We had an agreement!

Apparently, at his wife’s behest, in 1954 vice president Richard Nixon wrote down on paper:

“I promise to Patricia Ryan Nixon that I will not again seek public office.”

He wrote the date on the slip, folded it up, and stored it in his wallet.

Six years later he ran for president.

Sucker love is heaven sent

On the joys of sugar:

A placebo has no pharmaceutical properties; if it works, it works only because of my own belief in its efficacy.

If I know that I’m taking a placebo, it will be ineffective.

So while the placebo cures me only because I believe it will, I can’t believe that it will cure me only because I believe it will.

Peter Cave

Local sports clubs the new local church?

This was an interesting article. Firstly because of the requests being made, but secondly for the social analysis made towards the end of the article.

Cam Butler (Chaplain of the AFL Melbourne Football Club in the AFL and National Director of SCA) is claiming not only that the role of church has been usurped by sport (a tension long felt by those dealing with Kids' sport on Sundays), but also that spiritual guidance has shifted from the cathedral to the locker room.

"May I suggest that the closest thing to a pastor for most young Australians is their local club coach. The closest thing to a church, or refuge from life’s ills, for most Australians, is not the church, but rather their local sports club."

An area of struggle for many local churches is to be able to meaningfully engage with their community as a church entity. Perhaps the local sporting club is an avenue which could bear fruit for the gospel.

Our generation

Cool guys aren't passionate fighters anymore. The more bored you look when blocking the enemy's roundhouse kick while sweeping his standing leg, the cooler you are.

See?



Ok, so this could just as easily be Keanu acting very excited. Bad example.

Still, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has taken bored-fighting to an entirely new level. Even this image can't capture it. You have to watch the movie to feel his sheer boredom during the fight.

What would you answer? pt 1

I was a subject for a documentary being done by an old friend from uni. He's putting together a mini-doco on 'Devotion' and I'm one of three participants who answered a few of his questions about devotion. I was chosen for my alleged devotion to Christianity, another guy for his devotion to his child and a third for his devotion to Stargate.

I thought I'd post some of the questions Pat asked me, to see what you guys would say under the same circumstances. Just a few at a time.

1 . What were you doing five years ago?

2 . What are you doing with your life at the moment?

3 . What are the five great loves of your life? What are you passionate about?

4 . When did your devotion to God begin?

5 . How would you describe your relationship with God?

6 . How long did it take you to form this relationship?

Ecclesiastes: what some other people reckon

These aren't the perspectives that I promised would be analysed in detail, but just some summaries from commentators.

St Jerome (c. 347 – 420)

Saw the book as a call to embrace the ascetic life in order to escape the vanities of this world. Strangely, he also says "the Hebrews says that ... this book ought to be obliterated, because it asserts that all the creatures of God are vain, and regards the whole thing as nothing, and prefers eating and drinking and transient pleasures before all things." Weird

Crenshaw (1987)

"life is profitless; totally absurd. The world is meaningless. Virtue doesn't bring reward. The deity stands distant, abandoning humanity to chance and death."

Ogden (1987)

"The book's thesis ... is that life under God must be taken and enjoyed in all its mystery."

Like any of these? Why not?

Inappropriate

My wife yesterday:

(Excitedly) 'Apt' is such a fitting word!