Burma

Just received this from Avaaz:

Dear friends,

Burma is far from the headlines – but we’ve found a real pressure point, the insurers who prop up the junta’s economic interests. Read the email and take action now!

(Meanwhile a new US president is about to be elected — watch out for our post-election campaign…)

A year after their crackdown, Burma’s military dictators remain entrenched, propped up by dealings with Western companies. But the Burmese democracy movement has found a powerful pressure point — many of the Generals’ West-linked business ventures depend on one insurer: Lloyd’s of London.[1]

Lloyd’s is the world’s oldest, most respected insurer, and cares a great deal about its global reputation — by pointing out Lloyd’s blameworthiness as key insurance deals come up for renewal, we can shift their cost-benefit calculations on support to the Burmese regime.

If enough of us email and call key decision-makers at Lloyd’s this week, we could shame them into pulling out of this dirty trade, undermining the hardliners and creating pressure for human rights and the release of political prisoners like democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Follow the link below to lend a hand to the Burmese people:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma

The Burmese people’s struggle is long and tough. But as in South Africa, international pressure on the regime’s exploitative ventures could tip the balance. Because it’s hard or impossible for them to continue without insurance, this is an effective and wide-reaching approach for citizens everywhere to have a real impact. Burma’s democracy movement decided on this strategy because the benefit of these ventures flows overwhelmingly to the generals, while the Burmese people have grown ever poorer.

Lloyd’s of London is the umbrella and overseer for hundreds of specialist insurance syndicates, and it can stop their dirty trade if it so chooses. Already many big global insurers have stopped insuring junta-linked businesses – after Lloyd’s, the generals will start to run out of options. We’ll ramp up the pressure by alerting the media to our campaign, specialist insurance publications included. Even the British government has begun to ask Lloyd’s to cease its business with the Burmese military junta.[2]

We can win this campaign, so let’s flood Lloyd’s with emails and phone calls all this week — on the campaign page we provide key numbers, email addresses and suggestions for what to say — just follow the link below now to take action:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/shame_lloyds_on_burma

If we win, the regime will be thrown onto the back foot, Burma’s people will be immensely heartened, and the UN Secretary-General will have a greater chance of securing the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other prisoners this December.[3] Together, our individual small acts are becoming irresistible. We can’t forget Burma.

With hope and determination,

Paul, Alice, Iain, Graziela, Ricken, Pascal, Paula, Brett, Veronique, Milena — the entire Avaaz team

For updates on Avaaz campaigns: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/report_back_2/
You can also view reports on our campaigns in support of the Burmese democracy movement and the $2 million of aid Avaaz members provided in the wake of Cyclone Nargis.

Sources:

1. The Observer: “The baron who holds Burma’s purse strings”, 2 November 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/02/oil-total-burma-lloyds-levene1

Reinsurance Magazine: Big insurers including Marsh, Swiss Re, AON pull out: http://www.reinsurancemagazine.com/public/showPage.html?page=787739

Arab Insurance Group and XL also pull out:
http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/962-campaigners-hail-arigs-decision-to-pull-out-of-burma.html

2. “Foreign Office warns Lloyd’s over Burma”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/28/insurance.foreignpolicy

3. As Ban Ki-Moon prepares to visit, Asia-Europe summit in Beijing calls for release of political prisoners:
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/independent/2008/10/release-aung-sa.html

———————————

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means “voice” in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Sydney and Geneva.

Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns.

Don’t forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages!

November 3, 2008 0

Coins

Yesterday, I visited my parents. It was a good opportunity to see how Mum was getting on since we heard she (thankfully) had TB, not cancer. Dad has since been prescribed antidepressants: the strain of this episode, preceded by Mum’s fall last Christmas, and the prolonged saga of the house move last year have taken their toll on an eighty-one-year-old.

They treated me to an excellent lunch at a favourite pub. Then we returned to their flat for conversation, before tiredness meant they needed a rest and I made an earlier than expected departure.

