Blog Action Day 2011 - Missed!

Don't ask me how, but I managed to miss Blog Action Day 2011 even though I signed up for it. (BAD 2011 tied in with World Food Day this year.)   I seem to remember last year that I got a lot more emails warning me that the date was coming up.   This year...nothing, zilch.  I must have dropped off the list, somehow.  Curiously enough I didn't even see any tweets about it.  What was happening...?

Oh, well, the only way to redeem myself is to write my own little post, post-Blog Action Day 2011.  

BAD 2011 was focused on food, something I tend to focus on myself a good deal, especially as we're still eating the leftovers from my son's engagement party last Saturday.   When I say 'leftovers' I don't mean tired sandwiches and soggy chips.  Nope, we're still getting through the second of the two fruitcakes my wife made, plus the couple of boxes of biscuits she baked that are still partly full. 

Of course this isn't really what BAD 2011 wanted to focus on...the enjoyment of leftover biscuits and cake.  Strictly speaking, I should focusing on the fact that there are millions of people in the world who never have any leftovers, because they often don't have any start-overs to begin with. 

I don't know where you begin with the world/hunger problem.   We know that the planet can sustain all the beings on it.   That's not the issue.   Overpopulation doesn't actually come into it.  Distribution of resources does, and of course, as soon as there's distribution, there are distribution problems: mainly ones that relate back to whether the distributor is going to make enough money or not.   Quite honestly that's too big a problem for me even to think about.

Closer to home we have a different kind of distribution problem.  Food being thrown out from supermarkets and cafes and restaurants because it's too much of a hassle to redistribute it.   For a while, when I worked for the Presbyterian National Mission Office between late 2007 and 2011, in the late afternoon I used to go round to a coffee shop called Mash (in the Octagon) and pick up the leftover food that couldn't be sold the next day, and transfer it only a block away to the Presbyterian Support people.   They didn't have time to pick it up; Mash staff didn't have time to take it there, so we acted as intermediaries.   This went on for quite a few months until various staff changed (as they do frequently in cafes) and the idea got quietly dropped. 

This was a drop in the ocean, of course.   It could happen each day at a supermarket, if someone was designated to give away the food that couldn't be sold the next day.   All it would require would be a staff member to stand at a certain door and offer the food to whoever needed/wanted it.  You can bet it would mostly be the needy who came for it; other people would in general be too proud to be seen taking it.  (Sometimes, curiously, the needy are too proud to take this kind of charity.)

But no, the present system is for 'out-of-date' food to be tossed into the rubbish.   Crazy, but that's what happens.

Perhaps it needs someone - even a me sort of someone - to go and see the management of the supermarkets and see if they couldn't come up with some sort of scheme.   Perhaps they just need a little nudge.  And then, of course, it could go a lot further.   I know there are certain health and safety restrictions, but I don't think they would necessarily come into play if the food was being given away the day before it was due to be tossed. 

Bears thinking about...

Photo: Waiting for the soup kitchen to open, by Jeffrey Beall

Plumb

Many New Zealand (serious) novels are so gloomy I no longer bother to read them as they arrive in the bookshops. Mr Pip was a (relatively) recent exception; although it was serious in tone, it somehow managed to have both a positive attitude to life and bring humour to the story. I think the book that finally 'done me in' regarding NZ novels, was The Hard Light, by Stuart Hoar, better known as a playwright. I was supposed to review it, so read it from cover to cover - it was an endurance test.

Anyway, all that by way of introduction to the fact that I've finally got round to reading Plumb, by Maurice Gee, a book which had stayed in the back burner of possible books to read because of what I felt about NZ novels. Plumb turns out to be immensely readable, even though the narrator (Plumb himself) is a character whose opinions are often at odds with the facts (as far as the reader can glean them) and whose short-sightedness in regard to the lives of other people is destructive for some, and a joke to others. Plumb is based on a real person - Gee's grandfather - and you can only hope that the real man was more perceptive and insightful than the fictional character.

Plumb becomes a Presbyterian minister early in the story (early in the chronology - the story runs in two separate time-frames as well as wandering off into other periods in Plumb's history) and is surprised to find that the Church doesn't find his radical views fit well with their institutional approach to Christianity. The problem is that Plumb is always at odds with some group or other: so convinced of his own rightness, he never has time for anyone else's point of view, and makes strong enemies. But his views change from period to period: one year Christian, the next liberal, the next freethinker, the next....well, Plumb goes through pretty much every possible viewpoint that existed in the early 20th century, and still manages to scoff at his long-time neighbours who go through every (what we'd now call New Age) philosophy that arises.

