Saw this over at UserFriendly. I have a couple of games that I continually come back to for their game play not graphics so this made me smile.

Back from Queensland now and in the more temperate Auckland climate. Christmas Day was hot and clear with a big thunderstorm in the evening. The carol service put on by the resort was more like a hour in a shopping mall than a time spent singing “religious” songs. Mostly contemporary jingles with a group of (loud) singers and dancers up front to jolly the crowd along. Odd really to sing songs of snow, winter and other northern hemisphere things while sitting on the lawn in shorts and tee-short feeling rather hot and slapping the odd mosquito. (Still the kids enjoyed it).

Christmas Day we went to a service in the open air chapel. Great possibilities for all sorts of things but the service was pretty trad and formulaic. A (retired?) minister ran the show and spoke about grace which was good. A couple of readings (one from Isaiah and one from John 1) were read by children (but too quietly for the outside venue) and a couple of people were asked to come out of the congregation to read prayers of intercession. The odd thing for me about the service was the constant referral to the Christmas story in Bethlehem yet that story wasn’t actually ever told in the service (the readings didn’t refer to it directly) so there was a sense for me of disconnection between the readings, prayers and the nativity story and its implications that I was expecting. However I did enjoy going to the chapel with many of my family as that doesn’t happen at all very often with us all around the globe.

Anyway, we had a great holiday celebrating my Dad’s 60th birthday and had a great family Christmas too. Hope yours went well too.

I saw this when I was trying to find a quote on the internet yesterday. Sort of sums up my year.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” from Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)

It’s also a thought for the new year.

Well, what do you know. They do have internet access at the beach.

Christmas Eve and Day services here are being held in an open air chapel set amongst mango trees. The juxtapostion of the nativity with that environment should provide some interesting thoughts for tomorrow. And carol singing on the lawn by the sea with wallabies (small kangaroos) wandering amongst us too.

It’s been a very good week so far: my birthday, some days IT consulting and an end of year postgrad BBQ with lots of friends and their kids. Now it’s time to pack and head off to sunny Queensland for Christmas to meet family from Melbourne, London and NZ (while the in-laws mind the house here).

So blogging will be off the agenda for the next week or so, unless there have WiFi on the beach

Have a great Christmas. Christ’s blessings to you and your house.

Neat site for all of you out there wanting to share and use iCal:iCalShare – Share Your iCalendars!

Been waiting a few says to blog about this but the video is now available online. TV2′s Flipside (a semi-interactive youth news and issues programme) ran an interesting segment on rites of passage for young people back on 11 December. Not much depth to it but some interesting ideas to pursue:

• What are the contemporary rites of passage for young people today? (either individually or in their communities)
• A comment about a rite of passage being a “small death”.
• Another comment about people making their own ritual and rites today.
• The lack of any mention of significant religious rites of passage, either today or in the past.
• The loss of traditional rites and rituals.

Might be a useful segment to introduce a group talking about their own rites of passage and their significance. Also the opportunity for Alt.W and other spiritual groups in helping everyday people form new, relevant and life-giving rites for all ages.

The video clip can be found here on the Flipside site: Flipside – Rites of Passage. Video is a bit erratic but the sound works okay. The blurb for the video is as follows:

We all go through different stages as we grow up and we mark these changes with events or rituals. There’s the good old 21st, moving out of home, getting drunk for the first time? Vanessa takes a look at rites of passage. What they are, and why they’re important to all of us.

Some comments on Christmas and commercialism.

The link will be valid for only a couple of weeks.Calvin & Hobbes

It didn’t rain on Saturday (Yay!) so we went up the road to the Waitakere’s with some friends and their family to go walking in the forest up there. It’s great to be only 10-15 minutes drive from the Waitakere forest park. Anyway it was hot and muggy but the kids all trooped through the trees and down the hill to track down a 600 year old Kauri tree. The walk back up nearly did me in (very unfit) carrying my 1 year old son on my back and my 3 year old daughter (can’t walk, Daddy!) back up to the Arataki car park. Great to be in amongst the bush though with great views and a sense of permanence of land and it’s ability to recover from human activity. Viriditas.

Took a panoramic shot looking back south from Arataki over the Manakau Harbour. The land drops away from you sharply toward the reservoir giving a sense that you’re floating over the bush. (Click on image for larger view)

Maggi Dawn made a couple of comments about Kiwi’s on her blog that got me thinking. How much might the following factors create an environment where Alt.W is able to be explored and nutured in NZ? (I’m just a theologian/scientist thinking here not a sociologist or historian so I may be way off the mark)

• No state religion/church – NZ doesn’t have a state religion or church in the same (any?) way that the Church of England, the Roman Catholic church or Eastern Orthodoxy have related to the State/Crown. Here is pretty much everyone for themselves with no central authority to sanction what is or is not orthodox (except within individual churches or denominations).
• NZ is a “new” country – 160+ years old if you follow European dating from the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). Maybe there’s a desire to reconnect to lost “homeland” traditions, ritual and depth that opens doors for Alt.W to draw on.
• Contemporary NZ as post-Enlightenment project – Government, institutional and other structures were formed out of post-Enlightenment optimism, pragmatism and ideals. E.g. no (overt) religious education in NZ state schools until a recent shift to include more “spirtuality”. (See the section on Antoine Marie Garin which notes “he could not accept the regulations in the Education Act 1856 which stipulated that religious education was to be free from all controversy and taught only at times when parents who objected could remove their children from the schools.). This sort of environment may have heightened the response to post or late-modernity with little non-modern resources to draw upon.
• Parallel Maori spirituality – Most Kiwi’s have some knowledge that the Maori culture is rich in spirituality connected with the land and everyday life. Maybe there is a sense of wanting to draw from that and have that sort of spirituality as well.

Anyway just some immediate thoughts I had. Some like Steve may have more organised (and better researched) ideas.