The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

OneVoice: To End the Conflict in Israel/Palestine

From the 18th October celebrations. All power to this arm.

Technorati: Israel | OneVoice | Palestine

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

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

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

Freedom of Information ¦ Sodom and Gomorrah ¦ Power and Accountability

'Thought for the Day' this morning was an excellent piece  by Martin Palmer.

MP's have recently voted to exclude themselves from their own Freedom of Information legislation - a move that has angered many. It seems the law-makers want everyone else to be accountable save themselves.

Palmer made an interesting connection with Abraham's bartering with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. As he whittled God down to 'I'll not destroy the city if there are 10 just people there', Abraham inquires of God "Will the Judge of all the earth do right?"

Palmer saw this as an absolute benchmark: justice must be done justly, and those with power must be clearly seen to be acting justly. "If this was true of God, how much more true must it be of our human leaders."

Absolutely. This "pernicious little amendment" must be stamped out if trust and accountability are to be preserved in our legislature.

Alpha TV Ad to go out during Big Brother...

It's actually rather nice.

Technorati: Big Brother | Alpha

Saga | Photos

Saga has just started Flickring. Some wonderful shots. Cheer your eyes up with a lazy browse...

Technorati: Glass | V & A | Saga Arpino

The Truth Isn't Sexy | Act Now

There's been a lot of talk around the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, and rightly so.

But, right now, there are more people caught up in the international trafficking of sex slaves than were ever involved in that slave trade. It's happening right now. Young girls duped into thinking they're getting a better life in the West, ending up being brutally raped 40 times a day to 'break' them. Make them malleable. So they're ready to answer the calls of the men who take the cards from the phone booths. Tonight. Every night.

The Truth Isn't Sexy is a brilliant campaign led by a devolved network of concerned people. And that ought to include you. Don't hesitate. Do something positive this Lent and visit their site to find out what you can do to make a real difference. Like get hold of some of their award-winning beer mats and distribute them in your local pub.

For those based in London, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are holding a gig in the Bloomsbury Ballroom on the 6th March, all the proceeds of which are going to the campaign. Contact Si for more info.

Technorati: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club | Lent | London | Sexy | Slavery | Truth Isn't

The Open Office ¦ Liturgy Share

The Artists Formely Known as Vaux have just launched a project called The Open Office. (Here's one of us at work ;-)

What we're hoping to achieve is simple: an open-source, online space to resource a liturgical rhythm of life. A monastic office... but for the emerging city.

Over the years we've written a whole load of great pieces, and it seemed a shame that they were only really used once. And over the course of this year we are trying to create new pieces for whatever's going on: daily prayer, birthdays, dedications of children... even A Prayer for a Meal on a Tired Evening After a Day of Struggles in the City. A full list of what's there so far is [ here ].

But this is about us; the aim is for as many groups as possible to join and share their resources too. If you'd like to be able to post, leave a comment here or email theopenoffice {at} vaux [dot] net and we'll send you an author invitation. Include the name of your group so we can add a category for you. Then read the posting guidelines and get sharing.

MacOSaiX...

...is one of those great free bits of Mac software, and if you have a large iPhoto library (or just access to Google Images) you might want to download it and have a play. Very flexible. Very simple. Pick a target image, choose your source image folder(s) and let it get to work.

Technorati: Jesus | mac | MacOSaiX | Mosaic | photography

One Day in History | "A Day of No Particular Significance"

History Matters, along with the National Trust and a bunch of other UK organizations have put together 'One Day in History'.

The idea is simple: on October 17th you log on to the History Matters Website and upload your 'blog' diary of that day. These mass entries will then be collated and kept as a permanent record in the British Library of a snap-shot of an ordinary day in the UK in 2006. Why Tuesday October 17th? For no reason. It is 'a day of no particular significance'. Why do it? Because history matters. And this is one way in which the distributed nature of the web can be harnessed, and it's temporal nature bypassed. These 'Mass Observations' have been collected in the UK since 1937 (and are currently archived at the University of Surrey) , but this is a unique way of taking them to a totally new dimension.

Pepys will be rejoicing...

Sign up now.

