The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Signs Emerges... | Book Launch

So, Signs of Emergence finally hits the shops on 1st July... I'm really excited about the book coming out in the US and Canada, especially as so many of the ideas within it have sprung from great work done over there.

To all you people who've been queuing up for days outside stores to get hold of one... Oh, sorry, that was for the iPhone! Anyway, it's a book I'm really proud of, which a lot of people have been very kind about, and I hope people enjoy it and find some inspiration in it. I'll post some reviews  here as they come through; for now, thanks to everyone at Baker and Emersion for taking it on.

I'll be out in Ventura, CA at the Soliton gathering from 6th - 12th August, and there's going to be a launch party on the evening of the 10th, so if anyone from the LA area is around it'd be great to hook up with people while I'm over!

Technorati: iPhone | Emersion | Signs of Emergence | Soliton

Christians Forced to Leave Iraq

Thanks to Will for the heads up on this article suggesting that Christians in Iraq are being forced to leave their homes as their neighbourhoods are 'Islamicized'.

One wonders what Qur'an these people are reading, as I'm pretty sure the holy book demands that Christians are treated well and allowed freedom to worship.

Certainly, Surah 6:107 suggests freedom of religious belief for anyone:

"If it had been God’s plan, they would not have taken false gods, but We made you, not one to watch over their doings, nor are you set over them to dispose of their affairs."

This is the problem with fundamentalism: it ignores the conjunctive texts from its own tradition and focuses only on purifying its own space.

Not that Christians are guiltless here. Unbelievably, one guy has decided the best way to minister to Muslims is to "urge all my christian brothers around the globe to use their influence to bed as many muslims girls as possible."

Unbelievable.

 

Blair, Brown, Catholicism and The Protestant Work Ethic

So, after 10 years and a roller-coaster political ride, we say goodbye to Prime Minister Blair, and hello Prime Minister Brown. Personally, I'm optimistic. I think we desperately need some new energy, vision and impetus in British political life, and I think Brown is the right man for the job.

What has been interesting though is Blair's drift in belief. To paint in broad, caricatured strokes - it is well known that he wants to convert to Rome - he began a Protestant, committed to a highly personal drive of 'whiter than white government' and 'ethical foreign policy' - an almost Puritan agenda, and has drifted, personally as well as politically, towards a more Catholic position. Wanting to be an icon. Admiring the pomp, the finery, the rituals, the power... desperate for confession.

Blair, I feel, knows he has really screwed up on Iraq. What will be interesting will be whether he sets up this Middle East envoy task as something akin to his own political purgatory - working off his sins in order to restore his place to heaven.

Brown, even more than Blair, will be bringing his Protestant work ethic, and seemingly wearing it on his sleeve. He has just released a book of his father's sermons. And, unlike Blair, appears more willing to 'do God'.

Classically, Catholicism has been the grand and powerful institution of the church. And it has had to do some desperate spinning over some pretty horrific abuses. Blair too has been the king of spin. And Brown's first job is going to have to be to try to restore some faith in the political system. Will he dissolve Parliament soon in order to do so? Perhaps here's another Charles I ceding to Cromwell... Does Brown see himself as our Lord Protector?

Technorati: Blair | Brown | Catholicism | Charles | Cromwell | Protestant | Work Ethic

We ALL Like Paper-clip Thieving, Staple Snatching Sheep Have Gone Astray

According to some new research, over two thirds of the population have 'broken the law at some point'.

The law-abiding majority appears to be a myth... Or is 'borrowing' from work, whether phone calls or stationary, a victimless crime, and part of the payback we expect from the Faustian pact we make with companies in this corporate, work-driven world?

Arbuckle: Refounding | Common Roots of All Religions | Why Do We Always Screw It Up?

Thanks to Mark for a great post around Gerald Arbuckles "From Chaos to Mission - Refounding Religious Life Formation".

He includes this diagram, which prodded me to think not only about how renewal occurs within religion, but more generally about how religions are founded.

