Greenflame

Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand

  • A poem for these times

    I’ve had the library’s copy of Playing God by Glenn Colquhoun (2002) out for a week or so and have been reading it in the evenings. Colquhoun is a doctor who writes poetry and this collection is out of his medical experiences here in NZ. Like most poetry I struggle with it sometimes but on the whole I have found his poems engaging, challenging and refreshing. Today I saw his poem about Asthma and it fitted in with life just right.

    The poem ends with the lines

    This small boy has a flock of birds
    let loose inside his chest.

    And quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
    the magpies said.

    The last part is from a poem by Denis Glover

    Here’s a link to Colquhoun’s bio and “To the girl who stood beside me at the checkout counter of Whitcoulls bookstore in Hamilton on Tuesday” (Overseas readers substitute in the name of your local stationer/bookseller for Whitcoulls.) (Also I’ve bought many books in the Hamilton Whitcoulls)

    And another to his poem “Bred in South Auckland”. Another that captures Auckland life.

  • Home!

    Philip came home this afternoon (after we were told he’d be in for another night). Parents are relieved and tired and siblings are happy to see Philip and their parents again.

    Thanks again for the support.

  • Things getting better

    Still in at Starship with Philip (Kim stayed in the first night and me last night). Just slipped across the road to Uni to check my email. Hopefully he’ll be coming home tomorrow when he’s off the oxygen and is not wheezing. He’s getting better (enought to be grumpy with having to stay there) which is a relief. Kim’s mum came up from Kawerau to look after the other three for a few days which is great! Thanks for the support (real and virtual).

  • Starship

    Spent the day at Starship Children’s Hospital with my baby, Philip. Took him in to the doctor expecting to be told that I was overreacting, that it was viral and to give him paracetamol and let him rest. Instead she put him on oxygen and called an ambulance. He’ll be there for at least two nights while they sort his breathing out. Kim’s in with him tonight and I’ll probably be there tomorrow night. Very stressed. Thank God for all the friends that helped out handling the rest of our kids for us.

    If you happen to talk to God in the next day or too please mention Philip to him.

  • Blog On: Building Online Communities with Web Logs

    I’ve been reading the local library’s copy of Blog On: Building Online Communities with Web Logs by Todd Stauffer. It’s a book for introducing people to blogging and covers most of the different options that were available when it was published (Oct 2002). It’s pretty good at doing that covering free and commercial systems as well as three chapters on how to go about installing and configuring Graymatter, Movable Type and pMachine on your web host. Even though I’ve installed each of those I still found it useful for it’s references to third-party sites and add-ons to blogging.

    If you have someone who wants to get into blogging then this book would be helpful to them.

  • Women and emerging church

    Following up the ongoing discussion on Maggi’s, Jonny’s, Lilly’s and Jen’s blogs here are a couple of articles that I found helpful for me.

    Reality. Issue 24 – ’90s Women Talk About Their Place in the Church by Diane Benge

    Reality. Issue 24 – Was Paul a Sexist? by Chris Marshall (Different Chris Marshall to www.chrismarshall.blogspot.com)

  • Nouslife Blog

    I’ve seeen a couple of people refer to Andii Bowsher’s blog Nouslife and decided to have a look. There’s some really interesting stuff there covering church, environment and social justice. Well worth a look at on a regular basis.

    Recent postings include topics such as an economic approach to theology of the Lord’s Prayer, global warming, freedom of religion and some stuff relating to culture jamming.

  • Holiday time again

    Long weekend this weekend as it’s Auckland Anniversary. (Prodigal’s off to the beach with mutual friends: Prodigal Kiwi Blog: Whangamata & Midsummer Murders) So Monday is a holiday in the top half of the North Island and then it’s the first day of the new school year on Tuesday when three on my children head off to kindergarten and school and the days become more structured.

    In case you didn’t know in NZ each province celebrates its own anniversary with a public holiday (normally attached to a weekend). The list of dates is at: New Zealand HolidaysI think in South Canterbury they celebrate two! (but I could be wrong about that).

    Anyway a long weekend is a nice way to prepare for the rushing about of next week.

  • How to manage your site with Blogger, PHP, and XML

    If you’re into a bit of constructive tweaking of Blogger you can get it to generate an RSS/XML feed. But you need to be using Blogger to publish to your own site. Here’s the link” hit-or-miss.org: How to manage your site with Blogger, PHP, and XML

    I see also that Blogger has just announced support for Atom to handle syndication. Check out: Syndication. It’s not RSS but some of the RSS aggregators support it.

  • Theology and Science with Anabaptist insight

    Just started reading Nancey Murphy’s book Reconciling Theology and Science: A Radical Reformation Perspective and I’ve been enjoying it so far. I notice that in the section on Theology and the Social Sciences there is a section on the New Zealand experience of Restorative Justice. Quite unusual for a US book to notice something down here in Godzone.

    Most science & religion books are pretty esoteric, dealing with issues at a theoretical level, but this one seems grounded in the reality of having to live in this world. Murphy claims that

    Christianity has primarily to do with real life, here and now. It is only secondarily about life in the hereafter; it is more about changing the world than interpreting its “meaning.” Doctrine is important in that it constitutes presuppositions of the way we live.

    She works to bring themes such as anti-violence from the Anabaptist and other radical reformation traditions into dialogue with the science and theology debate. Should be an interesting read.