The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Why I'm Bored with Blogging and the 'Emerging Conversation', and Why I'm Switching to Conch

It'll be pretty plain to see that I haven't been posting that much recently. Stuff happens, and, on top of that, I've been feeling a little faded/bored with it. By it, I mean blogging. And by blogging I mean, in this context, stuff connected with the 'emerging conversation'. Perhaps it's just me.

I've just written a piece for Third Way - coming out in November - about Facebook, and other social networks. In the article I quote two things from Bauman's Liquid Life. Firstly Bauman himself who writes that:

"flattened into a perpetual present and filled to the brim with survival-gratification concerns, [the world] leaves no room for worries about anything other than what can be consumed and relished on the spot"

Secondly, Bauman quotes a Stasuik, another cultural commentator, who notes that:

“it is highly probable that the quantity of digital, celluloid and analogue beings met in the course of a bodily life comes close to the volume which eternal life and resurrection of the flesh could offer."

And what I'm feeling at the moment, springing out of these thoughts, is just the volume of noise in the blogosphere. I've likened it in the past to being at a party where everyone in the room is shouting, but no one is actually listening. Conversation is thus impossible. To converse we must be quiet and listen, and digest what others are saying, and reflect and then reply.

(By the way - welcome to those readers who've made it past the 240 word mark. You've done better than most web-readers do, according to studies)

For me the 'emerging conversation' has become too much like a whole bunch of people mouthing off... Pretending to listen, by occasionally quoting others, but, for the most part, just yabbering on about their little world regardless of what others are saying. In the book I mention some of the conditions under which a system might become 'emergent', or 'self-organizing', or 'a learning system', to use different syntax. One of the key conditions is an ability to sense and respond to its environment. And this requires careful listening. I think we've lost the art.

So I'm moving over to a new blogging-style system called Conch. The creators say that Conch is "designed to emphasise the connectedness side of being part of a network, not unlike sitting round a dinner table, where certain rules about listening before speaking are important."

You thus start by creating what they call a 'table' of other members. Once your table is set, you can begin posting, just as you would with any other blogging system. The difference is in the discussion element. Conch uses an algorithm to detect how the conversation around any post is going, and table members can rate other members' comments. These ratings are then used, along with the algorithm, to invite a member of the table to post a new thought once discussion around the previous one has died down. This member can then either: post a new piece or defer to someone else in the group who they feel ought to 'have the conch' that time round - the allusion obviously being to Golding's Lord of the Flies. Such a deferral gains a member ratings; members can force a new post themselves, but doing so is ratings-costly.

Of course, for the small part of the bell-curve who made it to the end of a post this long, you'll realize Conch doesn't exist. But sometimes, amidst the noise and haste of a movement that appears to be whirling around in hyperspace like a dervish, constantly spinning and going nowhere fast, I wish it did. Thus ends, according to Technorati, the 17,754th post on 'emerging church', the 100th in 24 hours, and that's including a Sunday, when good bloggers like TSK don't even post ;-)

Technorati: Bauman | Blogging | Conch | Emerging Conversation | Golding | Lord of the Flies | Stasuik

Has Old Father Thames Lost His Virility? | Sacred Rivers

Last night I went to hear Peter Ackroyd speak on the South Bank (pictured here), ostensibly about his new book: Thames, Sacred River. It was a fine lecture on the thread of the sacred throughout the history of humanity's interaction with London's river, followed by a hilarious Q&A led by the Times' Literary Editor, who had a torrid time trying to get anything much out of the old curmudgeon.

One recurring theme was the votive offerings that have been dug up from the Thames, covering pretty much every age for millennia. In more recent times churches have lined its banks, and one interesting observation by Ackroyd was the number of them dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There seems no rhyme or reason to this - and yet over the river's 240 mile passage there are over 50 churches given that name. Ackroyd connected this with the deeper history of the river as a place for fertility rituals: women would come to bathe in the Thames' waters before trying to conceive.

I got a brief chance to speak with him afterwards. I was interested in the idea of the sacred - in this case a river - as places for us to throw our shit. The votive offerings and the general detritus of society have emptied themselves into the Thames for so long, and I wondered if he thought the river would at some point call a halt and begin to fight back. "Of course not," he growled, "the Thames is cleaner now than its ever been."

