i am sparticus: Words

Something To Read

I'm sitting in the Apple Store on Regent Street apparently you can reserve online to have your macbook taken in for repairs for the small crack in the lower right side under the magnet but it turns out I didn't know this, so I've got an hour and twenty minutes to kill before I hand mine over. Good thing I've got work to do on my mac and a way of sending it home.

But, here's the question, my prolific schedule of writing for this website can't be maintained while my macbook is away being repaired, so what are you going to read when I'm not here?

Oh wait, the rest of the internet.

But anyway, if you want a good book to read, or indeed a good series of books to read; then you should probably read my dad's books. The latest one The Infinite Day came out a few weeks back, and well, it's awesome. Obviously, being his son I would say that, but really, they're a good series. The last one, I read over August as a Word document on my computer. Have you ever tried reading an entire book as a Word document? It's not un-akin to standing three inches from a TV screen for three days straight staring as it while it plays sped up kids cartoons. But it was worth it. I read it again over three days after I got hold of the hardback.

So, I'm lacking a computer for a week, but you can order a trilogy off Amazon now instead. Which is a good deal.

The Say No To Saying No To Whatever We Were Saying No To Last Time Group

There is a community of people on Flickr who like to complain when anything new happens. That's fine, go knock yourselves out, but meta-jokes about this are funny. Well, at least I think so. Join the protest!

Great Lies To Tell Video Game Geeks

"If in multi-player Mario Kart Wii you cross the same line at exactly the same time as another person you both draw and get an awesome special "you've drawn" screen."

Every * Child Matters

It's come to my attention that there was a document recently published called Every Muslim Child Matters. Alas, the website tells you nothing, so you'll have to guess at the contents. Other things that matter...

• Every Disabled Child Matters
• Every [county in England] Child Matters
• Every Bereaved Child Matters
• Every Traveller Child Matters
• Every Creative Child Matters
• Every BME Child Matters
• Every Deaf Child Matters

And so on... Someone really should inform them as to what "every" actually means.

Italian Pop TV

In a café¹ on Charlotte Street. The TV is playing Italian music videos. Some fifty year olds are covering "The House of the Rising Sun" in Italian. It's as bad as you can expect.

The video seems them playing along in a empty ruined church with the sun rising over their heads through the power of bad CGI. Given that the house of the rising sun in the original song is a brothel, it makes you wonder if this is a clever criticism of the selling out of the catholic church or more likely is it the supreme failure to correctly use poetic language in a music video?

¹ The coffee is average, and they don't do americano coffee, so if you don't like milk in your drinks you're left with espresso. They do however, have slabs of table, as opposed to the normal pasty tables that can't hold up a book mark let alone take the pressure of a pen on a notepad.

Top Five Radiohead Songs

Dear British record buying public,

What on earth is wrong with you? Last week Radiohead released their entire back catalogue on iTunes and you decide that the song you really want to buy is "Creep"? I'd have forgiven you if you'd managed to push "OK Computer" to the top of the album chart (or any other album of theirs for that matter). But really? Creep? You're just buying that song because it's the only thing you've bothered to listen to, same as you do with every other band. Don't try and argue that you're buying that song because you really like it and their other stuff doesn't do it for you, that line would only work if you had more than just "Smells Like Teen Spirit" filed under Nirvana.

If you want my advice —and let's face it you never do— then this is what you should have bought:

• There There
• Let Down
• All I Need
• The Bends
• Optimistic

The Reason I Never Became A Rock Star

I was all set to, but then I realised that this would start be down the unavoidable path that would lead to the second single having a clever cover version of an 80's classic written as a b-side at the bequest of a friend, that while smart and hip, was never intended to be played live or even played at all. Knowing this, and also knowing that my skills at being a rock star were so incredible that it was impossible for me not to develop a massive fan base who would be so devoted that they would track down all my early works, and due to the power of the internet share them all on the internet, I decided that I would rather live a life of obscurity that face every night seeing one drunk and slightly sweaty man yelling out in between every single song —and the quiet bits of the killer acoustic number that would feature in a thousand and a major (but yet underground) smash hit film— "PLAY KARMA CHAMELEON".

And that is the real reason why I never became a rock star.

Something more valuable

I've raised my two children in household church. They were 6 and 3 when we started and now they're 14 and 11 We have a chapter on children and young people in Total Church, but here's the two minute version. I think household church is a great context to raise children. There are challenges - the challenges of integrating them week by week. But better that by far than postponing those challenges until a crisis moment somewhere in their teens when they're expected to make a big jump to church. You do lose some peer opportunities (although you can address those by working as a network of household congregations). But you gain something more valuable - children and young people interacting with Christian community and, especially, having Christian role s who are older then them, but not as old as their parents. Lose you images of a youth club with 50 kids running around like mad things on a Friday evening and gain instead an image of teenagers hanging out with committed Christians in their twenties.

Tim Chester - Money and Children in Household Church.

Faith; Destroyer Of Doubt

This is a cartoon by a guy writes a website called ASBO Jesus. Some of cartoons are spot on and hard to fault, some are not so much. This cartoon comes to my attention in part because Marko (chief head person of Youth Specialities no less) links to it, and in part because having doubts is a hip idea at the minute, but mostly because on the surface at least it seems completely and utterly wrong. After all, is the faith that certainty tries to kill the same one mentioned in Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen"?

Here are some thoughts on the matter.

• The certainty that this cartoon is trying to rail against is probably the cocky "I know I"m right all the type faith". I'm not sure that exists as much as people make out.

• What are we meant to be certain about?

• Trying to say "hey uncertainty is good" is stupid generally. There are some things we don't know (more on that in a moment) and rightly so, and we are uncertain all the time, but to say that uncertainty helps faith growth, or even is the grounds for faith, is silly.

• I am not as certain about stuff as I should be.

• I think this attitude probably comes around from seeing faith as something we do, not a gift. If faith in God is a gift that is given to us from God, we're insulting God's gift when we say "I'm uncertain and I'm valuing that".

On the whole "what are the limits to our certainty?" question, I have nothing wise to say other than to quote (a slightly paraphrased) John Owen.

Herein [he is talking about Jesus' emptying of Himself to come down to earth], then, I say, we may by faith behold the glory of Christ, as we shall do it by sight hereafter. If we see no glory in it, if we do not understand that this is a matter of eternal admiration, we walk in darkness. It is the most ineffable effect of divine wisdom and grace. Where are our hearts and minds, if we can see no glory in it? I know in the contemplation of it, it will quickly overwhelm our reason, and bring our understanding into a loss: but unto this loss do I desire to be brought every day; for when faith can no more act itself in comprehension, when it finds the object it is fixed on too great and glorious to be brought into our minds and capacities, it will issue (as we said before) in holy admiration, humble adoration, and joyful thanksgiving. In and by its acting in them does it fill the soul with "joy unspeakable, and full of glory.
John Owen - The Glory Of Christ in His Office and Grace