• Adam and Eve – Sermon

    Here’s the video of yesterday’s sermon – somewhere along the way I’ve managed to lose the text, but the video is here in full. It is about Adam and Eve and about how their story is about now not then. There’s a nod to temptation and a chocolate boutique. I had the atonement in the back of my mind when I was writing it. Oh, and I included a semicolon. See if you can spot it.

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

  1. Paul Hutchinson Avatar
    Paul Hutchinson

    Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
    I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.

      The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.

  2. Seph Avatar
    Seph

    It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

    Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

    Can you tell I’m upset about this?

  3. Daniel Lamont Avatar
    Daniel Lamont

    I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

  4. Father Ron Smith Avatar
    Father Ron Smith

    My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

  5. David Campbell Avatar

    Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.

      I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Synod Mission and Ministry

    We move on to discuss the report on the implementation of Journey of the Baptised and New Century New Directions. Alison Peden begs us to stop sniping at TISEC telling us that it has received excellent reports from those who validate it for the Ministry Divison of the C of E. [One wonders whether it…

  • Synod – age discrimination

    We move on to a canon removing age discrimination from the canons. I get up to say that I support the motion, but ask whether there are any other forms of discrimination which would be allowed in the church which would not be allowed in another workplace. I’m told that they will take this question to…

  • Synod – clergy personel issues

    The question of clergy employment comes up yet again. We are told once again that clergy are not employed, even though there have been recent circumstances where clergy have  been treated as though they are employed in the law. A question is asked as to whether or not we need to deal with every employment…

  • Synod Eucharist

    Just to report the success of yesterday’s great innovation – we had the main Synod Eucharist in the place where we meet rather than in the Cathedral Church of St Mary (Edinburgh) just down the road. Yesterday’s service was splendid. James Macmillan’s lovely mass setting rang around the synod hall. The bishops huddled in splendour around…