During that chat, I mentioned a story from the other day. Rebekah had been looking at some coins and had noticed the date. This had fascinated her, especially a twenty pence piece from a galaxy far, far away known as 1982.

Dad got up and went out of the living room. I thought nothing of it. However, he returned with a bag. It was a collection of coins, many of them specially minted for state occasions and still in their presentation sleeves. There were crowns to mark the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981. There were two wallets of Britain’s first decimal coinage. Then there were assorted loose coins, including some old sixpences. One of these came from the reign of King George V in 1922.

Dad explained that he wanted them handed down the generations of the family. He asked me to keep them safe for our children. While they would be worth more than their face value, they would not be especially valuable, because many of them had deteriorated. However, they would be a fascinating and educational possession. I was delighted, and locked them out of sight in the car boot when I drove home.

It was a joy to come home and tell the children I had a present for them from Grand-dad. In the short time before bath-time, it was impossible to explain the significance and context of these coins to Rebekah and Mark. How on earth will I explain pre-decimal currency to them? I was only a fortnight shy of my eleventh birthday when Britain was decimalised.

And if Rebekah finds 1982 hard enough to comprehend, what price 1922? George V is three monarchs before the current long-reigning Queen (I’m including Edward VIII, even though he was never crowned).

Pounds, shillings and pence and early twentieth century kings will take a lot of patient dialogue and explanation. There are so many foreign concepts to go through in order to make sense of Grand-dad’s gift.

Is it not similar in evangelism today? With, say, three largely ‘unchurched’ generations there is a huge gulf between the Christian community and most of society. (And that gulf may go some way to explaining the misrepresentations of our faith in the media – it isn’t all wilful, much is a genuine lack of understanding.) Evangelism is about being in for the long haul to explain the faith in a context of dialogue. I see the point of those who say that a contemporary repeat of Billy Graham’s Harringay crusades in the 1950s with their remarkable levels of conversionss most likely would not happen today. It isn’t that I think God is incapable of it – of course the Holy Spirit could – but it is to recognise that Graham was able to appeal to a residual faith and call people back to it. There is hardly any such residual faith today.

Our faith is like a 1922 George V sixpence. To most people it appears not to be legal tender. It looks battered, but it is valuable. Nevertheless, to explain the significance takes time.

But the investment of time into relationships as we gossip the Gospel is immensely worthwhile. We are sharing treasure with people.

November 2, 2008 0

Varnish

We had bought a ‘Meal Deal’ in Boot’s, on our way to lunch in the park. There was one more item that Debbie placed on the counter for the woman who was salaried to scan bar codes. Nail varnish.

“It’s for my husband,” she said loudly for effect.

She was right. For the first (and hopefully the last) time in my life, I needed to buy nail varnish.

Why? Had I decided to become an aging Goth or New Romantic? Absolutely not. I may be part of a profession that is mocked for having ‘men in dresses’, but this wasn’t a matter of make-up.

It was all to do with allergies. Recently, I had developed red, peeling skin on my wrist, under where I wear my watch. My sister had looked at it and declared it was allergic dermatitis. The gold plating was wearing off the watch, exposing nickel. It appears I have a nickel allergy. I’ve added that to my collection of other allergies: to the adhesive in sticking plasters (I use Micropore), and to antihistamines (they don’t just make me drowsy, they make me depressed; I choose cough medicines carefully).

You will gather I found the whole experience embarrassing. I have known about the allergy for two or three weeks now, and the suggested solution of coating the exposed nickel with the nail varnish. Thoughts of going to a chemist’s and buying some (“It’s not for me, it’s for my wife”) have so filled me with dread that I have been keeping my watch in a trouser pocket for a fortnight.

Not even the encouraging story I heard about guitarists wearing nail varnish to strengthen their nails for plucking steel strings pushed me into action. Besides, it must be ten years since I got my guitar out in an attempt to learn to play it.

