We are just back from a week spent on a barge near the Cornwall/Devon border… We’d been planning to camp but having watched the weather forecast  we decided it wouldn’t be wise, especially with a 4 month old. Thanks to ResponsibleTravel.com we came across Blagdon Water… with the benefit of being last minute we negotiated a deal… which meant we could spend the week staying on a moored barge on a lake in a beautiful wildlife reserve, and explore the local coast, which was much like the coast I grew up near.

With no tv or mains electricity we were able to simply rely on the sun for power and books and the radio for entertainment… whilst also keeping to the nautical theme by using Mark Berry’s liturgies inspired by St Brendan the navigator from the Navigatio Pocket Liturgies booklet for times of prayer.

A completely different holiday which we would never have done if it hadn’t have been last minute… so there you go, the benefits of being late! There are more photos on my flickr pages (and for family and friends on mattandpolly’s flickr pages).

We try to buy our clothes from fairtrade / organic / ethical companies… but it is still hard to avoid the lure of the high street and the price tag usually causes the majority to head to the high street.

But there are other ways, I’ve found getting creative about shopping helps, as does heading to charity shops and intentionally trying to avoid the bright lights of the high street…

And buying ethical has got a lot easier over the last few years with some great web-based companies… by there nature they will never be as cheap as the high street (but there in lies the reality of paying the real price), but making the most of sales at these companies helps… and it seems everyone has a sale on at the moment! Here are some of my favourites:

Howies Adili Sea Salt People Tree

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.

The Story of Stuff is a great little film about consumption and our involvement… potentially a good discussion starter on sustainable living for groups…

The recent blah…, subverting the empire, with Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmat looking at their book Colossians Re:mixed, was a good day…

Mark Berry gives a good summary of the day… which really followed the flow of the book, which I’ve mentioned before.

The morning sessions helpfully explored Colossians in the contexts of Israel (The Jewish [Biblical] story), the Cultural/Political/Economic context of the Roman Empire, and the human context of the lives of Philemon and Onesimus… however, it was a shame that the afternoon session didn’t find room for real discussion of ‘our context today’, particularly as people seemed to question some of the way parallels were drawn between the Roman Empire and our contemporary culture as “Empire”… the fact that Walsh and Keesmat don’t let their children have Disney ’stuff’ seemed, in particular, to cause issues for some people…

Whilst I appreciate the reservations of equating today’s culture with an “evil” empire, that then means we set ‘God against Culture in a dualistic way’,  I’m not convinced that this is what they were doing. Rather I feel their approach helps us look at the consumerist nature of our culture (not our whole culture) and question that, which then helps us grapple with the ‘evil’ habits and actions at the heart of our consumerist way of life. It’s all too easy not to ask ourselves tough questions about our consumer idolatry and the visible and invisible impact of our lifestyle choices for instance…

I appreciated the questioning, as it made me appreciate my own bias and question that. On reflection though I don’t feel the book promotes the rejection of the whole of our culture, but rather the specific consumerist idolatrous culture we live with. In short we need both approaches, yes we need to recognise the good in our culture and engage with it (we need cultural contextualisation)… but we also need to take positive actions that stand against the consumerist nature of our culture… sometimes standing against it, and offering an alternative ‘Way’ of life.

Walsh and Keesmat have a similar new book out soon on Romans - I think they said it’ll be called Romans Disarmed - and Brian Walsh also talked of Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement which also sounded good.

**update** Brian Walsh blogging on Romans 13 and reflections on the Blah day on Romans Remixed by Richard Sudworth.

A few people have asked me recently about where we get our fruit and veg from… so I thought it was time I mentioned the delights of Riverford Organic deliveries, especially when I noticed that this week they have announced that they now deliver, through local farms, to most of England and south Wales.

We used to live near the mother Riverford farm in Devon and so when we moved to Oxford were keen to see if we could reinstate our deliveries - their sister Upper Norton farm covers Oxford and the south…

It’s organic, it’s fresh and it’s local… and good value… personally I wouldn’t choose to put anything else in my body… and it means that we very rarely have to visit a supermarket, as with a weekly delivery and a local Co-op means we can avoid the temptations of the super-hyped world of Tesco et al. They also do meat, dairy and a host of extra’s.

I’ve been far too quiet for far too long… and already summer is here, so I thought it was time my blog got a summer make-over… and what better way to mark the summer than a camper van by the sea?

We’ve been looking for a replacement of Dixie (our former vw camper van - as seen here in north Devon)… but so far it looks like we’ll have to make do with the memories of this photo…

btw: the new album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, by Sigur Ros is out soon - you can listen to it online at www.sigurros.com… sounds good, I’ve ordered my copy.

Coming soon: Download Day… Firefox’s attempt to set a world record for the most software downloads in 24 hours to mark the launch of Firefox 3: “With more than 15,000 improvements, increased security, blinding speed and cool new features that, apparently, will change the way we use the Web.”

Had a great few days last week in east Devon staying in a yurt… beautiful structures and lovely to sit in rain or shine! Fortunately we timed our trip with the few days of sunshine last week, so most of the time we were hanging in the hammock under the sun… watching the buttercups move with the sun. We only explored the local area long enough to wonder why we’d left our yurt and hammocks. Spent the last day bedding down hiding from the rain and stoking the woodburning stove… Ayla loved it!

Congratulations to Andy Atkins who has been appointed as the new Executive Director at Friends of the Earth and will replace Tony Juniper later in the year - more.

Andy, currently Advocacy Director at Tearfund, was my boss when I worked at Tearfund… well done Andy!