Telescope

Boats ... Bateaux

Sisters ... Soeurs

Le nouveau appareil photo aider pour l'inspiration, ces prochains jours une suite de clichés dont je suis assez content.

My 'new' SLR camera is providing some inspiration for new photos. Over the next few days I'll be posting some of the ones I'm more happy with.

Homosexuality & faith, the great debate

The comments here are definitely worth a read.

Some great quotes:

1. "...though gluttony is pointed out as a death-producing sin many more times than homosexuality is, no one plants churches for fat people do they? No one brings up skinny people to give a testimony about how they used to be fat until they were changed by God. Why not?"

2. "If we try to answer this question in a way that is bound to the “truth” side of the equation, we will likely be looking for an answer that is absolute and binding in all places, times, and situations. No matter how much we desire to be compassionate and loving concerning our final response to the question, the fact will be that we will end by dehumanizing the person we apply the “truth” to. This is the lesson Jesus repeatedly sought to demonstrate to the religious leaders of his day. “Truth” in our hands will always kill." (this entire comment should be printed out in big letters and stuck on church walls everywhere)

3. "Is it even the church’s job to fix sin, or is the church’s job just to get the broken people to Jesus so He can work on them (like the guys lowering their crippled buddy thru the roof for Jesus to heal him)?"

4. "It’s great to hold a position. It’s another thing to relate to people."

(Note, there are two pages of comments)
This is the next 'big' issue for the church (though I'd far rather we were adressing this!).

PC Hate ... Haine de PC

Mon PC a cessé de fonctionner le 12 septembre. Il a passé plus d'un mois en réparation (la prochaine fois j'achéterai chez Dell avec la garantie 5 jours à domicile!).

Je l'ai récupéré lundi.

Mardi soir, Ca a déjà commencé avec un nouveau problème - un processeur qui tourne en permanence à 100%. Ca le rend quasi inutilisable.

Gngngng, et j'avais envoyé/reçu 680 emails dans le mois entre deux: déprimant à souhait!

Donc il y aura un peu moins d'activité ici, le temps que mon cerveau est occupé à essayer de résoudre ce problème.

My computer died on the 12th september. It took them a whole month to 'fix' it (next time I'll buy Dell with the 5-day guarantee!).

I got it back on Monday. And on Tuesday evening it started playing up, with one processor at 100% all the time. 'Thrashing'. It's pretty much unusable.

So annoying. And in the intervening period I had sent/received 680 emails: how depressing.

So there's going to be a bit less activity on this blog, while my mind is occupied with trying to work out what's wrong.

(In other news, reading this confirms I am a nerd)

Coming off ... Detox

"Bonjour, je m'appelle Benjol et je suis accro au café".

Ou, plus précisément, mon corps est accro au café.

En général, je n'en bois qu'un par jour, le matin, mais au fil des mois, j'ai dû me rendre à l'évidence, si je loupe ce café, j'ai une migraine l'après-midi. Pas à tous les coups, mais assez souvent, et assez fort, pour me motiver pour passer au déca à 100%.

Le café est bizarre parce qu'il peut à la fois soulager ou provoquer des maux de tête. En tout cas, mes symptômes sont rares mais pas inconnus.

Toujours est-il que je suis passé maintenant à 9/10 cafféiné, et je progresserai vers le 0% d'ici quelques semaines.

"Hi, my name is Benjol and I'm a coffeeholic".

Or, to be precise, my body is addicted.

The crazy thing is, I only drink one coffee a day, generally. First thing in the morning. But after months of observation, even though I can't quite believe it, I have to admit that if I skip that one coffee, I get a headache/migraine in the afternoon - not every time, but often enough, and painful enough, to make me decide to come off the caffeine completely.

Coffee is weird, because some people report it alleviating headache symptoms, while others (like me) get the headaches if they stop.

(Check Google for "weekend headaches")

So I'm coming off slowly starting with 9/10ths caffeinated, and working my way down over a couple of weeks...

Poem ... Poème

L'autre soir j'étais écouté un neurologue parler de la relation entre la science et la foi (dans une série de 6 soirées).

C'était passionant - les choses que Descartes remettait en question par spéculation 'philosophique' (puis-je faire confiance à mon cerveau?) deviennent maintenant des choses qui sont remises en question par la science.

Qu'en est-il de l'âme? Du libre arbitre? Si le fonctionnement de notre cerveau est déterminé par les lois de la physique, sommes nous vraiment libres? Pour beaucoup de questions, les réponses ne sont pas du tout claires.

On a parlé de la notion de l'identité - que ce n'est pas le support 'matériel' qui compte : Comme un poème - on peut le recopier sur un autre morceau de papier - ou dans une autre couleur - le poème reste le même.

Quelqu'un a voulu savoir s'il n'y avait pas d'âme désincarnée (idée platonicienne écartée par l'orateur), et si nos corps périssent, comment est-ce qu'on peut re-exister à la résurrection?

C'est là que j'ai eu l'inspiration - c'est Dieu qui connaît le poème par coeur.

Cette pensée me plaît.

