paperless advent!

Something to do this year instead of taking photos of Christmas light decorations around my neighbourhood ... from the Greenbelt website, I just spotted this. Real delight, even though it's curiously called "paperless Christmas". And yes - I know Advent doesn't start until Saturday, but I did sneak a look at door number 1 ...

Thanks to its creators, whoever you are.

sustenance

Returning from a few days' happy, sunny journey around Cumbria, Northumberland and Scotland, I still had the wrapper from the delicious Selkirk Bannock I'd bought on Lindisfarne on Monday and been munching en route since.

To give it its full title it's Dalgetty's Famous Original Selkirk Bannock: naturally rich fruit bread - made with butter

It's certainly delicious so I went to the web to see if I could buy some online. Not sure if I really want to pay all that but the bonus is that I stumbled on information about Dalgetty's Selkirk Bannock on 'Practically Edible' - a delightful website for foodies around the world. Among its delights is a 'food calendar' which celebrates food and recipes. How about this quote from Henry James (American writer. 15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916):

It might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it.

And apparently today is "Homemade Bread Day".

Northumberland, Scotland and Cumbria were looking stunning this week and Russell and Sue's car was on best behaviour so I indulged it in a photoshoot on Lindisfarne - thanks R&S!

picture of paradox

Following m o d e 's images yesterday, today AmmarQ8 has a powerful image relating to global warming.

Stop the warming

keep it clean

inviting you...
Originally uploaded by m o d e

Under the heading "environment - to live with" on m o d e's blog Maldives in still mode come 3 clean, fresh views of the islands, and this verse:

We breathe in the air, so keep the air clean.
We live by the sea, so keep the sea clean.
We ride on the road, so keep the road clean.
We need a better health condition, so keep our environment clean!
Safe environment, Safe people.

investing in hope

There are some pics on Flickr (Mindstormphotos and Daskar) which will give a bit of encouragement to West Papuan folk in their continuing struggle to gain their freedom from Indonesia's illegal occupation. I love this one in West Papua and this one in London.

Please spare a thought for everyone working towards peace and justice.

West Papua's pain and tears

Among our church members are two families from West Papua. Their hearts are very much back home because the people of West Papua are illegally occupied by Indonesia and are being systematically brutalised. It's not something we hear much about in Britain.

Yesterday Benny told me that one of his people back home had been tortured and killed on Thursday night.

I found this picture on a West Papuan news site which brings it home.

Rudi Pagawak’s body at the Papua Provincial hospital morgue in Dok II Jayapura.
He is the victim who was tortured to death by an Indonesian soldier in Lereh district last Thursday evening.
Seems he was knocked around the head by the irritable soldier and then 'dunked under water' in a pond for 15 minutes.






[And here's the Free West Papua website
which carried the story translated into English.]