Filed under: Current Events, Hope | Tags: TED, Crow, Bird, Crows, Black, Smart crow, Crow and peanut, Coin and Peanut, Crow vending machine, vending machine, Joshua Klein, TED Talk
Filed under: Current Events, Hope, Music | Tags: 2008 EG conference, Bach, Cameron Carpenter, Mozart, Organ, Organist, Pipe organ, TED, TED Talks
And this goes to exemplify what I have always said, organists must become uninhibited in their bodies, in their movement. You see, the caricature of the organist bent over has got to go.
Cameron Carpenter
Glitter! White, wacky shoes! It makes my black organ shoes hideous. AND I totally called it – Jazz Organ. I’m glad someone out there cares about preserving and transforming a forgotten tradition. And this organ sounds like shit if anyone else noticed…Then again I doubt it is in a cathedral or custom made.
Filed under: Current Events | Tags: Canada, Climate Inaction Costs Lives, Green, Green Peace, Greenpeace, Greenpeace Protest, Ignatieff, Parliament, Parliament Hill, Peace, Protest, Stephen Harper
Filed under: Current Events | Tags: Victoria, Christianity, Times Colonist, Adore, Glad Tidings, Pentecostalism, Anglican, Church and Technology, Charles Parham, KKK, Snake handling, Laying of hands, Bible belt
Andy Moore is the pastor of Adore, a congregation for thirtysomethings within Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church in Victoria. Photograph by: Darren Stone, Times Colonist
A pastor who wears jeans, a black T-shirt and laceless Converse All-Stars.
A priest who taps away feverishly on a BlackBerry.
A reverend who podcasts his sermons.
A minister who asked parishioners to rate his performance using an online survey.
This is church?
It is in our modern era of gadgets, gizmos and Google, and it could explain how some mainline Christian denominations in Greater Victoria are bucking recent trends and actually attracting more people.
It’s not easy. According to University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby, the number of Canadians who claimed they had no religion jumped from less than one per cent in 1961 to 16 per cent by 2001.
Using census data, Bibby found formal membership in United, Anglican and Presbyterian groups dropped by 25 per cent over the same period, even though the Canadian population increased by about 70 per cent. Meanwhile, the proportion of people identifying with the other four world faiths — Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism — increased from about one to five per cent, largely as a result of immigration.
Since then, some churches have been have been fighting to regain the hearts — and souls — of would-be parishioners.
One of those is Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church on Quadra Street, where rods of rebar are welded together to make a postmodern crucifix. On stage, a skinny kid with a mop of blond hair adjusts his amp, while nearby, young women in scarves move tables and hang curtains.
They are preparing for evening worship.
“I think people would be pleasantly surprised if they visited us and saw what’s happening here,” says Andy Moore, the 35-year-old Arizona-born associate pastor who leads a growing congregation within Glad Tidings called Adore.
Glad Tidings has three separate congregations that appeal to different demographics and draw a combined total of about 1,200 people per week.
There’s a Sunday morning service that tends to be more traditional, followed by a service geared to families.
Adore, the upstart congregation Moore leads, is aimed at thirtysomething urbanites and meets Sunday evenings. But its high-octane services are also appealing to many senior citizens. So many, in fact, that organizers have begun providing earplugs to some of them.
The aim of Adore, Moore explains, is to put the teaching of the Bible into today’s world. “The Bible is incredibly relevant,” he says. “It can’t be read entirely as an ancient book, but as a book that speaks still today.”
Part of Adore’s success, Moore says, is using technology as a way of connecting with people. The congregation has a website, a blog and a Facebook group and podcasts each sermon. “We don’t Twitter yet, but we’ve been talking about it,” he says with a laugh.
Other churches are growing too. St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Saanich is undergoing a $1.5-million renovation to create more space for the roughly 1,000 people that attend the three weekly services.
Father William Hann, who was ordained in 2004 after years of teaching in the Catholic and public school systems, says being welcoming, hospitable and kid-friendly is the key to the church’s growth.
He also cites its proximity to a school, its youth ministry and its adult faith programs. “It’s not just coming to church,” he says. “It’s growing in your faith.”
It’s also about speaking in the present.
“We’re bringing the gospel to the issues that confront us,” Hann says.
And there’s a role for technology, too. Hann says he responds to more than two dozen e-mails a day and his BlackBerry keeps him organized and accessible, especially in a time of crisis.
Meanwhile, the parish’s youth minister, Bradley Cameron, relies on Facebook, an e-mail listserve and text messaging to stay in contact with parish youth.
The 19-year-old says his church also uses modern media and scenarios set in the present to underscore its teachings.
“The message doesn’t change, but the way we reach people can and must,” he says.
Technology, says Rev. Harold Munn of the Church of St. John the Divine, allows his Anglican church to communicate with people using whatever tools are available.
