This may sound odd, but I often enjoy talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, which was the case this morning, while waiting for someone to open the clock shop I work in.
The conversation meandered a bit, including the importance of the Bible as the "repair manual" for humanity, the importance of understanding the context of the Bible to understand pieces like the significance of Jesus saying "I am" (Mark 14:62) (John 18:8-9), the exact phrase being one only God could use.
The fun part came when he gave me a pamphlet, which claimed that the "new earth" and "new heavens" refer to "a righteous society of people living on earth" and "a perfect heavenly kingdom, or government". I took a different stance following from Revelations (21:1) "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away". I stated my belief this earth would cease to be, like a building with failing foundations it would be torn down to make way for a new perfect earth.
The next fun part that got him thinking was my belief that God actively works through mechanisms understandable by science as well as supernatural means, as the Genesis Chapter 1 version of the creation story, parallels the current scientific belief about the creation of the universe. And that God used evolution as His tool to create all life.
The reason I enjoy these discussions is that I enjoy turning the tables on the evangelists of the less theologically sound religions.
The day continued to be interesting when a chap turned up at the shop carrying a white bunny outfit, apparently he's taking part in the upcoming fun-run to raise money for charity. And somehow the shop was involved in a photo shoot from a local paper, I decided to turn down the opportunity to be photographed next to a giant rabbit.
I then had a few fun jobs to do, fitting a replacement movement into a case, requiring a lot of parts transferred from the old movement. I have the most interesting Saturdays.

Climbing

Went to the Manchester Climbing Centre in Gorton yesterday with Goran, who kindly showed us (myself and Emma) how to climb. We've been a couple of times before (once to Froggatt Edge in the Peak District with some university friends) but have forgotten nearly everything due to the ravages of time. Emma was feeling better, having been off school all week with laryngitis, but still has not got much of a voice, and was a little suprised to run into some of her school kids there (not as suprised as them, I suppose).
Stayed climbing most of the afternoon, with Emma doing most of the belaying (that's the guy at the bottom holding the rope so that you don't hit the floor when you fall off the wall) and me doing the hard work climbing. Apparently I could do with losing some weight.

Saw V for Vendetta - mindless entertainment - in the evening with Hadi & Goran, and then went for pizza, kebab & chicken. Pleasant day. Oh, and Wednesday are 6 points clear of relegation with 5 games to go, so I'm gradually calming down about the football.

I'm not sure whether this is fantastic or hideous. It certainly seems like it would be easier than reading Butler's Lives

I've nearly repaid my student loan, at last the end is in sight, I've decided to stop the deferment, mostly so I don't have to fill out the blasted form again, since there's only a little left to repay.

Sometimes getting benefits is mixed blessing, I didn't realise at the time but many benefits fluctuate over time. My initial Housing Benefit, covered almost all my rent, but it seems that my attempts to update the rent office about the variations got misplaced and so I had been underpaying rent for a while. Thankfully I was able to pay off the difference clear the mess up quickly, although I've requested that the Housing Benefit will get paid into my account, rather than the rent office, and just pay full rent.

I had a couple of things come to mind, while running errands today for work, and wondered what people think about them.

Firstly, Is Hell, a cold rather than a hot place? Hell is often defined as being cut off from God, since God is the ultimate source of everything (energy included), would Hell be a cold barren place, with the fires of Hell being an attempt to keep the (demonic) population from freezing solid, by using the souls of the damned as a fuel source?

The Second one, are some of my current answers to the age-old question "Why do bad things happen?" in reference to natural disasters, is misinformed or stupid decisions. My point being that earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes tend to be regular occurrences in some areas. Yet thousands suffer each time a hurricane flattens known vulnerable areas like Florida and other parts of the South-East coast of America, as the result of their or their family's decision to live in that area. The same goes for cities, like San Francisco built close to known fault lines.

For human relationships, the problems are more complex, but the simplest answer I have is that we willfully ignore God's guidance. To use a computer analogy, we disable the firewall and anti-virus software, because it slows down the computer, and then go surfing porn and 'warez' sites, and then gasp in disbelief when a 'cracker' steals our credit card details and loots our savings. Then when an expert is sent by the manufacturer at his expense, to show us how to fix the problems and prevent them happening again, he gets nailed to a cross for his troubles!

As a summation, Bad things happen because we and others in this world make bad choices, through ignorance and contrariness and we and others suffer the consequences of these choices.

Diseases, I don't really have a good answer for, I must admit that the cold and flu viruses are definitely not one of my favourite parts of God's Creation, just having got over several days of a cold. Does anyone have any insight why God created viruses? It's nice to feel better afterwards, but somehow I don't think that was the reason!

Ben asked a question, sort of. I made a reply, sort of. It took me chuffing ages, so I mention it here to make it seem more worthwhile to myself. I believe it was Pratchett who pointed out that the difficulty in spelling banana is knowing when to stop.

As I'm here, previous posts:

On the resurrection.
On the universe as a closed system.
On faith and works (in various places).
On the problem of evil.
On the Blessed Virgin Mary and labour pains.
On law and grace.