He and his long-suffering wife produce twelve children, yet he spends little time with any of them. One of the saddest moments is after the death by drowning of one of his younger children; he has to admit that he barely knew her. He continually claims to love his wife, but at the end of the story, it seems he loved his own thinking far more. Thinking is what Plumb does; the irony is that he so often thinks wrongly. He sees himself as a kind of prophet, yet if that's truly the case, his prophetic work is not just out of kilter with his society (nothing unusual in that, as regards prophetic voices) but, more importantly, is actually out of kilter with reality. Towards the end of the story he mentions that his last 'book' (little more than a pamphlet) barely sold at all, and some hundreds of copies sit in his basement. The problem seems to be that he is almost entirely intellect, and very little heart. He warms to only a few of his children, rejects one entirely, and is at odds with his grandchildren - except one. Even this child he beats at checkers, so that the child doesn't get above himself.

This all makes him sound like an entirely objectionable character, and in a sense, he is. Yet somehow Gee makes him extraordinarily interesting and readable. Plumb makes a vivid narrator, and we see the world and the people he meets through his eyes in considerable detail. The book is a great achievement, and deserves the praises it's received. There are two sequels, Meg, and Sole Survivor. I'm not sure yet if I'll read them, but time will tell...

Some Presbyterian views on the Christchurch earthquake

There have been some messages sent through to a group I'm on (and they've gone to other groups too, I understand) from two or three Presbyterian ministers in relation to the earthquake yesterday. There particularly interesting because they're from eyewitnesses. Here's part of one from Geoff King, whose church (Knox) was already damaged in the first earthquake in September:

Thank you for the messages and prayers of support that greeted me as I switched on the computer this morning - power was restored to our place around 9.30 last night but I was still dealing with texts and trying to find somewhere for the family to sleep in the mess of our manse. At midnight I accepted a friend's offer to take [my wife] and our two boys north to catch the ferry to the North Island, so it's just our dog and I getting ready for another day.

I walked home from what remained of Knox yesterday afternoon surrounded by scenes of devastation far worse than on 4 September. Whilst visiting a parishioner I spoke with one of his neighbours, whose husband was at that time unaccounted for in the Pyne Gould Guinness building in town. I walked for a while with a barefoot young woman whose workplace in the city had collapsed, and who told me of seeing a woman giving birth on the footpath. Later I passed others heading on foot with blankets and little else for Hagley Park, and wondered how they fared when the rain began to fall a couple of hours after that. Dinner was sausages cooked on the outdoor barbeque; I've drained the leaking hot water cylinder upstairs into several large water containers so can probably manage with that, whatever food there is in the fridge and a bucket toilet for several days.

Got around some of our older parishioners yesterday afternoon but by no means all of them - back on the bike after I've had breakfast today. It's hard to describe the destruction in the central city - modern buildings have collapsed crumbled this time, and there is now no need for the reconstruction meeting that was planned for Knox tomorrow, as only the wooden pillars and roof are still standing - I am profoundly relieved that no one was injured when the wall on Bealey Ave collapsed towards traffic. I've heard that at least one bus in the central city was not so fortunate, and all of us are anxiously awaiting the release of the names of those who've died. I've closed the Knox Centre as a precaution - whilst the newer building is still standing the rear wall of the church collapsed through the gallery and hall/centre stairwell, so may have damaged the centre's outer wall.

And a shorter one from another minister:

Trinity Pacific is in a really bad way including fire. As is Knox. Centre of town looks like a bomb site. I was next to Durham street Methodist as it collapsed in a pile of stones . Thank you for your prayers.

The Pacific church she's referring to had already had a fire before the September earthquake.

And finally, from Martin Stewart:

Thanks to you all for your messages of prayer and thoughts - so far from what I have been able to find out we have four churches in considerable strife (all were damaged in September) - fortunately the workers on the St Paul's trinity Pacific restoration were on lunch break and all got out.
This church is diagonally opposite the devastated CTV building.
Our Methodist friends have had more damage and there are reports of three people still missing on the Durham St Methodist Church which was ironically being made safe. The Methodist Connexional Offices are closed with some damage to that building.
The pic [photo - above right] is of Oxford Terrace Baptist Church which totally collapsed. Knox Church is also one of the significantly damaged Pressie buildings.
Time will tell as to whether the ones lost are known in our church families, but we all feel emotionally drained in a way different from September because of the loss of many lives.

The flashest drive

Last year my two colleagues came back from the major biennial meeting of the Presbyterian Church each with promotional flash drive - and one spare, which was handed onto me. Apart from the promotional factor (some advertising that would appear at the beginning if you weren't quick enough to forestall it) it was the best flash drive I'd had up to that point. The advertising, which consisted of a short video, didn't seem to take up any 'space' on the disk, so obviously the drive area was separate to this. In other words, it wasn't just four gig of memory (or whatever the space was) but that and more. Not only was there plenty of space but it worked like a dream.

Until I put it through the washing machine. Well, that didn't actually stop it working, but the suspicion was that the water must have damaged it in some way, and eventually the data on it would get corrupted. I've been loathe to throw it away - in fact, I'm going to check it some time soon just to see if it still functions (it's now a few months since it went through the wash).