The church’s website is an easy way for both current and would-be parishioners to connect with the church, listen to a podcast and hear for themselves whether it’s the place for them.
But Munn says the website also points to the character of the place. “The fact that we have a web presence indicates to some people that this is a church interested in connecting with the contemporary world as opposed to a church that just wants to keep things the way they were a hundred years ago,” he says.
Munn says St. John’s uses technology to highlight its interest in social-justice causes and express a style of Christianity for modern times.
A few blocks away, at First Metropolitan United Church on Balmoral Road, lead minister Rev. Allan Saunders says the church has turned to online registration for an upcoming conference.
The church also uses the website Survey Monkey as a quick and easy way to engage its 350 regular members on certain issues, including staff performance.
But Saunders points to something Martin Luther King, Jr. said at the height of the Cold War: “The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
Adds Saunders, “His point was we have technology, but we don’t have the wisdom about what to do with technology, and I think we face that same issue.”
mpearson@tc.canwest.com
http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/Victoria+churches+pack+pews/2199210/story.html
Society has come a long way…
Filed under: Current Events
Students too sick to attend classes at the University of Victoria have been told to stay home or confine themselves to their residence rooms.
Students are suffering symptoms similar to the H1N1 virus, and many are hitting the hay instead of hitting the books.
While the illness seems about as prevalent at UVic as it is in the community, the flu can spread quickly among the 2,400 students in residences.
The situation is bad and it’s going to get worse, said UVic spokeswoman Patty Pitts.
“We’re hearing that we’re not peaking yet,” Pitts said yesterday. “The prediction is the peak should be at the end of the month, the beginning of November or something like that.”
The numbers of students currently sick is similar to what is seen at the peak of a normal flu outbreak, said Richard Piskor, UVic director of occupation health, safety and environment.
He wouldn’t give estimates but suggested “a very significant number” of students will catch the bug.
Those who get sick feel better in less than a week and no one has been seriously ill, Piskor said. University health services see about 10 students each day.
“The illness is resolving in the course of five or six days,” he said.
“We have students who are sick one week and by the next week, they’re fine. Then we have another group of individuals who are ill,” Piskor added.
In an effort to contain the flu, students in residence are receiving deliveries of Gatorade and “nutrition kits” containing soup, juice, crackers and Jell-O.
There are also “grab-and-go” meals available at the cafeteria for students to take back to sick peers in residence.
Students who suspect they’re getting sick are asked to contact their instructors for instructions or online guidance. A doctor’s note is required for students sick more than two weeks.
Hand sanitizer is available in residences and elsewhere. Students, faculty and staff who feel ill are urged to stay home, wash their hands frequently and minimize social contact.
smcculloch@tc.canwest.com
Filed under: Current Events | Tags: Animal rights, Bunny Rabbits, Burning bunnies, Peter Rabbit, Stockholm, Swedish bunnies, UVic bunnies
Forget bunny boiling jealous rages and rapacious butchers. The biggest threats to Peter Rabbit’s Swedish cousins are the cold, the cull and their flammable cadavers.
The city of Stockholm shoots thousands of wild rabbits spread across the green spaces of the Swedish capital and sends their bodies to be burned as heating fuel, a practice which has enraged animal rights groups.
City official Mats Freij said Stockholm killed 6,000 wild rabbits last year and has culled 3,000 so far this year, but said a subcontractor decided to use the cadavers as fuel.
“One should put this in the perspective that we (humans) are actually cremated ourselves and that generates a completely different reaction,” Freij said in response to criticism.
Animal Rights Sweden spokeswoman Lise-Lott Alsenius questioned whether the practice was humane or ethical and suggested neutering the male rabbits as an alternative method of holding down the population.
“One at least has to evaluate what the alternatives are to just simply shooting them,” she said.
Konvex, the company handling the operation, said the rabbits were ground up with the cadavers of other beasts, mainly farm animals such as cows which have been deemed unfit for human consumption, reduced to flammable form and incinerated.
“Just as with us people … the bodies contain a lot of fat and fat has exactly the same energy content as normal heating oil for instance,” Konvex Chief Executive Leo Virta said.
http://www.timescolonist.com/life/Burning+bunnies+helps+keep+Swedes+warm+cozy/2106328/story.html
Coming soon: “The Bunny Holocaust: How the Swedes saved UVic“
Filed under: Current Events | Tags: 2009 Murders, Fraser Valley, Gang, Homicide, Murder, Shooting, Vancouver
Filed under: Current Events | Tags: National Post, Religion, Religion in school
YES! Yes! A million times YES! I’m so happy about this. It’s about time. Maybe kids won’t grow up to exterminate Jews or Tutsis. Maybe the US will start caring about black people. Maybe we can have an Indigenous Chaplain! I have a dream!
By Graeme Hamilton, National Post
October 3, 2009
MONTREAL – Half of U.S. high-school seniors surveyed recently thought Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple.