Hello,

Minutes to kill at the library, so I'll blog. Luke's birthday yesterday, so had a meal out at A.S.K. or Ask, depending on who you're talking to. Amazing pizza, but incredibly tired at the end - skipped out before the bill had been settled (not without throwing an appropriate amount of money at those contemplating said bill)

Visited 4/5 agencies now, nothing much has happened yet. One of my old managers is asking me back to do some tmporary work - not sure what to do about that; sounds like a trap, but potentially very useful.

I got a book on Christian Meditation from Chritians Together at County Hall, which is good, and my work colleagues got me (no pound sign!?)35 worth of book tokens, which is a cross between a present and torture, as I had to decide what I should spend that amount of money on - the conlusion: Jeeves and Wooster, An Intorduction to Logic, British History, And a History of the Crusades.

It's going to kick me off any second, so I'd better post. Bye.

Hello there - I have an interview with SPCK tomorrow.

Sheffield was the featured article on WikiPedia today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield), There was some quite interesting stuff about the sheer variety of the landscape, both in variation of height and habitat types.
Something Dad will find interesting, if he didn't already know is that Sheffield Wednesday FC is the longer-established of the two Sheffield clubs by 22 years

Deus caritas est. Fact.

Two weeks back at work and I finally feel settled into work again, admittedly the horrible cold I had over the New Year weekend probably didn't help much.


I invited Mark and Monica to a homemade lunch this Sunday, but I hadn't realised how hard it is to find desserts that don't contain milk, until I started looking for one for Monica. So I cheated a little and baked a Victoria sponge cake.

Gosh, you really can't let a day slip when attempthing to blog a holiday, I mean, quite a lot has happened. I arrived, as is the convention when going somewhere, and embarked on a process of Meeting Everyone, well, not everyone precisely, but you know what I mean. Monica says I should mention that she didn't spot me coming off "the plane, the plane" though her dad (babbo) recognised me by my fedora. Her mum (mamma, obviously) and dad were both there at the airport with her to meet me. Gosh.

I was cordially fed, Italy is a good country - they're not happy unless you're eating...

Monica: ..and wearing shoes...

..Quite. With the exception that Monica's babbo is like many a dad in that he's quite happy to pick up the slack in the ingestion stakes. I should mention that it was Vane(ssa), Monica's sister who cooked for us, and I also met her husband, Lorenzo, who is not from Offagna, but has become a bit Offagnish since moving there. He speaks pretty good English himself actually, and is a funny man. Of course a lot of translation was happening. Nice to have your own interpreter.

And it was New Year's you know, so the very evening I arrive I go to a party - not my usual style. It was fine despite Monica being practically the only person who can speak Inglese in Italia - I felt quite welcome. I met a particularly mad friend of Monica's called Raphaela who was very loud and waved her hands with alarming vivacity, but in an amusing rather than a scary way. Talking about scariness, there were fireworks, and Italy it seems that safety regulations are things for other people, you have these huge bomb-like ones that just explode on ground level with no energy expended on display, and also ones which spin on the floor and ones like cap bombs, and some which you hold in your handds while they either flare continuously or expel coloured bursts of things. Very interesting but a bit much per me. And then we (excluding my good self of course) played pictionary. Monica had two gos, the second of which was rubbiiish - she couldn't bring herself to say anything!

We stayed up quite late, naturally, so I just got up so that I had enough time to go to mass, which was okay considering that I don't understand Italian. That afternoon we went to Sant Angelo in Pontano to see Marghe(rita) who is Monica's bestest friend in the whole world who is going to become a nun. She's taking temporary vows this very Thursday, much to the dismay of many people, as it's an enclosed order. It was nice though communication was a bit of a difficulty. She got her daft Christmas presents from Monica as well, some silly socks, with dogs and cows on, and a silly hat, with those bobble things on. She was very happy with them - these proto-nuns...

On Monday I had a little tour of Offagna, which was well cool I thought, though all the villagers say it's a bit boring. I thought it was very intersting to see how a medieval Italian village is laid out, though obviously the buildings themselves come with all mod cons, including, it would seem, a device for controlling the main lights from the side of the bed, which is a very good idea. Also all the windows have shutters, which makes me feel rather as though I'm in the flicks. And in the afternoon we went for a walk as far as Santo Stefano (6km), which was nice. We were followed, to a certain extent, by a trio of certain little doggies, seemingly belonging to no man.

Today we set out for Assisi, but decided not to go on so far, as the weather was bad, and it would have ended up being rather risky, for reasons I can't be bottomed to explain. So instead we (saving il babbo di Monica) went to these rather fabulous caves (Grotte di Frassassi) with stalagmites and stalagtites and all that jazz. Lovely it was, though Monica was the wrong side of calm being a bi' claustrophobic. She was fine because she was looking at me and holding my hand.

:)

And we ate in a restaurant owned by a friendly sort of guy who was drumming up business by the toilets. Bewildered to find that some Italian toilets are a bit like French ones - I wasn't entirely sure it wasn't some kind of shower. Enough about toilets; the food was good, especially the bruschetta and the prosciutto. Plus, the wine was like nothing I've ever had before. Bene.

And then we came home and ate again. Mmm - food. Oh, and I've eaten rabbit now, plus, it emerges that in certain parts of Italy, the cat is consumed. Monica's not so sure. But then again, she tells me that everyone knows pepper is bad for you.

Can't use the same joke twice, so I'll just say buon'anno and happy epiphany for when it arrives.