I’ve been amazed often by Bloc Party’s lyrics: this one, from ‘Better than Heaven’ seems like an eloquent summary of the injustice of the doctrine of original sin:
“And there was a time before we were born
when we stood in the garden.”
I wasn’t sure about Intimacy, their most recent album. But lyrics like this, and there are more, make it easier to love.
I’ve just finished watching highlights of England lose to West Indies in the T20 world cup. With the fact that T20 cricket is supposed to be short and fast moving, there is absolutely no reason to have to use the Duckworth Lewis rule. It would be FAR more sensible to use a Wimbledon type approach, and just keep going the next until there is a REAL result.
But anyway.
Supralapsarianism is the belief that God decided who he was going to save and who he was going to fry before he decided to make the world, and then allow the bit with evil and Satan entering the world, so that humanity comes under the threat of hellfire. God is a redeemer who creates and not a creator who redeems. It strikes me that this is a bit like when Michael Jackson dangled a baby off the balcony of a Berlin hotel suite . He must have known he wasn’t going to drop the baby. But no-one else did. Except in the case of God, the vast majority of babies get dropped.
Steve Reich is probably the most influential composer from the second half of the twentieth century. So today, I bought a package that Nonesuch, his record label put out, called ‘Phases’, with most of the defining recordings of his defining pieces. I also bought a remix package, where leading off kilter electronic artists take him on. The absolute highlights for me are Coldcut on ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ and D*Note on Piano Phase. You can listen to samples here.
A.C. Grayling has a lookalike who goes to St. Giles’ Church in Oxford. Either that, or he actually goes to St. Giles’ Church in Oxford. Which would be well weird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxi6QDwQyLU
BRILLIANT!
Just finished this: its a bizarre book. Its just bizarre and perverse for the first 250 pages or so, and then it examines these characters that have been developed. Michel, and Bruno are brothers, who have lived separate, different, but parallel lives. From page 250 onwards, tragedy strikes, and the rest of the book explores their response. It is moving and devastating. Highly recommended, but not for those who can’t persevere.
He says, going back to James Joyce’s Ulysses, which he started getting on for a year ago…
I’m thinking lots at the moment about the resurrection of Jesus. Alot has been made about how it is possible to prove its historicity, and most of these arguments aim answer the question “Did the disciples think that Jesus bodily rose from the dead?” rather than “Did Jesus rise from the dead?” I’m not sure if, or how, this problem can be circumvented.
The most recent album by Jon Hopkins, who I recently mentioned, today arrived in my pigeon hole. Its got some supremely beautiful moments, in particular track 9, ‘A Drifting Up’ (sadly not yet on YouTube, will keep an eye out a post a link). Its an album that has the potential to end up in Moby ‘Play’ territory: i.e. plastered all over adverts. Get it now before it gets devalued.
THAT’S EASTER Life to Death from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.
Watch from about 2:00, for a few seconds, then read this:
Christianity needs sickness…making things sick is the real intention behind the church’s whole system of salvation procedures.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti Christ, 51
I see.
