Light

O Lord, lighten our darkness!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . .

Not a Creature was Stirring

Hope: Because one Child is born.

"Give Hope"
Christopher Fry (1906 - 2005)

The darkest time in the year,
The poorest place in the town,
Cold and a taste of fear,
Man and woman alone,
What can we hope for more?

More light than we can learn,
More love than we can earn,
More strength than we can treasure,
More peace than we can measure,
Because one Child is born.

As though a single flake
Of snow touching the earth
Would all our thirsting slake
And turn all death to birth,
Bidding our spirits wake.

To what makes the many one
The deep solicitude
Which bred both star and bone,
Claiming by stable and rood,
God's will to be our own.

Bicycle

Loco

St. Martin's

St. Martin's In the Fields, Trafalgar Square
London, England

St. Patricks, Armagh

St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, Northern Ireland
(Church of Ireland)

Angel

Angel, Dublin Church

Spirits

Umbrella

Red Boat

Vatican by Night

Jane and Charlotte

Lamp

Rocking Horse

Big Ben

Cattle

Roman Arch

Angel

iBrain and Macrowikinomics

Re the last post, am looking forward to reading:

Macrowikinomics; Rebooting Business and the World, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

and

iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan.

The brain’s plasticity—its ability to change in response to stimuli from the environment—is well known. What has been less appreciated is how the expanding use of technology is shaping neural processing. Young people are exposed to digital stimulation for several hours every day, and many older adults are not far behind. Even using a computer for Web searches for just an hour a day changes the way the brain processes information. A constant barrage of e-contacts is both stimulating—sharpening certain cognitive skills—and draining, studies show.

Digital Rewiring of the Brain

From a Toronto Star article, December 4, 2010, by Geoff Pevere, Entertainment Columnist - about the changes that the digital age has brought and is bringing, even to the evolving of actual brain patterns, especially among youth and children.

Digital media has not only created a world that is starkly different from the world of a mere fifteen years ago, they have changed the way people who live in the world think, behave, create and consume. They have facilitated a generation gap that makes the divide between Boomers and their parents narrow by comparison, and they have accelerated the pace of cultural and political change to something like warp speed.

The future has arrived more quickly that most people were prepared for, and the consequences of this abrupt collision with tomorrow will likely not be fully understood for generations to come. Meanwhile, this much is certain: culturally, we’re not even in the same solar system as Kansas anymore.

“We believe the world has reached a critical turning point,” writes Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams in Macrowikinomics, a book that situates changing cultural industries as central to the new digital era. “Reboot all the old models, approaches and structures or risk institutional paralysis or collapse.”

Neurologically, the reboot has already occurred, write Dr. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan in iBrain: Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind: “The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains.”

And not simply in the way you may think: “Rather than simply catching ‘Digital,’ ” write Small and Vorgan, “many of us are developing neural circuitry that is customized for rapid and incisive spurts of directed concentration.

“Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now — at a speed like never before,” they write.

Nowhere has this shift been more dramatic than in popular culture. The old models for the creation, production and dissemination of these things have virtually collapsed in the past decade. The industries producing music, movies, TV, books and news have seen their paradigms not merely shift but explode, and each is scrambling to re-define itself for a future where the only thing from the past that applies is our passion for pleasure.

This is a key point. For all that is changing neurologically, socially and institutionally, content is constant. As the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Henry Jenkins writes in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, “History teaches us that old media never die — and they don’t even necessarily fade away. What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content.”

The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but also is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains. Daily exposure to high technology—computers, smart phones, video games, search engines such as Google and Yahoo—stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones. Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now—at a speed like never before.

Dawn Treader Coming . . .

"It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."
— C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

Winterset Garden

Clouds

Charlotte and Grandpa

Capture your screen in seconds

Red Tablecloth

Private home in Turkey

Geraniums

Geraniums near St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, Northern Ireland

Yellow Door

A closed-up doorway in Rome

Bicycle

A bicycle at a shop in the west of Ireland.

Red Coat at Giant's Causeway

The 'Giant's Causeway' is a natural phenomenon in Northern Ireland.

Orange Poppy

Street - Houses, N. Ireland

Created on iPad SketchMee app

Yellow Flowers

Rose: Philadelphia Church ruins - Turkey

B&B - Northern Ireland

Chora Church Window

Chora Church - an ancient Christian church in what was Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey). 'Chora' meant outside the walls or city proper - like St. Martin-in-the Fields or St. Giles-in-the Fields in London, England.

