Thailand 1

Our 2009 holiday in Thailand was an amazing time with many fascinating experiences of people and places. The variety of transport, the friendly people and temples all over the place. Sometimes such a riot of impressions that I could hardly take them all in and altogether two weeks was such a short time, just a glimpse of the surface of things without really grasping deeply how life, language and culture work.

The temples had too much in them for me though no doubt there is huge meaning for people who understand what all the decorations and ornaments are about. I was most impressed by the monk who sat absolutely still, apparently deeply focused on something.



And I enjoyed the swamp with its birdlife - the highlight was seeing an osprey at close quarters.











There are Christians in Thailand and we were impressed by the Youth House ministry and our daughter's part in it and the generous self-giving spirit of a Thai Christian, M.

Science

I like science and have learnt many wonderful things from doing it and reading about it. If I had been smarter at maths I would probably have gone further with it. When I lived in Wales I used to go with my friend Gwilym to the Cardiff scientific society for their winter lecture programme. It was always very interesting. They had a variety of topics drawing in people from a variety of disciplines; physics, chemistry, biology etc even sociology. Gwilym and I would then have an interesting discusson on the way home and would continue it over a cup of tea at his home.

The first scientific subject that interested me as a youngster was nature study, especially bird watching and that interest has stayed with me. Then soon after I started to get into astronomy and made a simple telescope and looked at the moon, the full moon which isn't the best phase but the effect was magical. I looked at better times and saw craters and then got a better telescope. It was only a 2 inch refractor but I had wonderful views of the moon and Jupiter and its moons and so on. In 1957 the first Artificial Earth Satellite was launched and I started watching satellites. For a number of years I worked in laboratories - chemistry and physics and though I left that line of work I kept up the scientific interest. When I was a school chaplain in Zambia I taught general science for a term when a teacher was on leave. I also ran an astronomy club and learnt a lot about the southern stars and the students found it interesting too.

Now I have a better telescope and can take digital photographs and that has been pleasing in good weather though I don't go into it anywhere as deeply as some. It is all very wonderful but I don't do cold mornings as I did 50 years ago!

Science is very amazing. The discoveries and advances that have been made are astonishing. Just when things have been sorted some new discovery throws everything into the melting pot again.

I once wrote an essay on what is science for? I argued for it being useful, a practical purpose, and there is a lot in that but the usefulness is wider than technology. It evokes wonder for example and also encourages patience and the search for truth and an open mindedness in expecting surprises. Apart from aiming at truth science has little ethical leverage and so its use and pursuit must be controlled by philosophical principles that are not inherent to science. It is therefore not the whole of reality and exists in a wider context of abstract realities such as principles and values that cannot be evaluated by science. Thus although reductionism and materialism are assumed by some scientists and they are free to use them it must be clear that these actually are philosophical stances brought to bear on science. Nobody is obliged to be a materialist and science can be approached from other standpoints.

Many Christians are scientists and have thought about these things. For myself, as a Christian, I think that science shows how the material universe is constructed and works and that is a cause for wonder and praise. Usefulness definitely comes into the picture and I think that Christians can be very open to new developments in science and technology but see them in the context of loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbour as ourselves. Undoubtedly, this does offer a critique of destructive, malicious uses as well as greed and the like but our attitude doesn't have to be negative all around as new discoveries are made which are potentially for the good of humankind and the world in general.

For me those early views of the moon and the stars opened the eye of faith to believe that there is a creator of all these wonders. How this developed into a Christian faith is another story.

Cross culture

Someone working in another country expressed her tension over being in one country and longing for 'home' and reflecting that if she was home she would long to be in Asian country she had moved to.
It is indeed a dilemma for people who work across cultures because they are in between the cultures and are neither one nor the other. Some expatriates try and create a world like the one they have left and emphasize aspects of the culture they have left. I have met British people in other countries who seemed more British than people in Britain. However, the home culture is never as simple as such folk imagine and by failing to engage with the people they are among they miss an opportunity for growth in understanding other people and learning new things from their ways. Furthermore, their lack of interaction means that they do not add their bit to the social and cultural mix. I found that being in another culture does throw into relief my own background and its strengths and weaknesses. Cultural differences become apparent and need to be assessed and bad things discerned but many features such as music, art, language are not to be despised but rather to be valued and learned from.
It is curious how, like plants, some aspects of culture transplant easily and others do not. Association football [soccer] has caught on in Africa, cricket in the Indian sub-continent and curries in Britain. On the other hand soccer and cricket have not flourished in the same way in the USA and American football has had little appeal in Europe.
There is 'culture shock' when we go to live in a new culture though we do expect things to be different. We spent 5+ years in Central Africa, a life-affecting experience, but when we came home we were surprised by the 'reverse culture shock' which is a two-edged sword because:
[1]. Home had changed since we left, it had moved on for better or worse, and on coming home we faced these changes. We may or may not have liked them but adjusting took longer than we expected.
[2]. We were changed by living somewhere else and by being immersed in another world with different languages, customs and values which we missed on coming home. We were not as we were when we left and adjusting to home again took longer than we thought it would.

