maggi dawn

offending people nicely

Another great cartoon from Jon Birch today. Along with Dave Walker, Jon is one of my regular reads in blogland. Jon was really writing about satire, but the context of his site, and the Vicar-like tee-shirt he gave his cartoon character, took me off at another tanget as well... 

There is something inherently "offensive" about the gospel - however much you get to grips with the love and forgiveness and comfort of God, if you are engaging with what it means to live out the gospel, there is still the regular jab in the ribs. The gospel is many good things - exciting, challenging, comforting, fulfilling, forgiving, gracious, merciful... and much more - but one thing it will never be is comfortable, in the sense of being mentally settled down on a sofa never to move again.

As I commented to Jon, there is something about being a minister of the gospel (and this is true in the sense that every Christian is a minister, not just the "professional" thing) that means you should anticipate that you will end up offending people. The TV Vicar is nearly always "nice", to the point of being bland; even the Vicar of Dibley, while not bland, was still "nice" on the whole. A true engagement with faith should certainly make us kind, compassionate and forgiving, and I don't suggest we justify giving unnecessary offence through our own clutziness. But we should never feel obliged to be bland-nice. There's a pressure (perhaps especially on the professional minister?) to be "nice" to everyone, but it can lead you into woeful passive-aggressive behaviour, it's fake, and in any case it doesn't do justice to the fiery, vibrant, exciting character of the Kingdom of God. Goodness and Niceness are not the same thing at all.

write like a blogger

Seth Godin suggests that all writers could learn something from bloggers

Plaid Blog

Tim Bednar is blogging again. This time on resources for innovative ministry. Check out his new site: Plaid Blog by Tim Bednar for very innovative ministry teams.

spam and comments

Apologies to Ray, Christy and one or two other commenters - in the process of deleting the spam and a few rather nasty comments the blog has inadvertently lost some real and good comments too! Christy, I hope you find a good source of shirts. Ray, sorry I don't know the answer either! "Poetry", I hope you manage to get published.

No Comment

sorry blog readers, for some reason my blog won't take comments at the moment. Normal service will be resumed ASAP. Hold that thought! ...

Bloggers Choice Awards

Wondrous! Someone has nominated my blog for this. Not sure exactly what it means...   certainly it means nothing much in the great scheme of things, but it's a bit of fun in blogland. So trot along and pop in a vote for your favourite God-blogs, eh? You never know, I might get a virtual certificate to hang on the  virtual wall!  (But if nothing else, you can join me in waving respectfully at Ruth or Real Live Preacher who will doubtless be among the luminaries on the virtual podium...)

free speech? or loud-mouth point-scoring males?

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian gave one of the better accounts of yesterday's story about civility in blogland. (It's interesting to me that the particular blogvillages I tend to visit had this conversation at least 2 years ago, applied some old-fashioned principles of manners, and nowadays mostly conduct a pretty well mannered discourse. But anyone who has ever been bothered by trolls, flames, torches etc., will recognise exactly what Freedland is talking about:

"...That's the beauty of [the blogosphere], say its defenders; an environment of truly free speech. If your ideas cannot withstand the fierce gale of harsh debate, then they're probably just too flimsy. In one respect, they're right. Journalists like me have had to raise our game, knowing that a factual lapse will be pointed out within minutes. But that advantage is surely out- weighed by the risk that the blogo-sphere, which could be a new, revolutionary public space, instead becomes a stale, claustrophobic environment, appealing chiefly to a certain kind of aggressive, point-scoring male - and utterly off-putting to everyone else. This is not just bad news for media outlets like the Guardian, keen to build an audience; it means that this great democratic opportunity is lost.

Read the rest here: Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The blogosphere risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males.

bishops do listen...

Last week someone commented here that the Bishop of Bristol's new blog was unreadable, being in white letters on a back background. Within a matter of days the good bishop has a lovely clear new format. He is promising some posts on the relationship between the emerging church and the institutional church and the power relationships involved. Go on over and check it out: Mike Hill.

should blogs be banned by church?