Embarrassment is a huge hurdle for many of us. How much of that is a British cultural perspective, I don’t know. But embarrassment is an efficient producer of inertia. It is also a powerful social stigmatiser. The fear of mockery prevents many from doing what they believe to be right.

How potent it was when Paul talked about being ‘fools for Christ’. One major issue for Christians is the courage to overcome the fear and risk appearing fools. Not in the sense that we sometimes back outright stupidity, but in the risk of unpopularity.

Getting the balance right can be difficult. I found that tonight when a mother and daughter called at the door to do Trick Or Treat. I gave the girl some sweets, and she looked at four-year-old Mark, who doesn’t understand it yet. “He’ll do it when he’s older,” she said.

I smiled and said as gently as I could, “Maybe not.”

It wasn’t the time for an extended conversation, but I simply indicated to the mother that it was a matter of religious conviction for us, and hoped I didn’t sound judgmental.

She apologised for causing offence, and I moved quickly to say that I wasn’t offended and I hadn’t expected her to know. I hope they left on good terms with us, but I also hope I was clear about our beliefs without being condemning. Too often in my life I have tipped to one end of the see-saw or the other, either fiercely denouncing something or ending up compromising my beliefs out of a desire to be on good terms with folk.

May God help us to risk embarrassment with grace.

October 31, 2008 5

Ubuntu

Thought I’d put out a couple of help requests here, which I’ve also posted at Ubuntu Forums. (If you want to find me there, the user name is ‘davefaulkner’.) But I thought I’d mention them here, in case any techie readers can help.

The back story is this. I’ve given up the idea of trying to get a dual-boot computer between Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux. (Despite checking the MD5SUM, Ubuntu has never installed properly on the hard drive.)

So I decided that since I wanted to experiment with Linux, I’d run it inside Sun’s VirtualBox 2.0.4. Well, it installs fine, and runs fairly fast in much less memory than Vista – surprise, surprise. But there are a few problems:

1. I can’t get any sound – e.g., if watching a video on YouTube. Error messages tell me I might need a Gstreamer plugin. I’ve googled ‘Gstreamer’, but the results are not the sort that a newbie to these things can understand.

2. Ubuntu only shows up in a monitor resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. It won’t detect my monitor (a Dell 1907FP Digital, if you’re interested). The card is an NVidia GeForce 7900 GS. So I’m stuck with a ridiculously small window for a 19-inch monitor. It’s useless for looking at most websites, for example. I need 1280 x 1024 or at very least 1024 x 768. I also can’t change the refresh rate from 61 Hz.

I dearly want to like Linux and have a usable alternative for the times when Vista increases my rate of hair loss. I understood Ubuntu was about the most user-friendly, but these are not the problems I’d even expect to encounter with badly behaved Microsoft products.

If anyone has any constructive ideas, please leave a comment, or email my ‘personal’ or ‘backup’ email addresses as listed on the Contact page of this blog.

Thanks.

October 31, 2008 5

Election

Not being American, it’s pointless to a degree my expressing a preference between John McCain and Barack Obama. Except that the winner will be so influential on the UK and the world that it matters.

So I was pleased to read this open letter from James Emery White to whoever the victor is. It is the measure of a Christian attitude. It is so different from what I have read elsewhere from some Christians. Take Focus On The Family Action’s hysteria-inducing hypothetical letter imagining what the USA would look like in 2012 after the first term of an Obama presidency. (One reaction has been a bipartisan Facebook group opposing it.) Or whole blogs like Ohnobama. Or the incredible nonsense that Sarah Palin prophetically is Esther.

Now I’m aware that all the stuff I’ve denounced above is from one particular camp – the religious right. I know that filth exists on the left, too. Certainly Palin (while she cannot be a modern-day Esther – who was the king and who were the other concubines? :)) has been the victim of misrepresentation of her faith. One article on Huffington Post comes to mind. It is a mixture of genuine research and tangential ‘guilt by association’ insinuation.

And I know too that none of this should be surprising. It exposes the gulf between claims that people want high office in order to serve others and the reality that it is a grab for power. If you want power for yourself or whoever you support, you’ll adopt a ‘by any means necessary’ approach.

