a small town. And all of them - all, mind - were eating fry-ups.

I managed to persuade one of these truckers, an 18st sweetie called Paddy, to replace his daily fried breakfast with a large bowl of porridge, but to make no other changes to his diet. We weighed him two weeks later. He had lost a stone......"

With our new theme being the "Hand of God: Providence and Promise," we decided to launch our Accelerate sessions with that perennial challenge - the problem of evil. The problem is usually put this way ...
1. God is all-good.
2. God is all-powerful.
3. Evil exists.

Now, this becomes an apparent problem if you seek to affirm all three statements without compromise or nuance. In other words, if God is all-good you would expect that he would want to stop evil; if he is all-powerful, you would expect that he would be able to stop evil; and yet, evil exists. So, does that mean that God is actually not all-good (he doesn't want to stop evil) or that he is not all-powerful (he is not able to stop evil)?

We entitled the session, "Why Doesn't God Stop Suffering and Evil?" and, if you are interested, the participant notes and podcast can be located here. By the way, a small apology is in order - at about the 40 minute mark of the podcast I was speaking off the top of my head about Christian Science as an example of a worldview that denies the reality of evil (hence, compromising/nuancing number 3 above) and inadvertently confused them with the Church of Scientology (and mentioned some known scientologists such as Tom Cruise etc). Sorry for the stuff-up - it had been a long week!

Been humming this all day long. The song tied into the message this weekend on providence comparing linear and cyclical views of history... I think the story of God is more like the aforementioned spiral, with beginning, ending and progression. You can catch the message via podcast if you wish as well as mutter these lyrics by Noel Harrison or better still re-watch the more recent of the two Thomas Crown Affairs and sing along with Sting:

"Round, like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnaval balloon
Like a carousell that's turning
Running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it's own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle your head
Why did summer go so quickly
Was it something that I said
Lovers walking allong the shore,
Leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand

Pictures hanging in a hallway
And a fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
As the images unwind
Like the circle that you find
In the windmills of your mind..."

As posted back on the 18th, Tom Sine was in Perth recently. Here is his take on aspects of his visit, in particular his brief experience of living as a part of Peace Tree Community in Lockridge. Interesting reading.

Microsoft's new worldwide telescope is coming. Ray Gould and Curtis Wong give a sneak preview in this video talk... Or go to worldwidetelescope.org

Dave Eggers is random, creative and fun... He wanted to do something to help the public school system. So pirate supplies led to over 1400 volunteers and a global network changing the life of kids even making many of them published authors..... Watch and be dazzled... Or even get involved

Dan Merchant, on the Today show, talking about the book and the preposterous idea that followers of Christ who disagree on various issues should try to grow up and obey the premier command.....

The Book........  The Documentary.

 

This from the fermi blog:

"Not for anything in the world would I be free from God; I wish to be free in God and for God…. God must again be the centre of our whole life."

—Nicolai Berdyaev, The End of Our Time (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1933), p. 105.

[Via]

Seems like the men of South Africa are calling on God... Mathys and Dewald report in...

"Let me tell you about a miracle that happened in South Africa
recently. I realized then that
only God can change the heart of a nation.

Some of you might know Angus Buchan as the writer of the faith like
potatoes book. If you haven't read this book please do so trust me on
this. Three years ago Angus was told by the Lord to cancel his busy
speaking schedule completely. Angus was distraught as he believed in
what he was doing. The Lord told him to look after men but not to
advertise this. The first camp had 240 people attend from one
invitation mail. The second had over 7000 people attend......"

This one topped out at around 60,000!  [Read the report]   [The official Site.]

  [Via]

Bono:   "How do you find time for prayer and meditation?'

Tutu:   "What are you talking about? Do you think we'd be able to do this stuff if we didn't?"

I think I will be talking about prayer and messiness this weekend.... I love this extract from an interview with Yaconelli on Dick Staub....

"....I talk about principles of unspirituality. And one of them in the book is the 60 percent principle. I had a gal who used to teach in Harlem. And she had this one guy, this student who she taught Shakespeare. And he was flunking the class. And he was brilliant. And she tried everything with this kid. She threatened him. She stayed with him. She made him stay after school. She begged him. She pleaded with him. Nothing happened. He graduated finally from high school, but he flunked her course. Sixty percent. So about ten years later she's walking down the street in New York and this really nicely dressed guy comes walking up and he looks at her and he says, Dr. Monroe, do you remember me? And she says, oh yeah, I remember you. You're the guy that gave me 60 percent in the Shakespeare class. And he says, yeah, I've always meant to talk to you about that. I'm working for Time magazine now. And he said, when I was in high school in your class, he said, my dad was in jail. My mom was a prostitute. My brother was in a gang. My other brother was in a gang. And he said, 60 percent was 100 percent of all I could give you. Now, we've got churches full of people. And this is the thing that really irritates me. We've made heroes out of authors and ministers who have big churches. Let me tell you who the heroes are. They're the little lady in my church who has Downs Syndrome, who has two kids that are kind of messing up their lives right now, whose husband was unfaithful to her once and now they're trying to make their marriage work. And for her to get up in the morning and get out of bed and go through the day is all she can do. And I want to tell you, she's the hero. She's the one that gets the mansion. She's the one whom God is showing and working through......"

There is a line from Rob Sitch about the film 'The Castle' which continues to resonate within me....

"Sophistication is a false god. We think we are smart by how well we might claim to know opera, but at the end of the day the only thing that really matters is family and friends. Darryl Kerrigan doesn't need to prove himself with any of these false pretences. He knows what he wants - he's got virtually everything he needs - and he is content with his life. The rest of us may initially laugh and mock him for being a simpleton, but at the end of the day - the joke's on us."

I think we do the same thing with our faith. We major on minors and often pick up on trivialities to define someone else's spirituality.... The truth is we are all messy and admitting that is the spiritual act, not the doing or non doing that initially grabs our attention.

 Mike Yaconelli's book entitled 'Messy Spirituality: God's Annoying Love for Imperfect People' is wonderful in this regard..... Highly recommended......   [Part 2 tomorrow.]

 

"Reading without meditating is like eating without digesting."