Q Conversations 4: Jazz Singer and Photographer Ruth Naomi Floyd

While I was in the States at the end of last month, I had an afternoon to kill in Philadelphia. So the completely obvious thing to do was record another Q conversation. This time I sat down to chat with Ruth Naomi Floyd, whom I’d met at the European Leadership Conference in Hungary a few years ago. It’s available on iTunes podcasts, or if you prefer a direct feed, here on Jellycast.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 56 (May 2013)

A brief plug before this outing. Someone asked how I keep track of various internet things. My secret is the wonder that is Pocket. People send me stuff or I see stuff on my RSS reader (NetNewsWire if you’re interested), and then I click pocket in the browser – and can then check them out off-line on my phone on trains and tubes etc. Simple really – so there you are.

Sacred Treasure

• This is a wakeup call – a global rich list tied to an appeal to donate to the world’s poorest. Very simple, very effective.
• A more interesting conversation now that “Richard Dawkins has lost…”
• A brief but pastorally important response to suicide amongst believers.

Q Conversations 3: Spy novelist Charles Cumming

He ate my toast and drank my beer. But that seemed sufficient to put him at his ease and get him talking (good cop routine). And it was a lot of fun. Charles Cumming has managed to craft a very successful career as a spy novelist out of the failure to enter SIS/MI6 after their initial approach.

Friday Fun 41: Mitchell & Webb debunking conspiracy theories

Some readers will know that my current obsessions are conspiracies and suspicions. One of these days, these may coalesce into something substantial. But that feels a long way off at the moment. Ho hum. But for now, if you want some brilliant ripostes to those who suck up every conspiracy theory going, then my suggestions are twofold:

• Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest David Aaronovitch’s superb Voodoo Histories, reviewed here some months back.
• Watch, chuckle and take very seriously indeed these little gems from the wondrous archive of Mitchell & Webb.

Q Conversations 2: the living legend that is Frances Whitehead

You may not have heard of Frances Whitehead – but if you have read any of John Stott’s books, you will have witnessed her extraordinary handiwork: transforming his handwritten scrawl into immaculate typescript ready for the publishers. For more than 50 years, she worked very closely with him and her perspective on his life and work is unique and valuable.

So it was a total joy for me to spend the best part of a day with her at home in Bourne End, on the Thames, to the west of London, during which our conversation ranged over all kinds of things.

Forging a future out of a pandemic of tragedy: Rhidian Brook’s The Aftermath

The months immediately after the close of the Second World War were confusing. One minute the Allies had been dropping bombs on Germany (as Col Lewis Morgan, the protagonist in Rhidian Brook‘s The Aftermath, points out, more bombs fell on Hamburg in one weekend than fell on the London in the entire war), the next they were dropping lifeline supplies in the Berlin Airlift of ’48-’49. The disorientation this must have brought for ordinary Germans is articulated by some so-called ferals (kids living in the ruins of the city):

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 55 (April 2013)

Oooooops – this is seriously late!! Many apologies. Been rather a busy week and completely forgot to post this!

Sacred Treasure

• Shhh!! Chris Green on introvert preachers and introvert lightbulb changers
• Eddie Arthur quotes the wonderful Oscar Muriu on the traps of western (though here, particularly American) missionaries in E. Africa.

Expressing our lives in consumerist terms

A good friend, John Goering, was reading an article, alluringly entitled How to make trillions of dollars, and he came across this quotation, written over half a century ago (by one Victor Lebow in 1955). Like him, it made me sit up and notice.

As If These Walls Had Tears: Reflections on Berlin’s Holocaust memorial

Apparently there were only 19 hours of sunshine in Berlin between 1st January and 22nd March – a record low. Such absolute greyness is oppressive. But in recent weeks, there have also been huge snowfalls. The result is an eerily monochrome world. Not ideal for taking sightseers’ photographs. But somehow appropriate for a visit to Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Bursting the Self-Esteem Bubble once and for all? Glynn Harrison on a Big Ego Trip

