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We had a lovely Cinco de Mayo party on Friday complete with loads of Mexican food, margaritas and Coronas with lime. Thanks for all who came! A few recipes were requested, so here they are:

Chicken (or vegie) Enchiladas
10 tortillas
3 chicken breasts
2 green (spring) onions, chopped
1 cup fresh salsa (or canned if you can’t find fresh)
1 sml tub sour cream (creme fraiche)
1 sml carton whipping (double) cream
Jack (or cheddar) cheese for filling and topping, grated

Cook chicken breasts in oven at 350F for 30 minutes or until cooked through. Chop up into little pieces and add the sour cream, salsa, and green onion. Add a dash of chili flakes if you want it a bit hot. (This can be made a day in advance which allows the flavours to meld together).
Get out 2 plates and fill one with the whipping cream. Dip and coat each torilla, allowing excess cream to drip off. Place tortilla on 2nd plate; add a bit of cheese and a few spoonfulls of the chicken mixture. Roll up and place in a glass baking dish. After all tortillas are filled, pour excess cream on top as well as a bit of cheese and bake for 15-20 minutes at 300F or so.

Vegie version: Instead of the chicken, add grilled eggplant (aubergine), red and yellow peppers and lots of corn. Black or pinto beans would also be quite good.

Homemade Salsa
Makes about 2 cups
10 tomatoes
3 chilis (jalapeno, or thai chilis are fine)
1 small onion, minced
3 cloves garlic
1 lime
bunch cilantro (coriander)
salt and pepper

Broil the tomatoes with their skins on until blackened on all sides, about 10 mins. Meanwhile dry pan fry the peppers and garlic (also with their skins on) until blackened, about 10 mins for the peppers and 15 for the garlic. Take tomatoes out and remove skins; allow to cool. Chop up in a bowl or put in a food processor to get the right consistency. Mince the onion. De-seed the peppers and chop finely; remove the garlic’s skins and mince. Add onion, peppers and garlic to tomatoes along with the juice of one lime. Add chopped cilantro per your preference, a dash of pepper and a teaspoon or so of salt. Taste and change according to your preferences.

Black bean dip
2 15 oz. cans black beans (or similar amount dried and soaked)
2 cloves garlic
2 limes
1/2 cup fresh salsa
salt and pepper
cilantro (coriander) to garnish

Puree beans and add garlic (also quite good if garlic is roasted). Add the juice of 2 limes and the 1/2 cup of salsa. Add a dash of the salt and pepper and a few sprigs of cilantro. Puree. Add more salsa or lime juice if you want a thinner dip. Garnish with a few leaves of cilantro on top of the dip.

1) Can you explain where the name “the Durminator” came from, and does the name involve wearing a cape or any other special clothing?

The name came from summers i spent working as a lifeguard. My brother and I worked with the same crew. When the beach posting when up they would match a lifeguards last name to the beach. As we shared the same last name we were distinguished as:
durminsky
and
murminsky
Well, this was the same summer as Terminator 2 came out. As everyone was T2 crazy you can see how durminsky was changed to The Durminator.
On a side note. The durminator eventually became just Durmi. But that just doesn’t sound as Kewl.

2) Will you explain *math*?

Math is in fact short for Matthew. Now the story goes like this: Matthew was some guy who was really good at sums, and geometry and astronomy. These weren’t called these things back in the day; the orignal names are lost to us. He needed a way to catagorise all the things he like to do. So he came up with mathematics; MATH- for MATTHEW and MATICS-from the word automatic (cause the way he did maths was automatic). This person also liked to inflict pain on people which is why the Automatic Machine Gun is rightly named.

If you now ask any first year Engineering Student what they would do if they could travel through time (Which Matthew made sure was mathematically imposible), their first stop would be to travel back in time and kick Matthew in the shin.

3) How does being a Christian affect the way you do math?

From the NIV Genesis 1:14-16
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights–the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

As a mathematical astronomer, I simulate moving these heavenly bodies around on my Computer. By understanding this, I like to think I am understanding God a little better.

4) Why are Canadians so darn patriotic? And why is their patriotism so much more palatable than American patriotism?

Canadians are patriotic for a number of reasons. The first is that we have alot to be pround of. Examples include; the idea of UN peacekeepers, CN tower, hockey, 2nd largest land mass, curling, best part of north america, largest supply of fresh water. The second is that we want to let those french seperatist know that Canada is really a good place to live. Thirdly, BC bud is the best in the world (or so I’m told); Ottawa is the second coldest capital in the world. In the war of 1812 we burned the White house and most of Washington (the brits like to claim this, but it was in fact Ontario that did most of the damage).

Why is it more palatable than American patriotism? Brain overload…. too many witty things to say about that. Mainly, I think, it is because our patriotism does not come with a gun in hand.

5) What ONE Canadianism should every person adopt?

Picking one is hard. I’m going to pick 2 which i think are important for the rest of the world should adopt.

first: Dress sense. Standard clothes in everyone’s wardrobe should be, plaid, lumberjack jacket, Hockey Jersey and snowmobile boots.

Second: I’m sorry. People should learn to say this more. (It would help the customer service people in Scotland)

6) What is the essential difference between Urban Dave and, ummm, Non-Urban Dave?