Friends Model RR - Diesel

King of Glory

Jesus Christ a King of Glory has come in Peace.
+ God became man,
+ and the Word was made flesh.
+ Christ was born of a Virgin.
+ Christ suffered.
+ Christ was crucified.
+ Christ died.
+ Christ rose from the dead.
+ Christ ascended into Heaven.
+ Christ conquers.
+ Christ reigns.
+ Christ orders.
+ May Christ protect us from all storms and lightning.
+ Christ went through their midst in Peace,
+ and the word was made flesh.
+ Christ is with us with Mary.
+ Flee you enemy spirits because the Lion of the Generation of Juda,
the Root David, has won.
+ Holy God!
+ Holy Powerful God!
+ Holy Immortal God!
+ Have mercy on us.

Amen!

Go Before Us, O Lord

Actiones nostras, quaesumus Domine, aspirando praeveni et adiuvando prosequere: ut cuncta nosta oratio et operatio a te semper incipiat et per ta coepta finiatur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Go before us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, in all our doings with Thy gracious inspiration, and further us with Thy continual help, that every prayer and work of ours may begin from Thee, and by Thee be duly ended. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Diorama of Friends Model RR

Created with Sketchmee on my iPad

The Wonder of a New Day

Apocalypticism

Apocalypticism ‘denote(s) the world view in which certain people come to believe that their group is set apart from the rest of humanity, that it is righteous and all others are sinners, and, more particularly, that an event will soon occur which will sort things out once and for all. The sun and the moon will be darkened, literally not metaphorically; the Lord will descend from heaven and snatch the saints up in the air, literally not metaphorically; the Mount of Olives will be split in two, and rivers of fresh water will flow down to the Dead Sea, literally not metaphorically. And of course if you believe this sort of thing about yourself and your group, certain social practices follow: a tight drawing of boundaries within the group, a rigid exclusion of those outside, a carelessness or even downright rejection of most of the concerns of ongoing society, a focus on particular styles of worship and holiness. As history both ancient and modern will show, such groups are often internally fissiparous, fragmenting into smaller groups that then reserve for one another their bitterest anathemas.

N.T. Wright – The Millennium Myth, Publisher:Westminster John Knox Press, 1999, p32-33

Apocalyptic

Apocalyptic “involves vivid metaphors which enable the writer to say, and hopefully the reader to understand the significance, within God’s dimension of reality, of events that happen within our dimension, within the world of space, time and matter. “

N.T. Wright – The Millennium Myth, p 30, Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999

Holy Week

What will you do with this man?

Old Log Barn

Lanark County, Ontario

Coldstream Guard

Glass Nectar

Purple Flower

RBH, Burlington, ON. Wish I knew all the names for these gorgeous flowers.

Music of the Spheres

RBH, Burlington, ON

Royal Botanical Garden

Burlington, Ontario

Byblos Beauty

Byblos is just north of Beirut, on the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon.

It is believed to have been founded around 5000 BC, and according to fragments attributed to the semi-legendary pre-Trojan war Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, it was built by Cronus as the first city in Phoenicia.[1] Today it is believed by many to be the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world.

It is mentioned in the Bible in 1 Kings 5:18, referring to the nationality of the builders of Solomon's Temple, and also in Ezekiel 27:9, referring to the riches of Tyre.

(pic by me; some info from Wikipedia)

Original Nike

The god Nike, in Ephesus.

In Greek mythology, Nike (Greek: Νίκη, "Victory", was a goddess who personified victory throughout the ages of the ancient Greek culture. She is known as the Winged Goddess of Victory. The Roman equivalent was Victoria. Depending upon the time of various myths, she was described as the daughter of Pallas (Titan) and Styx (Water), and the sister of Cratos (Strength), Bia (Force), and Zelus (Rivalry). Nike and her siblings were close companions of Zeus, the dominant deity of the Greek pantheon. According to classical (later) myth, Styx brought them to Zeus when the god was assembling allies for the Titan War against the older deities. Nike assumed the role of the divine charioteer, a role in which she often is portrayed in Classical Greek art. Nike flew around battlefields rewarding the victors with glory and fame.

Nike is seen with wings in most statues and paintings. Most other winged deities in the Greek pantheon had shed their wings by Classical times. Nike is the goddess of strength, speed, and victory. Nike was a very close acquaintance of Athena. Nike is one of the most commonly portrayed figures on Greek coins.

Names stemming from Nike include Nicholas ("victory of the people"), Nick, Nikolai, Nils, Klaas and Nicola.
-- from Wikipedia

With Gladness

Preacher

Out on a Limb

Tulips

Longing for Spring!

Trafalgar Saint

"We are committed to identifying and affirming what is good and identifying and opposing what is evil, and living as best we can in the mess in the middle."
- confusion or necessity in missional praxis? (from church website, St. Martin's in the Fields, London, England)