Downloaded Mavericks, Apple's latest operating system for MacBooks, last night. Took > 6 hours, but given there were well over 5 gigs and we're in the far north of India and running off one of the hospital's wifi hot spots, I'm impressed. Downloaded a whole bunch of apps taking another 4 or so gigs this morning. Last time I did something like this was in Dili, the capital of Timor Leste. I downloaded Al Gore's Climate Change slide show of nearly 400 megs and presented it the next day in a continuing education seminar for Leprosy Mission staff. Any break in the phone line internet connection or power supply during that time would have wrecked it, but everything worked beautifully! The other fun techo thing I did was 2 years ago, when I took my iPad and my mini data projector with LED display in my backpack and rode a motorbike up to the leprosy hospital I had worked in 30 years previously. They asked me to do devotions the next morning, so I produced a Keynote presentation on the iPad overnight. The question becomes, at what point does the medium overwhelm the message? Still, laptops and even data projectors are quite common here. That mini data projector has had a good workout at the local school this week. I've taken what we'd call scripture assemblies 3 mornings for years 8 & 9. Being greeted in the street by several teenagers today was a terrific reward!
Sunday 27 October 2013
Neophobia
"Novelty is deeply disturbing, especially when people have built their lives around the old way." Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone.
Is this the fundamental reason for the current bad behaviour in public life? The world is being drawn, willy nilly, into a new energy regime, and therefore a new way of living. The threat of Climate Change is forcing humanity to reconsider not simply how we live but who we are in relation to nature/creation, and the ones who have been advantaged most by the old regime are the ones who are fighting with whatever means they have at their disposal against the change to the new. Some of their means are deeply unethical. Lying, recasting history shamelessly to suit their own version of reality, besmirching the reputations of opponents and bringing them before the courts, and corrupting scientific method to cast doubt on scientific findings that they don't like are some of the tactics they use. But the change is inevitable. Resisting it will only make the process more painful. In one way or another we are already paying and will continue to lay a price on carbon.
Is this the fundamental reason for the current bad behaviour in public life? The world is being drawn, willy nilly, into a new energy regime, and therefore a new way of living. The threat of Climate Change is forcing humanity to reconsider not simply how we live but who we are in relation to nature/creation, and the ones who have been advantaged most by the old regime are the ones who are fighting with whatever means they have at their disposal against the change to the new. Some of their means are deeply unethical. Lying, recasting history shamelessly to suit their own version of reality, besmirching the reputations of opponents and bringing them before the courts, and corrupting scientific method to cast doubt on scientific findings that they don't like are some of the tactics they use. But the change is inevitable. Resisting it will only make the process more painful. In one way or another we are already paying and will continue to lay a price on carbon.
Tuesday 16 April 2013
A new day may be dawning
The momentous, 4 day meeting of the Uniting Church's Synod in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory ended yesterday. Among many highlights several shone particularly brightly.
(1) The Synod's theme, "Uniting for the Common Good" seems to be being enacted within the various agencies and senior staff of the Synod. It was refreshing to interact with people who talk straight and talk together.
(2) We elected an alien widow to be our next Moderator. If you have followed the developing discourse throughout the bible on the status of aliens and of women, let alone of widows, you will understand what a radical step this is. Not only that, but one of the other candidates, an Anglo Australian man in his prime, told me that he hoped she would be elected, not him! This points to an ethos radically at odds with that which prevails in Australian society and much of the rest of the world.
(3) The Synod's ecological concern has come of age. 3 significant proposals were passed, one opposing coal seam gas mining, another moving towards divesting from companies that mine fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy providers, and the third asking the Synod and the Assembly to speak and act both pastorally and prophetically in the Murray-Darling Basin.
I was one of a diverse consultation group that presented the report on its consultation over the MDB and the proposal arising from it. To be honest, the sea of orange cards indicating assent that greeted our proposal was one of the highlights of my life. It was a culmination of a process that began when I spoke at meeting of Synod 24 years ago about environmental concerns arising from my experience in my first placement as a minister, the then Northern New England Parish. Since then the story has developed for me and also for the Uniting Church. I've done an honours degree, then a PhD in ecological theology as it relates to the MDB, and I'm a presenter with Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. In the Uniting Church there has been a deepening and broadening of ecological concern that is immensely heartening, but has come none too soon. Now on to enact the Proposals!
(1) The Synod's theme, "Uniting for the Common Good" seems to be being enacted within the various agencies and senior staff of the Synod. It was refreshing to interact with people who talk straight and talk together.
(2) We elected an alien widow to be our next Moderator. If you have followed the developing discourse throughout the bible on the status of aliens and of women, let alone of widows, you will understand what a radical step this is. Not only that, but one of the other candidates, an Anglo Australian man in his prime, told me that he hoped she would be elected, not him! This points to an ethos radically at odds with that which prevails in Australian society and much of the rest of the world.
(3) The Synod's ecological concern has come of age. 3 significant proposals were passed, one opposing coal seam gas mining, another moving towards divesting from companies that mine fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy providers, and the third asking the Synod and the Assembly to speak and act both pastorally and prophetically in the Murray-Darling Basin.
I was one of a diverse consultation group that presented the report on its consultation over the MDB and the proposal arising from it. To be honest, the sea of orange cards indicating assent that greeted our proposal was one of the highlights of my life. It was a culmination of a process that began when I spoke at meeting of Synod 24 years ago about environmental concerns arising from my experience in my first placement as a minister, the then Northern New England Parish. Since then the story has developed for me and also for the Uniting Church. I've done an honours degree, then a PhD in ecological theology as it relates to the MDB, and I'm a presenter with Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. In the Uniting Church there has been a deepening and broadening of ecological concern that is immensely heartening, but has come none too soon. Now on to enact the Proposals!
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