I arrived home last night to two pieces of news...
Firstly - Millie appears to have hit her 6 week growth spurt and is feeding constantly.
Secondly - We're about to be evacuated.
The implications of the second are significantly less tiring than the first... and much more exciting. Apparently, workers building a tidal defence system in Pill (just seawards up the Avon and on the other side) have discovered what they think is an unexploded WWII bomb.
They're going to start digging up said object on the 7th May... and then tow it up the river towards Bristol, past the bottom of our garden.
They've suggested that we might like to leave the house for the towing bit...
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Friday 23 April 2010
Christendom tensions and the Kingdom
I've just been sent a news bulletin from church... in which there is a notice about one couple's son who is taking part in a charity event to raise money for 'Help for Heroes'... the advice that it's 'a good cause' and information on how to donate.
It made me very uncomfortable.
On the one hand, I can see that it's a massive effort, it's taken lots of organisation... Clearly his parents are proud of him and what he's doing... and they are convinced by the rightness of the cause. It's good that people should know and be free to give, and there are a lot of people in the church who might do that... so, what better way to tell them than through the bulletin?
On the other, I think it's a terrible idea... I hate war, I think the troops in question are unnecessary, I think their involvement in Afghanistan is illegal, and I wouldn't classify them as 'heroes'...
Most of all, I find myself surprised by how strong my emotional reaction is when I see something that appears to support military action proposed as 'a good cause' in a church publication...
Now, I know I can just go and tell the leadership that I didn't like the inclusion of the article... that would be a very easy way of dealing with my own discomfort. I know some of them are sympathetic to my rather extreme anti-militarism.
That would make me feel better. But it's a bit of a cop-out and won't deal with the root issue, which for me is the discomfort that I see as some in the church 'stretch' (for want of a better word) towards a less taken-for-granted post-Christendom type understanding of the Kingdom of God... while more ingrained habits of the church aren't moving in the same direction.
Perhaps the frustration of knowing how to even enunciate this is reflected by the fact that I wrote more on this below... and then deleted it because I thought that it sounded judgmental (which is the last thing I want to be)... Every time I put something down that represented what I wanted to say, I found that it didn't... or it could be read wrongly.
Hmm...
It made me very uncomfortable.
On the one hand, I can see that it's a massive effort, it's taken lots of organisation... Clearly his parents are proud of him and what he's doing... and they are convinced by the rightness of the cause. It's good that people should know and be free to give, and there are a lot of people in the church who might do that... so, what better way to tell them than through the bulletin?
On the other, I think it's a terrible idea... I hate war, I think the troops in question are unnecessary, I think their involvement in Afghanistan is illegal, and I wouldn't classify them as 'heroes'...
Most of all, I find myself surprised by how strong my emotional reaction is when I see something that appears to support military action proposed as 'a good cause' in a church publication...
Now, I know I can just go and tell the leadership that I didn't like the inclusion of the article... that would be a very easy way of dealing with my own discomfort. I know some of them are sympathetic to my rather extreme anti-militarism.
That would make me feel better. But it's a bit of a cop-out and won't deal with the root issue, which for me is the discomfort that I see as some in the church 'stretch' (for want of a better word) towards a less taken-for-granted post-Christendom type understanding of the Kingdom of God... while more ingrained habits of the church aren't moving in the same direction.
Perhaps the frustration of knowing how to even enunciate this is reflected by the fact that I wrote more on this below... and then deleted it because I thought that it sounded judgmental (which is the last thing I want to be)... Every time I put something down that represented what I wanted to say, I found that it didn't... or it could be read wrongly.
Hmm...
Môme's Home
I've moved academic discussion to my wordpress.com blog so this is now a much more personal take on all things life/work/family/church/God...
Why Môme? As an academic, I'm often searched for by name. Môme is a persona from a past in MUDs and a not-at-all-anonymous tag when posting information that doesn't need to show up as 'me'. It means 'small child' in French and has a kind of defenselessness innocence about it - a kind of sparkly-eyed, sand-in-your-sandwiches, hair bleached in the sun, implicitly trusting, happiest-when-hugged simplicity to it that I'd like to see in my own life :)
Why Môme? As an academic, I'm often searched for by name. Môme is a persona from a past in MUDs and a not-at-all-anonymous tag when posting information that doesn't need to show up as 'me'. It means 'small child' in French and has a kind of defenselessness innocence about it - a kind of sparkly-eyed, sand-in-your-sandwiches, hair bleached in the sun, implicitly trusting, happiest-when-hugged simplicity to it that I'd like to see in my own life :)
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