Lockdown Stuff 2

A couple of one-liners to start with. All right, three …

I’ve had amnesia as long as I can remember.

I intend to live forever. So far so good.

They say when a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.


Next, a couple of real howlers!

Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sickly father died, he decided he needed a wife with which to share his fortune.  
One evening at an investment meeting he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.
“I may look like just an ordinary man,” he said to her, “but in just a few years, my father will die, and I’ll inherit 20 million dollars.”  
Impressed, the woman obtained his business card and three days later, she became his stepmother.

Two Kiwis Hemi and Bob are walking down a street in Bondi. Bob happens to look in one of the shop windows and sees a sign that catches his eye. The sign said ‘Suits $10.00 each, Shirts $4.00 each, Trousers $5.00  per pair’.
Bob says to his pal, “Hemi, look! We could buy a whole lot of  those, and whin we get beck to InZid, we could make a fortune.
“Now whin we go unto the shop, you be quiet, okay? Just lit me do all the talking cause uf they hear our accint, they might not be nice to us. I’ll speak in my bist Aussie accint.”
“No worries,” smiled Hemi, “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
They go in and Bob says, “I’ll take fufty suits et $10.00 each, 100 shirts et $4.00 each, and fufty pairs of trousers et $5.00 each. I’ll beck up my truck and…”
The owner of the shop interrupts, “You’re from New Zealand, aren’t you?”
“Well… yis,” says a surprised Bob. “How the hill dud you know thet?”
The owner says, “This is a dry cleaners.”


Finishing with this ancient blessing:

I wish you enough
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough hellos to get you through any good-byes.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and joyous.
I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how grey the day may appear. But I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.

Happy days in lockdown, one ‘n’ all.

Ken F

Lockdown Stuff

Greetings, all you good people in lockdown. How are you faring? We’re all in this together, huh, but in our own homes, so there’s not much fellowship to be had, huh. Well, as the St Francis Web-guy, and in talking with Rev Joan, I thought I’d put up a few things to maintain some morale in these uncertain times. So, check out some of the the things below. You’ll find something there for you – plenty of inspiration, hopefully, and including some fun stuff and some interesting stuff. All jumbled up, so you can figure out which is which as you make your way through them. [Some are all three!] And I’ll add to it as long as we’re in lockdown, so keep coming back to see what’s been added.

So, yeah, I’ve added some more links (Monday morning), below, in the second half of the page. Scroll down – you’ll find a real smorgasbord. Plenty of distracting amusements.

Enjoy, peeps.

First of all, let’s remember who we are – and whose we are: a prayer to begin:

We are not people of fear:
we are people of courage.
We are not people who protect our own safety:
we are people who protect our neighbours’ safety.
We are not people of greed:
we are people of generosity.
We are your people God,
giving and loving,
wherever we are,
whatever it costs
For as long as it takes
wherever you call us.
Amen
(A Prayer from Church of England)

If you have a family with you, here’s a week of family blessings you can use (or adapt), daily:
Sunday
Risen Son, bless us with life!
Creator God, bless us with rest!
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us.

Monday
As the new day dawns and our week begins,
bless our feet in paths of peace
and our hearts with hope and courage.

Tuesday
Gentle Jesus, go before us in goodness
Graceful Jesus, go behind us in mercy
God of power, teach us to walk beside you
And to rest in your arms of love.

Wednesday
Jesus, our friend,
hold our hands,
hold our hearts,
hold our nerves steady
as we believe and trust in you.

Thursday
Creator God, bless us with joy.
Bless us with purpose,
bless us with love
and may we be a blessing
to your creation this day.

​Friday
We bless this day with the freedom of God
and say “Be still” to the storms of the sea,
we bless this day with the beauty of love
that was poured out for you and for me.

Saturday
We rejoice in the gift of each other
We rejoice in the gift of you
We bless each other with joy today
We bless each other in you
Art Gallery, Paris

Seeing world travel has been squashed by Covid, different tourist highspots are making some amazing online offerings. Do you know, you can go through the Louvre Museum/Art Gallery in Paris? Click on this link Louvre site des collections, and pick your way thorough the art works there, complete with descriptions and provenance. You’ll need time – there are nearly 500, 000 items!!
The default language is French – hey, why not? – but there are buttons to allow you to convert to English, and when they’re not available they provide a different little button that allows you to use Google Translate.
Ring me if you can’t make these work (027 652 6100), because this is truly a wonderful site (sight?!) if you can make it work. Here’s the link again: Louvre site des collections

Here’s an interesting, slightly different, church service from Wellington last week.

You might enjoy it, in lieu of getting out to our usual Sunday service.

