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It’s World Water Day today, which is especially significant this year as it’s also the International Year of Sanitation. But, rather than me rant on again about the 1.1 billion people who don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water or the 2.6 billion people who don’t have access to sanitation causing disease and death on a catastrophic scale, I thought I’d drop you a link to radio 4 where you can listen to the development expert and writer, Maggie Black, and Lydia Zigomo of WaterAid, talk far more eloquently about this most fundamental of development issues.
I would have gladly embraced this rotting piece of wood,
Until this moment had passed.
But no one understood my intent.
Neither friend, nor foe,
Not follower, or thief.
And so they fastened me here as if I am some captive of theirs,
Instead of being captivated by them.
In many ways the church I go to is great. However, having spent many happy years in a High Anglican Community prior to moving to Bristol and joining a local independent church, I do miss the liturgy and theater of those ‘High’ days, especially around the major Christian festivals. No processions or palm waving for us, just a brief acknowledgment of Palm Sunday shoehorned into a talk about Daniel in the lion’s den – sounds odd, but actually it did work.
Anyway, my daughter is now of the age were she can take part in the children’s activities on a Sunday morning, so I thought I’d ask her if she had a story about Jesus riding on a donkey and people waving palm branches. ‘No’, she said. ‘We had a snack and I did some sticking.’
I was interested to hear that in a recent survey carried out by the children’s book publishers, Random House, that more than half of parents believe childhood is over by 11.
I guess I’m supposed to be shocked by this. But as ever, definitions of what constitutes childhood appear to be lacking. So too does a clear and appropriate age for which childhood should end – 13, 14, 18 – and can this be universally applied, or are we simply supposed to be discussing this from a purely white, middle class, developed country perspective? I’m sure many children around the world Read the rest of this entry »
My good friends over at Theos, the public theology think tank, have just published an interesting, and midly humorous report, which demonstrates that a quarter of people in Britain confuse the Bible with speeches by Sir Bob Geldof.
In a ComRes poll, 27% of people questioned wrongly believed that the statement “You must defend those who are helpless and have no hope. Be fair and give justice to the poor and homeless” – Proverbs Chapter 31, verse 8 – came from a speech by the singer, songwriter and activist Bob Geldof. A further 20% thought it was from a report by former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. Only 13% of people correctly identified the statement as coming from the Bible.
