Fernando Gros

Thoughts From The Blogosphere

A selec­tion of the com­ments, ideas and insights that have got me think­ing (and in one case sal­iv­at­ing) this week…

Mind The Gap — Brodie high­lights the grow­ing inequal­ity gap as one of the core issues facing PM-to-be-at-last Gordon Brown. The quote from Miroslav Volf is worth repeat­ing here.

“A third form of exclu­sion is becom­ing increas­ingly pre­val­ent not only in the way the rich of the West and North relate to the poor of the Third world, but also in the manner in which sub­urbs relate to the inner cities, or the jet-setting “cre­at­ors of high value” to the rabble beneath them. It is exclu­sion as abandonment.”

The dynam­ics of gloc­al­isa­tion and the cre­at­ive class is a theme this blog reg­u­larly visits and it is always worth remem­ber­ing the eth­ical issues involved in terms of the lives of those who do lead live of high mater­ial com­fort. Not every­one is invited to the big party. How­ever, I’m a little ambi­val­ent about Volf’s use of “aban­don­ment.” Some­times it feels like the biggest act of aban­don­ment has been the sub­urban church turn­ing it’s back on the inner-cities and with them the cos­mo­pol­itan and cul­tural classes that have now, in the era of glob­al­isa­tion, become the new élite. Isn’t it time we stopped build­ing trenches and star­ted build­ing bridges?

High­lights of Chal­lies Sem­inar at the Basics Con­fer­ence (via Tall­SkinnyKiwi) — Some sage ideas on what Chris­tian blog­gers are doing well and what they could be doing better.

Top 10 things I love and 5 Things I hate about Hong Kong (via Ordin­aryG­weilo) - I’ve men­tioned before my indif­fer­ence towards most Hong Kong ex-pat blogs. But, like a moth to a flame, I keep coming back to them. These two lists of likes and dis­likes are reveal­ing and rather typ­ical of the scene here.

Scal­lop Ceviche with Straw­berry & Green Chilli — I’m always under­whelmed when my favour­ite foods become the fla­vour of the month. This time the victim is ceviche, which seems to be the dish of the year in a lot of places. At least ThePas­sion­ate­Cook, one of my favour­ite food­b­logs is saavy enough to know this recipe is not a true ceviche. Also, check out the Scal­lop carpac­cio ?† la Robuchon — I’ve tried that at the L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon here in HK and it was stunning.

What About Kids In Organic Church? (via Nex­tRe­form­a­tion and Reclaim­ingThe­Mission) — Upon closer read­ing this art­icle wasn’t as impress­ive as I first thought. “…the truth is that chil­dren learn more at home with their whole family than in school with their peers…” — no, not in my exper­i­ence or under­stand­ing. There’s a pre­sumptive tone in the art­icle that I didn’t like. But, the import­ant insight as you wade through the examples appears to be that kids do learn an aweful lot from the example of par­ents and other key adults (which we all know) but that most formal Sunday School pro­grammes some­times don’t reflect upon real world min­istry exper­i­ences or engage kids in them (which is a valu­able insight). A grow­ing trend I’m seeing is par­ents taking their kids along to min­istry and mis­sion con­texts so they see what it is the adults do in ser­vice. That can happen regard­less of the eclessial model people are pushing.

Ortho­doxy As An Event and Ques­tions About a Quaker Ortho­doxy — I’m broadly sym­path­etic to the way C.Wess is inter­rog­at­ing Tony Jones’ approach to ortho­doxy here. In par­tic­u­lar, the rela­tion of ortho­doxy and tele­ology fas­cin­ates me, espe­cially if we adopt a socio-rhetorical defin­i­tion of ortho­doxy (ortho­doxy as collective-practices). What’s the point of church without goals and hopes?

Seeing Through Bars — Not long after I took on this Christian-thing, it became pretty obvi­ous that con­cern for those in prison was a core focus of the faith (given the prom­in­ant role it plays in the Bible). So, I’m inclined to agree with John’s sup­port for it (at least I’m guess­ing there is sup­port behind those ques­tions). But, by labelling those in jail as per­pet­rat­ors of evil and suf­fer­ing, it seems maybe this post has slipped into the same kind of reas­on­ing that allows many believ­ers to ignore the plight of pris­on­ers. If we put grace and res­tor­at­ive justice at the core of our out­look on incar­cer­a­tion, we end up look­ing not just at the crime and pun­ish­ment, but also at the form­a­tion of the pris­oner before their crimes, at the poten­tial for their life after­wards and their pros­pets for future par­ti­cip­a­tion in society.

The Long Take: The Greatest Long Track­ing Shots in Cinema — I recently men­tioned the long track­ing shots in Chil­dren of Men. Well, this excel­lent blo­g­post has a canon­ical list of the best of these kinds of shots and is a fant­astic resource for all you film-heads.

Gen­eral Ordin­a­tion Exam­in­a­tion: 2007 (via Brad.Boydston.us) - Brad thinks this is a good set of ques­tions and I’m more than inclined to agree. I have a feel­ing ques­tions four and six would stump an aweful lot of min­is­ters I have known.

Edu­ca­tion and the Exodus Man­date (via JesusPolit­ics) — Like Marty Duren I have very mixed feel­ings about the idea of pulling kids of state/secular schools and into some exclus­ively “Chris­tian” school­ing system. I do believe the church has a role to play in edu­ca­tion, but I also believe kids need to be pre­pared for life in the world and that their abil­ity to cope with the strains of grow­ing up require net­works and sup­port that extend well beyond the school. Moreover, schools don’t just social­ise kids, they also social­ise par­ents, allow­ing them to build and develop their net­works. Duren dis­misses social­isa­tion (as an argu­ment against homeschool­ing) but wor­ries about cul­tural rel­ev­ance — I see the two as connected.

Take it Away - We’ve been talk­ing a lot lately about the things we miss about Delhi. I guess it’s a func­tion of approach­ing the one-year anniversary of our depar­ture. But, of all the things we miss, deliv­ery food was not one of them — it simply wasn’t avail­able where we lived, no Chinese, no Pizza, noth­ing. In fact, I spent more time in the Kit­chen every­day in India than I ever have in my life, which cer­tainly was not all bad! It’s fas­cin­at­ing how expats can exper­i­ence a city so dif­fer­ently on the ordin­ary, every­day level.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 13th, 2007 at 11:30 am. It is filed under Daily Life, Delhi, Education, Expatriate, Film Theory, Food, Globalisation, Missional Church, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.