Mark notes: "Arbuckle talks about three stages; 1) Initial unease, the separation stage. One could talk about a sense of disconnection and a growing awareness of the dissonance between the action and the foundation story of the community/group. 2) The liminal stage or reflection stage "that moment between old patterns of reality and new ways of looking at reality". In this stage Arbucle says there is a point of choice; do we seek to retreat, to wallow in nostalgia, to cling to past securities, do we try to stand still and maintain the status quo, to be paralysed by the chaos or do we "move forward with risk and hope in an uncertain world"? 3) Re-aggregation, or re-entry. A new application of the vision and story of the community."

I wish I'd read it before - it resonates well with the Advent/Incarnation/Emergence path that I identified in the book. More generally, If we think about Abraham, and his unease at life in Ur, and Jesus and his unease at the way Judaism had gone, or about Mohammed, and his dissatisfaction at the way the Makkan's were living, or about Guru Nanak, coming back out of the river after 3 days, claiming 'There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim'... We could go on.

All of these people had some sort of 'epiphany' and saw beyond the local claims of a bounded worship to something unified. All of them radically went through Arbuckle's stages as outlined above, and all of them suffered for it.

And in each case, those who have come after them claiming to lead and carry on their movement have solidified that boundary, have 'kept order' once that place has been found, and made it difficult for renewal to continue.

Why? Why do we always screw it up? Why do we always have to tie things down and bind them? And how long before this happens to the Emerging Church?

Technorati: Abraham | Arbuckle | Hinduism | Islam | Judaism | Mohammed | Nanak | Sikhism

Reflections on Going to Church in Second Life | It's All About Sex

OK, so I went to church. In Second Life. A little late - so that's pretty much par for regular church - but I wandered around and tried to take the thing in.

I didn't last long. I got forcibly evicted - teleported I guess - for having no clothes on. I tried to give the 'Isn't it a bit like Adam?' line, but it didn't wash. To be fair, they apparently had to as that zone was 'PG', which meant 'clothes on', under Linden's rules. But it was amazing how quickly people rushed around to bustle me out. Even when I landed out of the building, some marshall came rushing over and told me to get dressed again! Perhaps they're being sensible and looking to the future, but the rendering is so poor that you look like little more than a naked Action Man. And what kid hasn't seen that? More worrying though are the graphic videos that are now being embedded (see article here); Second Life is becoming a haven for pedophiles to swap material. So fair enough for chucking me.

So how was church? To be honest, pretty boring. I mean, you can activate the audio/video streaming stuff. But that makes it little more than putting a worship CD on. You wander around. Chat to people. Sit somewhere. Like a good male, I hadn't read the manual too well, so it took me a while to learn how to move/gesture etc. Even so, it was still pretty underwhelming.

Personally, I don't think a) it worked as a worship experience and b) it was a healthy way to spend time. Why? Because, however bad or good the graphics, it's still a screen, and still all eyes and fingers. It's all mediated. And not so much 'nonsense' as 'a-sensual'.

Which brings me on to the sex. An article on Wired entitled "Second Life Without Sex Would Be a Sad Life, Indeed" noted:

Come to Church With Me Tomorrow!

In Second Life, that is. LifeChurch.tv

A few of us are going to check it out.

I'll be KFrank Repine, and Zack'll be there as Depak Soderstrom. I guess we'll start true to type and hang around the back first ;-)

Service kicks off 5:30pm UK, and that's 9:30am PDT.

See you then. I don't seem to be able to find my clothes at the moment, so I guess I'll be easy to spot.

Don't forget your hymnal.

Technorati: LifeChurch | Second Life

Gravity and Grace (3) | DIY Heaven

Or... as I finished the previous post, perhaps we shouldn't try to escape the gravity of this large mass.

Herzog's film is a satirical critique of the 'don't worry about the environment, we'll all eject to some other system' view. We can't. And if we did, it'd be tragic.

The earth is what we have. Creation is a gift. We shouldn't be looking to trash it and leave it. We should be deeply caring for it now. And this, I think, is the central theme of Wild Blue Yonder: between the oceans below and above, the dark and weightless places where the film draws its footage, lies a delicate and wonderful earth. An earth we see in all its dirty glory in the closing sequence.

And this, in the end, must also be our attitude to the Church  - to this body of Christ that we often find crumbling and inhospitable. It's what we have, and we have to make it work. Heaven will not be sent to us. And we will not be whisked away up to it. We build it here. Now.

Image: Lightproofbox

Technorati: Emerging Church | Environment | Herzog | Salvation | Shuttle | Weightless | Wild Blue Yonder

Urgent Help Needed - Fire at The Simple Way Community

Many of you will know Shane Claiborne, and maybe will have read his book The Irresistible Revolution, or read about The Simple Way community in Philadelphia.

A fire has totally destroyed their buildings. 8 families are homeless.

Please read on and consider supporting these wonderful people in this great time of need:

Gravity and Grace (2) | Leaving the orbit of a large Mass

In the last post, about Herzog's new(ish) film The Wild Blue Yonder, I mentioned that much of the footage was shot on a Space Shuttle mission. From the haircuts it looks early '90s. May be even earlier. That or NASA have some serious fashion issues hanging over.

Going into space has always been a huge dream of mine. Given the opportunity to do just one thing in life, I'd chose going to the moon. No argument. Shame it'll never happen.

The experience of weightlessness is beautifully communicated in Wild Blue Yonder. Astronauts go to sleep in sleeping bags on the walls. Except, of course, there are no walls. Wall, floor and ceiling only make sense with gravity. In zero gravity these axes disappear. There is no sensible Cartesian system. No up or down. The 'special relativity' of earth gives way to the 'general relativity' of the entire universe.

This is what happens when you leave the orbit of a large mass. You lose it's gravity, but escape into some new grace. For a while many of us have circled the heavy institution of the church, considering an escape velocity, but always dragged back toward its centre. And I wonder if it's going to be soon time to jettison that aging planet, and find new orbits entirely. It may be a long and strange journey, in some weird and wonderful craft. But it's one I feel we'll have to make. Leave the sterilized, artificial atmospheres of the 'special case', and jump into the general relativity of the Universe in its hugeness.

Or...

Technorati: Einstein | Herzog | NASA | Gravity | Relativity | Shuttle | Wild Blue Yonder

Gravity and Grace (1) ¦ Wild Blue Yonder ¦ Living Between Two Oceans

Last night I went with my good friend and doctor of film Gareth Higgins to see Werner Herzog's latest film 'The Wild Blue Yonder'.

It's a deeply comic, deeply environmental parable about space travel, aliens, shopping malls, complex math and hyperspace. And quite wonderful for it.

Speaking to Gareth afterwards, I mentioned that the path of the film reminded me very much of the wonderful children's book 'Penguin Dreams' in which Chongo Chingi flies into the air, and goes so high through space that he pops out back through the surface of his pool. Herzog uses the same trick in this movie: footage from a Space Shuttle mission is cut with mathematicians describing the theory of 'chaotic travel' to other galaxies... the 'astronauts' are then seen diving into this new world as the footage switches to incredible shots of divers exploring waters beneath an ice cap.

The metaphor is, I think, a beautiful one. As humans we live at the interface between two oceans: the seas below, and the 'ocean of the air' above. The tallest human construction is only a few hundred metres tall. Relative to the size of the planet, even Everest is only a minor imperfection; scaled down, Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.

We are, in many ways, but a minor irritant on the surface of the planet. And it will scratch us off with no thought unless we learn to live in peace. The dream of zooming off to another planet is satirized by Herzog very well here. It ain't going to happen. If it could have, aliens would have taken our fine earth by now. They tried. But no one came to shop for their trinkets.

It's a great film with some incredible footage and wonderful music, and reminded me very much of another environmental meditation, Baraka. What is particularly striking are the disorientating shots of zero-gravity living, and the parallels between floating in space, and floating under the ocean. But more of that in the next post.

 

Technorati: Wild Blue Yonder | Herzog | Penguin Dreams | Environment | Ocean | NASA | Space

Book | Endorsements

I've just received a copy of the book from Baker, and I have to say it looks great - thanks to everyone who's worked so hard to get it to the shelves!

I'm also very thankful for the great endorsements that the book carries - thank you all so much! I liked them so much I put a random generator on the sidebar; should change each time you load the page.