Technorati Tags: History Matters, London, Pepys

Backside Cache | Dirt and Computing

Great article in Wired at: http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71763-0.html?tw=rss.index

At first sight, a computer is a system that seems "clean." Early mainframes were housed in dust-free rooms bathed in unvarying white light. Nobody ever got physically dirty handling a laptop. The computer-using proverb "garbage in, garbage out" is just a metaphor; nothing physical goes into a computer, and nothing physical comes out of it.

Then again, why would a "clean" system require so many filters? Spam filters, search filters, surf filters? Why would stuff we encounter on a computer screen be capable of making us feel dirty, or "infecting" our clean machines with a virus?

Just as every animal has a mouth and an ass, with processing stuff in between, a computer operating system has inputs, processing and outputs. We input content through a keyboard, a modem, a drawing tablet, USB or Firewire ports. Useful stuff is output via screen, printer, speakers or over the internet. The useless stuff -- dirty old computer waste -- leaves the system via a little desktop metaphor called the Recycle or Trash bin.

It might be refreshing if, one day, the people who made your computer's OS would call a spade a spade. In a section of his conference talk titled "The Geometry of Filth," Adam Jasper Smith gets to the uncomfortable yet unavoidable nub of the matter. "Dirt radiates out from us," he says. "The primal form of this dirt -- the perfect dirt -- is shit."
 

Morning Rush | Art Therapy | Dirt Boundaries

On a school trip to the (excellent, and oft neglected) Museum of London a couple of months back I was struck in the foyer by an exhibition which included this work 'Morning Rush'. Having a while to look through their shop after the tour - a compulsory part of any trip with kids, I can tell you - I noticed (hot tip for interesting gifts) that the museum allows you to browse and order prints from their huge archive of London photography/print.

Not being able to find this particular work, I emailed the museum about the possibility of buying it and was put in touch with one of their external programmes staff. She told me it had been produced by one of the prisoners involved in their art programmes. I won't mention his name here, but it became clear through the negotiations about buying the piece that he was inside for some pretty terrible crimes. And that he was being moved to a high security, long term gaol with no art facilities what-so-ever. It ended up that we made a cheque out to the Governor of this place, and the purchase may go some way to resourcing the beginnings of an art department.

I don't want this to sound like some do-gooder story. And you may hate the piece anyway. But it is background to some difficult questions I was left with to do with beauty. Can hands that have done such violence create rich beauty? If we can agree they can in a physical, material sense, then we have to allow them to have 'beautiful minds' tucked away somewhere. Minds that were troubled into evil acts. Minds that can be renewed. Minds like ours.

So this piece now stands at the bottom of our stairs by the front door. And reminds me each time I step out of the house to try not to stand in judgement on this beautiful/ugly city that is just over the doorstep. But to try to encourage the beauty in each thing. Somehow.

It's not easy.

Technorati Tags: Art, London

Off to Greenbelt | Heretic's Guide to Eternity

I'm off towards Greenbelt tomorrow, via a stop with some friends in Devon, so probably won't be blogging. Before I go, I promised to post a review of Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor's book 'A Heretic's Guide to Eternity'.

First, an apparent paradox in the book, which I think helps unlock its position quite well. Spencer begins with a well written polemic about the state of religion: immovable, unchanging, unresponsive. Religion no longer works for him, but he remains hopeful that "faith can be practiced without the baggage of religion." Yet a chapter or two later, Spencer writes that "in religion, nothing ever stays the same. Our religions are practiced within our cultural horizons, not outside of them."

So which is right? Is religion over, or is it still evolving? Is Spencer leaving religion behind, or practicing it in a new way? The book appears to affirm that it's both/and. And this is the unique place of the heretic: one who stands both within and without, who "pushes past and beyond the conventional wisdom of the dominant group and pulls us across sacred fences that hold us back... Heretics either burn in flames, or light the way for a new generation."

In other words, this is heretic as Trickster. And for that alone, the book deserves to be read. It will challenge and frustrate and stir up and question. And we absolutely need that to happen. In a great section on the prodigal son, Spencer asks us to reflect on ourselves not as the tragic/heroic younger son who gets so marvelously saved, but on the hard, cold, elder son who equally needs saving. Perhaps the younger son's heresy will save them both, for what the story tells us is that grace is something they both needed.

So what's the central heresy here? For Spencer, this grace is an 'opt out' issue, not an 'opt in' one, and this sails him mighty close to Universalism. In fact, he calls it 'Universalism with hell attached' - hell being the place where people who consciously opt out go. Personally, I think there needs to be a lot more careful thinking here. In fact, my reading of the prodigal son story is precisely that grace is an opt-in issue: the elder son hadn't 'opted out' - he'd hung around and done his duty - but neither had he yet opted in, which the younger son did do.

Either way, one of the other key undertones of the book is the centrality of gift - and it is this line of thought about the nature of the 'transaction' of grace that I would have liked to see pursued more rigorously to push beyond the simplicity of opting in or out. But in a sense, that's the beauty of the work: like a good heretic or trickster should, it demands a response from the reader. What is important now is for those theologians who vigorously deny their ivory tower status to come and get their hands dirty with some of this stuff.

Spencer explores a variety of meanings of the word religion, but doesn't mention the latin verb 'religare' - 'to bind'. He is fighting those bindings, and wrestling to be free of them. But we never will be. We are bound and obligated to live inside some plausibility structure: atheistic, Islamic, hedonistic, universalist, Christian. And bound by culture and place within them. The answer is not that these double binds don't exist, but how we negotiate these boundaries and learn from each other about 'the other'. What is perhaps unique about Christ is this: here was a God prepared to be bound, become human and nailed down. And, accepting these limits, forged a freedom for us.

Technorati Tags: Grace, Spencer Burke, Religion, Salvation, TheOoze

Two Links

Gareth Higgins has started blogging. Working at the front line of Northern Irish peace with Zero28, film critic, author, PhD and lecturer... This is going to be someone worth book-marking.

CoComment is a great site I've started using, having seen Andrew Jones doing so. It allows you to track blog comments / conversations really easily - something that is going to be very useful.

Soliton | The Gospel of Welcome

Just at LAX now on my way back from Solition. What with the security alerts in the UK, my flights home have been changed, cancelled and delayed... and changed again to suit me much better than the original plan. At one time I thought I'd have no hand baggage allowed, but they've relaxed that just today. Thank goodness. Seems flying will soon be exactly as Stelios wants it: naked cattle with passports tatooed to our necks. So much easier to transport...

Soliton itself has just been absolutely amazing. The theme was 'the gospel of welcome', and the hospitality has been just incredible. This is no convention centre meeting: it's meeting in homes, in parks, in bars. Conversing, not preaching. Flexible programming and a great relaxed attitude with some brilliant and inspiring people.

The picture is of me and Si Johnston with the little car we were given to get us from the place we were staying one day. It's bigger than my house. And if the flying hadn't already done so, entirely ruined any environmental credentials I may have had. It was a lot of fun though ;-) 3.5 litres of it.

It's going to be a pleasure to have Shane over at Greenbelt. It was really great to meet him. He had to drive an M3 BMW while he was there too, so we all got a little compromised. Greg Russinger - who puts Soliton together - is going to be over too. Just an amazing guy. Do your best to hook up with him while you're there. You don't need a picture. He IS Jack Nicholson in the days of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

Here's to getting back home to London. Can't wait.

Technorati Tags: Los Angeles, Greenbelt, Terrorism

Should Mission be about Funding? | Small is Beautiful

Over at TallSkinnyKiwi Andrew has posted some thoughts on How To Ask Foundations For Money.

This isn't the first time Andrew's posts have made me feel a little uncomfortable. And it won't be the last. And I'm glad about that. He's a guy who keeps me itching. But, I have to say, the post did flag some questions for me about some of the foundations of the emerging movement.

Andrew notes:

This kind of thing really wears me out but its a necessary part of mission work and getting the job done. My previous mode of working was to ignore the Foundations and do everything without money as much as I could. But Donors also want to play a part in the Great Commission. Especially the more exciting stuff that I have been involved in this past decade -the mission of God in the global emerging culture - and I have a responsibility to make space in the playground for them also.

It seems trite these days to go back to asking what Jesus would have done, but I think it's a serious point. The gospels suggest that the merry band shared a common purse, and that they probably welcomed gifts. But did they go out fundraising? I wonder if it's a point about gift theory. If you put together a Christmas present funding proposal to your parents about how exactly they are going to get that great gift you so want, and what a boon it would be to your life, is that present still 'gift'? I think something of the gift is destroyed by the proposal.

Vaux was a very small project. I remember going to see the Bishop of London at the House of Lords and him sitting down saying 'So what do you want to see me for? Do you need some money?' His jaw almost hit the floor when we said we didn't. We accepted gifts, sure. But we never went out fundraising. Why? Because it seemed right to live within our means.

