o   What are your reflections on the Occupy movement and the financial crisis?

o   Have you protested? Do you work in finance? What do you think God is saying / doing in these times?

o   Do you have any tips for managing personal banking and investment?

o   Can you recommend an ethical bank? Does ethical banking live up to its name?

o   Have you tried any alternative options for saving, insurance or mortgages?

I love this set I found in Adbusters Feb 2011 (although brace yourself for the cover if you do search for it).  The page to the left is renowned French Portraitist Denis Bouvre whose piece is of a Senegalese wrestler .  The page on the right is ‘Queen Rocket‘ from ‘13 Queens‘, a piece by AlexandFelix.  However the two pages titled ‘what is normal?‘ are intentionally placed side by side thus creating a new comment and dialogue.  I couldn’t work out what I liked about them until a friend said “I don’t get it, explain it to me”.  Because I was forced to deconstruct and vocalise them, it slowly came clear, an exercise I will repeat.

So I’m not going to tell you what I found but I will offer you a few questions that should help you decode it for yourself.

Take a page at a time and ask yourself:

What are ALL the elements that make up the visual?  The colours, materials, props etc?  

What do each of these elements represent?  What are their origin?  What are their purpose?

Now contrast each page’s findings.

You can find alexandfelix and Denis Rouvre’s work here and here

Plus my new site attempting to Redeem Advertising Space designthefuture

Starting tomorrow I’ll be blogging daily through Lent at this site. I’ll be sharing some of the challenges and successes of trying to live more simply, and expanding on material in the book. A few friends are working through the book over Lent, and this should be a great accompaniment. But I also wanted to make something available for those who don’t have access to the book.

There are also some notes for small groups to use, including some of the most challenging / unorthodox things I’ve proposed for groups to try together. The idea of making a full inventory of what you own, for instance, came from a discussion with the guys at Nomad last year. Crazily, in our society, we barely have enough time to keep stock of the things we own. I hope that, if anything, an exercise like this gives us cause to be more thankful. But then if we could give our list to someone else to pray over (see the notes for more details), just think what might happen…

Enjoy Lent, and may it lead to deeper transformation in all of us.

I wanted to thank you for putting this together [the Lent 2012 Consumer Detox] – and how very appropriate this is for the times we live in. It seems to be the focus of many people, including those outside the church, to de-clutter their lives. I receive emails from Daily Good and two have really stood out so far: one included a link to this blog http://zenhabits.net/ who is currently dealing with removal of clutter (very practical), and http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=130 which gives some amazing statistics relating to the fact that working longer hours contributes to carbon emissions and unsustainable living.

This year I made 2 new year resolutions:

•  to buy only food, and to make, bake or create everything else.
• to clear out the junk and unused clutter from my home, piece by piece, every day – and yes, we have lived here, with our 5 children (now grown up) for 20 years so this will take me a year!

So far, I have kept them both, and am feeling quite liberated by them. Clearing space frees the mind for other things. Not going shopping is wonderful – I have even discovered that Ocado deliver free to my area on a Wednesday lunch time, so I am saving petrol, time and greenhouse gas emissions! Wonderful!

Thank you so much for your inspiring writing. God bless you on your journey.

Jefferson Bethke

The night Jefferson Bethke, 22, posted his “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” video on YouTube, he made a bet with his mates about how many views the video would get by morning.

The highest bet was 6,000.

By the time Bethke woke up the next day, the video had more than 100,000 views. Eight days after the video was posted, it had been watched more than 14 million times. The number continues to skyrocket.

The video, Bethke said, was an attempt “to write a poem against legalism, self righteousness, self-justification and hypocrisy”. It contains catchy lines like: “The problem with religion is it never gets to the core / It’s just behaviour modification, like a long list of chores” and “I’m just saying quit putting on a fake look / Cause there’s a problem if people only know you’re a Christian by your Facebook”.

The video has been discussed by both religious scholars and armchair theologians. Some point out that pitching Jesus against all religion is too sweeping: Jesus, after all, was a religious Jew. Bethke himself says “You have to get back to my definition of religion. Jesus was coming to abolish self righteousness, justification and hypocrisy.”

In fact, the New Testament’s definition of Jesus’ kind of religion is pretty punchy: “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you” (James 1:27, NLT).

Defending and helping the defenceless, the marginalised? Refusing to swallow the lies of the surrounding culture? That’s the kind of religion Jesus taught and modelled.

Revolutionary religion like that means selling possessions, living simply, sharing with those in need. It means opening your heart and life to others. It means refusing the lie that says “Live for number one”.  It means going beyond the pain barrier, learning to love, committing yourself to working for justice and sticking at it over the long haul.

For me, it meant giving up my own home and sharing it with others, and not having a penny to my name because I share my cash with others, too.

For Jesus, it meant dying for what was right. He calls us to follow Him.

I believe there may be a sequel waiting to be made: “I Love Jesus And I Love The Religion He Loves” – to lay down my life for the marginalized and see through the lies of the mainstream.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions and stories about the world of clothing and fashion. For instance:

• What is your favourite ethical clothing brand / purchase and why?
• Is charity shopping the way forward? Any tips for this?
• If we dress ‘simply’ do we end up enjoying our bodies and our clothes less? Could there be a way to enjoy them more?
• Is it ever acceptable to wear something that might have been made in a sweat shop?
• ‘Do not worry about what you wear’ – how do you do this?
• When was the last time you heard gold jewellery denounced in church (see 1 Tim 2:9-10)? Have we missed something, or have times changed?

You can comment on this piece, of course, but you can also submit a new blog post (email editor@breathenetwork.org) or something for the Breathe monthly email (to subscribe: in@breathenetwork.org). Watch out, too, for new Breathe contributors James, Micah, Annie and Matt, as well Phil, Jeremy and I.

Enjoy!

Television watching is a sedentary activity which is known to be harmful to health and is distinct from getting too little exercise. But a new study suggests its damaging effects may even rank alongside those from smoking and obesity. The study includes bad news for advertisers: it found that if you get up during the commerical breaks and run around, you may be able to ameliorate television’s worst effects.

Researchers who studied television viewing habits in Australia calculated that people who watch for an average of six hours a day shorten their life expectancy by almost five years.

Now, I’ve long since given up taking statistics at face value. But there clearly is a link between TV and bad health of various sorts. And we’re watching more of it, too (although I guess being sat at a computer as I am now is just as sedentary). The only thing missing in these particular reports, so far as I’ve read, is the full time cost of TV. To watch an hour of TV may indeed shorten your life – that is, it has a high association with shorter lifespans. But even if it’s as much as 22 minutes per hour, that’s nothing compared to the 60 minutes you’ve already lost in the first place!

In total, watching an hour of TV could make our lives 82 minutes shorter! Now there’s an incentive to turn off the box.

It’s hard, though, I know. Just the other day I was almost hooked by cult TV series The Killing. I watched the first episode on iPlayer, and was suitably thrilled and entranced. But then I thought about the other 19 hours I’d need to finish it off. That’s 1140 minutes of my life. If the research is right, maybe 1558 minutes!

So all in all I’m glad we cancelled our licesne. I say cancelled, actually we briefly reinstated it for the royal wedding and Wimbledon (!) but it’s gone again now. Not that it was easy – the only reasons the TV licensing people seem to accept for not wanting a license anymore are moving or dying! Can’t they imagine that we might simply have had to much of it? Come to think of it, can’t we?