A plug for the excellent spotify service. I haven’t bothered to shift all my music files from my back-up back to a PC because I’m using this instead – currently indulging my new romantic nostalgia, tho’ wikipedia doesn’t know what a quiff meant in those days. For a real one see this.
Got up with all sorts of good intentions as I was beginning to feel normal again – even managed to take Ollie for a walk for the first time since Sunday morning – but then discovered that my computer was going wrong, in that I was immediately logged off as soon as I entered Windows XP. I have since spent almost all day trying to fix it, going to the extreme of installing Ubuntu (which, frankly, is easy to put on to the PC and then absolutely awful to try and run anything on, or connect to the internet, so I’m giving up on that idea) only to find, after trying a complete re-install of WinXP that my hard disk is non-functioning. All that the machine can cope with now is Ubuntu run from the CD-Rom.
One bit of good news – I’ve got all my files backed up. What’s going to be a pain is re-establishing all my settings on a new PC. Still, for now I can steal my wife’s as she’s not going to be needing it for a week or two. And I might just be tempted to upgrade my system….
Not a nice way to spend a day (but thanks to PB for some key assistance half way through).
Joe and Peter took issue in the comments with the previous post and I wanted to expand on my perspective (ie why I liked the article I linked to).
On the one hand we have worship that is centred on holiness, the mysterium tremendens et fascinans, the provoking of awe and (in the strict sense) ecstasy. This is more associated with the Anglo-Catholic style of worship.
On the other hand we have worship that is centred on being human, relational, relaxed and informal. This is more associated with the Evangelical style of worship.
Pushed to an extreme, is this not a failure (on both sides) to be incarnational? In other words, the Anglo-Catholic tendency is to err in losing the humanity, the evangelical tendency is to err in losing the divinity in worship?
Whereas Jesus unites the two; and therefore so must our worship.
My worry with what Peter and Joe argue is that when we are worshipping, we are specifically worshipping God, and our relationship to Jesus must contain – I suggest – more of the woman clutching his cloak or Thomas exclaiming ‘My Lord and my God!’ than simply gathering to share a glass of wine with a community of friends (and it is that, of course). We need to find the place of balance, the sweet spot of the Spirit.
Peter said “The assumption in the article is God/Jesus is only present in church, specifically at every communion…” – it’s not so much that God/Jesus is ONLY present in church, but that he is indeed especially present in communion, there is a real presence which is significant. That is what lay behind my comment about the place of Old Testament worship (on which topic John Richardson has an excellent point here).
In other words, I think there is a further permutation of the evangelical error above, which is to flatten our experience of God. To say that God can be encountered everywhere and worshipped anywhere is true. Yet it is also true that we are a) sinful, b) therefore need to be taught how to worship and relate to God, and c) need to take account of the Scriptural witness that God is to be found and worshipped in particular places at particular times in particular ways. What has in fact happened, as a result of that evangelical emphasis (Protestant emphasis) upon God being worshippable anywhere, is that God ends up being worshipped nowhere – because we no longer know how to worship. The historic desire to avoid sacerdotalism has eviscerated the holy and we now live in a culture full of the spiritually starving who see what goes on in church as irrelevant to their hunger. The one leads inexorably to the other.
It is indeed possible to be mystically united with God at all times and in all places. Yet I suspect that any human beings like me need training and assistance (the what, the why and the how) in order to attain such an exalted spiritual state. This is exactly what communion does – it is our principal spiritual medicine which heals us and enables us to share in Christ’s life. After all, Jesus didn’t just come to abolish the Temple; he came to abolish it and replace it, with his Body. If we fail to take that seriously, ie with sufficient awe and reverence, then I believe that we are not keeping the faith, and we are not growing in the Spirit.
Loved this:
(From another blogging vicar with a daughter called J_)
Normal service will hopefully resume here before too long (Ollie hopes). I’m convalescing from something, I think it’s exhaustion, my wife thinks it was ‘flu (but not swinish).
Every so often Outlook Express compacts messages. It would appear as though some time last week, when it was doing so, it wiped several of my e-mail folders down to nothing. I do have a back-up – a couple of months old – but I was just wondering if anyone knew of a way to merge the back up with the existing folder files, so that I don’t lose the material accumulated since I did the back-up. All help gratefully received.
And yes, it’s another hint to take me off Microsoft completely.
UPDATE: found this, which (hopefully) will do most of the work:
The BAK files your OE folders before compacting. They are copied there
as a precaution in case something goes wrong with the compacting.
1) Look in OE at Tools, Options, Maintenance, Store Folder for the
location of your Store Folder. Then close OE.
2) Go to Recycle Bin and restore the most recent Sent Items.bak file.
That will put it in OE Store folder, but still as a BAK file.
3) Open the Windows File Explorer and look at the store folder you found
in step 1. (You may need to enable the the display Hidden and System
files in Tools, Folder Options, View as well as uncheck the option to
Hide extensions of known file types. You should see both a Sent
Items.dbx file as well as the Sent Items.bak. Rename the Sent Items.DBX
to Sentold.dbx and then rename Sent Items.Bak to Sent Items.DBX. When
you open OE, your Sent Items messages should be restored.
I should add, in the interests of accuracy, that lots of people have been asking how I am recently. That’s because there is a rumour going around that I am mentally ill 🙂
I’ve taken a day off today, partly because I’m severely knackered, partly because I’ve got a fairly major meeting tomorrow night. You probably noticed that the number of blog posts has risen!
Prompted to write this by Doug’s post.
The wider social group has historically had an intense involvement in the regulation of human sexuality.
The justifiable reason for this is that human sexuality has (predominantly) had the consequence of reproduction – and the wider society has a major stake in the raising of children. Given that (by and large) stable relationships are the best way to raise children it seems legitimate for society to support stable relationships.
The advent of cheap, reliable and widely available contraception changes this.
Now the expression of human sexuality has no _necessary_ link with reproduction.
This puts humanity into a new place, and we are still working through all the implications. (In particular, just because the mind knows conception will not follow, the body has its own reasons, and may not ever adjust to the new situation. I suspect men find the consequences easier than women – but perhaps I’m just thinking of Julie Gianni.)
At an early stage – the 1930’s – the Anglican Communion decided that contraception was not against the will of God, and the matrimonial service was adjusted to reflect this.
Now sexuality is seen as not simply about reproduction but about mutual affection and the development of relationships.
As Rowan Williams has previously argued, once you accept this, there is no argument against homosexual relationships as such – after all, even Adam was given the final choice of mate by God.
I suspect that – in a hundred years or so – we will end up with two different institutions, one which is centred on reproduction and the provision of the best possible environment for the raising of children; the other based around the mutual giving and receiving of affection. Society will regulate the first but have nothing to do with the second. (Sometimes, of course, they may overlap.)
Final thought: people who comment blithely about a ‘biblical understanding of sexuality’ don’t seem to read the same bible as me.
And here’s something I obtained earlier:
