The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Rites of Passage | Atheists Marking Life's Big Events

Interesting piece in this week's Time Out: atheist Tim Arthur talks about the privilege of being asked to be 'celebrant' of friends' marriages. He has done so four times, and wonders if he's asked because he is a theatre director and has a degree in religious studies: people think he's like a vicar, and he can make stuff look good. For those interested in following his path, there is a 'Rites of Passage Workshop' at this year's Workshop Festival in London from Sept 4 - 9th.

I'm all for this to be honest. Having seen so many people go through Christian rites when they clearly have no interest in the faith, I'm all for them celebrating and marking life's big events in ways that reflect their beliefs. Sure, some vicars would claim that bringing people in to church at these times, regardless of their faith, is helpful in leading people in to it. But I'd argue that more commonly people see vicars and other 'faith professionals' as having too much of an agenda, and are scared off.

One nice story: Greg in Ventura was telling me how every church leader in town had refused to celebrate the wedding of the leader of the Hell's Angels. Greg agreed, and this did turn into a fruitful relationship.

The article mentioned Arthur's search for resources/liturgies online, but "generally I don't find much useful, practical advice". In light of this, I'd like to flag the Open Office project up again, which is simply an online liturgical resource exchange. Sign up to post stuff from your community; search for and read other people's stuff free.

What the piece does suggest to me is that, again, the church simply can't rest on past norms. People are in search of the sacred in ways that suit them, and if we want to be part of that journey, we need to get where people are at. Would you be prepared to be celebrant at a wedding where the friends asked you because they so respected you, but to 'keep God out of it'? I think we ought to be.

Technorati: Atheist | Rites of Passage | Tim Arthur | Time Out

Off to Greenbelt.

Always a high point of the year.
Always leaves me sad that the summer is almost over, and work beckons again after 7 weeks off :-(

Wise Traveller...

Just out is this set of three books of reflections, to which I contributed 8 or 9 pieces.

Nice thoughts for the journey to pop in and out of.

Here's one I submitted for book titled 'Loss'

Fruit

I want to change the fruits of my labours.

When someone says ‘Apple’,
I shouldn't want sleek plastic and titanium,
but England’s Coxes,
heavy hung in dappled orchards.

When someone says ‘Orange’,
I don’t want to know about free minutes and the latest upgrades.
I want to think citrus thoughts;
the appeal of slowly peeling skin.

And when someone says ‘Blackberry’,
I don’t want my head to rush with virtual thoughts
of emails and deadlines and documents and settings
and schedules and coverage and battery life.

I want, instead, my tongue to rush with sweet sensation,
a bowl of fruits shared with friends.
A rug.
Open space and blue sky.

Lech Walesa came to the West and said:
“You have riches and freedom here,
but I feel no sense of faith or direction.
You have so many computers,
why don’t you use them in the search for love?”

Devices all sold to connect me.
When all I had to do was pick some fruit, and share it.

© KB 2007

Walesa's quote is strangely prophetic, I think.
We've all heeded his advice in some way.

Technorati: Blackberry | Fruit | Love | Scripture Union | Walesa

Kernow | Surprised by Joy

It was a pensive flight back from Soliton on Sunday. After a riotous week on the theme of 'Dangerous Living', with not a little practical work thrown in too, the many great conversations I was privileged to share gave me a lot to mull over. That these happened around fire pits, or in restaurants being used as seminar rooms, or churches used as restaurants, or night clubs used as all three, or in people's homes or even hot-tubs, is testament to the unique spirit I've found Greg and the wonderful people around him have fostered at these sessions.

The Human Dress | Signs Launch

Thanks to everyone who helped out to give Signs a fantastic launch last night. It was great to phrase it as a time of worship; the guys from the Bridge imagined different sections in terms of doing laundry. Out of that I wrote this piece, meditating on 'the human dress', beginning with a quote from Blake.

"Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress."

One piece of divine fabric,
Unblemished, woven without defect
Knit together in a girl’s womb,
Perfectly fitting this human frame,
Was stitched up, and stretched out
And torn.

Die! said the soldiers,
And they took one and rolled,

They were mistaken,
And we have bought into their mistake.
This cloth was not for sale,
But offered as a free gift.

Taut, pierced, this pelt collapsed around a broken frame,
Pinned out and exhausted, it’s colour drained,
While, in the Temple, another fabric tore top to bottom.
And the weaver escaped
With thoughts for a new design

Hued with mercy,
And lined with love,
Shrouded in mystery.

Technorati: Blake | Bridge | Human Dress

Another Day with the Soliton Geek Show

Technorati: Pete Rollins | Higgins | Russinger

Violence in the Movies

So, I have just ducked out of the fine weather - lovely Ventura sunshine and cool ocean breeze - to see The Bourne Ultimatum with Dr's Huggins and Rolly-mo.

The Great Huggster describes himself as a film buff. Which, I think, means he watches films in the buff. As if this information isn't violence enough to our consciousness, the film was very violent.

But that's OK because, as Peter Rolly-Mo has it, this was politically sensitive violence. And 'we're all dead anyway'. His middle name isn't Jason for nothing. In our identity-fluid times, this sort of violent entertainment can actually sensitize us to the world's problems. Who are we? Why are guns with video cameras just so alluring? Why does the guy never seem to get more than only a little bit hurt?

With the hand-held camera work it was hard to tell. And apparently it's not the end of the series. Which worries me. What worries me more is having to spend 4 more days with these Irish nychtophiliacs. Like the Belfast drama group they are both associated with, they love the dark. Help.

