Podcast: [Repost, fixed] An exceptional critique of Philip Pullman's series 'His Dark materials', and the book 'The Golden Compass' by Simon Coupland

This podcast is a pre-recorded talk given by Rev Simon Coupland, a minister of the Church of England in London, on Philip Pullman's books in the 'His dark materials' series.

Simon is levelheaded, his talk is exceptionally well researched. It offers facts about both Philip Pullman, and the contents of each of the three books.

This is the best input I have heard on 'His dark materials' and 'The Golden compass'. Coupland is a Minister, but seems to have been trained as an Historian. So what he offers is tempered and framed by facts and substantiated by quotes from Pullman and the three books. (Thanks to Paddy for the link to Simon Coupland's Church site, and for helping me with the correct spelling!)

Just to warn you, Coupland gives a very good overview of the plot of each of the three books in this series (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber spyglass), so if you have not yet read all three and don't want to spoil the plot please just skip through the first 15 minutes or so of the podcast.

The podcast is just on an hour in length, the sound quality is great (for a change!), and it weighs in at around 12.5MB (so don't go downloading this on your cellphone!).

Thanks for downloading it.

Update: I must appologise! When I uploaded the podcasat previously I accidently left the podcast track muted!!! AAaaaaarrrgghhh!!! So sorry, it has been fixed and reposted (sorry to waste your precious bandwidth!) Simply click on the link below to download the FIXED version!

'Simon Coupland's critique of Philip Pullman and the 'His Dark Materials' series [Fixed].mp3. (12.5MB)

Technorati tags: Simon Coupland, Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber spyglass, podcast, Dion Forster

Open lecture at John Wesley College, Prof Joerg Rieger from Perkins school of Theology at Southern Methodist University, Texas

John Wesley College is pleased to invite you to attend a public lecture by Prof Joerg Rieger (see below) on Tuesday the 22 January 2008. The lecture will be split into two parts, Part 1 from 11h30-12h45, and then Part 2 from 13h30-15h10.

The Title of the lecture is Christ and Empire - (from Paul to postcolonial times) rethinking the imperial legacy of Christianity.

Unfortunately we are not able to offer lunch to those who wish to attend the lecture. However, there will be tea and few biscuits etc. available over the lunch hour.

Joerg Rieger is Professor of Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dalls. He is also the author of Remember the poor: The Challenge to Theology in the Twenty-First Century, and God and the excluded: Visions and blindspots in Contemporary Theology, and editor of Opting for the margins and Liberating the Future: God, Mammon, and Theology.

I had the great joy of spending some time with Joerg in Oxford last year. He is an incredible thinker, a youthful man with great passion, insight, and an engaging manner! I have just recently read 'Christ and empire', and 'God and the excluded'. I rank them among the top books that I have read, and they certainly the top of my reading list from last year.

Please spread the word about this lecture, invite members of your Churches, clergy, and other interested parties to attend. I hope to be able to record the lectures (for those who are too far to attend in person). I will post MP3 copies of them on http://www.spirituality.org.za within a week or two.

If you are interested in coming, please could you drop me a line via email, or phone Taryn our receptionist on 012 804 3022 just so that we can be sure to prepare an adequate venue and enough tea and biscuits!?

Rich blessing in Christ!

Please don't forget to pray for our seminary, the student ministers, and the staff who serve them. As always we have families at John Wesley College who need financial support, so please do consider and remember us when you make your mission and tithe allocations for 2008!

Asus eepc? Any ideas?

Yup, stuck in traffic again... It seem to be the only time I get to post to my blog these days! Busy times!!

Does anyone out there know if the Asus eepc is available anywhere in South Africa? It looks like a great ultra portable pc. I must say that I quite like the idea of Linux on a PC of that size.

I believe that it has OpenOffice on it. That would be great to work on books, talks, etc. on a laptop with that small form factor.

Scheduled 'load shedding' and the cost to the economy... Whatls the answer? Here's one!