If you’d like access to an online copy of the Anglican Prayer Book:

http://anglicanprayerbook.nz/

Here’s a great idea if you need something to keep your (or your family’s) morale up during lockdown.

[Click on the link:] https://www.sunzbreakthrough.org.nz/resources/stopandnotice?fbclid=IwAR2W2v2I3KDMbvND-G_qoeudh-9DmUrStBxeanuMZDcvaQ9TAslidToP24c

And … here are two daily devotionals

The first is from The Word for Today. The second is from a group called 24-7prayer, but is actually only available as a cellphone app. (Go to their site and surf around – you’ll see how to download their app onto your phone.)

https://www.rhema.co.nz/the-word-for-today; https://www.24-7prayer.com/dailydevotional

  • The Sphinx: Great Sphinx of Giza If you click on this link it takes you to Google Earth’s photo of the Sphinx (Egypt). Except, it’s more than a photo. It’s 360 degrees. If you left click somewhere on the photo and ‘drag’ your arrow, you’ll see all around, including two pyramids, other ruins, and the party of tourists that you’re with!
  • New Life Church, Sydney: https://live.church.nu/ This online church comes with Barry’s and Keri’s recommendation. Click on the link and you’ll find You Tube recordings of their recent services/sermons, plus other stuff. They also offer live online services, which you’ll be able to connect to next Sunday.
  • Whist. Have you ever played Whist? It’s a card game. But this is an online version that you can play alone, or with someone else in your household. (There are instructions (click on “Rules”), so when you understand the game you can play with someone else in your household, with real cards. Whist | Play it online
  • Speaking of which, what about online chess?! Go to this link: Lichess.org. Go to the ‘Play’ button, select ‘Create a game’. You might have to register, and it might take a bit to figure out how to make things work, but once you do, you’ll be able to play against the online computer, or against another live person somewhere else in the world – someone here in Tairua or – who knows – someone in Latvia!
  • This site is similar, but for card games: Card games
  • RNZ Podcasts: Some fascinating interviews and programmes – more than you’ll ever have time to listen to. Some really interesting stuff, ideas and opinions: https://www.rnz.co.nz/series Scroll through and select one/some.
  • Max Boyce. [My personal favourite]: This Welsh comedian is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever heard. Boyce put out a hilarious album in 1974. I can only find it on Spotify, so to listen to it you’ll probably have to register with Spotify – but it’s free and it’s worth it just to hear this 70s comic offering. Go to this link: Ode to Barry Island · Max Boyce
    However, he’s put out an updated version recently that is free on You Tube. You can just view this if you like, although listening to the 70s one first will heighten your enjoyment of the second. Find the second here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8G_ouF1PeU Being Welsh, you’ll have to strain sometimes to understand his accent, and he even speaks (and sings) in Welsh sometimes. But …

    Good clean hilarious fun. We all need a good laugh right now.

Happy Lockdown, all.

Ken F

Appreciating Mary, Mother of Jesus

by Bruce Gilberd

(Based on Luke 2:1-7)

Today we give thanks for the part Mary played in the story of God, bringing new life and redemption into this world, through Jesus, God, and Mary’s son.
I also, this morning, wish to probe what might have been going on in that Nazareth home as Jesus and his siblings grew up there.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has had a place of honour in the church from the beginning.  In some parts of the church this has taken rather extreme forms – which diminish her humanity.

We are well informed that both Mary and Joseph were descended from David, King of Israel – a flawed, penitent, blessed King and ancestor. 
We read, each Christmas, the birth narrative, which is preceded by the annunciation narrative, and Mary’s consent to God’s purpose for her.  There have been periods in the church’s history when the divinity of Jesus has been so emphasised that his humanity – his weeping, sweating, bleeding humanity – his identification with us – was almost lost. Admittedly, it can be difficult to get to grips with this divinely human brother who is also our “Lord and our God” (as Thomas put it).

We are told his mother, Mary herself, “pondered all these things in her heart”.

Jesus grew up with nurturing parents and younger siblings – attending the local synagogue, and probably a school there.  He watched Joseph, and picked up carpentry.
Then, except for the incident in the Temple as a twelve-year-old, there are eighteen years of silence.  We can assume Jesus was still at home.  Some say he joined the Essene monastic community near the Dead Sea.  The evidence is slight.  So, as many young Jewish men did, he stayed at home, close to his mother – who we give thanks for today.

