Bloggers, beware of local warming. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/203

The 42nd Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia opened at 9am this morning, 13 February 2008, with an apology to the indigenous population and the stolen generations of 1910-1970.

Lest we forget this day.

I’ve just sent an email to my local MP telling them that I support Parliament’s apology to the Stolen Generations - and they should too!

The apology is not about guilt or individual responsibility - it’s about building trust and reconciliation. Without an apology we cannot properly go forward to address practical disadvantage which continues to plague indigneous communities today.

This historical moment is no time for party politics. It’s really important that all MPs support the apology, otherwise it will ring kinda hollow.

Email your local MP to let them know you support the apology and they should throw their full weight behind it too (especially if you are unfortunate enough to have a Liberal MP)

GetUp!

After seeing the last bad church sign I had posted, a friend suggested this should be an ongoing blog project, so I’m kicking it off with a sign posted outside my own local.

Reasons why I can’t stand signs like this:

1. Very little effort in making it visually appealing. You have to stop and read it to get the message, and can’t just glimpse at it and keep moving. And then you realise that by stopping and reading you’ve lost three seconds of your life that you’ll never get back (if you read slowly like me).

2. I feel like throwing up when I see Christians trying to sell their religion with the whole “believe in what we believe in and you’ll get to heaven”. It assumes people are so selfish that they’ll only go to church to get something for themselves.

3. It also smacks to me of bad theology. I don’t know about you, but when people try to sell me the whole heaven thing, I think about all the instances in the Bible that God says she adores this planet, this level of existence. And if that’s the case, why do we spend so much time talking about the afterlife? To me (Is it only me?), this world is enough, and I can’t believe it’s only a testing ground to determine our entry into the next one.

If you’ve got any bad church signs, send them on to me, or post them on your blog and let me know about it so I can link you.