As I write this post I am sitting in a traffic jam on William Nicol drive in Bryanston. I have been in the same spot for almost an hour... I have no other choice but to endure it because I am on my way to a meeting with one of our Bishops at OR Tambo international airport.

The cause of this terrible traffic is not an accident... No, it is the scheduled 'load shedding' by ESKOM our nations electricity bungler... I cannot in all honesty call them a 'provider' since they do it so seldomly these days!

As I sit her wasting time that I don't have, watching all the other people stuck in the traffic with me, I wonder, how much is this scheduled load shedding costing our country in lost revenues and productivity? Perhaps there is a subtle plan to make the WHOLE nation as inefficient as the Department of Home Affairs so that they won't look so bad? Oooohhh... That's a cheap shot.

Seriously though, what could the solution be? Well, the one group of persons who seem to be making a roaring trade are those guys who sell Cokes and sunglasses on the side of the road! Perhaps that's what we should do? Shut down all formal trade and all just sell our stuff from the backs of our cars when the traffic stands still?

Last night I spent my birthday by romantic candle light, my daughter her homework by less than romantic candle light, and we ended up boiling water for my son on a small gas stove.

My ban account seems a little overloaded by the many demands upon its resources. I think this month I may do a little load shedding myself and withhold payment to ESKOM. What do you think?

/end rant! Sorry!

Kenyans reports on the Kenyan crisis using the net and google maps

This comes from boingboing:

Ushahidi is a website created to give Kenyans a way to report incidents of violence in the ongoing post-election crisis. The project came together, it seems, during the TED Global conference event earlier this year in Tanzania. Erik Hersman, who publishes Afrigadget and was one Ushahidi's organizers, tells us more about who's behind it:

Ory Okolloh - Was the nexus-point of information for news during and after the elections in Kenya as the mainstream media went quiet. Ory was also the genesis of Ushahidi as she opined in one blog post, "Google Earth supposedly shows in great detail where the damage is being done on the ground. It occurs to me that it will be useful to keep a record of this, if one is thinking long-term. For the reconciliation process to occur at the local level the truth of what happened will first have to come out. Guys looking to do something - any techies out there willing to do a mashup of where the violence and destruction is occurring using Google Maps?"

Daudi Were - Has been blogging and working to hold together a disparate group of 400 bloggers in the Kenyan Bloggers Webring. He is working full-time on two initiatives. First, to create strong partnerships for Ushahidi through the Kenyan NGO Council. Secondly, to create easy ways for people to donate to the Kenyan Red Cross.

Juliana Chebet - Being upcountry during elections gave her a unique view of the post-election aftermath. Also a blogger, she has been busy taking pictures and video, and chronicling what she sees. Juliana has also been a part of making Ushahidi, primarily in putting new reports into the system.

Segeni Ng'ethe - Owner of Mamamikes.com. As people have had a hard time getting cash and an even harder time trying to find cell phone charge cards, Segeni has been providing one of the only ways for people to send money from abroad and recharge people's cell phones. On top of that, he has created a voucher system that allows anyone in the world to donate money directly for distribution and use by the Kenyan Red Cross.

Link. Over at Global Voices, contributor Juliana Rincón Parra has this roundup of online video that provides a glimpse into the current state of affairs in Kenya, including first-person testimonies of violence recorded and published by Ushahidi participants: Link. More coverage of the crisis in Kenya on Global Voices here. (thanks, Emeka Okafor!)

Previously on BB:

Video from TED Global conference - Africa: The Next Chapter

Deconstructing Vanity Fair's "Africa" issue

posted in: Civlib , Innovation

Various inputs, and analysis, on the Kenyan crisis from around the web.

Tonight my good friend Mark Russel prayed for the crisis in Kenya...

Here's a little something that may shed some light, and give some insight, as we pray for that nation.

What struck me about Mark's great prayer was they he framed it in terms of our South African past, thanking God for the many Kenyans who remembered South Africa in our dark days, and remembered to pray for us. Now, it is our time to remember them, and our joy and duty to pray for them!

Snip from an article on AllAfrica.com:

"It is the Kenyan People Who Have Lost the Election," headlined Pambazuka News in its special Kenya election edition on January 3.

"But the real tragedy of Kenya," the editorial continued, is that the political conflict is not about alternative political programmes that could address ... landlessness, low wages, unemployment, lack of shelter, inadequate incomes, homelessness, etc. ... [instead] it boils down to a fight over who has access to the honey pot that is the state. ...[citizens] are reduced to being just being fodder for the pigs fighting over the trough."

Commentaries of particular interest from the U.S.include an op-ed in the Washington Post by Caroline Elkins, "What's Tearing Kenya Apart? History, for One Thing," a statement by Africa Action stating that U.S.-Kenya policy should support "robust democratic processes" rather than be defined by "a narrow agenda of the war on terror and international business", and a statement by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars highlighting "the role of the U.S. government -- far from a neutral player -- both before and after the elections" and the danger that U.S. involvement will be biased by its close military relations with the Kenyan government..

More on current events in Kenya at AllAfrica.com: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3. (via Ned Sublette)

posted in: Civlib

Technorati tags: Kenya, election,pray

Doing what you can with what you've got!

I heard a lovely little story recently when in the worship service of my friend, Deacon Ernie Nightingale in Durban.

He told of a mighty warrior who was riding his great big horse through the Kingdom. As he rode people scattered in his way. He was truly impressive as he rode through the towns and cities.

Then, something strange happened as he was riding on a small pathway in the country. As he came over a hill he could see a small bird lying in the road in front of him. While he was still some way away he shouted "Hey bird, you're in my way! Move so that I can pass!" The bird didn't move at all..

When the warrior got closer h noticed that the bird was lying on its back! He called for it to move again, but it just lay there. So, he got off his horse and walked up to the bird.

When he came close to the bird he asked it "why are you lying in the middle of the road with your legs in the air?" The bird said "well, I heard that the heavens were going to fall down, so I thought I will hold them in place." The warrior laughed so much that tears began to run down his cheeks... "Do you think you'll be able to hold up the heavens with those tiny little legs of yours? They are so small and skinny!"

The little bird thought for a moment and then answered "I can only do what I can with what I've got... And guess what, it seems to be working! The heavens are still up there!" The warrior left in silence.

This was a wonderfully encouraging story for me! It is so true, when we do what we can with what we've got, God graciously does the rest!

Have a blessed week!

A fine balance... I think this is where the Church often gets Christianity wrong.

There have been a few hints about the 'new thing' that I shall be doing. Don't worry, news about that will follow in due course.

However, I was in conversation with one of the senior leaders of the denomination that I serve about this new course when he asked me an interesting question. He said something like "Wouldn't that be a bit too evangelical for you, taking into account your approach to the social gospel?" In short, he was setting up a dichotomy between commitment to the Gospel (and bringing people to an understanding and lived relationship with the One (Jesus) who is the content of that 'good news), and my commitment to social justice, and issues of justice.

This comment made me think... There does seem to be a somewhat mistaken understanding that one is either committed to justice OR one is committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Such an understanding MUST be fundamentally mistaken! The Gospel of Jesus Christ IS a matter of justice. It is a matter of individual justice that brings freedom from the slavery of sin, and the causes of enslavement and death. Yet, it is just as much about finding ways of bringing justice, freedom, life, and wholeness to the whole of the world.

Brian Mclaren said it best when describing his move beyond the 'conservative reformed' view of Jesus in his book A generous orthodoxy. He suggests that one of the problems with the traditional (and I might add thoroughly Pauline) view of Jesus as the one who 'justifies' us is that it is almost exclusively bound to 'personal salvation'. In other words, Jesus is the one who died to forgive us for our personal sin, to set us free from our personal sin, and help us as individual persons to relate to God and the rest of the world. Of course this is absolutely correct, BUT, it is NOT the whole truth!