Nor is this about a Brit wanting to have a go at Americans. Whatever our more reserved characters, we know enough about aggressive politics. PMQ, anyone? And neither Biden nor Palin have ‘done a Prescott’:

And my complaint isn’t about wanting to treat politics as if it doesn’t matter. It does. Christians can’t disregard it. Just concentrating on evangelism and dismissing a so-called ‘social gospel’ is sub-biblical.

Surely as Christians we can model something different for the world, where we are passionate about what we believe, even when we differ among ourselves, yet do so with humility and love. It seems to me that James Emery White’s tone models such a spirit.

I can sympathise with some of the reservations about Obama. I find his stance on abortion awful. (Although if I am to be pro-life – and I am – then that extends after the womb and takes in issues such as war and poverty, too.) I also have concerns about McCain. His tax proposals appear to favour the wealthy. (Yet on the other hand I think his stance as a Republican on green issues is noteworthy.) So it’s easy to see why Christians with particular areas of concern gravitate strongly for or against a particular candidate.

What, then, has made many Christian voices so indistinct in tone from secular ones? We have a regular problem in the church of being squeezed into the world’s mould, as J B Phillips put it. But are there particular factors either causing or exacerbating the situation?

I suspect that at least as far as the religious right is concerned, we ought to take a look at the ‘prophetic movement’. It’s been in play for several years, and led to the view that George W Bush was God’s anointed, and woe betide any Christian who disagreed. A British Christian friend of mine who works in the States with a charity that is developing drug treatments for people with AIDS couldn’t believe just how true the picture was of evangelical alignment with the Republican Party.

Yet that wasn’t going on so much a few months ago in this campaign, if I understand correctly. Disgruntlement with how McCain viewed certain issues dear to the Christian right’s agenda meant was surely a major reason why evangelical and fundamentalist churches weren’t holding voter registration drives with such enthusiasm this time. My hunch, watching from a few thousand miles away, is that it all changed when McCain announced Sarah Palin has his running mate. Not seeing that McCain surely thought of her for pragmatic reasons: he needed to pull a rabbit out of the hat so as to bring a major Republican constituency into the voting booth, suddenly Palin was the person God had kept everyone waiting for. No wonder ‘prophetic words’ began to flow. (And, please note, I believe in prophetic words. But I also believe in testing them.)

Is it part of a lust to believe we are living in times that are comparable to biblical ones, and therefore they have to be graded as such by prophecies? Are these things some kind of sign taken to mean that we are in some sense more faithful to biblical spirituality? Are we just not content to get on with days of small things (Zecharaiah 4:10) and be faithful in a few things (Matthew 25:21, 23)?

Put this approach together with the ‘grab for power’ I mentioned earlier and we have a flammable combination that leads Christians to spend more time ‘praying against’ rather than the ‘praying for’ which White exemplifies.

I don’t wish to make it sound like White’s is the only sane voice around. That would be arrogant and ignorant. It didn’t take too long to find this sane post from Rob Harrison, a Christian Republican, arguing moderately in favour of the Grand Old Party, expressing deep reservations about Obama and explaining why he thinks Hillary Clinton would have been a better Democratic candidate. From a different stable comes Jim Wallis’ post, ‘My Personal ‘Faith Priorities’ for this Election‘. (Wallis has also called on James Dobson to apologise for the ‘2012 letter’.) I know Wallis is technically independent, but most of his faith priorities lean in Obama’s direction.

So it’s galling to keep hearing the nonsense when there are thoughtful voices in the debate. Somewhere a big section of us in the church has lost a grip on servant leadership and that we see through a glass darkly, not clearly.

There is something to be said for Derek Webb‘s view that you’ll never find ‘A Savior On Capitol Hill’

even if I don’t share what sounds like a cynicism in the lyrics towards all politicians. Nevertheless, it is a timely warning for all those who offer Barack Obama semi-messianic adulation or who see John McCain (but really Sarah Palin?) as God’s anointed.

