If the variety and chaos and lack of aggression of the Traffic in the Philippines is the first thing that hits you as it did me, because of how in your face it is, the Hospitality and Generosity of the Filipino people will hit you in your heart. i have always found it quite a hard piece to navigate when time after time in my life it has been the poor who have consistently [...]
Blessed are the rich... for they shall be spared sermons! Rene August [preaching at St Johns Anglican church yesterday] didn't quite say those words, but she might as well have. And they feel largely true. One thing Rene did say was this: 'The church has so many programs to help alleviate poverty. The church has no programs to help people alleviate greed.' [which i think was a quote of Bishop Zac Niringiye] Two other [...]
It's been a frustrating few hours arguing with people on Facebook around this statement i shared on Facebook: What if i am wrong? A number of people came on and defended the rich and tried to misdirect away from the problem and called me a lot of things, telling me how my line of thinking was responsible for more deaths than Hitler managed and so on. And it's super frustrating because a [...]
Want to get rich quick? i'm not particularly interested in it, but i know a lot of people who are. Well i have discovered a way to legitimately become rich and it is a lot simpler than anything you might have imagined. Don't be nervous. It's not a pyramid scheme or a get-rich-quick internet scandal or anything like that. In fact this is a lot simpler and quicker than either of those. [...]
This will be the last share of the chapter from Ron Sider’s super-challenging book, ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’ [do yourselves a favour and get hold of a copy and let it ruin you in the best of ways!] We ended the last post with: The threat of a curse always accompanied the promise of blessing […]
A wise teacher once told the story of a man who was on a journey, who was mugged and beaten up, robbed of all his possessions and left on the side of the street to die. […]
Mumford and Fish These are three of my best friends: Dunc, Majay and Rob. And missing from that pic is Reegs who is also one of my longest life buddies. And of course my wife, the beautiful Val [aka tbV, which so many of you keep thinking stands for The Lovely Val because of, um, the B, obviously] who made this photo [taken at my 40th after these clowns performed a satirical rendition [...]
continuing my journey of reading through the psalms at a leisurely pace, making some observations as i go along, inviting you to jump in to the comments section with a verse or idea or question or wrestle that possibly jumped out at you as you were reading this particular psalm: for me it was verse 4 which immediately jumped out at me: 'The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.' i remember [...]
two nights ago val got a call from a guy from a local church who told her that some homeless people [who had been evicted along with the 'Occupy Philly' people this week] had moved under a nearby bridge and would we the Simple Way be wanting to do anything about it – i chatted to him and got the details and told him i would try go that evening… something more prioritised came up [...]
and we're still alive, and muchly so... i was in charge of supper duty and overestimated the amount of noodles we needed so we have a bunch of it left for tomorrow - green beans and a couple of carrots and two chopped up prok sausages [have 8 of those for the week visiting 4 different meals as our week's meat, flip] and half an onion and half a packet of macaroni - and with [...]
