Stinking hot here and really muggy. The fan’s on full but it’s not helping. No snow, holly or long dark nights here. So time for some Antipodean Christmas songs. I like Backblocks Nativity, especially the verse:

She sat on the foot of the fernstalk bed
And she watched, but she didn’t understand
When they put those bundles at the baby’s head
And this river nugget into his hand

Gold is the power of a man with a man
And incense the power of man with God
But myrrh is the bitter taste of death
And the sour-sweet smell of the upturned sod

Also don’t forget to check out the other links at NZ Folk Song:

• An upside-down Christmas
• A Pukeko in a Ponga Tree
• One on a Tractor

Given how much it’s rained here as well as being hot then the backblocks song with its rain isn’t too far off the mark.

Saw a new Tui billboard today down in Henderson

“Let’s go to Hamilton for New Year. Yeah right.”

Made me laugh. (I spent five and a half years living in Hamilton (lovely place))

Popped over to the Uni bookshop while down in Christchurch which was a somewhat painful move financially (they had a sale on). Picked up the following new books:

• Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion by John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor
• Science and the Spiritual Quest: New Essays by Leading Scientists. Comes from Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. (Been wanting to get this for a while now)
• Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World by Stefan Helmreich

So a bit of “light reading” over Christmas.

Saw a link to this nativity activity on the Re:jesus web site. It’s not bad:Nativity puzzle

Tui Beer run a billboard ad campaign in New Zealand based around their “Yeah right” slogan. A single blokey statement followed up by the response “Yeah right.”

Favourites of mine include:

“We didn’t need Mehrts.”
“Aerial spraying is safe.” (If you live in West Auckland or Hamilton then you’ll understand)
“It’s true – a guy in the pub told me.”
“There is definitely money in the account.”

With all the Christmas promotional stuff going on and the nice “sanitised” baby Jesus (blonde with blue eyes on the cards) being bandied about I thought I add my own billboard celebrating the birth of God as a Palestinian Jew 2000 years ago.

Now then, who’s for a drink?

Children’s nativity play today at our church with three of our children playing critical (at least in my eyes) parts – angel, shepherd and special effects (held the star). Lots of fun and all the normal gaffs and blunders that add the human element to the story.

But the story jars with our experience of the Christmas season here in NZ. The weather is getting hotter (Stats here); the trees greener (and the grass soon to be browner); people are beginning to wind up to Christmas and the big summer holiday afterwards; school children are looking forward to 5-6 weeks off school; and shops and churches are getting “festive”.

So how to connect what happened in a small Middle Eastern town a couple of thousand years ago in the winter with a culture that’s looking forward to barbeques, beaches and the bach (NZ holiday house)? What is the common ground, if any, between the experiences of a few shepherds, a teenage mother and some eggheads from the east and the average kiwi? How can the impact of the story – with its tension, terror, fanaticism, pilgrimage, wonder, joy and sheer humanity – be heard today? What is a distinctively NZ Christmas story with a corresponding theme of grace? And how can it be related over the cacophany of northern hemisphere images, carols and mind-set coupled with overwhelming demand to consume?

Will be thinking a lot about this.

Happy Advent.

Finished up at the STANZ theology conference and catching up with family yesterday and headed out to Charteris Bay to stay the night with friends over there. I love sitting and watching the sea and their house looks out over Lyttleton Harbour. Good food, good friends and a great view capped off a nice few days in Christchurch. Snapped a few pics of the view from their lounge and pasted them together below. You can get the bigger image if you click on it.

The conference went well with some interesting papers, including one on two metaphors for the Holy Spirit — the Holy Spirit as the “ecstatic God” and the Holy Spirit as the “God of the edges.” My paper was well received I think with some good feedback afterwoods from different people.

I’ve been putting together this conference paper on the spirituality of technology and focusing on the the spiritual narratives created by technologists to explain and inspire their work. Stuff like the appropriation of apocalyptic imagery to describe cyberspace as the Heavenly City, the linkage of VR to the Buddhist nature, and technopaganism.

Today I come across this web site: The Wild Divine Project Here we have the combination of a video game, biofeedback devices and Buddhist-like meditative practices. You play the game but you can only pass certain point if you can demonstrate (via biofeedback techniques) that you have mastered the body. Achieve a centred calmness and the game responds and you move on.

Sounds like a Sony Praystation to me.

Well my paper is written (finally – writing is like getting blood out of a stone for me), the slides are made and I’m set to head off today to Christchurch to the annual STANZ Talking Theology conference. Should be good as I get back to the first university I studied at and get to see family (including a new niece!) and friends.

Kevin Kelly puts together his “Cool Tools” list online. It’s an eclectic collection of useful stuff including both old and new things (e.g. a book on raising chickens makes it in). A few of the more recent postings are on the main page and then many others in the category links.

Kevin Kelly — Cool Tools