Technorati: Ikon

Soliton | Think Not Whether The Serpent Exists, But What The Serpent Said

I can think of no better way to stretch my legs out over the Atlantic for 11 hours than flying with Pete. Like a couple of great insomniacs, we fell to talking some theology, which knocked out the 5 rows around us in no time. I think BA might actually contract us for overnight flights, or produce some sort of video channel to help people get some sleep.

We tried to watch Blades of Glory, but the system broke. There is a God. Perhaps.... which put us back to the God-talk.

Literally.

One of the interesting things Pete was setting out, one of very many, was the idea that actually proving that God exists is a dead-end topic for theologians. It can't be done, so needs to be left undone. Pete quotes Barth, who was asked "So, did the serpent physically speak in the Genesis narrative?", to which he replied "The question is not whether the serpent spoke. The real question is what the serpent said."

In the usual argument over whether God 'intervenes' in our world, people who have doubted this have drawn two conclusions:

1. There is no God, and thus no intervention is possible, or

2. There may be a God, but this God doesn't intervene. He's set the world running, and stepped away.

Dr. Peter J. Rollins Ph.D* (not Caputo as I erroneously mentioned), of whom Pete is a big fan, argues that there is a 3rd option:

3. Intervention has definitely occurred in my life, but there may not be a God.

So the question thus becomes: let's take the fact that I experience some sort of intervention in my life seriously, but not get bogged down in the unanswerable question of whether God physically intervened. Instead, what does this intervention say to me? This helpfully takes us away from having to work out exactly how God might have intervened - an argument we cannot make sensible progress on - and forces us to focus on the actual intervention itself. I know I have experienced love here... what impact does that have on how I'm going to live?

* Ph.D's are, according to the man himself, as Doctors of Philosophy, the 'only true doctors.' Medical doctors, in particular, are singled out by him as charlatans.

Technorati: Caputo | God | Intervene | Weakness

Your Digital Carbon Footprint

It's obviously rich of me talking about this, flying as I am to LA on Monday, but it's an often over-looked fact that the net runs on servers, and servers draw power. Nic mentioned the other day that a simple calculation of the server power-draw for Second Life, divided by the average number of users online at any one time, gives the incredible fact that Second Life avatars use more CO2 than an average Brazilian (or should I say, person in Brazil ;-). Another great reason for never going back there.

So when do Typepad release a 'Green Tariff', which allows you to ensure your power-draw is coming from renewables?

Technorati: Environment | Green | Second Life | Typepad

Web 2.0 | It's All About the Sacred | Festival and Carnival

I guess sometimes you can't see the woods for the trees. I recently posted a piece about René Girard's thoughts on the essentiality of the sacred to human experience - something Dawkins et al ignore in their anti-religion positions - and I also posted something on Facebook and friendship.

But it took a beer with Nic - as so often it does - for the obvious connection to jump out: all social networking sites are simply virtual ways of touching the sacred.

In the Girard piece, Roger Scruton defines the sacred as "moments that stand outside time, in which the loneliness and anxiety of the human individual is confronted and overcome, through immersion in the group"

There can be no better definition of why Web 2.0 / Social Networking has taken off: we are all desperately raising antennae, trying to channel from the web these moments of immersion, moments when someone wants to link to us, wants to comment on our thoughts, wants to tag us, accepts us in their group.

My skepticism about the extent to which these moments actually can occur on the web thus highlight a further problem, and a further opportunity. The historic ways in which people have accessed the sacred have been eroded: community, church, neighbours - even conscription - and yet the virtual substitutes of MySpace, Facebook etc., are proving inadequate. Easy as it may be to whip up a network of hundreds of friends and connections, the actual sacred moment is still elusive.

This is the problem. And the opportunity is clearly this: we need to be providing these sacred spaces, and if we do so in an unthreatening way, people will flock there. Which they already do: check out the huge surge in popularity of festivals recently. Connected to the rise in virtual living, and the demise of the traditionally sacred? I'd say definitely. We all need a little carnival to feel connected. Which is why I'll be off to Greenbelt again at the end of the month.

Technorati: Facebook | Festival | Girard | Greenbelt | MySpace | Carnival | Sacred | Scruton | Social Networking | Web 2.0

No More Our Father? | IVF, Sexuality and the Father Figure Clause

I'm not one for 'natural order' arguments, but part of me is drawn that way over the news that the 'father figure' clause currently in British IVF legislation is potentially going to be dropped.

A government joint committee report "took issue with the proposal to remove the current requirement for IVF clinics to take into account the need for a father. They said it was right that lesbian couples should be considered for IVF, but said removing the father clause could encourage clinics to downgrade the importance of a two parent family."

Absolutely. In my experience as a teacher I am absolutely convinced that it is the absence of proper father figures that is leaving children flailing around for meaning when they reach around 12 years old. It is then that, for boys, the move away from the maternal accelerates, and the move towards manhood begins. In the absence of secure father figures, boys struggle to form secure masculine identities. Many begin to violently reject the maternal, and their behavior becomes very poor. Others, unable to find security in the paternal, instead define them through the fraternal, and these immature groups of boys struggling toward manhood become gangs.

I seriously hope that the committee's concerns are listened to. In our virtuous march towards a just and liberal society we must also make sure that freedom for one group does not impact on the lives of another. In this case I am worried that freedom for any woman to bear children is going to very seriously impact society in a few years time as the 'crisis in masculinity' gets worse.

Am I being too conservative here, or is it common sense that a child needs a mother and a father for a balanced upbringing?

Technorati: Family | IVF | Lesbian | Masculinity | Parents