Text books of the faith...

Dave Cartoon-Church Walker noted a while back that some institutions within the Church of England have placed pretty severe bans on their members blogging. I quite appreciate that bloggers have to have a sense of responsibility towards their employers, colleges, parishes etc., and this should be encouraged in every way. But banning everyone from blogging? Bad idea.

Several people have noticed this week that Bishop Mike (of Bristol) has started blogging. Someone set up a blog for him as a kind of newsletter/prayer request when he and his wife were involved in a car accident. Now that the crisis of that is over (Deo gracias) he has come to apreciate the potential of the blog, and has begun to use the blog as a place to post summaries of sermons, thoughts about Church related stuff (including a category on Emerging Church), mixed in with his own enthusiasm for football. That's what makes blogging good I think - unilke a website which is purely official information, a blog gives the capacity for the person giveng the sermon and the information also to be able to give you a bit of their humanity - like adding the coffee time chat to the lecture. And of course the comments, which make the whole thing a dialogue, not a sermon.

Anyway, Stefan noted in my comments a blog from Westminster Cathedral, the flagship of English Catholic worship. The writer describes Cathedrals as "text books of the faith" and writes about how the building needs to go about its life and its presentation in order to draw tourists in to become worshippers. Who would have thought that a blogpost about such a humdrum thing as signage could become a theological/missiological reflection?

The fact that some bloggers have been a bit thoughtless about what they tell to the whole wide world shouldn't stop the church from blogging. It should make us think carefully about what we put on the blog, of course. But the Blog can be a kind of text book of faith in its own way. 

faith in society

Simon has put up some lovely posts lately - when does the day begin, what does it mean to be a Christian... go read

Five things you probably didn't know...

...about Ruth Gledhill, who has proved herself a good sport and taken up my challenge!

...about AKM Adam, whose jolly good book I am currently reading

...about Simon Barrow, whom I have persuaded not to be so deadly serious on his blog, but whom I shall now never speak to again after the photo credit he has put up :)

about Dave Paisley, aircraft designer and all round interesting person

...

Online communities

6th annual report from the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for the Digital Future reports that the impact of online communities is only now coming of age. Online friends are of significant importance, as are online communities, which they define as "a group that shares thoughts or ideas, or works on common projects, through electronic communication only."

Happily, though, all this online activity seems not to be removing us from "real life", but enhancing it. THe report notes that online communities and contacts frequently translate into offline activity.

go read: We love our Internet friends, really..

Identity Crisis

Best story of the week is the one going on at Ship of Fools, where one of the pseudonymous Mystery Worshippers has been uncovered as being a priest writing glowing reviews of his own liturgical performances (in this case that seems a good choice of word). The Ship's own account is here, and Ruth Gledhill writes up the story too. But by far the best coverage of the story is here: Ship Of Fools Fooled By Times' Journalist.

points mean prizes

sometime today someone is going to be my 300,000th visitor. I'll send you a couple of celebratory albums, whoever you are...

UPDATE:
The actual 300,000th visitor proved to be uncontactable, so the nearest next one has been sent the albums. He blogs as "Finker".

remembering who I am

Mike at Wheeliebinland.gives us one of the best reasons for blogging.

mind, body, spirit - dekhomai

Jonny and co have set up a new blog at dekhomai
Looks really cool. Go visit and find out what it's all about

techno-glitch

Sorry, one and all, for the site going AWOL this afternoon. Had a glitch, and being a technophobe, it  took me a little while, and some assistance from Typepad, to sort it. Must say Typepad helpdesk is very fast and efficient. Hats off to them.

Blog catch-up

I was very blog lite this month, for a variety of reasons, both reading and writing. I've just been catching up on a few of my favourite reads. For a couple of theological thoughts, Jason offers us some interesting thoughts on Spirit and Glory,  and Andy holds forth on how the label "Evangelical" is becoming more and more of a language problem even for those who do regard themselves, in the classical sense, as evangelicals.