Precisely. With its concreted banks and strict laws and worries about health and safety, the waters pass through the city now with no interruption. Nobody bathes, nobody enters the water. We pass over it atop buses and gaze down at the greying ripples. Our detachment from this river that has fed us and led us in worship for thousands of years, and carried off our shit, is now almost total.

The river-spirit flows through the centre of our capital in a well defended channel, leaving us dry. We cannot be fertilized by it now. We have, to corrupt Jung, purified 'Old Father Thames' to the point of sterility. Which makes me want to head to Putney and the boat houses, and have a swim.

Connected Post: Nature Watching in LA | Mango Body Whips and the LA River

Technorati: Catholicism | Fertility | London | Peter Ackroyd | Jung | Thames

Vaux Is Like a Box Of Chocolates...

Rather surprised to see, as I opened a bar of chocolate from Lundy Island - a present from my mum, that Vaux had branched out into confectionary. With Grace were doing Donuts, Ikon just candy-floss, perhaps I shouldn't have been.

Technorati: Chocolate | Grace | Ikon | Lundy | Vaux

Wikiklesia Paperback Available | A Tale of Two Publishers

I'm really pleased to see the Wikiklesia book published in physical form. Go get your copy here and support Not For Sale as you do. I contributed a chapter on the move between text, audio and video, which seems to have gone down well.

Wikiklesia is one of those great publishing projects you are happy to be a part of, with no thought of payment. Good people doing good things... the gifts have cycled well.

Unfortunately this isn't always the case. Many months ago now I was keenly asked to provide a couple of articles for a large and very well known US Christian publication. The deadlines were tight, the turnaround not easy with juggling other things, but hey - they seemed so keen and nice about it! My queries were answered by the editor within hours, they seemed really pleased with what I'd produced... And then it came to payment. I was patient, I can tell you - I don't like hassling people for cash - but suddenly, with the articles published, I couldn't get a squeak out of them.

Finally, after a number of unanswered emails, a cheque for one of the articles arrived, with a copy of the piece for my file, which I was more concerned about to be honest. I've since heard nothing about the other one, which was published months back, but for which I'm still owed.

Should I be bothered? I can take or leave the cash. Some can't, but I'm lucky enough to have income from my teaching. But I just feel that the principle is important. It's basically theft, right? Should writers have to hassle people for what their due, however small it might be? I know for a fact that this publication has treated others in a similar way. Is this the sort of way we'd want a Christian publication to run? I've no desire to write for them again, and if that means I'm shooting my US Christian publishing empire in the foot, well, so be it ;-) I'd rather spend the rest of my days pushing work out for free to projects like Wikiklesia than have the sour taste of having to chase poorly run, industrial-sized Christian publishing houses for cash.

Rant over.

Technorati: Christian | Publishing

Some Ideas for Commemorating 9/11

It's that time of year again, so how might we begin to find a rhythm for commemorating 9/11 and/or the July London bombings?

Perhaps, in our local communities, we could build huge bonfires, and all gather round them, faces glowing in the heat. We could make effigies of Bin Laden, or Mohammed Siddique Khan, and have competitions to create the most grotesque one, before lifting them atop the fire and cheering as they burned.

We could light up the sky with fireworks, reminding us of the explosions that ripped through the air that day.

We could gather together for festive food: sweet toffee apples or spiced wine, and congregate in large crowds in pubs and bars beforehand to get right into the mood.

Or we could lobby our governments and demand that no Muslim ever held public office - at least for a few hundred years until things calmed down a bit.

Ah. Apologies. I forgot. That's what we Brits do to commemorate the 5th of November 1605, when the Catholic, Guy Fawkes, very nearly blew up parliament with kegs of gunpowder stowed in the basement of the Palace of Westminster.

Somehow it all seems a less appropriate celebration these days...

Technorati: 9/11 | Bin Laden| September 11| Guy Fawkes| Terrorism|Commemoration

Signs of Life in the Churches

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been really enjoying Roger Deakin's meditation on trees 'Wildwood'.

