Where was I? Under a rock?! How COULD I have missed it!!!

The Australian season of the Dirty Dancing theatre production has closed!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh how the gen-x tears flow!

After much rigorous scientific study, I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘Chewy Caramel’ Tim Tams are the best choice for a Tim Tam Slam. Best results are acheived after refrigeration : )

Last week I mentioned an interview with Moby on the ‘God’s Politics’ blog. Here is part two of that interview:

http://www.beliefnet.com/…/moby-audio-interview-everything-is_12.html

While in Sydney a while ago, I went to a lecture at Sydney University by Jim Wallis, about the ideas expressd in his new book, God’s Politics (there is also an Australian edition).

Here’s a brief description:

God’s Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition — that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life (beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). Our biblical faith and religious traditions simply do not allow us as a nation to continue to ignore the poor and marginalized, deny racial justice, tolerate the ravages of war, or turn away from the human rights of those made in the image of God. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not. In the tradition of prophets such as Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu, Wallis inspires us to hold our political leaders and policies accountable by integrating our deepest moral convictions into our nation’s public life.

The book has been highly successful, making it to the New York Times’ Best Seller List, and now a new blog has been launched: http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics/.

While skimming the latest blog articles, I noticed this interview with Moby (the musician not the whale hunter), in which he describes his journey of faith. Listen to it here. This is the first of a series of interviews.

My brother is in Melbourne for a few days! Today we saw ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘, the movie about Global Warming by Al Gore, whom President Bush narrowly (and controversially) beat to the White House in 2000.

If you haven’t yet seen it, do so.

This movie is a must-see doco on global warming that will terrify and, hopefuly, wake enough people that our governments will start listening and taking action, and ordinary people will start changing their lifestyles.

It’s that last bit (changing lifestyles) that is the hardest. Gore says (rightly) that Global Warming is a moral issue. It’s a moral issue because our lifestyles and common environmental malpractice are killing and displacing millions, and causing mass extinction of species. The science is true and undeniable. We are to blame. The longer we wait to do something, the worse the impacts will be (and the impacts are already being felt).

I hope Christians and others will be motivated by this film to be good stewards. We’ve been warned before.

What’s scary is that the cause of Global Warming boils down to sin - our greed and selfishness - and this basic problem is not going to lessen. At least not unless there is a radical God-given shift in the hearts of millions.

Amnesty International are running a petition to have UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

It sounds like they are desperatly needed. Sign the petition here (requires Flash):

http://amnesty.textdriven.com/home/index_darfur.php?lang=en

Check out: http://www.simsweatshop.com/

You are invited to enter the world of the sweatshop and become a factory worker. Do you accept the challenge? Can you tirelessly make sports shoes for less than a dollar an hour as you struggle to support your family?

I lasted about 3 days, before I tried to join a union and got beat up.

Want to do more than just play the game? www.amnesty.org | http://www.csw.org.uk/

A friend from cafe church just created this AMAZING simulation of the planet!

It’s a map of the world that shows the CO2 emission rates, birth rates, and death rates of every country in the world. It shows this information visually and in real-time.

To view it comfortably, you will need a relatively decent computer running at a decent screen resolution. You will also need a recent version of the Flash player (if you don’t have it, it should automatically detect it and give you instructions on how to quickly install it).

http://www.breathingearth.net/

Child sponsorship has taken on a new meaning:

http://geezmagazine.org/?page=childsponsor