In the visuals department, Serena has created an icon from a gorgeous close-up of our Chapel window, and Dave Cartoon Walker pokes a little fun at Google.

In the personal recollections department, Dave Disaster-Area Paisley recounts amuysing memories of growing up with a Dad who gave living room lectures on coal mining. (My Dad is a geologist and I have similar affectionate childhood memories.)

I also enjoy bloggers who poke a little fun at the more ridiculous things that emerge in the news.  Simple unleashes his dry wit in How a Car Seat can Ruin Your Day.

I just noticed (and this must be unusual for a blog round-up) that I know all of these guys IRL.

Blog conversation (ii)

I wrote a few days ago about blogs, what form they take, and hinted at a few ideas about the form-content relationship. Paul Fromont says some very intelligent things on the same subject  here.  Brodie has also written about whether blogging is dying - read here to see if the rumours are true.

One further thought from me. I'm fairly sure that Blogs create no greater potential for misunderstanding than do books, preaching, conversation, e-mail or any other form of communication. What they DO, though, is offer an almost-but-not-quite instant opportunity for response. If someone disagrees with your sermon, their lunch guests will hear about it, but you probably won't. If someone disagrees with your book, you'll be most unlikely ever to hear about it. The difference on a blog is that when you are misunderstood you find out about it, fairly soon after you've written it, and probably while the ideas are still fresh and malleable in your own mind. Blogs don't create misunderstanding, they just make you aware of the limits of your own communication skills, and the reality of other people's capacity to take a thought from you and turn it into something else. Thus, they make you aware that you are, in fact, often misunderstood, but also that you are the source of an idea that sparks off other, unrelated ideas which you yourself do not "own".

tags for dinosaurs

I'm very comfortable with my image as a technodinosaur (pass the cocoa and slippers, someone...) and it is not lost on me that I am probably almost the last blogger in the world to get my head round tags. But just in case there's anyone else out there who has "get your head round tags" on their to-do list for January, this blog seems to be a good source of help.

weddings and geeks

At a wedding yesterday I met lots of blog-readers and several fellow bloggers. And, among the guests, lots and lots of computer geeks. This blog is so widely read that some people erroneously believe that I myself am a geek. This is not the case - I am in fact a rather lo-tech writer with only a rudimentary grasp on how software works. But there are these people out there who really do know what goes on in cyber space. Or so they claim, at any rate. Some of the geeks in Cambridge are really very clever indeed, and their projects are amazingly space-age. 

I love it whenever I meet a computer whizz who can be bothered to explain in plain English how this stuff works. It's like talking to people who have actually met angels - it sounds fantastic and I'm totally impressed. But then later I find myself wondering how that can really be true.

Anyway, to add to my mystical view of the world of computers, I now also have an approximate idea of how hacking works. I now have an image in my head of 258 assigend pigeon holes and a few spare ones at the end, and a naughty person misappropriating just one or two of the extra pigeon holes, upsetting the system and readdressing your mail. Or something like that. Or maybe it's really angels that deliver the messages after all.

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new (to me) blog

Mark Pierson...

...has started blogging. He's nice, interesting, not afraid to say what he thinks, and has years of experience at stuff i think is worthwhile... I shall be reading his blog here.

blog friends and fitzbillies

Magz and her sister Cindy came round for tea today, bringing some yummy Fitzbillies Florentines with them (the kind of guests that are welcome back any time!!). They gamely fought their way through the tangle of small boys on my front doorstep who assailed them with Light Sabers and the like, demanding all kinds of forfeits before they were allowed in.

Then we ventured out to the back garden which is (of course) nicely set up for drinking lots of tea with all comers. We mused for a while on the fact that we have met quite a number of people through blogging, and were naming off a few friends we'd met IRL only some time after the blog-cyber-connection.  Somewhere along the line, I suddenly remembered that that's how I met Magz too (although also met in a bar in Brick Lane a whle before she moved up to Cambridge). 