In one passage on 'The Sacred Groves of Devon', Deakin goes in search of the 'Green Man' - the woodland spirit of rebirth often seen carved into beams in old churches - in various villages. He notes the oddity of having a basically pagan deity carved into the very supporting fabric of these ancient Christian places of worship - "nowadays such an inspired conjunction would be called 'multiculturalism'" - but then goes on to quote a great piece of Ruskin:

"Go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless monsters, and stern statties, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which is must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her children."

I had never appreciated this before. In the hundreds of tiny country churches - many built around the 16th and 17th centuries, we see local communities expressing, through their craftsmen, their faith and spirituality. Later, as more grand projects emerged, the masons were still able to throw their personal touches into their work through gargoyles and other features.

Have we lost something here? Are the warehouse churches that we throw up or rent just bland, interchangeable shells for an equally bland and interchangeable God?

Technorati: Deakin | Green Man | Megachurch | Ruskin

Helvetica: The Movie

Just what everyone has been waiting for: a well kerned, beautifully cut doc about the world's most ubiquitous greatest font. Helvetica. Showing at the ICA

Anyone up for a pilgrimage?

Technorati: Helvetica | ICA

Oiticica | The Mundanity of Beauty

I spent a wonderful afternoon at the Tate Modern on Monday, and caught the Oiticica exhibition. If you're in London, I highly recommend it.

I thought the curation was excellent: a full sense of progression in the artist's ideas. In the case of Oiticica, whose native Brazil is so famous for it's colour and flamboyance, this was all about the way that "gradually colour is liberated from the picture plane and given spatial form in further series of works, which include suspended paintings and reliefs, sculptural objects, penetrable environments and ‘habitable paintings’ - capes, tents and banners designed to be worn or inhabited while moving to the rhythm of samba."

With the heightened eye that wandering a gallery can bring, I was amused to find a highly fidgety and clearly very bored member of gallery staff in the same room as the piece above. Clearly beauty becomes mundane with time; I was transfixed as he texted mates, fiddled with his radio, munched a Snickers and scratched his nether regions. Brilliant.

Technorati: London | Oiticica | Tate

Review from Bill Dahl at The Porpoise Diving Life

"One of the top 5 books I have read in 2007. You MUST read this book now. Trust me, this book will rearrange your soul! A tremendous contribution."

Bill Dahl, editor of The Porpoise Diving Life.

Hidden Trees and Weeds | The Interstitial Jesus

I have been reading, sitting quietly with, meditating on Richard Deakin's wonderful book, Wildwood - A Journey Through Trees. Having previous written of his swims around England, this book is simply a series of reflections on the transformative power of this 'fifth element'. Much of it is taken with stories of sleeping out in the middle of woodland, fully engaged with and alive to the busyness of this environment.

There are a number of things that I want to blog about from it, but, to begin with, the book has simply opened my eyes to an new appreciation of our forests. I spent yesterday out in the Surrey hills, which Deakin mentions (he died almost a year ago to the day) and it was wonderful to read the book in the very environment it spoke of.

But it was when traveling back into London by train that the book gave me a wonderful insight: there are scattered forests everywhere along our railways. These inbetween spaces, tucked safely between dangerous high-voltage rails, are havens for all manner of plant life. And with the plants, animal life too. I was surprised to learn recently that the best honey the UK has to offer is made in London. Why? Because London has such high bio-diversity, and thus the bees carry a rich mix of flavours into their hives. In the countryside, where much of the land is given over to industrial agriculture, the honey is bland.

Those who have read here before will know about the allotment that a few of us keep, and this is one sort of 'hidden land' that excites me about the city. But it was only traveling through Clapham Junction, East Croydon and London Bridge that I began to see that there are huge acreages of small clumps of trees and bushes, all living with no threat from mankind. All growing in the gaps that our developments have left. All working their quiet transformations of our air, our ecology, our sight.

And I can't help but think that, hidden away in these places, an interstitial Jesus is camping. Quietly working. Beyond our boundaries, and in places we simply miss as we glide along rails in steel carriages. I need to look more closely.

Technorati: Deakin | Ecology | Environment | London | Railways | Wildwood