The essential difference between Urban Dave and Non-Urban dave is that Urban Dave is wearing clothes purchased for him. Non-Urban dave is wearing clothes that he chose himself.

7) Anything else we should know?

Yes, my wife and I have a cat named Basil. We miss him terribly. One time, Basil bit my bare bum cause he wanted me to get out of bed and feed him.

The weather is warming up (we hope!) and this makes me think of all the books I want to read.

On top of my list for summer reading: Francis Schaeffer. As much of his stuff as possible. Also Bryce and I are going to begin reading some more modern philosophy together and examine the ways in which it presents a challenge to Christian worldview thinking. I hope to get some of that started this summer.

What’s on your summer reading list?

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with David Wells, cultural observer and professor at Gordon Conwell.

Your strong critique of contemporary “seeker-sensitive” styles of worship will come as a surprise to evangelicals who see this kind of worship as necessary to bringing people into the church. What are the greatest dangers of uncritically accepting this kind of worship?

David Wells: You are certainly right that my critique will come as a surprise to many evangelicals because they have come to think that the seeker-sensitive approach is the only game in town. It is also the only thing they know. And certainly it is what has made many churches big and important. These evangelicals also reject the alternative which they think of as being backward, obsolete, traditional, aging, not with-it, failing to reach a new generation, and therefore doomed to inevitable decline and irrelevance. I think these are false alternatives. I offer no brief for failing traditional churches which deserve to fail, but I hold out no hope for all of these trendy players in the church who are going to end up empty-handed. The inescapable fact is that the culture is offering just about everything that one can find in these churches but without all the inconveniences of having to be religious.
This experiment in doing church is already a demonstrable failure. Barna, who is both its architect and its chronicler, has demonstrated its failure. Week-by-week, his polls show that born-againers, so many of whom inhabit churches that are in the sensitive-mode, are biblically illiterate, live no differently from the secular and, in fact, only 9% have anything like a worldview (by which he means the most minimal set of Christian beliefs which inform the way they see life). He predicts that in five years the evangelical movement will be gone. Not even I have gone so far out on that kind of limb! He also predicts that within a few years, 50% of the churches will have melted away. Instead (and Barna thinks this is really great!) people will be following the current cultural mode of being spiritual but not religious, meaning that they will divest themselves even further of doctrinal belief and corporate involvement in a local church. Talk about a recipe for suicide!

Here will be the graveyard of evangelical faith and we are being led, step by step, into it by our oh-so-sensitive, trendy, with-it pastors. Taking us there has made them famous as they have become C.E.O.’s of big church enterprises, but the price of their fame and fortune is the bankruptcy of the faith, not by their overt heterodoxy but by their practice.

The fact is that Christ is not up for sale. His message is not in the marketplace begging for takers. And those pastors who so prostitute themselves will find that the faith they no doubt hold dear has slipped from between their fingers. Here is a paradox that neither the earlier Protestant liberals nor many of our currently sensitive evangelical pastors appear to have grasped: Christian faith which makes absolute truth claims, and demands a commitment which matches this absoluteness, against all cultural odds, thrives; Christian faith which mutes its truth claims in order to fit in, and dilutes the commitment it asks for in order not to be off-putting, is doomed. The issue here is not traditional versus contemporary. The issue is authentic versus inauthentic. It is historic Christian believing versus its remnants, its pale imitations, in the hands of these pragmatists.

Are there any benefits to it?

David Wells: Not too many that I can think of.

We took the train up to St. Andrews on Friday afternoon to visit our friends, Paul and Amber. We had a great weekend: walking along the beach, good conversation at a local pub, meeting all their American friends, strolling around the city, playing Scrabble at another pub on Saturday, buying used books and dropping a bottle of Margarita mix. In fact I ended up being rather clumsy the entire weekend. It was lovely to get away from the city for a little bit, to be with friends and have good talks and simply not to study! We really appreciated their hospitality and if they come down to Edinburgh for any of the events these next few weeks (Cinco de Mayo party, Christian Aid booksale and the Hays’ going away party), we’ll be happy to return the favour. Sunday we had a picnic in the Botanic Gardens (until we couldn’t stand the wind) and read a few chapters of Total Truth together, which we hadn’t read in a while. Fabulous book — go out and buy it!

Saturday night when we came home there was a phone call from a guy at the Assessment Center. We got a hold of him, thanks to the time difference, and found out that they want us to wait another year or two before applying — we figured that they’d probably give us provisional church planting status wanting us to go get a few more years’ experience; instead, they want us to get the few more years’ experience now and then apply. The guy was really great, told Bryce he’d be in southern California in the autumn and they could meet up and kept reiterating that they’re not rejecting us — that they had in fact told some applicants that they didn’t think from their application that church planting is their calling and gifting and they were not saying that to us. So I guess it’s encouraging in the long run.

Needless to say however, it does make things a bit more confusing about how to know where we’re supposed to be next year. Providence is flying me out for my last interview in June so by then that end of things should be sorted. Bryce is going to start looking for churches in the presbytery that would be happy to have him as an apprentice for a year or so. The hard thing is, is that a few of the churches are in the pastoral search phase; thus it might be a bit hard to apprentice with a pastor whom you don’t know yet. But God provides and God will show us where to go and when. It’s just this waiting that is difficult.