Kia ora e te whanau
Another week of learning to live at Alert Level 2 has passed! I don’t know how you’re finding things – for me, the 2 “in between” levels (2 and 3) always seem to be the hardest – we’re “almost there”, but not quite. To mask, or not to mask – that is the question!
Last Sunday we met as Ilam in Groups – in the end around 110 of us across 9 groups, which was great! This week we will stay with the Groups model – and we have 10 venues this time. Hopefully you will hear from Andrea with an invitation / confirmation of location for this Sunday. If you could let your “host” know if you can’t make it, it’s helpful in terms of sorting out seating and spacing ahead of time. Thanks!
Thanks, too, for bearing with us, as we get our bearings around the changing rules of Alert Level 2. As you will know, we can now meet in groups of up to 100, provided we have appropriate physical distancing in place. In theory, therefore, we could offer Ilam School Hall for something like a more normal Sunday gathering (minus singing, of course, at this stage). However, numbers would have to be capped, which means we would still need to have some other venues available for the overflow (and 51 Ilam Rd is not sufficient, as it needs to be limited to around 24 to ensure appropriate distancing). So, if anyone has some ideas around the best way that we could try some different things on Sunday mornings at Alert Level 2, please get in touch!
Last Sunday in our service we dived into Daniel chapter 1 as we started looking at how Daniel might speak to us in 2021 in a COVID-infested, climate-change challenged world. It sounds like there was some good discussions generated – some of it maybe slightly tangential to the questions asked (but undoubtedly inspired by the spirit of those questions J). I find that the more I read Daniel taking off my Sunday School hat, the more interesting I find it in terms of seeing the big questions Daniel and Co were confronted with living in this potentially syncretistic Babylon.
I’m especially grateful to Malcolm this week for thinking about the process by which Daniel and his companions were approved for the veggies and water diet. He managed to locate this assessment of the research methodology which was employed in the 10 day clinical trial we’re told about:
In considering the strengths and weaknesses of the controlled trial reported in the Book of Daniel, David Grimes (1995) has observed that the strengths include the use of a contemporaneous control group and independent assessor of outcome; and that the weaknesses include probable selection and ascertainment bias, and confounding by divine intervention.
Interesting perspectives for the 21st century researcher!
On a lighter note, William Topaz McGonagall, the 19th century Scottish self-styled “poet and tragedian”, described by Punch Magazine as “the greatest Bad Verse writer of his age”, wrote a poem about the Tay Bridge disaster. (The railway bridge over the River Tay in Scotland collapsed in a storm in winter 1879, taking with it a passenger train heading to Dundee.) I’ve included the opening stanza and the final stanza – the lesson from which I thought the many engineers among us at Ilam might appreciate as they work on their designs.
The Tay Bridge Disaster
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
…
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.