Tuesday 25 November 2014

657 - Beautiful Whitley

Beautiful day, beautiful Whitley, with all its complexities.


Sunday 26 October 2014

658 - Mistral

A warm wind blowing through Whitley Bay tonight. So despite the clocks going back this morning (by the way, I forgot) the town feels Mediterranean. A little bit.

Tuesday 21 October 2014

659 - Back to Business

It's been a long time, and a lot has been happening in Whitley Bay. And I have been indulging myself on this blog and not writing about any of it.

Okay, sometimes I have. But mostly, recently especially, I've slipped tracks and written for and about myself, and that's not what this blog is for. This blog is for Whitley Bay. Exciting projects like the Big Local and the Station Master's Garden and the Whitley Bay Film Festival have been taking root. There's a food bank, and a venture to develop culture in the Bay called 'Under the Dome', which I have a small interest in. Friends of the Brierdene, with which I am also involved, albeit sparingly, dig weekly in a dene at the northern end of the bay. My wife co-ordinated a fabulous festival there last summer...

And so on. Exciting Church things too, but for all my preachifying I've not actually been involved in them.

Verdict on 'A Whitley Bay Thousand': Could do better. From now on I will attempt to.

Monday 6 October 2014

660 - Adam and Eve

I'm not sure I understand the story of Adam and Eve. Mainly I don't understand why a loving God would load additional punishments on the two first humans besides death, which is I suppose fair enough, after they eat the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil. These include pain in childbirth and exile from Eden. Perhaps they should be considered somehow as death itself or inevitable consequences of death. But they do seem to be sprung on Adam and Eve after the event. I'm not sure I understand why future generations should have suffered either.

Why should this matter? It's just a story. But even if it is just a story it is the lens through which the New Testament makes sense of the actions of Jesus. If it is, somehow, true, then concerns like mine become problematic.

My second 'don't get it' is related. If God hadn't exiled Adam and Eve from Eden, He could presumably have forgiven them and given them the chance to make good their actions. Instead He waited two or more millenia, then allowed his Son to sacrifice himself.

Can anyone please help me?


Monday 29 September 2014

661 - Antonio Damasio

This man has written a book called 'The Feeling of What Happens: body, emotion and the making of consciousness'. I am excited to be reading it, because the ideas within it are so beautifully put. Here, for example, about the capacity of the conscious mind to hide as well as reveal:

"Perhaps it was easier to get a more balanced perspective in earlier times when there was no veil, when the environments were relatively simple, long before electronic media and jet travel, long before the printed word, before the empire, and ahead of the city-state. It must have been easier to sense the life within, when the brain provided a lopsided view in the opposite direction [to the present], tilted toward the dominant representation of the internal states of the organism. If it was ever like that, perhaps at some magic brief time between Homer and Athens, lucky humans would have perceived in an instant that all of their amusing antics were about life and that underneath every image of the outside world, there stood the ongoing image of their living bodies." [p. 29]

It would be fascinating to read the Bible on Adam and Eve in the light of this passage.

Monday 15 September 2014

662 - Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

This is a story about madness. It can be found in Daniel, chapter 4. King Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a mighty tree which is cut down, leaving only the roots and a stump, which is bound in iron. Daniel interprets the dream to mean that the king is to be cast out for his pride, to live amongst animals for seven years, unless he changes. The experience of being cast out into madness will, however, purify him - the stump will remain, ready to shoot again when he acknowledges 'that Heaven rules'. In the story this is what happens.

I draw great comfort from this story for myself, because it suggests that God will allow madness to intervene to prevent evil taking place, after which there is redemption. Nebuchadnezzar is not a Jew but a foreign king, yet this redemption is available to him.

That's how I read the tale, anyway.