Christians belong to this world and another world so are always between the cultures with the two worlds interacting. As the Citonga translation of a verse in Philippians has it 'Munzi wesu uli kujulu' ['our village is in heaven'] - we live in this world as people who belong to heaven and that can create tensions and frustration as well as filling us with love, joy and peace as our life is shared with the heavenly man, our risen and ascended Saviour and friend, Jesus Christ.

Snow

We had a bit of snow this week. Well, quite a lot for us and the UK in general. Things come to a standstill and people lighten up a bit. We went into Wellington this morning and saw families, children of all ages, toboganning and lots of people walking about and being friendly. It was more than forecast for our area - about 5-6 inches - and near Exeter the A38 was blocked and many people were stranded.
We don't have a lot of snow in the south and west of England so it causes chaos. Canada and Scandinavian countries have plenty of snow and they design and plan things accordingly. In Richmond, Va, as in Cornwall and the rest of the west of England there is panic with a little snow. We lived in Co Durham for 5 years where they are more used to these things and they kept things going in the snow though once I couldn't get to one village when there was about a foot of the white stuff.
We had 3 students from Sierra Leone when I was in college and when the snow came they were so excited. I remember them running out into the car park and trying to catch the falling flakes.
Last evening when the snow was falling we looked out of the bedroom window and although it was obviously cloudy the area was quite well lit instead of being pitch dark in places away from the street lights. Perhaps the light is reflected from the low clouds and/or possibly dispersed by the snow flakes. It illuminated the area like very bright moonlight.
I think I read somewhere that all rain actually starts off as snow so in these conditions it just stays as snow.
Snow is beautifully white until it starts to get slushy and people and cars churn it up.
Of course snow is but a form of that most amazing substance, water. For all that water is so common and we all know that it is H2O in fact is structure and how it works is still not properly understood. It is so important for life and has several unusual properties - high surface tension, high boiling point for a molecule of it's size etc. I, and many others, regard all this as the work of the creator and give praise that such an amazing substance has been invented, developed and no doubt has some properties that have not been fully realised yet.
Snow on great mountains provides a slow release supply of water.
Now the sun is setting, with yellow glistening light on icy patches on the road outside.

Africa

In an email conversation I had recently someone who had been to Africa remarked, 'Bury my heart in Africa.' He had been there for three weeks and it left that deep an impression on him. Africa seems to do that. I lived there for nearly six years and although I have never been back I can't really get Africa out of my system. I have revisited it through reading and researches and especially in writing about Edwin W Smith. More recently there have been the missionary history conferences and the papers I prepared on the Zambezi valley, African missionaries in Zambia etc. I find that when I think I have finished researching Africa, it pops up again in some way. So, just last weekend 2 people contacted me who had come across my papers on dacb and thought I could help with something they were looking into. It was back to the notebooks, microfiche and books to find information for them. And it seems that I did get useful things for them.
Three years ago I meet the man who would replace me at Tonypandy. A man from Zambia! And I found that I could still hold a sort of conversation in Tonga after all these years.
Fred Welbourn introduced me to Africa with his 'Religion in Africa' seminar at Bristol, 1968-70, and that made a very positive impact though I never thought I would actually go there. I met Africans at Methodist International House and then when we offered to work overseas the call came from Zambia. The appointment as a chaplain to a girls secondary school was a surprise but turned out to be a great blessing. My interest in local history was put to good use when I was asked to prepare the church archives which I did at Kitwe.
And now I am down to give a talk at the Guild on experiences of Zambia - I decided to talk about surprises; quite a few to mention.
Why does Africa have such an impact?
The physical environment contributes. The scenery, mountains and valleys, Victoria Falls... and life that teems in the heat - birds, mammals, insects.
The social enviroment contributes too - with its communal emphasis, its spiritual openness and cultural features such as song and drama and dance. Music, and especially the religious choral music produced by country people sends a shiver down the spine. And after years of slow progress in mission the church has taken off immensely.
I was born in India and I have a feeling about India too and a hankering to go there - and Indian music has its effect too and I like meeting Asian people too. But Africa made a big impression.
Places we have been to make leave their impression. Africa made a big impression.

Back again

I did a bit of blogging a few years ago and then we moved and though it is possible to view that short blog I am unable to get access to edit it. So here we go again. After 3 years we are now in Wellington, Somerset and pretty well settled down. I have chosen the title because I quite like studying the stars and other celestial objects - moon, planets, iridium flares and other satellites. At the moment there is an Epiphany service for choral evensong and the last blog I did [3 years ago] was about the star of Bethlehem. There was an hour long programme on Christmas Eve about that which was quite full and very interesting and Songs of Praise on Sunday did its bit too. Methodists featured - Phil Greetham in the first programme and David Wilkinson in the second. Jesus is the real star.