I love Schumacher's principle of Small is Beautiful and sometimes wonder if much of the industrial mission machine has moved away from this. The subtitle of his work is 'A Study of Economics As If People Mattered', and it is of course the relational that is central to all we do. How much funding should we need for that?

If these donors want to 'get in' on the global emerging culture, why not just give freely? Oh - because they want to make sure their money is being used wisely. How can they do that? As Andrew hints, they need to get relational. But much more so than they might already be doing. Forget the funding forms and spin culture.

I recently went to speak at a large, modern, beautiful church and was speaking to one of the congregation about the building. 'It's horrendous!' they moaned. 'It's costing us so much to keep up'. So sell it. Live within your means. Accept gifts. And if that means scaling back some big projects, fine. The Church™ will survive.

Technorati Tags: Consumption, Mission

Glass Works

Just wanted to flag up Saga Arpino's site cataloguing and promoting her work. A recent post-grad of the Royal College of Art, Saga is fine artist, a Vaux accomplice, and her award-winning work in glass is fantastic. Order some for your space now.

Technorati Tags: Architecture, Art, Glass, London

Noise Mapping | Sound Pollution | Aural vs Visual

Via TimeOut, the London Noise Map.

It's a pretty sophisticated resource, with maps produced by postcode, time of day, major roads excluded or included etc.

What's interesting about the article that accompanied the piece in TimeOut is that it showed that Londoners find road noise to be their great source of irritation. In a world obsessed by anti-social behaviour laws and apparently over-run by block-parties and noisy-neighbours, it's actually traffic that is the most anti-social beast in town. I doubt I'd get very far trying to put in an ASBO on cars and scooters, but research like the London Noise project - funded by DEFRA - does give designers and architects the tools to try to reduce the impact road noise has on our lives.

On another point, I think it's also fascinating that even though we have become such visual beasts - spending so much of our time staring at screens - anti-social behaviour is still essentially a majority aural problem. It's very easy to close your eyes. It's bloody hard to close your ears. One feels that there perhaps needs to be a rebalancing of effort here. So much time and money is spent improving the 'look' of our cities - the visual environment - but given this fact that it's the aural that affects our perception of calm and peace, perhaps more ought to be spent on the 'sound' of our cities too.

Technorati Tags: Antisocial Behaviour, Architecture, London, Noise, Science, Technology

Contemplative Youth Ministry | Being Present to 'The Other'

I volunteered to be part of the 'grid blog' flagging up Mark Yaconelli's book 'Contemplative Youth Ministry', and duly received a copy to read from the publisher.

It's very good. We were traveling up to Iona with some friends, one of whom was also reading it, and she was also very positive.

A quote I'd like to pull out is on page 101, where Mark is reflecting on the practice of contemplative prayer with young adults, as opposed to a 'doing' style:

"Sadly for many of us there are few precious moments among our many human interactions when we feel someone is fully present to us... If you look back over your life, you may find that the moments that had the greatest impact on you were moments when you were in the presence of someone who was fully present to you."

This is the true essence of contemplation - not that we find ourselves, but that we engage with 'the other'; not that we become centred, but that we find space for 'the other' within our centre, and thus become fully present to them.

And if we can help people to begin this journey when they're young - then all the better.

//

Previous post on the grid-blog [ here ]
Next post due tomorrow [ here ]

Technorati Tags: Contemplative Youth Ministry Grid Blog, Youth Ministry

Generocity

My brother in law, Simon, and his partner Maro are going to be heading out  with VSO shortly. They've started a blog which I've added to my sidebar, and I thoroughly recommend passing by there.

The strap-line they've come up with is 'Bringing Global Justice Home' and what I really like about what they're doing is, as usual with me, to do with interconnection. This isn't just about going to some far-flung place to help out. It's about connecting that with places back here too - starting with Edinburgh, where they met and lived. True justice is always about these interconnects. It's not just about helping the victims, nor just about exposing the violators, nor judging the violations, but about helping people to better mutual understanding, whichever side of the divide they are on.

