on a tangent...

i've just had one of those days when i've done the opposite of what i should have done!! the essense of procrastination. ahh!! besides a lovely lunch with two friends (one who just got engaged on monday!!) the rest of my day has been reading and thinking about really intriguing topics in relation to science and faith... instead of reading my lovely textbooks. grrr... it's kind of opened a can of worms in my head so to speak, in that i really want to know more about this topic. lots of big concepts that i need to figure out in relation to things like critical realism, anthropic principle, theistic evolution, intelligent design, scientific theology... etc. not sure whether i should just put the lid on the can for the time being until i get some real studying done or whether to pursue this issue (admittedly mostly via wikipedia and other bloggers..) now. my one consolation in a day of procrasintation is that it wasnt just with mindless tv and i suppose i could always say it's slighty related to my course in that it's loosely related to science!! dont think that argument will cut it with my lecturers tomorrow somehow! maybe need a good face-to-face with real people debate about some of the issues before i rant on here without really knowing what i'm on about.

mediastorm

a friend recommended this website... she's a photographer in atlanta :) it has cool ideas to do with photojournalism / multimedia etc... really fascinating both in relation to the content as well as the variety of styles used.. i honestly dont know anything about this field but think it's so interesting... using photography to tell a story. the one on AIDS called bloodline really hit home. anyway, check it out!

who is he?

i've had a song stuck in my head today. it asks questions i think everyone longs to be answered. ok, so maybe it seems too simplistic; maybe the answer seems too contrived; maybe the questions are too self-centered. but maybe we make life more complicated than it really is. do i recognise the one who is everything i need? the second verse goes like this:

who is he that makes me happy?
who is he that gives me peace?
who is he that brings me comfort?
and turns the bitter into sweet?
who is he that turns my passion?
who is rising up in me?
who is filling up my hunger
with everything i need?

creator god, he is Yahweh; the great I Am, he is Yahweh; the lord of all, he is Yahweh...

happiness

one of the economic lecturers at my university has just published a study that found that money can't buy happiness. see a short review of his findings here. kinda feel like saying, really? duh!? but then i guess society goals are often very much focused around increasing income. he doesn't seem to mention religion at all... i wonder if he even included it in the survey? not that i'm saying that all 'religious' people are happy.. but in my psyc of religion module we looked at studies that have found the feeling of 'closeness to god' correlates to happiness (pollner, 1989); having firm beliefs or 'existential certainty' correlated with life-satisfaction (ellison, 1991); increased feelings of meaning and purpose in relation to happiness (chamberlain & zika, 1988). i guess he's coming from a economist perpective not a psychological; although in this case it's related. anyway, just interesting when concrete research points out things that jesus already talked about (matt6.19); life is more than just getting as much money as possible as if that will make you happy...

happiness is one of those funny words anyway. what does it mean? is it different for everyone? can you really measure happiness? hmm... need to get out my psyc books more often :) but they probably only give one side of the story anyway...

here's part of a poem by steve stockman called 'the swing of the pendulum'

Between tradition and change
Between mayhem and bored
Between actions and words
Between destitute and to horde
Between soft mercy and working hard
Between content and never could be
Between the moment and forever
Between blind trust and what you see
Between inferiority and pride
Between your grace and what I confess
I ride the swing of the pendulum
To the balance of happiness.

monday morning...

i'm back to class in the morning... hoping to make a dent in these two books over the next few weeks. i'm actually really looking forward to it - slightly suprisingly. maybe it's because i feel like i've had a proper break this time and done nothing course-related for two weeks! i'm anticipating we'll be stretched a bit more this semester than we have been, mostly because of different lecturers and more practical learning which requires you know the theory first and then apply it. we'll see!








on a side note, i love the fact that i can see the water out my living room window...

naija

kai, i miss nigeria today. maybe it's more amplified because my sister's there and i'm not. don't know. i hate it when people ask the question 'what is nigeria like?' as if could sum up the country and all my memories a brief monologue. i went looking for nigerian comedians on youtube today.. more to listen to pidgin than to be entertained i think. there are some funny guys out there but wish there were more online. maybe with the increase of technology etc, there will be. one guy talks about nigerian films here (just excuse some of his lang). pretty funny although he paints them in a slightly negative light; i used to love watching them with my mum. a friend posted on this a while ago; if you know what i'm talking about read this. if not, you've missed out!

anyway, another thing i miss is singing songs that you can dance/clap to (not bature clapping either ie: one clap per beat) ... sometimes i just get fed up with how we 'worship' here. it seems so stilted; so formal. funny how culture shapes how we express ourselves. anyway, check out clip if interested. good for a wee dance around the livingroom when nobody's around :)

come on the gunners...

you see, i'm a bit of an arsenal fan and henry fan. this guy is amazing and this goal is one of the sweetest team goals i've seen in a long time...

truth?