Before I say any more, let me say that I preach, live, and share this message with many people! I am radically committed to bringing individuals into a personal relationship with God in Christ, who longs to relate to each of us as individuals! In fact, I think that this personal relational element of the Good News is the antidote to 'religion' - it forces us, as all true and honest relationships do, to live with the truth of who we are in close relationship with Jesus who knows us intimately.

So, in that sense I am fundamentally evangelical (in other words, I am committed to to evangelism - (the root for this English word is the Greek word meaning 'Good News') I want people not only to hear, but to discover the good news that they can find a living, close, and real relationship with the God who created and re-creates the whole of the cosmos!) However, this cannot be the whole truth!

You see simply to emphasise individual salvation (a 'personal' relationship with Jesus) can lead to some serious pathologies! One could quite easily start to think that Jesus does not care about other people who are different from us (such as poor people, gay people, rich people, evangelicals, liberals, Muslims, Hindu's etc. I think you get the idea). It could also lead us to think that all that Jesus is worried about is forgiving my personal sins. Sadly, personal sin is often a symptom of social sins... For example, I am convinced that a lot of individual greed is a result of consumerism. Or, the disregard for the poor has a lot to do with the monetization and commodificiation of value based on income (i.e., only people who can contribute to the economy are valued... This tells us that we are basing our value judgment of persons on their bank accounts, not on the fact that they are created in the image of God).

Mclaren says that what we need is a balance between individual justification and social justice!

That is a wonderful summary of my own view of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ - a fine balance between justification and justice. The one cannot be complete without the other.

I cannot truly be saved, or at peace (which is surely a sinful personal state), while there are people who are dying from AIDS, or people who are dying of hunger etc... My individual salvation is caught up with God's plan to save the whole world!

So, yes, I am committed to JUSTICE, but I am also committed to JUSTIFICATION!

Central to this false dichotomy, as I have explained before, is a false worldview that is based on modernism. Modernism has to operate (because of the influence of secular Newtonian science and Cartesian philosophy) with the principles of non-exclusion. In other words, if one is faced with two seemingly opposed notions of truth only one could possibly be true, while the other is false. This is a mistake! There are many areas in which 'truth' is based upon a complex tension between 'truths'... That's why I like the postmodern conversation so much! It forces me to ask questions about what I agree with, and what I don't agree with. I cannot simply reject something as untrue. Perhaps it is not untrue, but just marginally true! That's the negative position.

There is also a positive approach to the complexity of competing truths. That is the notion of holarchies, as found in the writings of Ken Wilber, (I have written about this elsewhere - or you can listen to a podcast that I recorded way back on 2005 that discusses these principles - podcast on Ken Wilber).

The analogy is this: Lesser truths add value to greater truths, and greater truths give lesser truths their 'fuller perspective' on truth. The example I always us is based upon grammatical construction in language.

The letter 'O' in the alphabet has an individual and unique meaning. Yet it gains greater meaning when it is complexified and included in the word 'lOve'. The word has a greater meaning than the letter 'O'. However, it the word cannot assume that it is more important than the letter, since the word cannot exist apart from the letter 'O' that is a constituent part of its meaning! Yet, the letter means very little on its own - it only becomes 'true' when included in the word. One can go further and say that truth of the letter 'O' gains fuller meaning when the word 'lOve' is included in a sentence, "I lOve you".... And so the analogy grows. The sentence gains complexity as it forms part of a paragraph, the paragraph as it forms part of a chapter, the chapter as it is part of a story, the story as it is part of history, history as it is part of all human life, human life as it relates to all of who and what God is...

Each of the smaller truths needs to be included into the ever complexifying notion of developing truth! So, I am evangelical, and socially committed, I am a Christian....