Cindy is doing the pilgrimage to santiago della compostela soon - I so have got to do that one day. A friend of mine published a book on it a while back - he walked all the way from Canterbury to Compostela carrying a trombone, which he played at stops along the way.

Fitzbillies, by the way, is a very famous tea room and cake shop in the heart of Cambridge - the haunt of generations of hungry post-rowing or post-lecture students. A few years ago, after I'd moved to Cambridge, there was a fire at Fitbillies and the shop and tea room burned down. The city practically went into mourning. But Fitzbillies was gradually rebuilt, and expanded into the shop next door, and now features a new downstairs restaurant as well as the restored cake shop. After more than a decade in Cambridge, I have sampled most of Fitzbillies' classic delights - the chelsea buns, the eight cake, the sachertorte, the chocolate ganache cake... and today, courtesy of Magz, revisited the divine florentines.

new blog (3)

Paul Roberts has finally caved in and started blogging. (Paul, we told you so. Resistance was futile.)

His first few posts are (unsurprisingly) nicely written and full of good thoughts.
Go Read.

images

there was a programme on the telly last night about "how art made the world" or something to that effect. Some of the commentary was typical dumbed-down nonsense - making grand scale assertions that demanded a great deal of verification, but were we going to get any of the justification for it? We were not. I realise that not everyone wants to ask all the pernickety questions, but really. When someone just announces on national TV that "something strange happened" 34,000 years ago, surely we ant to ask - "how exactly did you arrive at your explanation? Why that explanation and not any one of three or four hypotheses that I, a complete novice, could think of right now?

anyway, despite the annoyingly glib commentary  the images were totally fab - lots of shots of Altamira and Lascaux and turkish stone circles.

speaking of images, here's a blog that does images rather well. Does Becca take her own photos, I wonder? Or is she a dab hand at finding them on the web?

new blog

check this out

blogrolls

AKMA keeps one of my favourite blogs. Today he writes about discussions on the blogroll - why do people have them, not have them, what effect it has on people when they find they are/are not on someone else's blogroll, how insecure do you feel when you were on a blogroll and then find you're taken off it... (It's a bit like the feeling you get when you receive a last-minute invitation to a dinner - you're happy to be invited, but also know that you weren't first on the list... ).

A number of people have asked me why my blogroll doesn't show anything. Don't get emotional about it. It's because I haven'tfigured out how to make it work, and haven't had time, amidst the pile of things I haven't done yet, to sit down and tinker with it until I DO know how to make it work.
It's low on my priority list really - not because I don't read other people (I do) but because I blog as another format to write; I am a self-confessed technoclutz and therefore the technology involved takes me longer to figure out than those people half my age who grew up with a mouse in their hands.

Is Trackback dead?

what do you think?

and see a response by James here

view from the basement

I've been enjoying Brodie's blog this week.
Good post entitled "what's a blog for?" and another one called "all about me" - good little nuggets to keep us on our toes.

new blog

I found this today. it's good. go read - and make sure you read the artist's statement about creativity and building sandcastles. Fab stuff

starting a blog

For those who've been asking, here are some good places to find out how to start your own blog, or replace the one you've got with something better:  try Jonny Baker's Idiot's Guide to starting a blog
More tips on kinds of blogs, choosing your interface, here

Typepad is good for the ego...

On my old blog, the Site meter only recorded one "hit" per visitor (though also told you how many pages they read. If the same IP address checked back in a second time within the hour, it wasn't recorded. And it didn't record your own visits to your own site. On this basis, my old blog had around 280-300 visitors a day. Typepad, however, appears to record every page visit and every repeat visit. So apparently I have about a thousand visitors a day. Annoyingly inaccurate, I feel sure, although momentarily there I thought my popularity had soared overnight... :)