I read this article today that made me think about the role of the church in society and also thinking about ‘truth’ and values… how can people say that there is no truth and truth is all relative yet enforce tolerance on everyone even if it contradicts belief/moral values?
The journalist was asking these questions:

“Do faith institutions have a legitimate role in public life in a largely secular country? Are faith institutions subject to the laws of the land even when those are contrary to their own beliefs and doctrine? Does the state recognise the "rights of conscience" in the phrase used by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his letter to the prime minister?
There are other issues are at stake in this confrontation. How does a culture of immense diversity find accommodation between very different sets of values - what kind of tolerance do we allow and what values are allowed to trump others' cherished values? And when values are changing so rapidly - from illegality to gay rights in little more than a generation - how do you ensure that a new consensus is given time to develop, or are you entitled to steam ahead, confident of your moral superiority?”

How can we stand up and say that we believe that there is absolute truth? How do you go about doing that in a society that is ready to jump on anyone who claims to have truth…

Schaeffer discusses it like this…

“We must acknowledge and then act upon the fact that if Christ is our Saviour, he is also our Lord in all of life. He is our Lord not just in religious things and not just in cultural things such as the arts and music, but in our intellectual lives, and in business, and in our relation to society, and in our attitude toward the moral breakdown of our culture. Acknowledging Christ’s Lordship and placing ourselves under what is taught in the whole Bible includes thinking and acting as citizens in relation to our government and its laws. Making Christ Lord in our lives means taking a stand in very direct and practical ways against the world spirit of our age as it rolls along claiming to be autonomous, crushing all that we cherish in its path.”

(Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, Ch. 1)

Piper, when discussing truth states…

"If the supreme, Creator God exists, then there is Truth with a capital T. God is simply there, and he must be taken as he is. We do not make him or shape him or define him. He makes all things. He shapes. And he defines. So we come into a universe that is full of givens. God is simply there. And he has made the world one way and not another way. And he and his ways are the truth. That is what you embrace when you embrace the supremacy of God….”

“The Bible says, that, except for the gracious work of the Holy Spirit, our hearts always tilt one way: we suppress the ultimate objective truth outside ourselves and we choose to create our own. This is ultimately why the supreme God of the Bible is rejected. If he exists, he is absolute Truth and we must yield to him, and define good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, true and false, wise and foolish, and our very selves according to him and not according to us.
God is the measure of all things, not man.”

(sermon: challenging the church and culture with truth, 1996 Piper)

the quotes from schaeffer and piper are more about truth rather than relating to this particular issue but i think it's related. I’m sure the debate will rage on… just not sure of my role/response to the whole thing… or is the debate more about church vs state rather than tolerance vs truth?

i wish...

i have a new addition to my living room which i'm very excited about... i can say that i'm a bit rubbish at actually playing it but i still love playing anyway, especially at random times of the day or night when i just feel like escaping from the day to day happenings. . . i wish i could just sit down and play anything i wanted; doesn't everyone though? i think it's a bit like wishing you could fly. you know it's impossible (unless you're one of those really gifted people) but it doesnt mean you can't dream, right?

drink life to the lees

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees...

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!...

excerpts from Tennyson's Ulysses

i remember the first time i read this poem. there just seemed to be lines/phrases that jumped off the page at me. it was my senior yr of high school, sitting in the classroom with the faint breeze blowing through the room as we dipped into the world of literature...a place that somehow has been forgotten in the midst of my science-based degrees... it was a few months before my class were all about to graduate and scatter across the world.. and the dream of seeing more of the world and experiencing what it had to offer beyond the confines of the strange existence that was our community / bubble seemed both terrifying and intriguing. i longed then as is still do to 'drink/life to the lees'. (defintion of lees: Sediment settling during fermentation, especially in wine; dregs.) it seemed to capture in a fresh way the adage of living life to the full; life in all it's fullness.