They, like VSO, could always do with our support. So if you feel like giving to support something really good, thoroughly global and thoroughly local, give their 'support' link a click too.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Environment, Justice, Poverty, VSO

Final Salute | Pulitzer Feature Photography Prize

Full series of images from Tom Heisler's excellent winning series [ here ]

Technorati Tags: Iraq War, Pulitzer, Photography, Terrorism

Off | Bandit Baker

I'm Scotland-bound later today for an Easter break. They have bird-flu there. Great. Should be nice and quiet ;-)
I think they'll have wireless, but probably only the bakelite sort that sings out 'The Archers', so doubt I'll be posting or commenting, though I've set up a couple of things pre-post for the GridBlog.

Have fun in my absence, and why not have a read of Malcolm Chamberlain, who's just started blogging. He'll be well worth reading, I can vouch for that.
Enjoy the Master's golf too... A cheeky someone told me over drinks today how Jonny has resisted blogging about his golf habit as he thought it might 'lower his stock'... Rubbish! The campaign to hear about his Emerging Golf Mission begins here. No doubt being a Baker he's a real bandit ;-)

Happy Easter.

Technorati Tags: Easter, Golf

Dirty, Tricky London

Satirical London exhibition at the Museum of London.

Highly recommended.

Free.

A Dirty, Robust Messiah

An excellent thought for the day from the always-interesting Giles Fraser on the BBC this morning, discussing the essential dirty nature of the incarnation, rendering the sacred/profane divide fuzzy in the extreme.

His Greenbelt talk on Why Rothko Is Bad For Your Health is also superb. Buy it on CD, or hassle them to fast-track it to MP3.

Release Your Inner Mr Man/Little Miss

Make your own Mr Man or Little Miss here. Resistance is futile. You know you're going to have to. The Mr Emergent™ competition starts here.

Technorati Tags: Cartoons

Studying Religion

"Some people are sure that the world would be a better place without religion. I am not persuaded, because I cannot yet characterise anything that could replace it in the hearts of most human beings. (Perhaps we should try to eliminate music while we're at it. It inflames the passions and seduces many young people into wasted lives.) What people care about deeply deserves to be taken seriously. Exempting religion from scrutiny is actually a patronising way of declaring it to be all just fashion and ceremony."

From the exchanges between Daniel Dennett and Richard Swinburne, recorded in this article in Prospect.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church, Science, Religion, Theology

Grizzly Man | Searching for Salvation

Just been to see Grizzly Man. It's fantastic.

For those who haven't heard about it, it's a documentary cut by Werner Herzog, using footage shot by Timothy Treadwell on his summers living among Grizzly Bears in Alaska. It wouldn't spoil the film for you to know that in his 13th summer there, he and his girlfriend were mauled to death by a one of them.

Treadwell shot over 100 hours of footage, much of it with him narrating in shot, so there was a wealth of material for Herzog to use, which he intercuts with interviews with friends and others.

What makes the film utterly intriguing is the character of Treadwell himself, who is convinced that he alone is working to protect and save these creatures. It becomes clear that with healthy populations and a functioning nature reserve this is patently not the case. His work is simply not needed, but after a difficult life of failed attempts at other projects, and severe alcoholism, he is desperate to be a saviour to something. He cuts a tragic figure, but is not to be pitied, being totally in love with what he is doing, and totally convinced that he is the only one who can do it.

The film thus becomes a meditation on the human need for salvation. Not so much that we need saving, but that we are desperate to save something, to be something meaningful, to lay our lives down for something.

The question we must therefore ask is, is our life's work worth it? Are we out to save something that doesn't need us?

Only on limited release, so try to catch it soon.

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Film, Grizzly Man, Salvation

100 Reasons You Should Be At This Event

1. Si Johnston promises me it's going to be good. And, even though he's an Anfield boy, I'll trust him on this. Click his link for further details.

2. Soliton. Worth it.

3. The Craic.

4.-100. Make up for yourself to justify the trip. And then Carbon Neutrailise it. GoLowImpact™

Contact Si via his blog (link above) to give him an idea of numbers.

Friday 3rd March. Social.
Saturday 4th March. Sessions 10am - 5:30pm. Meal 1pm
Venue: Kelly's. Portrush, Northern Ireland
Cost: Gift. (Reason 101)

See you there.

Blook | (sic) | Lulu

For those who asked, I've just received the final (hardback) product from Lulu, and the quality is excellent.
If I was being finnickity I'd prefer matt to gloss finish on the cover, but apart from that, no hesitation at all in recommending them.