Is it too late to hope for more Christlike tone as well as content to Christian contributions regarding the election, both in terms of an increase in quantity and a greater prominence to the careful voices that are in danger of being drowned out? It’s so close to the end of the campaign that for anyone to say this now is humanly a forlorn hope. I’d like to think it might be different in four years’ time. For that to happen, the church will have to have been chastened. That might mean a whole run of failed ‘prophecies’, but it would take a lot for even that to lead to repentance in some circles. My fear is that even something that goes against the grain will just lead to a reframing of them.

But you never know. We might learn humility one day.

October 30, 2008 11

Golf

Golf is one of those sports I find thoroughly boring. (Unlike cricket, which is subtle, tactical, and brain-engaging. Really.)

But crazy golf is different, and little Mark discovered a love for it on our summer holiday. So today – while his sister got taken to Colchester Zoo by friends – we took him to a nine-hole crazy golf course in Chelmsford. Somebody on another website had labelled it ‘the world’s least crazy crazy golf course’, but were we deterred? No!

It was less fun to arrive and find the entrance to the free car park blocked by a tractor and some traffic cones. That meant parking across the other side of Waterhouse Lane in Meteor Way, a cost of three pounds. Thankfully, when Debbie told the guy at the course our story he knocked that off our charges.

Then we set off to find the course. As soon as we found it, we had to agree with the other website: it is the world’s least crazy crazy golf course. I managed a couple of rough pictures on my phone. Here’s one:

It shows Mark in action, and what you see corresponds with the photo on the other site. It’s the – er, exciting hole. For a little lad like him, the lack of windmills, houses and other obstructions didn’t matter. He was a picture of happiness as he took his child-sized putter and tapped his ball from start to finish of each hole. Well, almost to the finish. After about half a dozen ‘shots’, he generally picked up the ball and threw it in the hole. We let him play on his own – he is an introvert like his Dad – and it wasn’t long before he was lapping his parents as if he were not Padraig Harrington but Lewis Hamilton.

So is a little four-year-old boy easily pleased? Maybe. But isn’t it also a lesson in simplicity? Like some drug addiction, we adults want more, bigger, better, faster. Yet a small boy can take a simple pleasure and find great joy. I think it’s something for us to chew on, when we talk about simple lifestyle.

October 29, 2008 3

Introverts

So true – An Introvert’s Lexicon. Via Brother Maynard.

October 29, 2008 3

Kitchen

So we’re in Café Rouge having a lovely family lunch out, when Mark, our four-year-old, wanders off with his glass of apple juice.

“What are you doing, Mark?”

“I’m going to the kitchen.”

Poor lad. He had assumed that he needed to take his empty glass, plate and cutlery to the kitchen, just like at home. The idea that a waiter would come and collect it for him, while he needed to do nothing, hadn’t clicked, no matter how many other times we’d been out for meals.

Maybe he’s like many of us. We can’t believe that God will come and do something for us. We have to do it. And we fail to understand grace and integrate it into our personalities. At best we think God should be paid, just as (indirectly) our waiter was today. What a difference that is from the gratitude and love God longs to draw from our hearts.

October 28, 2008 0

Reading

It’s half term, and I’m taking this week on leave. Daytime, I shall be having time with the kids, of course. We’ve been exchanging Tesco Clubcard vouchers for money off ten pin bowling and a meal at Café Rouge.

But in the evening, I’m beginning to delve into some newly arrived books. Yes, they are all Theology, and that might seem a strange choice when I’m away from ‘work’, but few things restore me like a dose of good reading. (Yes, I am an introvert, if you hadn’t guessed.) Here is what those nice people at Amazon and The Book Depository have sent me lately:

Eugene Peterson, The Word Made Flesh: Peterson explores the issue of language as a spiritual concern by examining the parables of Jesus in Luke’s so-called ‘Travel Narrative’ and in some of his prayers.

