Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 81 (June 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Philip Yancey has a good piece on the value of small churches… he also passes on a lovely John Ortberg story about a bus driver in San Francisco.
• Eddie Arthur has a consistently thought-provoking blog – this piece particularly good: Go to where God is Not at Work!
• Krish Kandiah on 7 reasons why preaching is dead and 7 reasons why it lives

• Lengthy but ingenious: Was Winnie the Pooh a good Muslim from Andy Bannister
• Two contrasting, opposing responses to the same-sex marriage debate: Matthew Parris and Michael Jensen.
• Beware what Stephen Colbert brilliantly described as Truthiness… (HT a depressing post from Cranmer)

Topical Treasure

• How Western media would have covered the Baltimore Riots if they’d happened in pretty much any other country: very clever indeed
• Sobering infographics about poverty and the status/predicament women around the world… (e.g. see right)
• Isabel Hardman writes so well about modern politics in Britain – this is a great piece: the one thing sadder than an ex-MP
• Mind-blowing photos in utero of conception to fully grown child
• I love this: Wendell Berry on being a poet and a complete human being
• In the light of the appalling atrocity that is FIFA’s corruption, and the death toll of the Qatar World Cup, here are some very provocative anti-logos

Quirky Treasure

• These composite photos of animals in their natural habitats are sublime
• This is so beautiful: a Swedish mother photographs her daughters’ love for each other… one biological, one adopted from Ethiopia.
• 10 Great works of art with hidden meanings
• A lot of fun: mini Lego adventure stories
• Beautiful time-lapse from Bolivia’s stunningly beautiful (and vast) salt flats:

• Great illustrations of foreign words that have no English equivalent.
• 30 Rare colour photographs of Imperial Russia – quite remarkable
• What a great idea: inserting Old Master group studies into photographs of contemporary Kiev
• And while we’re looking at cool videos, this is a fantastic 15 min sci-fi short starring a friend of mine (Teddy Nicholas), set in post-apocalyptic Stockholm. Really impressive stuff