Passing the Old Serbian Embassy Building

Passed this wonderful building a few weeks ago. I always recognise it as it used to be the Serbian Embassy where I taught a few lessons in about 2004.

 

Good Curry Paste

 

This is the curry paste that I use to make my curry.

After simmering my vegetables for about half an hour, I crumble a vegetable burger into the saucepan to make things thicker and add 2-3 tablespoons of the curry paste above.

Below, there is a vegetable madras that I made:

I made the vegetable rogan josh below through adding a can of tomatoes to the mixture:

Never dreamed that one day, I'd be turning out such good curry.

 

Passing a Franciscan Church

Passed this Franciscan church a good few weeks ago before all the snow and very cold weather arrived in Warsaw/Poland. This was the first time that I had a close look at the crucifix in front of the church:

 

A Few Historical Roots of Secularisation

I'm now over 250 pages into Charles Taylor's A Secular Age which tells a long, complex story of how exclusive humanist (non-religious), blueprint worldviews have gradually risen throughout Western history to now dominate the contemporary world.

Overall, Taylor discusses a complex myriad of factors that have helped to bring about modern secularisation process that originate in medieval times, and at the moment, I'm at the point in the book where he focuses on how 17th and 18th century Enlightenment thinking provides significant roots of disenchantment which prompt secularisation in the future.

From the book, the following four interrelated roots of disenchantment from the Enlightenment stick out for me:

 

(i) The creation of a meta-topical public sphere which gave people many more ways of viewing and interpreting the world

(ii) A pursuit of mutual benefit in commercial activity which started to outweigh the value of religious/ transcendental truth

(iii) A movement away from heroic, warrior type behaviour towards more diplomatic and civil/polite communication process

(iv) A revolutionary sense that human beings themselves (rather than the grace of God) provide the motivation for seeking universal justice and benevolence in the world.

However, my own interest in religious conversion shows me that many modern people want to transcend the disenchantment of our secular age, and do this through religious-seeking. Thus, I can't wait to reach the part of the book when Taylor deals with this fascinating phenomenon.

A Priest's Memorial

 I passed this memorial to Father Roman Indrzejczyka a few evenings ago:

Having passed the memorial, I had to look up who Father Indrzejczyka was. Through doing this, I found out that he was ordained into the priesthood in late 1956, and at one point, served as a priest at St. Alexander's church in Warsaw. Between 1986 and 2004, he was the parish priest at the Church of the Infant Jesus in Warsaw, which is very near the memorial above:

 

Tragically, at nearly 80 years of age, with many others, Father Indrzejscyka died in the Polish air disaster in Smolensk, Russia, on April 10th, 2010, as from late 2005 onwards, he was the Catholic chaplain to the Polish President, Lech Kaczyński who also lost his life in the disaster, of course.

Passing the Ronald Reagan Statue

 Passed the Ronald Reagan stature in Warsaw the other week:

Despite it having been targeted by left-wing extremists recently, the statue looked okay.

Small House in Canterbury

Always thought that this small house in Canterbury must've been really warm and cosy to live in:

Lived in Canterbury for a few years between 1999 and 2003, and miss the labyrinthine streets there:

Below, there is a nice pub that I used to go in while studying at Christchurch University College:

And a church that was nearby: