I Can See You

I checked the statistics for hirviniemi.net. I don't quite know how to read them all but the ones I think I can, look quite interesting. Here we go...

This month there has been 475 visits by 56 visitors. Thank you all for the interest, 403 of you's (87%) stayed less than 30 sec - what a generosity. The other typical visitors were the 56 (11,7%) who stayed for more than 30 mins. Thanks a lot for popping in, but I assume you fell asleep, because I can't imagine what would you find in these pages to look at that long.

40% use Firefox and 12.5% Explorer and 1% surf with Camino, which I know nothing about. However, 46% hid themselves somehow and the server couldn't tell their browser. 52% operating system was windows and 1% mac, but again the brothers from shade were 46%.

60% of the visitors were surfing while working, and 30% in their leisure time. And I see that 2% visited me in pyjamas... but well, this didn't come from the automatic stats...

Pastors' get-together

We had a interdenominational pastors' get-together the past Thursday. It's quite enjoyable meeting with the varying participants from the two Pentecostal churches, Free Evangelical, Evangelical Lutherans, Salvation Army, Adventist and Orthodox. The Meeting's function has been changing throughout the years, and currently it's an informal gathering where we talk about the current issues in town, upcoming ecumenical events or projects, pray together and have some coffee. This time we met a orthodox church hall, and the local priest, Father Lisitsin, lead the conversation for the most part.

Needless to say, he represent quite a distinct line of thought from all the others. Naturally so, because he comes from the tradition that has had it's own history from 1054, whereas rest of us has the history shared until around 1900, and even after, the traditions look quite alike in most major aspects. In our gatherings these peculiarities make discussions quite interesting.

One thing the Orth. priest mentioned, as the discussion touched some theological issues, was his own contemplations on the early church schism with Gnosticism. We didn't go too deep in talking but he just reflected that back then the church councils were almost even in vote pro/contra Gnostic views, which has made him to contemplate on what of an enormous effect had it been on the theology if the Gnostic side had won. He did not go to any detail on topics, but the observation is quite interesting.

It is certainly true that theology is build up to meet the demands of logic. And it is likewise true that our logic, has its history in classical antiquity. The way we reason rise from the culture that has developed within the western history. For the most part the development of Christianity and theology within it, shares that history. It might be of interest to someone to speculate on the form of theology if it would have developed within another culture.

I could not go to say that the basic elements of Christianity would be different: One God, three persons, substitutionary death, eternal salvation, to name a few. Whatever the surrounding, without these it wouldn't be Christianity anymore, but certainly different challenges from the surrounding philosophies, would have demanded for different statements from the church. It would probably have had an effect on the issues the church have felt problematic. Perhaps some problems would have gone unnoticed, and some others would have caused great councils to meet.

Well, at this point it would be pure speculation to me to develop it any further, but this kind things does tickle my curiosity.

In the gathering the chat went on and we reached the current controversies in the orthodox church, (namely, the problems with the Finnish orth, and the Russians who are having troubles claiming the land in Finland) and the priest probably felt bit uneasy discussing those with the given set of colleagues. He wrap it up stating that "well, those are the issues we try to deal with in church politics" That's when the supportive me showed up, and I couldn't resist it. I told the priest that isn't it great that everybody has own problems: you got those, but we as Pentecostal try to find correct music style to our services... whereas orthodox' have had that one fixed for the last 500 years now.

but, I suppose, that could work as a minor-scale example to the contemplations above... ...in different surrounding, different issues appear problematic.

Father-son business

I was watching Finding Nemo with Joonatan and Benjamin. In the beginning of the film there's a scene where the father fish tries to catch Nemo the son and they end up in laughter. Joonatan commented the scene saying "they are having so much fun".

I decided to try the desperate - you know, sometimes when you tickle them you get them say stuff that really makes you day. So, I replied to Joonatan, "yep, fathers and sons sometimes do have so much fun..." trying to lead the conversation into something real tender.

Joonatan didn't quite follow my lead, and he replied shortly, while keeping the eyes on the TV... "But, why don't we ever do?"

Doh!

Online Grocery

One web-visionaries' popular topic used to be an online grocery store where you can buy your milk and bread over the internet with a tick from your couch and have the stuff brought to you door. Well, it's true now here in Finland, too, although in some cities only.

I used to be skeptical about the whole thing and never caught the idea, but I surfed into the store to see, and they bought me in. Pity, they don't sell stuff in Kotka (yet) I seems like they have quite competitive prices to supermarket (looks like a bit higher to me) and they offer free delivery for 75e+€ shoppings.

I hope they find enough customers to keep on going, and that there'll get competitors to push prices down, and then all we need is a site that compares the prices, and then...

...well I don't know what then, but I won't miss fighting shopping carts in frosty rain...