My first post was this one on Tuesday May 31 2005. As I’ll be away on the exact anniversary, I thought I’d say Happy Birthday dear blog a little earlier.

The graph is quite exciting, even if the numbers are still rather small in an absolute sense.

John Milbank is one of the best contemporary British theologians. I came across this paper today, whilst looking for something else, and it’s great. I particularly liked this: “This ‘designing’ God is not the God of classical Catholic theology because his causality operates on the same plane as finite causes even though it is all powerful. One can trace the beginnings of such a way of conceiving of divine causality as far back as Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, but it displaced an older and essentially neoplatonic way of looking at things, still holding good for Aquinas, in which the divine cause was a higher ‘influence’ which ‘flowed into ’ finite levels of causation, entirely shaping them from within, but not ‘influencing’ them or conditioning them on the same plane of univocal being, as a less metaphorically-rooted meaning of ‘influence’ tends to imply. Put briefly, the ontological versus ontic difference between primary and secondary causality was lost sight of.”

It was the ‘put briefly’ bit that really made me smile…

(Just for the avoidance of ambiguity, I too find Milbank difficult to read. I was saying much the same thing here.)

It’s a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world’s most toxic retailer. (HT Energy Bulletin)

As it happens, Tesco are doing something similar.

I haven’t forgotten that I need to write up ‘Am I wrong about Tesco (part two)’ – but it’ll be after my holiday…

Why do the British get so hung up about nudity?

Big funeral today, which went OK. Finished with a cremation.

I don’t like crematoria. Bit too industrial – but may also be the experience of several hundred services endured, which has taken off any charm that may have existed at the beginning.

However, crematoria are often redeemed by the staff, like this man, who deserves a medal for excellence. (Hi Paul 😉