View From The Basement

100 days

Alan Johnston, BBC reporter in Gaza has now been held captive for 100 days. Our thoughts and prayers are with him, his family, the people in Gaza and yes his captors.

Forgotten

Life does not stand still and like voyeuristic flies we buzz from one hot new topic to another and in our flying suffer some sort of amnesia.

The friends and family of Madeleine McCann have done very well to keep her story and profile in the news for so long. The story of her family, the fear that this could happen to our kids, grips us all and weighs heavy in our minds and on her hearts. We cry "God have mercy" and pray that she is alive and will be returned to her family soon.

But what of Alan Johnston? Do we pray for him? Do we remember him or is he forgotten?

On Tuesday I was doing some teaching on the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. One of the issues I raise about Ecclesiastes is that some of it's theology sits ill with the rest of scripture. As an example of this I used 2:16 where it talks about being forgotten in death. I explained that to be forgotten in Jewish thought of that period was to not exist.

In some respects we still think like this - "out of sight out of mind" is a phrase we still use. Yet we need to remember and remember rightly. We need to remember Alan Johnston, for to forget his plight it to forget the plight of the many who do not pull at out heart strings, to forget his plight is to forget the un-known kidnapped around the globe and of whom we never hear.

Getting Drunk

Freddie Flintoff probably Englands most naturally talented cricketer for a generation has got himself into all sorts of problems from his widely reported drinking escapades at the cricket world cup.

This in turn has sparked off a debate about whither his losing the vice-captaincy and missing one game was an over reaction to this incident. There were the obligatory phone ins on Radio 5, with many callers saying that the authorities had overreacted.

I beg to differ with this view, for it bolsters the view that getting drunk is a socially acceptable thing to do. Yet the UK and Scotland in particular has a growing problem with alcohol. In 2004 there were 8,221 alcohol-related deaths in the UK, almost double the 1991 total of 4,144. That is a staggering rise in just 13 years! If the UK picture is bleak then the Scottish context is even worse. The area I live in, Glasgow, had the highest alcohol-related death rate among both men and women in 1998 - 2004. Fifteen of the 20 UK local areas with the highest male alcohol-related death rates were in Scotland, 14 of the top 20 for women. Two out of three 16 - 24 year old males in Scotland drank more than twice the recommended daily benchmarks [Scottish health survey 1998].

Getting drunk is no laughing matter, especially as for most people this is not an unforeseen consequence of a "good night out", but is the object of the night out as for many the attitude exists that unless you get drunk you cannot have a good time.

I hope Freddie is truly sorry, I hope he gets help as his over drinking seems to be a feature of his lifestyle. I hope he does not become crickets George Best. More than this I hope that as a nation we can change our relationship to alcohol.

REport on Alcohol Related Deaths    Health Stats Spring 2007   Stats on alcohol in Scotland     Binge Drinking Costing Billions

Child Poverty

Trident (again)

MP's will today participate in a vote on wither the UK should re-new it's Trident nuclear missle system.

It seems that there is a reasonable number of MP's who will vote against it's re-newal. I pray they will not loose their nerve, that God would add to their number that they would have a vision for a more just, less dangerous world.

update - the Government won the vote to replace Trident.

IPod = insecure, Pressured, Overtaxed and Debt-ridden

Hat tip to Brad who highlights a Newweek article called, Europe's New Young Generation of Losers. The article outlines the growing rift and tension between those of the boomer generation and their kids. One paragraph in particular jumped out at me;

"Lacking well-paid jobs, the young have been thrown back on the generosity of their parents. That's fine for the middle class, but much worse for the poor. "Progress was once produced by the state; now it comes from family solidarity,"

The growing gap between the "haves" and "have not's" is something that greatly concerns me, but what to do? A while back I went to hear Tom Sine speak. He touched on many of the issues the Newsweek article does. His challenge to those of us there that day was to find Kingdom solutions to these problems. Yet so often the church undergirds the status quo rather than challenging it.

London Shootings

Kester has a very thoughtful post on the recent shootings of young black men boys in London. What Kester brings to this discussion that say New Night did not and perhaps cannot are questions about the spirituality of the black faith communities and the role they might play in the disenfranchisement of their adolescent boys.

Kester asks "where (in Fowlers stages of development) are the stage 4+ Pentecostals"? Where is the space and who are the guides that can help navigate the difficult and dangerous ground of this "demythologizing" stage? Both space and guides seem to be in short supply.

As with all these issues there are no simple or quick fix answers, but perhaps in this period of reflection these recent tragedy's will birth leaders of young men in these communities that will create safe spaces for questioning and be guides to lead them into manhood?

Still Small Voices

I've posted some thoughts on Still Small Voices today.

On the brink of civil war?

A couple of years back I fulfilled a life ambition and visited the beautiful country of Lebanon. Since I was a young teen I'd wanted to go there and see the ancient cedars. So when the opportunity arose to take a youth mission trip there I jumped at it. As with most placed you visit to do some kind of mission you bring back something of that country in your heart so to speak, and also leave something of yourself there.

Over the past months my concern for the political situation in this small country has been growing. Ever since the assassination of Hariri Lebanon seems to have been lurching towards an ever growing period of instability, and one is left asking the question is this the portent of civil war?

The news coverage last week of the general strike in Beirut, organised by Hizbullah, seems to have added fuel to the tensions that were never far from the surface between the different ethnic groups who now peacefully try to coexist but when I was a kid were are war with each other.

BBC correspondent Jim Muir writes on the situation under the header "Lebanon clashes fuel fears of civil war". For a Lebanese perspective you can read the Daily Star an English medium Middle East Paper that's on the web.

Still Small Voices

The first story from an asylum seeker is now up on Still Small Voices.