In my understanding TRUTH is not something that can be summed up in a statement, rather it is much more like an unfolding story of grace. We discover where TRUTH is, and also where it is NOT. Truth is also a moveable thing. It might be entirely correct to say, for example, that when I was 5 I wanted to be fireman! Yet, as I grew and developed in my understanding that truth changed... Something of that desire (courage, heroism, service, saving lives) has remained with me - so the desire is still as true today as it was a 5, yet what that truth has become in the story of my life is something different. It is not that my desire at 5 is untrue, and my life now is true, they are all part of one and the same story of truth.... I hope that makes sense?

I think sometimes this is where the Church goes wrong! It labels itself far to strongly in one form of 'truth' and so remains a 'word' that negates the 'letters' that give it meaning, and looses out on the fuller meaning of becoming part of a greater 'sentence of love'.

I know this could be said much more clearly... But it was just a thought, in response to a question, that is a part of a conversation, that is about my life, which is about living for eternity!

Technorati tags: truth, emergent, emerging, modernism, postmodern, evangelical, social justice, liberal, love

Public Launch of my new website and domain - www.dionforster.com!

I spent a few hours putting together my NEW domain and website. It is finally ready to launch! So, here goes!

Please take a few seconds to check out www.dionforster.com - I would appreciate feedback, any errors or problems you spot, or some advice on layout and content.

Thanks so much!

Rich blessing,

Dion

Technorati tags: website launch, www.dionforster.com, www.spirituality.org.za, Dion Forster, Author, Christian, scholar

Careful tagging, and keywords, that lead to massive web traffic.

There are many different ways of drawing traffic to your blog. Perhaps one of the most effective ways for smaller blogs such as mine, is to harvest traffic by using carefully selected words and tags.

I monitor the statistics for my blog daily and I have seen that one particular blog beats mine just about every day (I get around 150 to 250 unique visitors. He however gets between 300 and 550). The Blog is hq197.wordpress.com - it is called 'This little light...'

I have had a look through the author's posts. And there are some great posts there! However, I think it is this post (see below) that is drawing all the traffic. It has words such as Israel, Palestine, Eid, and Christmas in it... The post is entitled 'No room at the Inns in the little town of Bethlehem'

Palestinians had reason to be joyful this Christmas, with all the hotels booked inside what has been turned into a big prison by the Israeli wall of separation. Robert Berger reports for the VOA News from the little town mentioned by the prophets and later recorded by the Gospels as the place of Christ’s birth. Christmas was kicked off this year by Palestinian boy and girl scouts parading. Local clerics and pilgrims from all the corners of the world also joined in the commemorative events at the Church of the Nativity. The events were not disrupted this year by the Israeli forces (Jews do not acknowledge the legitimacy of Palestine nor that of Christ’s birth, while muslims and Christians do).

You can read the full report at the VOA News site. A Blessed Christmas to you and all your loved ones this year.

The Muslim holy day of Eil al Adha coincided this year with Christmas celebration, occurring as it did around the 20th of December. Eid al Adha is the day when Ibrahim (A.S.) obedience to God is recalled (Al-Baqara:196). Eid mubarak to all Muslims all over the world.

| Tagged bethlehem, christmas, eid, Palestine |

What do you think?

Here's why a BMW motorcyle will ALWAYS be better than a Harley Davidson!

Make no mistake, Harley Davidson motorbikes are great to look at! But, it is no small coincidence that they are called 'hogs'... All that grunting and growling...

No, if you want a REAL motorbike you need a BMW, like my friend Pete and I (of course Pete still needs to get a REAL REAL bike like my Vespa, Mertle! Did I mention that God rides a Vespa? Oh, you want evidence... No evidence required. Just look at the picture of my Vespa and I'm sure you'll agree!)

But, here's proof that the BMW will always be better than a Hardley Dangerous!

Sorry for offending any Harley riders out there ;-)

Technorati tags: BMW, Harley Davidson, Harley, Vespa, Best bike

A thought...

What is 'true' in the emergent movement is not 'new', and what is
considered 'new' in the emergent movement may not necessarily be 'true'.

Just a thought!