The photos of unusual flash drives are from Flickr.com - the homemade Subaru is by Rebecca and Bernhard and the green frog by Scott Beale (aka Laughing Squid - appropriately!)

Tim Keller

I'm re-reading Tim Keller's The Reason for God, and here he talks about his Manhattan-based Church of the Redeemer, which has a congregation of some 6,000...

Redeemer's basic doctrines - the deity of Christ, the infallibility of the Bible, the necessity of spiritual rebirth through faith in Christ's atoning death - are in unity with the orthodox, supernatural beliefs of the evangelical and Pentecostal churches of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the US South and Midwest. These beliefs often put us in conflict with views and practices of many people in the city. At the same time, we have been delighted to embrace many other aspects of urban, pluralistic culture. We emphasize the arts, value racial diversity, stress the importance of working for justice in the city for all its inhabitants, and communicate in the language and with the sensibility of our city-centre culture. Most of all we stress the grace of a Saviour who ate with people the establishment called 'sinners' and loved those who opposed him. All of these things are very important to Manhattan residents.

Some years ago a man from a southern US state visited Redeemer. He had heard that though we held to orthodox Christian doctrine, we had grown large in the midst of a sceptical, secular city. He expected to find that we were attracting people with avant-garde music, video monitors and clips, dramatic sketches, exceptionally hip settings, and other kinds of eye-catching spectacle. To his surprise he found a simple and traditional service that, on the surface, seemed identical to those in his more conservative part of the world. Yet he could also see that the audience contained many people who wouldn't have ever attended the churches he knew. After the service he met me and then said, 'This is a complete mystery to me. Where are the dancing bears? Where are the gimmicks? Why are these people here?"
I directed him to some 'downtown art-types' who had been coming to Redeemer for some time. They suggested that he look beneath the surface. One person said that the difference between Redeemer and other churches was profound, and lay in 'irony, charity, and humility.'

quotes from pages 42/3.

So where's Brent Stavig, you say? Why would you ask that in a post about Tim Keller and the remarkable Presbyterian Church of the Redeemer in Manhattan? Particularly since Stavig isn't in Manhattan, and hasn't even been in New York City for some time - last I heard, back in 2007, he was living in Seattle. Anyway, he's now managed to appear, in his turn, in this post.

Couple of McKean quotes

Sometimes a line in a book just strikes you as having a certain melifluousness about it. The following is an example.

God, mammon, and provincialism thus formed the sometimes ugly amalgam that was to be shaped into loyalty to the Synod of Otago & Southland.
pg 9

And another quote from the same book, this time in regard to Thomas Burns, one of the founding fathers of my home city, Dunedin, and a staunch Presbyterian.

There was considerable evidence that while many settlers frequently resorted to ‘cups o’ kindness yet’, Burns was not censorious about drunkenness. He remarked that in New Year celebrations of 1850 ‘some in their first-footing did not exhibit very sure footing.’
Pg 35

Both quotes from: The Church in a Special Colony: a History of the Presbyterian Synod of Otago & Southland 1866-1991, by John McKean.

Powerless

Spent Friday and Saturday night playing on and off at the Presbyterian Synod AGM. This involved several stints of playing hymns and other worship music for the various services that were held during the evening and day, as well as accompanying two or three singers (singing together) as entertainment during the meal, and presenting the world premiere of the three piano pieces I’ve written this year.

Playing these in public didn’t add anything to my savings accounts as yet, but at least it gave me a chance to test the water on the pieces and the general reaction was good. I found it harder to play them at this event, because the piano was one of those old uprights that had been put on large castors – the better to move it, my dear. However this meant that the pedals were way off the floor, and I needed a couple of chairs to sit at the thing, which didn’t give me the sort of security I have when playing on the wide piano stool at home. I wasn’t very happy with the performances, but several people came and talked about them with enthusiasm, so that was good.

It was a bit of a night: just as we were about to sing the ‘grace’ before the meal (we were still in the church at this point), the lights went out with a great bang. Seems that one of the three phases to the church complex had gone, and the only lighting was in the kitchen and large hall area outside it. This was fine, except that the dining room was in darkness, and some of the kitchen equipment had gone out as well. Dinner got delayed, so I finished up playing before the meal instead of after the main course, which was more satisfactory from my point of view.

We had the meal by candlelight, which was pleasant (although it made it a bit hard to see what you were eating). The lights were suddenly restored towards the end of the mains. There’d been a different and briefer bit of ‘excitement’ at the Brass Band Contest I played at last weekend. The cornet player was just heading towards a climax of one section when there was a bang and a light bulb fell from the theatre’s flies onto the stage where we were performing, missing us both, but giving us both a bit of a start. Seasoned pros that we are, we carried on playing.