Saw this today over at Dave’s Portal while googling (is that a verb?) for some stuff on “embodied virtuality”.

Douglas Adams on Tea

One or two Americans have asked me why it is that the English like tea so much, which never seems to them to be a very good drink. To understand, you have to know how to make it properly.

There is a very simple principle to the making of tea and it’s this – to get the proper flavour of tea, the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves. If it’s merely hot then the tea will be insipid. That’s why we English have these odd rituals, such as warming the teapot first (so as not to cause the boiling water to cool down too fast as it hits the pot). And that’s why the American habit of bringing a teacup, a tea bag and a pot of hot water to the table is merely the perfect way of making a thin, pale, watery cup of tea that nobody in their right mind would want to drink. The Americans are all mystified about why the English make such a big thing out of tea because most Americans have never had a good cup of tea. That’s why they don’t understand. In fact the truth of the matter is that most English people don’t know how to make tea any more either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.

So the best advice I can give to an American arriving in England is this. Go to Marks and Spencer and buy a packet of Earl Grey tea. Go back to where you’re staying and boil a kettle of water. While it is coming to the boil, open the sealed packet and sniff. Careful – you may feel a bit dizzy, but this is in fact perfectly legal. When the kettle has boiled, pour a little of it into a tea pot, swirl it around and tip it out again. Put a couple (or three, depending on the size of the pot) of tea bags into the pot (If I was really trying to lead you into the paths of righteousness I would tell you to use free leaves rather than bags, but let’s just take this in easy stages). Bring the kettle back up to the boil, and then pour the boiling water as quickly as you can into the pot. Let it stand for two or three minutes, and then pour it into a cup. Some people will tell you that you shouldn’t have milk with Earl Grey, just a slice of lemon. Screw them. I like it with milk. If you think you will like it with milk then it’s probably best to put some milk into the bottom of the cup before you pour in the tea.* If you pour milk into a cup of hot tea you will scald the milk. If you think you will prefer it with a slice of lemon then, well, add a slice of lemon.

Drink it. After a few moments you will begin to think that the place you’ve come to isn’t maybe quite so strange and crazy after all.

* This is socially incorrect. The socially correct way of pouring tea is to put the milk in after the tea. Social correctness has traditionally had nothing whatever to do with reason, logic or physics. In fact, in England it is generally considered socially incorrect to know stuff or think about things. It’s worth bearing this in mind when visiting.

Suddenly I feel like a nice cup of tea. Darjeeling, I think.

Some interesting thoughts from Doug here and he wants some suggestions. So surf over to Virtual-Doug and suggest away.

Virtual-Doug: Transforming Church – Beginnings

Just when I thought I was getting old.

CNN.com – Old fish in captivity turns 65 – Nov. 19, 2003

I’m still thinking and reading about religion, technology and the nature of human identity in cyberspace. (I’ll be thinking about this for at least another 2 years until my thesis is finished) One book I find my self continually dipping into is Brenda Brasher’s Give Me That Online Religion. It’s easy to read, contains people’s personal stories and raises some good questions. Yesterday I was struck by this passage having been thinking about blogs, open-source theology and the postmodern monastry idea.

Individuals with no tie to any particular religious organization or group are the pioneers of online religion. The nonspecialists find in cyberspace a public space where they can preach and teach, crack religious jokes, and construct virtual rites with abandon. And they love it. To computer-adept amateur religionists, the global interconnectedness and pervasive openness of cyberspace concoct a heady brew of spiritual possibility that causes the spiritual imagination to flourish. Investing hundreds of hours in constructing Websites filled with spiritual content that they treat as virtual sacred places, individual online religious practitioners are the cultural missionaries of virtuality. They are among the first to explore the boundaries of cyberspace, attempt to learn its language, and try to translate their religious message into its context. Netcasting virtual religious art and music, these cyber-religionists construct online ritural, spin out virtual theologies, and form unprecedented, free-floating bonds of spiritual community in an eruption of cyberspace spiritual enthusiasm.

Brenda E Brasher, Give Me That Online Religion (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 69-70.

Blogging fits this description well, though when Brasher wrote her book blogging was not really wide-spread.

Still thinking about Steve Taylor’s postmodern monastery and what it might look like.

The Monastery of Christ in the Desert

The comments functionality on the blog appears to be having problems at the moment. I am reassured that I am not alone in this (see: comments not showing up).

Sorry if you had something profound to say and you’ve been thwarted. If things don’t improve in the next few days I’ll have a look at installing a new comments system.

I’ve been reading about the self and cyberspace today. Here’s a quote I like from:

Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Reprint, London: Virago Press, 2000.

One question that arises, then, is where does the self end? If the self “continues” into cyberspace, then as I say, it also “continue” through the post and over the phone. It becomes also like a fluid, leaking out around us all the time and joining each of us into a vast ocean, or web, of relationships with other leaky selves. In this sense, cyberspace becomes a wonderful metaphor for highlighting and bringing to our attention this crucial aspect of our lives. As (Christine) Wertheim points out, the Net make explicit a process that is already going on around us all the time, but which we in the modern West too often tend to forget. By bringing into focus the fact that we are all abound into a web of interrelating and fluid selves, the Internet does us an invaluable service. (p. 249)

Leads to all sort of possible images

• Baptism in the fluid of other people
• Liquid church metaphors
• God’s self as sloshing about down here too.
• God’s continuation of self into Scripture

Rachel had a lively discussion over on her blog a week or so ago about an evangelistic tract that was put into her letterbox (see cre8d journal: Spam I am?). The conclusion being that it was more about scaring people into heaven than conveying the richness of the gospel and it’s implications for life now. She posted a scan of the tract and I used it in our house group as a discussion starter on eternal life and what we think the gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses.

Then yesterday I found the following tract from the same crowd blowing around my garden (hence the water damage). This time they’ve gone for the whole demonic figure, fire and skulls (on the back) to convince people to pray the prayer on the back and avoid hell. Do it now – you may not have another chance!

Now salvation does mean being saved from something. But it also means being saved into something – eternal life. And that is, to borrow a slogan, “life before death” – Being part of the community of the children of God, seeing the Kingdom of God at hand and being part of the new life that proclaims in word and action freedom for the oppressed, healing of the broken and restoration of relationships with God and others. It’s not just about buying a ticket to heaven for when we die – otherwise why did Jesus spend so much time changing people’s situations in life, physically and socially, instead of just reassuring then that it would be all right in the end.

So when I see something like the above tract I feel many things: Sad, angry, upset, disturbed. Christ is both saviour (the giver of new life now) and judge of all things. We need to hold onto both.

There’s a good reflection on this last comment in the latest Sojourners Magazine: The Hungry Spirit: Damnation Will Not be Televised

The “Smart Mob” crowd catch up with organized, passive resistance in the UK.

See Interwebnet’s Chasing Bush – Tracking George W. Bush throughout his UK visit

Australia played brilliantly (All credit to the opposition – literally!). New Zealand played badly (didn’t seem to have a “Plan A”, let alone a “Plans B, C & D”). We lost. They won. Feel very sad.

But somehow it wasn’t as bad as 1999. Maybe having lots of friends around for a barbeque, board games, sharing the “pain” etc. made all the difference.

It got me thinking about the importance of community for coming through hard times (not just rugby tests). It still hurts but it helps to have others who are or haved suffered too and are able to get you to laugh (at yourself often). (Still this is probably just rationalising a a deep sense that “we were robbed” )

Darren has an Australian view over at his blog: LivingRoom >> A space for Life: Rugby World Cup – Go Australia

Don’t even mention the cricket.

Go France!