When Jesus began his ministry at about thirty years of age, it is abundantly evident from his teaching, parables, dialogue and deeds he had used the hidden years being an acute observer, learning from all that was going on around him. He had carefully noted and was deeply aware of:

  • the hypocrisy of many in religious leadership;
  • the brutality that underlay the Pax Romana – the peace of the Roman occupation and empire;
  • the wisdom, depth, ethics and prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures;
  • the minutiae of family and village life;
  • how to run a small carpentry business;
  • the working life of surrounding farms, and nearby fishermen – also wine makers;
  • what goes on behind closed doors between masters and servants;
  • how to listen accurately and question probingly;
  • the side-lining of children and women; of tax gatherers and prostitutes;
  • the burdens of the sick, and the excluded: Samaritans and Gentiles;
  • the changing of the seasons, and the world of nature;
  • the jostling for political and religious power.

Jesus then used all this accumulated knowledge and wisdom in his ministry, enriching those who had ears to hear, and us today.

But even in that hectic three years, his beloved mother was still at his elbow:

  • at the marriage at Cana, broadly hinting he could solve the lack of wine problem;
  • wanting him to join her away from the throng, and rest from the stress.

And Mary was there, probably in her mid-forties, at the foot of the cross, and was taken in to the care of John the apostle, at Jesus’s bidding.

So, thank you, Mary, mother of Jesus, for your loyalty, your obedience, your nurture, your mothering.  Your pain and joy of childbirth, your wondering heart as your boy grew up and grew in stature and wisdom.  Your heartbreak at the cross; and yet joy beyond understanding at his rising.

The lives of these two – human Mary and her divinely human son Jesus – are inextricably bound together.

I want to conclude by inviting you to use your hidden, quiet times, all your times, discerningly, by being as aware as possible, as Jesus was, of what is going on around you, and in you, and:

  • in nature,
  • in relationships,
  • in the local and wider community and their issues,
  • in politics, and in other nations,
  • in local, national and global church life,
  • what is going on? what am I learning …?

Let us be aware, observant, alert – and make our findings the subject of our conversations and prayers and, at times, our actions. We all need to keep equipping ourselves for our life-long ministries.

Amen

Geniuses 1

Here begins a short series on geniuses.  Prompted by the fact that, in my subjective and opinionated opinion, there have only been four true geniuses, plus a motley tag-team.
[Can you think who they are?  Who would you include?]
There may have been other geniuses, for sure, but I can’t include geniuses I’ve never heard of, can I; and of the ones I’ve heard of, only four (and that tag-team) impress me as true geniuses.

Where to start?

The status “genius” defies definition, really, and it’s even more vacuous trying to compare one genius with another.  They are incomparable.  And it depends on context.  Albert Einstein, arguably one, said, “… if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The explorer Kupe would have failed an English exam, yet was a brilliant ocean navigator. Genius?

But Merriam-Webster gives (amongst several alternatives), “extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity.”  I can live with that.
It is not enough just to be intelligent.  Very intelligent people can be useless!  And some geniuses might not score well on an IQ test.  In fact, in some quarters IQ tests carry no credibility at all.    How would Kupe’s IQ be calculated?

There are some common qualities though.  Oxbridge Learning [https://oxbridgehomelearning.uk/blog/characteristics-of-a-genius] proposes that all geniuses, so-called, share at least four characteristics: a curious mind, a capability for ‘abstract thought’, a tendency to push boundaries, and a tendency to live and work to their own rhythms.

There are some interesting genius lists on the internet. See, for example, https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-40-smartest-people-of-all-time-2015-2 and https://thebestschools.org/features/50-greatest-living-geniuses/. These both use IQs and, because IQ tests were not known until 1904, deduce IQs of the historical people on their lists.
Some of my choices are on those lists, so my picks are not completely rogue.

Ok, I’ve strung this out far enough.  Who are the four?  And the tag-team?

I’ll start with the latter, because I’m running out of words. In thinking this through, I decided the person who invented the internet must have been a true genius. Just think about it … the entire world and history of knowledge and information, plus dazzling communication possibilities, captured in zillions of electronic storehouses around the world and accessed interactively within fractions of a second by almost anyone on the planet. Wondrous. There must be a genius mind behind it.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Well, turns out that there were several minds behind it (in the 1970s and 80s) – not just one genius but a whole tag-team, and many refiners since, and none of them, taken by themselves, would be considered a genius. But, while it’s beyond my scope here to show what each player contributed, Tim Berners-Lee was the man, a Brit, who first created the World Wide Web so far-flung scientists and academics could share their ideas more easily; and Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf were the two Californian professors who developed the underlying code (or ‘protocols’) that Burners-Lee used. Kahn and Cerf provided the electronic wherewithal – Berners-Lee turned it into a living, interactive organism. These three semi-geniuses, and numerous other contributors, a veritable tag-team. 😊

More to come.

Ken F