Just about finished tinkering... hope you like the new design, which hopefully has a lot more info upfront without being too busy...

Technorati: Baker

Blog Tinkering...

Excuse a few design experiments and general untidiness for a few days... just having a spring clean before the book hits the shelves in a few days ;-)

Second Life | Second Incarnation?

I was curious. I had to have a look. So 'KFrank Repine' entered the Second Life universe and judderingly wandered around trying to make some sense of it all. I couldn't. So I walked into the sea and logged off. Have I drowned now?

Part of me simply wants to mock this whole world, but I'm aware that would be foolish. For one thing, there are many in the disabled community who are finding it a hugely releasing experience. For another, there are clearly millions of people involved. One might cynically say they are all a bit dysfunctional in some way, but they clearly can't be. Linden Labs have tapped into something.

One of the things I tried to find out in my brief foray away from real life was whether there was a church in this new world. I didn't get to one, but certainly I've tracked one down on line. It looks absolutely terrifying. Notice the rigid rows of seats and utter darkness inside. Some kind of fantasy going on here.

So... does anyone know if there is 'emergent' activity going on in Second Life?

The question I was left with was: should there be?

Should we be encouraging people to meet more 'virtually', or should we be trying to draw people back to a better appreciation of their first life?

A recent radio report told the story of a guy in SL who paid someone to build a skyscraper for him. He then went inside and got the guy to pull it down around his ears. He wanted to experience what his brother had been through at 9/11. Just before it happened, a crowd gathered. 'You can't do this,' some bayed, 'this isn't what SL is for! There should be no suffering!' Others screamed that this was precisely what SL was for. Someone asked 'I want out - Where's my Third Life?

The nasty truth is, all of life is mirrored in SL. There have been reports of rape, and child abuse, and theft and all manner of violence and corruption.

Where should the church be in this? Should we just leave people to it, and bemoan their sad lives?

I had this funny idea of a virtual incarnation. What if Jesus turned up on SL? What if God hacked it? A baby was born, and grew up there and went around doing good... preaching that there was more to life, that they needed to be born again... back into their original, first life, blessing? Doubtless they'd be murdered. Doubtless resurrection would be no problem.

I guess someone's going to have to log on and go help these people. If we don't, may even the poorly rendered stones will grow speech bubbles and shout out...

Technorati: Christ | Christianity | Emergent | Incarnation | Jesus | Second Life | Virtual

Manchester Cathedral vs.Sony

Sony have released a bloody violent game including scenes inside and around Manchester Cathedral. And, quite rightly, Manchester Cathedral are not amused.

All strength to them battling against Sony. It's not entertainment. It's very poor taste. So do the right thing Sony. And soon.

Technorati: Manchester | Cathedral | Sony

Berners-Lee Wrong on Web 2.0?

Will Samson has an interesting quote from Tim Berners-Lee revealing his thoughts on 'Web 2.0':

"If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."

I'm not a big fan of the phrase 'Web 2.0' either. But I think there are differences between the web then, and the web now.

It seems to me that in the past people searched the web to connect to documents.
Now, we search to connect to people.

I think that's a significant enough shift. But not significant enough to warrant the silly monicker we've ended up with.

Technorati: Berners-Lee | Will Samson | Web 2.0

Salvaged Faith ¦ Baptized in Arial Black ¦ RS Exam Bloomers

We've been having school examinations the past week. I had to mark a bunch of scripts (the kids are 11/12 years old) of an RS paper on Christianity. Some of the answers were just priceless:

 

In a series of questions on parts of a church - what is an altar, what is a pulpit...

What is a font?

"I'm not sure what font they wrote the Bible in, but I reckon it was probably Times New Roman or Arial Black or something."

Genius. Though the cynical francophone atheist might have prefered 'Comic Sans' ;-)

 

What is the Salvation Army?

"The Salvation Army are a bunch of people who salvage Christians."

I think this is going to be a key emerging market! Anyone think their faith needs salvaging? Not sure how much I'd get for mine...

 

 

Technorati: RS | Exam | Bloomers | Font

London Olympics Logo | Newness Disturbs?