Somehow, now that i've been in the same city for the best part of 4 1/2 yrs (with random travel thrown in), i think i view this poem slightly differently. Not that i don't still have itchy feet for new experiences/adventures/travel but i think that it is still possible to strive 'drink/life to the lees' and to not 'rust unburnished' while remaining in one place for a time. is it stretching the essence of this poem to think about it as talking about life being a journey?... and the longing not being too content with how things are.. not to 'rust' in relation to friendships, challenges, seeking to know god more... or maybe tennyson was just talking about ulysees or just about travel (go read all of it sometime). and my interpretation may be just making it say what i want it to... nevertheless, i long for more ambition and passion in life that this poem portrays and as tennyson closes...

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

my father's world...

i had an interesting conversation today...just made me think. we were talking about if we had one question that we wanted to ask god and that he would answer, what would it be? (i know, sounds like a strange question to have a conversation about!) i guess some of us would hypothetically ask trivial or obscure things about the world, or science etc whereas others may ask the big philosophical questions about death and suffering. the guy i was having the conversation said that he would ask, what did the future of the human race look like... in other words, about the future... what's going to happen to the world? how far will science advance? will life get better/worse? are we progressing?
i guess i've not thought about it that way. of course all of us would like to know the future in some shape or form, to know what decisions to make now, to see what life will be like... but i've never really thought about the question the way he put it. i guess with all the talk of global warming, environmental disasters, the increase in hurricanes/tsunami/droughts (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6288445.stm - bbc article on nigeria that i read today) etc it is something that is coming more to the fore in the media. but i'm not sure i've thought about asking god about.
i believe he is in control of everything and therefore he must be in control of nature. also as creator, he knows all in relation to science/physics as it is all his work. so he knows what will happen in relation to the human race/the world...
in the same way, i do believe that he is in control of the mess that seems to be iraq even though reading the news makes the idea that his purposes are ultimately being fulfilled hard to chew...

the other thing the conversation made me think about was whether, if this world/this life was all there was to look forward to, maybe i would be more concerned about the preservation of planet for generations to come etc... but because i believe there is more to life than this world does that make me less concern about the natural world? do i switch off more than the average joe bloggs when climate change comes on the news because of my faith in 'something more' and the idea that 'this world is not my home'? yet surely because i believe in god, should i not be even more ready to stand up and fight ecological sustainability, preservation etc because of the view that we are caretakers of this world and actually the idea that 'this world is not my home' means the world actually god's which he has given to us for a time to care for?
it seems this is a debate that has been taking place in the states, and some evangelicals have actually gone again bush's policies up to now addressing (or not addressing!) global warming... so maybe they will have a voice in the future. (see http://www.ncccusa.org/news/14.02.05theologicalstatement.html

anyway. that was a bit rambling. what do you think?

why?

so, i've been thinking about why i started this blog...
1. i guess i could be really philosophical about it and quote socrates who said that 'an unreflected life is not worth living' and that i want to have a concrete place to think, to make myself reflect on life instead of just moseying thoughtlessly through life...
2. another reason is that i have time this week :) a week off before getting back to classes and the joys of student life...it's kind of that feeling before you're starting back afresh to classes (or anything new) when you make sure you're ready, you have new notebooks and new pens (ha, remembering 1st day of school at crest...) and maybe this is part of the process this time...
3. my sister just got on a plane yesterday to go 'home' and i'm wishing i was going with her...so this may merely be a distraction from wishing i was with her...
4. i'm anticipating the next few months to be quite busy, but still have a nack for procrastinating what i really should be doing at all costs...this may be prove to be part of my procrastination!
5. i think i actually can be quite opinionated about things, about how i see the world.. i love a good debate over a cup of tea, so maybe this will be another place to voice what i think, although realising i'm probably wrong about many things...
6. it's also a new year and i think at the start of the year, it's always a time to stop, think, readjust, try something new... it remains to be seen if it's just a fad/new yr resolution that will fade mid february :) or be something i actually keep up...watch this space!

i'm sure there are more reasons... but it's probably a mixture of all of the above.