A McGill University professor’s reference to the patience of Job drew blank stares from students in his religion course. An art history teacher in France found children were mystified by the “strange bird” (a dove representing the Holy Ghost) common in Renaissance paintings.
Until recently, such confusion was little more than fodder for faculty-room jokes, evidence of the increasing secularism of Western societies. But educators attending a conference at McGill University this past week heard there is growing recognition in Europe and North America that religious illiteracy creates serious barriers between cultures.
“There exists a widespread illiteracy about religion that spans the globe,” said Diane Moore, a professor at Harvard Divinity School. “The most significant consequence is that it fuels antagonism and hinders respect for pluralism, peaceful coexistence and co-operative endeavours.”
Quebec, which last year introduced a mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture course to replace Christian denominational classes, was held up as a leader in an effort to improve children’s religious literacy. The Quebec class covers all major world religions and is taught throughout primary and secondary school.
Spencer Boudreau, a professor of education at McGill, said he was struck by how little his students knew about religion. (He was the one who had to explain the biblical story of Job.) “It became more and more evident to me, the lack of knowledge — not only of other religions but of their own tradition,” he said in an interview.
“I’m saying, how can you understand Canada, how can you understand Quebec, without some of this background knowledge?”
Ignorance of other religions was on display in Quebec in the recent debate over the “reasonable accommodation” of religious minorities and the move by the town of Herouxville, Que., to enact a code that amounted to a caricature of non-Christian religious practices. For example, the code informed new arrivals to the village that stoning of women was not allowed and that pork was a common menu item.
“What happened in Herouxville, I was embarrassed as a Quebecer,” Boudreau said. “And it’s not just Quebec that would think like that.”
He said Canadians have to learn to live alongside newcomers for whom religion is central to their identity.
“We’re going to survive as a country by bringing in people from different religions, and many times that is how they define themselves,” he said. “Whether you think it’s a good thing or it’s a bad thing, it’s there, and you have to be respectful.”
Robert Jackson, a professor of religious education at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom said the 9/11 terrorist attacks served as a wake-up call for Europe.
“It has propelled the discussion of religion into the public sphere,” he said. “We can no longer say that discussion about religion does not belong in the public sphere, and of course part of the public sphere is public education.” One result, he said, was a 2007 Council of Europe report containing guiding principles for teaching about religion.
Even France, known for its secular schools and strict division of church and state, has recently opened the door for more religious content in the curriculum. Isabelle Saint-Martin of the Paris-based European Institute of Religious Sciences, recounted at the conference an anecdote about a popular children’s text used in French schools in the early 20th century.
Authorities at the time insisted that a character’s reference to his father being “in heaven” be changed to, “My father is dead.” An exclamation of, “My God!” was changed to “Alas!” New French texts have created waves because they include excerpts from the Bible and depictions of Christ’s crucifixion, she said, as part of an explanation of the cultural significance of religions.
Moore, of Harvard, said religious content should be incorporated throughout the curriculum and not restricted to a single course. “Religion permeates all dimensions of human life,” she said. She identified a wide range of problems caused by a lack of religious understanding, including anti-Semitism and the equation of Islam with violence and terrorism. She said it also leads to the portrayal of religion as “obsolete, irrational and oppressive.”
Boudreau is optimistic the emerging generation is more open to studying religion. Strident secularism in Quebec was a product of the Quiet Revolution, when the province emerged from a period of church domination referred to by some as the great darkness.
“The kids aren’t there any more. They’re very curious, they’re very open,” he said. “The religion classes at McGill are full. The students want to know more.”
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Filed under: Current Events | Tags: Cyclist rules of road, Cyclists, Victoria, Victoria BC
Finally!!! People on bikes can suck it. They use “saving the planet” as a reason to ride through crosswalks and cut cars off. If I can’t jump the sidewalk and pass everyone else at a red light then neither can you, you cock-sucking-cyclists.
Police crack down on cycle scofflaws
Victoria police have cracked down on cyclists disobeying the rules of the road, handing out 40 tickets.
Four officers focused on the downtown core Friday, nabbing cyclists who were not wearing helmets, riding on the sidewalk or running red lights.
Tickets ranged from $29 for not wearing a helmet to $109 for more serious offences.
“Most fully admitted that they would never drive that way in a car,” said police spokesman Sgt. Grant Hamilton.
Hamilton said the initiative came after many of the 100 drivers who were slapped with tickets for speeding in a school zone last week asked why they were getting all the attention.
“We get complaints [from drivers] about not hammering down on cyclists. All the [same] rules of the road do apply to cyclists as they do to those driving motor vehicles,” he said.
Accidents between cars and cyclists almost always result in injuries to the latter, especially if they are not wearing a helmet, Hamilton said. He said most of those collisions happen at night, often when the cyclist is not properly illuminated.
Hamilton said cyclists can expect another blitz like the one last week.
kderosa@tc.canwest.com