So, the debate over the new London Olympics brand has raged on for more days than a debate about a graphic really ought to... Hasn't it? Initially it was just the aesthetics, but, while many people mentioned it made them feel sick, but then some of the video pieces really did. The Mayor has waded in, and countless other alternative logos have sprung up too... The Press have refused to let it go, and the vitriolic response to it has been amazing...

But are we going to be proved wrong? Is this actually a bold leap into a new aesthetic that we will, by the time the Olympics come round, think was amazingly design-prescient?

Newness always disturbs us to begin with. The Olympics committee could have gone for something predictable and comfortable. We would not have been disturbed. But, as we know from emergence theory, without disturbance, nothing ever evolves.

With the advent of home-computing, 'everyone is a designer now'. And a peek at some of people's own goes at a logo do tell us just how badly visual ideas can be. So, Nic, tell me - is this a brave new world, is it 'in tradition', or just terrible?

Technorati: Logo | London | Olympics | Disturbing

Is Islam Violent? | Funding Moderation

The government has just announced £1m funding to support Islamic Studies courses at universities, in the hope that wider student bodies and better courses will encourage moderate Islam to prosper where fundamentalism currently reigns.

It's a course I'd be interested in doing, if only to answer some troubling questions even my basic explorations have thrown up. The most immediate is this: is Islam a more basically violent religion than others?

The reasons I keep pondering this question are perhaps many and obvious: there is rarely a day that goes by when some act of terrorism perpetrated by Islamists is reported on the news. I have just been reading What is the What - which details the horrific violence and genocide brought about when fundamentalist Muslims took control of the government in Khartoum.

Of course - these are simply the things that get reported the most, and it only takes a little digging beneath the surface to reveal horrific violence done in the name of all religions: the Lord's Resistance Army, the many years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Hindu clashes in the Indian subcontinent...

But I'm still left wondering whether something to do with the very genesis of Islam is still problematic: when Mohammed was forced out of Mecca and fled to Medina, he grew the number of Muslims, and, through both conquest and conversions, eventually went back and took Mecca. In other words, there is a military and political force element to the spread of Islam, even under the leadership of its founder.

We can talk about the terrible atrocities of the Crusades - and they were awful - but they were not performed by Christ himself, and we can hopefully look back at them as an abberation of 'true' Christianity. Bloody awful things happened throughout the Old Testament too, but perhaps we might look on those times as almost 'prehistoric', and expect that in the 7th Century expectations of a spiritual leader might be higher, especially given the way Christ himself eschewed violence.

I am genuinely interested in how moderates would treat such events now. Let's be quite clear - there is so much in Islam that is beautiful and clearly pro-peace and justice, and much that I truly deeply respect. Yet that some of these Islamic conquests were very violent is not doubted - so does Mohammed's own violence somehow impact the views of modern Muslims when it comes to violence too? Did he have no other choices? I'd love to know what people think. And sincerely hope someone can tell me without themselves resorting to promising to kill me for even asking...

Technorati: Genocide | History | Islam | Mecca | Medina | Moderate | Violence

Jesus, The Guantanamo Years

"From an American security point of view, it's not that reassuring to find a single male Palestinian with no hand luggage, traveling alone. I'm guessing Mossad has a file on me. It probably says I'm a bit of a troublemaker, and it almost definitely says I'm lying about who my real father is."

Abie Philbin Bowman's comedy hit from last year's Edinburgh festival comes to the Arts Theatre in London this week...

Technorati: 9/11 | Abie Philbin Bowman | Edinburgh | Guantanamo | Jesus | Arts Theatre

It Was 40 Years Ago Today...

Sgt. Pepper was released 40 years ago today. As I mentioned at a 'God's iPod' interview at Greenbelt last year, it's an album that has great memories for me. After various Thomas the Tank Engine LPs, Sgt. Pepper was the first record I really liked. I don't know how my dad let me, but I played his 'first edition' version, bought the day it came out, over and over. I was about 4... and ironically my older brother, now a DJ, would always turn to me to put records on!

The final track, A Day in the Life is, for me, quite simply the best song ever written. And hence was the only choice to go out on for the last Vaux service ;-)

Technorati: Beatles | Music | Sgt Pepper