TBTM = “The Beach This Morning”, of course.
That’s pretty much as low as the tide gets. When it gets this low in the morning, it means that it will likely cut the island off from the mainland around lunchtime.
Monthly Archives: March 2006
Depressing
Have a look at this post which is commenting on some astonishing (appalling) comments by Peter Akinola, inciting violence.
I actually agree with Stephen Bates, despite some of the fine-grained caveats I have about the direction the US Episcopalian church is going in. One side follows a non-violent Messiah, one doesn’t. I don’t think that this is a particularly difficult question to discern.
Sigh.
Interviewed
As well as the more ephemeral media tart appearances, I had the pleasure of being interviewed on a rather more serious basis at the weekend, by Paul Kingsnorth for a book that he is writing. If you read this article you’ll understand why we were able to reach common ground fairly quickly. (At least, I think we did!)
I’ve just ordered his book from Amazon. I’ll let you know how I get on with it.
Confessions of a media tart
Not really. Just wanted to say that, narcissist that I am, I watched my two minutes of fame on ITV and BBC tonight. On the whole I’m quite pleased, particularly with the ITV one, as it mentioned the roots of my perspective at the end, ie the context of Peak Oil and what it means for those who plan to ship apples from one side of the world to the other. Our future is local!
On the whole I’ve been quite impressed with the journalists, both TV and print, despite the experience of being ‘used’ to further their own story line. They have mostly been very direct and honest with me. Plus which, it turns out that the BBC camera man was an old friend of my father’s (and the Daily Mail photographer and I had some mutual friends). Small world.
Rushmore
Wonderful. Remarkable use of music too. Better than the other two Wes Anderson films I’ve seen (much better than The Life Aquatic).
It got me thinking about a post I had once planned to write, linking Bruce Springsteen’s paean’s to ordinariness with Charles Taylor’s ‘Sources of the Self’ argument about the sacralisation of ordinary life after the Reformation. That was what I took from this – the marvellous nature of an ordinary life.
The beach this morning
(Spot the dog)
I’m tempted to make a habit of this, if we get to keep Ollie. If I’m going to be on the beach anyway, it’d make quite a nice record of how things go, as the sea level rises…
Jack Bristow gets Peak Oil
“Well, considering the rapidly growing demand for fuel from nations like China and India, not to mention the world’s oil production is expected to peak in the next five years and then sharply plummet, I think it’s pretty clear we’re looking at an exponential rise in global conflicts along with an energy crisis of unfathomable proportions – so yes, I’d say, a hybrid’s an excellent idea.”
Jack Bristow, Alias, Series Four, Episode 10: “The Index”
Something I would like to see
I have been thinking about the Eisenhower comment on the military-industrial complex rather a lot recently, for obvious reasons.
For the record…
The Daily Mail article is published today, but it isn’t on-line (pages 26 and 27 of the paper). Big picture of me superimposed upon a Tesco store…
This was an interesting and enlightening experience. The interview was extensive – over an hour – and the photography took almost as long. Out of that interview, however, there is almost no direct quotation, and, indeed, some elements ‘created’. So, for the record…
The article runs two things together. First, a sermon where I suggested to the congregation that they should not shop at Tesco, if it opens on the island, mainly on fair trade grounds. Second, my Learning Church talk on Peak Oil, which suggests that the Tesco model will break down, and that we will have to use much more local food supplies.
I’m a little disappointed. I had hoped that – because I went into quite some depth about Peak Oil with the interviewer – that at least that phrase would be mentioned, but no such luck. They didn’t mention the blog either! On the whole, though, I don’t think I can complain too much.
Thing is, it has really made me ponder about my vocation and where I am supposed to be going with this. I said to a colleague the other day that it was forcing me to engage with the issues rather than just think about them (contemplate them, in my previously understood sense) – this will force me to ‘walk the walk’ much more than I have so far. Which seems a good reason for thinking that God is involved.
I just have this memory seared into me of wanting to go into a political career and being told by God in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t right – and ever since I have been allergic to anything smacking of direct political involvement.
Yet – it’s not “political” so much as – I trust – “prophetic”, in the best sense. At least, that’s where I think I’m headed. As I quoted in my ‘Prophecy and Peak Oil’ post: “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture” (Brueggemann). I am beginning to believe that this is a central part of what I am called to do. There seems to be an integrity about the choice, however cautious I am about it.
In any case, I’m pretty sure that if I go off the path of my vocation, the good Lord will let me know.
Inertia, theōria, blogging
I’m a very stable and fixed sort of person – you could call it mulish (or if you happened to be interested in astrology, you could say it was because I have a grand cross of major planets in the fixed signs 
– but one way of thinking about it, which my wife uses every so often, is to say that I have a lot of inertia. Normally that means that her husband is accumulating too much lard on his backside through being inert, but I actually like the strictly physical definition, whereby a body at rest needs a lot of prompting to move, but also a body which is moving requires a lot of force to change course. For I have been known to move, on occasion.
This sequence of thoughts was prompted by the arrival of Ollie – not an expected arrival, but one which was nevertheless sought out, and is from God – for Ollie is dragging said husband off his backside onto the beach two or three times a day, and the pressure of a wagging tail and a wet nose is a sufficient force to cause the mass to enter into movement. I think this is a very good thing for me – I haven’t been getting enough exercise ever since I got married (and have accumulated nearly an extra three stone in weight) and this exercise is going to persist. So although I find it uncomfortable – my inertia is resisting this outside force – I can see it is a tremendous blessing for me.
Now yesterday I managed to read a review in the Times Literary Supplement which discussed theōria. Theōria is seen by Aristotle as the highest virtue, and it is normally translated as contemplation. My spiritual director once told me that I have a significant contemplative streak, and I think this is true – I like to ponder questions, and weigh them, sifting them for nuggets of truth. Think of Rodin and a part of my self-image is revealed. Yet I have always seen this as a principally sedentary and immobile activity. Now I read this in the review:
“In due course, Aristotle would assert that theōria, meaning philosophical contemplation of the nature of things, is the best, most enjoyable activity there can be; hence it is God’s sole occupation and the central purpose of the best possible human life.
“This is easy to misunderstand, in part because ‘contemplation’, the now conventional translation of Aristotle’s theōria, suggests a single, steady gaze held on a single impressive object, like a telescope focused on the peak of a high mountain… But the original theōros, engaged in “sacralized spectating” at the Olympic Games or watching a tragedy in the theatre at Athens, saw a complex multiplicity of events, which could only be properly understood in relation to one another. (Compare: the spectator’s experience of a modern cricket match is more like following a narrative than viewing a mountain peak.) There is no good reason to think that this complexity dropped away when Plato and Aristotle made the transition to abstract, philosophical theōria. Their theōria is not analagous to a single steady gaze at a single impressive object.”
(MF Burnyeat, reviewing Andrea Wilson Nightingale’s “Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy, TLS February 24 2006)
It seems to me that this sense of theōria has just a little in common with blogging – on going comments on those things which enter into the mental frame of reference of the blogger, which do not have to be fixed and stable like a mountain, but can be an ongoing drama like a greek tragedy, or like the fall of western civilisation as a result of Peak Oil (grin).
So theōria, contemplation, that which I enjoy – this is not a ‘single steady gaze’ – and to undertake contemplation I do not need to be passive, which is the psychosomatic hole in which I have placed myself. My inertia can be mobilised, I can indeed be a body in motion, and still I can pursue that highest, most divine of virtues – “sacralized spectating” – which is, I believe, what my blog should aim to be.
I’m not there yet, but I’ll keep going at it.