It’s easy to forget the psychobabble jargon that is now so part of  everyday parlance had its origins in serious academic discourse. It’s pretty obvious when you stop to think about it, because all terms, metaphors and concepts must have their origins somewhere. It only takes a few decades or even years before what starts confined to the lecture room ends up on the street (whether the discipline be philosophy, theology, or psychology). What is scary is how many of the psychological assumptions that we take for granted today are built on such flimsy foundations. That is the main thrust of the first half of Glynn Harrison‘s important new book, The Big Ego Trip.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 54 (March 2013)

Sacred Treasure

• Is there a new US-style religious Right in the UK – Theos argues no
• Research shows that if you ‘survive’ first 10 years of marriage, you’re more likely to last the course as divorce rates for that stage haven’t shifted much
• This is a bit of a surprise for this particular blog: 10 reasons why Creationism should be taught in schools

Popkin’s Surprising Lessons from the White House campaign Trail

I guess this book will initially appeal only to politics junkies and West Wing devotees (which is probably why I read it). But I suspect many others may well enjoy it despite that – it’s pacey, readable and insightful. And actually, surprisingly relevant to all kinds of other walks of life.

A politics professor and former Democrat party campaign consultant (from McGovern through to Gore), Samuel Popkin has sought to expose the arcane and often dark arts of US presidential campaigning in The Candidate. The results are fascinating. Here are just a few windows into this bizarre parallel world.

The British Empire was never quite what you thought: John Darwin’s Unfinished Empire

Nearly 10 years ago, a dear friend of mine was addressing a gathering of Ugandan MPs in the Parliament building in Kampala (around the 40th anniversary of independence). It included those from all shades on the political spectrum, including not a few post-colonial firebrands. My friend is certainly no great apologist for imperialism, but he posed two simple questions.

• “Which Ugandan regions (of those that the British failed to develop) have we since developed?”
• “What aspects of public life, government and rule of law have we improved on or done better in than the colonial regime?”

The Prince of Wounds by Siegfried Sassoon

Picked up a Sassoon anthology this week. Had forgotten the visceral humanity of his poetry, but also the theological framework of his vision. This is a case in point, even though it leaves one in a real lurch.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 53 (February 2013)

Sacred Treasure

• Great stuff from Keller: Preaching in a Secular Culture
• This is good: 8 ways preachers harm the depressed
• Fantastic news: Proc Trust makes its audio archive available for free download.

The Gulag Shawshank: Lev & Sveta Mishchenko in ‘Just Send Me Word’

The proverbial ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ could have been minted especially for Lev Mishchenko, one half of the extraordinary couple at the heart of Orlando Figes’ Just Send Me Word. Before completing his science studies in Moscow, he was whisked away to the Nazi front. Soon after, he was captured and spent considerable time as a German POW. As a German-speaker, he was able to make himself useful – though he resolutely refused to become a German spy. That wasn’t enough to prevent him from being convicted as one on his release – for which his sentence was death, commuted to 10 years hard labour in Siberia.

Monarchy’s last hurrah? Edward VII’s funeral in 1910

It could have been at a rather upmarket fancy-dress party. The dress was certainly fancy; the guests well-to-do; the event evidently unusual. But as well as being a deeply solemn occasion, and even a family occasion, it was an era-defining moment.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 52 (January 2013)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s to a great 2013!

Sacred Treasure

• Law and Grace in Les Miserables
• Important booklet on Prosperity Gospel made available by the Theology Network
• Why CSLewis’ Mere Christianity should have bombed… and the lessons we can learn
• It’s done the rounds – but no less fun for that: Higgs vs Dawkins on Atheist fundamentalism

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 51 (December 2012)

Sacred Treasure

• Eddie Arthur has provided some important updated stats on Bible Translation.
• An interesting response to voting in a presidential election
• Barnabas Piper on 7 things a kind wants from his pastor dad – really helpful stuff here

Caught in the crossfire: the Pain of Exile and Friendship in Dmetri Kakmi’s Mother Land

I set out for Greece today to do a long weekend of training in Athens: a country and city wracked by austerity measures, riots and fearful pessimism. And the complexities of the situation extend back far in the country’s history – they certainly defy soundbite rhetoric or easy-blame zingers. But as I return, I’ve been thinking a great deal about one person’s experience of this history, a history inextricably if painfully linked to that of its neighbour, Turkey: Dmetri Kakmi’s Mother Land.