Hey New York – take a lesson from Durban!

It’s happened twice now in South Africa — helicopters have rescued people from burning buildings, once in Pretoria during a fire at the South African Agricultural Union Building, and last night at a hotel in Durban.
Last night’s fire was worse than the Pretoria one; there were more people, and the building was taller. As the [...]

Chinese Taliban

First it was the Taliban using Buddha statues for artillery target practice, and now the Chinese are wanting to destroy a 100-year-old Catholic shrine.
In Vanity of Vanities the Imugi dismisses Samuel Huntington’s thesis of the Clash of civilizations as Platonism in politics, but I think there is more to it than that, as these examples [...]

The appearance of Jesus Christ

Rethabile, in Black Looks, posts Christ — another meme, with two pictures of the Protestant Jesus, and asks children which one is the “real” Jesus.
I don’t have any children of that age around to ask, but if I did I’d show them a third picture.

It was painted by my daughter.

First pet food, now cough medicine and toothpaste

A couple of months ago batches of pet food were withdr from sale in various countries, including South Africa, because one of the ingredients, imported from China, was found to be contaminated with poisonous substances. that caused kidney failure.
Now, it seems, other products made from ingredients manufactured in China have been found to be [...]

New Phil Rickman novel

A couple of days ago my wife found a Phil Rickman novel in a bookshop, and bought it immediately. It was The remains of an altar, a Merrily Watkins novel.
For some reason I don’t understand, Phil Rickman’s novels are hard to find in bookshops, so we have to get them whenever we see them — [...]

Militant atheism goes West

Back in the 1930s the League of Militant Atheists was booming in Stalinist Russia. At its peak it had over 11 million members. And in Russia in the 1930s more than 200 000 priests and monks were killed in the godless paradise where all the bad things caused by religion — war, oppression and hatred [...]

Oldest Orthodox priest dies – Memory eternal!

The oldest Orthodox priest in the world, Fr Elias Wen, fell asleep in the Lord at the age of 110.
You can read more about him here.

Monasticism in Southern Africa

There’s a new blog for discussing monasticism in Africa.
The first South African Orthodox monk to be tonsured in South Africa is to be ordained as a priest at 09:00 on Sunday 15 July 2007 at St Thomas’s Orthodox Church, 14 Tana Road, Sunninghill, Gauteng.
There is also an underutilised forum for urban monasticism at http://tribes.tribe.net/urbanmonk for [...]

And they told us the Taliban were vandals

After the Taliban used historic Buddha statues for artillery practice, the Western media castigated them as vandals, and when Afghanistan was invaded it was difficult to feel sorry for them.
But the Taliban’s vandalism is small change compared to the Bush/Blair “Coalition of the willing”.
Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central [...]

Now you see it, now you don’t

Batten down the hatches, down periscopes, the emerging church is submerging again!
Or is it just a mixed mataphor?