A few days ago I went to hear a neurologist talk about the relationship between faith and science (a series of six talks, the preceding one was by a cosmologist).

It was very interesting - the questions that Descartes asked (can I trust my brain?) are no longer solely philosophically driven, but are raised by what scientists are discovering about how the low-level functions of the brain follow the same physical laws as the rest of the universe.

So what does that mean for our soul? For free will?

For most questions, there are no clear-cut answers.

He talked about the notion of identity - that it's not the physical 'container' that counts: if you copy a poem, or write it out in a different colour, it's still the same poem.

Someone asked how we could be re-created at the resurrection, if we don't have an eternal, disembodied soul (a platonic idea which was rejected by the speaker as having no basis in science or scripture).

My 'inspired' answer was that God knows the poem by heart.

That little thought pleases me.

Beautiful

Some beautiful things written about writing here: On writing: thirteen theses

"Writing is slow because truth is shy. You can’t get close to truth all at once, but only by a protracted exchange of fumbling gestures, awkward silences, and tentative questions and replies."

"Like a drawn bowstring, the writer draws back from the world in order to pierce it more forcefully."

"between idea and form there is a mystical union of natures; to write well is to think well. Language is not the external adornment of thought. It is thought itself, the blood and tissue of the idea."

"Did they not find the face of Yahweh pressed suddenly against their outstretched fingertips as they groped their way blindly through the doorway into the dark house of language?"

Came there via another blog I've recently started following for a very interesting series on hell (work still in progress): From Damascus to Emmaus, Questioning Hell

Chilled ... Relax

Ca y est, c'est les derniers de ma réserve de photos prises pendant les vacances scolaires. Ici Rebecca toute fière de savoir entrelacer ses doigts.

Finally got to the end of my backlog of photos taking during the school holidays. Here's Rebecca, proud of being able to interlock her fingers.

On a fait le tour du bout du lac pour aller faire des courses en France, où on a vu un requin au rayon poisson. Le contraste avec les requins vivants qu'on avait vu en vacances ne semble pas avoir frappé Kalia.

We took a trip round the end of the lake to go and shop in France, where we saw a shark on the fish stand - Kalia seemed to be unfazed by it's evident dead-ness.

Peu de chances de se reposer tranquillement chez nous.

Not much chance of a quiet nap at our place.

Oh dear, oh dear ... Aïe, aïe, aïe

Encore un rite de passage qui nous rappelle que notre 'petit bébé' devient vraie grande fille.

Sa première dent de lait est tombée ce matin, à son grand soulagement (elle se faisait beaucoup de soucis).

C'est drôle que je me rappelle exactement de la sensation d'une dent qui branle, même si ça doit bien faire... quelques décennies en arrière!

Vous pouvez aussi voir les quelques mèches de cheveux qu'elle s'est mis en tête de couper avec des ciseaux hier.

Ces jours-ci elle est en mode hyper-créatif. Elle 'travaille' (comme elle dit), tout le temps - bricolages, dessins, coloriages. Elle trouve des fiches dans les anciens papiers d'école de sa maman et elle les embarque. C'est super.

Today, yet another reminder that our 'baby' is steadily growing up.

Her first milk tooth fell out this morning. Much to her relief, she was very worried about it.

It's weird that I remember exactly what it felt like to have a wobbly tooth, even though it's a few ... decades ago now.

You can also see the results of her brief experimentation with cutting of one's own hair (only a few locks, fortunately).

She's in hyper-productive mode these last few days. 'Working' (as she says) - cutting out, gluing, drawing, painting, colouring. She finds worksheets in her Mum's old school papers and pinches them to fill them out. All very reassuring - it means school hasn't bored her out of it yet!

Leman love ... Amour de lac

Cet été il y a eu une journée spéciale avec des barques du Léman.

This summer at Vevey there was a special day with lots of barques du Léman.

Les gens en visite demandent parfois si on se lasse des montagnes et du lac. La réponse est simple: Désolé, mais non. Parfois, en allant au boulot on oublie de regarder, c'est vrai (surtout maintenant que les journées raccourcissent), mais on ne peut pas s'en lasser. Moi pas, en tout cas.

Sometimes visitors here ask if you ever get tired of the mountains and lake. The answer is easy: Sorry, but not. Admittedly, on my way to work I forget to look (especially now the days are shortening), but how can you get tired of this?! Not me, in any case.

On a fait une sortie en bateau (CGN, pas une barque) jusqu'à Cully, où on a pris le Lavaux Express. Après on a pris quelques raffraichissements dans un bistro au port, où j'ai pris cet autoportrait...

This summer, we did a little trip from Vevey to Cully, on a steam boat, not a 'barque', where we did a tour on the 'Lavaux Express' (which is a fancy name for a tractor disguised as a train). We stopped at a café while waiting for the boat back, where I took this sort-of self portrait.

Au retour on était dans La Suisse (pour la première fois), avec 'mécanique apparente' - c'était très impressionant à voir.

The boat we came back on is called 'La Suisse', and even though the coal-powered boiler is long-since replaced with diesel, the steam mechanism is still working, and very impressive.