Klyne R Snodgrass, Stories With Intent: I love the parables of Jesus, and this looks like being the standard work for the next several years. A few months ago, Scot McKnight was raving about it. Then Paul Beasley-Murray did the same in Ministry Today. Already, I’m hooked. He has a subtle, multivalent treatment of the parables. For years I’ve loved Craig Blomberg‘s book Interpreting The Parables, because he so thoroughly took to pieces the anti-allegory school and gave a brilliant history of schools of biblical interpretation. However, it was beginning to feel a bit simplistic in some of its expositions. I think Snodgrass will bring the subtlety.

Colin Greene and Martin Robinson, Metavista: What do we do, mission-wise, after postmodernity? Greene and Robinson are sketching a vision. I met Greene five years ago on a Bible Society course at Lee Abbey, but I’ve never previously read his books. I was pondering buying this one when I saw him interviewed by Alan Roxburgh on the Allelon website. That convinced me.

Christopher J H Wright, The Mission Of God: another Scot McKnight rave. Eleven or twelve years ago, I bought Wright’s commentary on Deuteronomy, in which he interprets the book missiologically. Later, I bought his exposition of Ezekiel, which attempts something similar. This is his magnum opus, bringing together his skills as a biblical scholar and his past experience as the Principal of a missionary training college. Wright argues that the whole Bible is a missionary document. I believe this will be required reading for all of us concerned with the ‘missional’ approach. It promises to be the most important work of missiology since the late David Bosch‘s Transforming Mission.

Ben Witherington III, The Letters To Philemon, The Colossians, And The Ephesians – A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles: I’ve bought several of BW3’s commentaries in the last year or so. I’ve been looking for something to complement and contrast Andrew Lincoln‘s majestic Word Biblical Commentary on Ephesians. Witherington is a prolific, eloquent and brilliant writer.

Richard Burridge, Imitating Jesus – An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics: For someone whose calling involves helping people with ethical decisions, I don’t read as much as I should on ethics, although I’m indebted to Changing Values by David Attwood and The Moral Quest by the late Stanley Grenz. Burridge is flavour of the month in some circles I know, not least in Chelmsford, where he gave a Holy Week lecture earlier this year. Not long ago I reviewed his commentary on John’s Gospel, which was superb. This too has been well reviewed, again not least by my friend Paul Beasley-Murray. I had a quick dip into his section on Paul and homosexuality, and while not everything Burridge said convinced me, he said enough to shed new light for me on this painful debate.

I won’t read all these books cover to cover. Some will just go straight on the shelf for reference. In the case of others (e.g., Snodgrass) I shall read the introductory chapters before squeezing them into my statutory thirty yards of bookshelving in this study.

Have any of you read any of these titles? What did you think of them?

What are you reading, or have you read recently, that you would recommend?

I would be fascinated to know.

October 27, 2008 3

Fleeced

As I drew up in the drive after an afternoon of pastoral visiting, I knew what had happened. Rebekah was dancing around at the top of the drive. It could mean only one thing. That wobbly tooth had gone. At last she had lost her first baby tooth. The tooth fairy would be swooping into action tonight.

Not that she had the tooth. It had disappeared somewhere between school and the shoe shop. Somehow the wingèd dispenser of monetary compensation for missing molars would need to receive this urgent message.

Of more concern was the level of financial recompense for that first tooth. We had been led to believe that the current exchange rate was one pound per tooth. However, that was before Tanyel’s mum had run out of change.

Tanyel is one of Rebekah’s classmates. When she lost her first tooth, Mum was out of coins. She only had paper money. Thus it came to pass that Tanyel received five – yes, five – of our finest British pounds for her milk tooth. And the good news had spread all around the class. Yea verily the golden coins tumbled out of my wallet into the envelope Debbie had decorated, accompanied by some text she had found on a website.

So make what you will of this story. How natural it is for children to share good news quickly. Or how dumb and soft we were as parents. Take your pick.

October 26, 2008 7

Author: Dave Faulkner