How much do I prefer page to screen?

Technorati Tags: Blook, Blooks, Lulu, Plogging

Graham Doel Asks...

As you may have seen, Graham was blogging through the book recently, and, having done so, posted some questions, which I'm going to try to answer here.

I'll start with an easy one:

Have you ever tried to get a plumber in a hurry?

No. But my dad has. When I asked him to repair a creaky floorboard in our new house. "Mind the pipes, dad" I said. And he put 10 perfectly lined-up nails through one. Ouch.

It struck me that your experience of the so called "Emerging Church" is born out of frustration and subsequently involvement in "Alternative Worship". How long do you think it will be before the Emerging Perspectives become part of the establishment?

Technorati Tags: Books, Da Vinci Code, Emerging Church

Plogging: You Read It Here First

One of the things I dislike about blogging is the volatility of posts: you write your heart out, and in a couple of days it's disappeared into the aether, too far down for scrolling, rarely to be seen again.

Perhaps this is why Doug Pagitt has decided that blogs are not a good way to conduct discussion and debate. I disagree, but personally need a different format to keep up with what I've written. I just don't find online archives a good way to browse back.

Hence I hearby declare the word created, and announce the arrival of Plogging: Publishing a hard copy of your blog.

I called the book (sic) - "an adverb used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original" - which sums it up pretty well I think. Mine is a beautifully bound edition of the unexpurgated posts, comments and tags from this blog, July - December 2005.

It's really easy to do through Lulu - an excellent online publisher, which I think is going to radically change the nature of publishing as we know it.

Hardback edition available [here]

Softback edition available [here]

PDF previews of the first few pages are available there too. I'm personally really excited about having a hard copy of the blog - it runs to 260 pages or so - and being able to browse a book, rather than a screen! Looking through it, it's amazing to be reminded of the stuff people have contributed... dirt, humour, insight. Doing so makes me want to challenge Doug to think again. Going private on discussion may not do everyone a service.

No I don't expect any sales. And no I haven't considered copyright of people's comments ;p

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: Books, Emerging Church, Lulu, Plogging, Blogging

Protest4 | The Truth Isn't Sexy

As the government releases its proposals about clamping down on prostitution, there's a timely release of Protest4's website and presence.

Si Johnston has had a passion for justice in this area - people trafficking, sexual slavery and abuse - for a long time, and I'm confident that the viral strategy he's set up is a great way forward.

It's entirely run by volunteers: lean, keen and... not at all mean. Do click, support and spread the word.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church, Justice, People+Trafficking, Sexual+Slavery

Are We Just Neophiliacs? [1]

New Year, new blog series on… Newness.

Actually, I’ve been meaning to write something for some time around the book ‘The Neophiliacs - Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties’ that Christopher Booker (the first editor of Private Eye) wrote back in the late 60’s.

The Amazon synopsis for ‘The Neophiliacs’ is rather good:

“Around the mid-1950s, on a wave of technological advances, Western civilisation moved into a period of prosperity dwarfing anything that had ever gone before. How golden was this age of affluence? How did it come to spawn a legend? The Fifties and Sixties are said to have witnessed sexual, artistic and scientific revolutions, the explosion of youth culture, the creation of a classless society. The New Aristocrats were pop singers, clothes designers, actors and actresses, film-makers, photographers, artists, writers, models and restaurateurs. Christopher Booker disentangles fantasy and reality, the ephemeral from the enduring. He charts the rise and fall of a collective dream.”

The book is therefore a critical biopsy of a revolution, and in his analysis Booker identifies archetypal features of any revolution. I read the book baking in the Tuscany sun a couple of summers ago, just after The Complex Christ had come out, and was immediately struck by the huge relevance his analysis had for us in the Emerging Church.

Are we just ‘Neophiliacs’ – in love with newness? Is the change we are hoping to undertake simply nothing more than another ecclesiastic ‘fantasy cycle’? Are we just destined to become a new form of cultural aristocracy, having trashed the established one? Are we involved in something more than a collective dream?

Having picked the book up because of it’s excellent cover, and this period in history being of major interest to me, I thought I was going to simply enjoy a bit of social history. I was therefore totally floored to turn the pages towards the end of the book to be hit with an searingly insightful analysis of Christ’s temptations in the desert, and their relevance for us as we attempt to effect real change, rather than lust after newness in a fantasy that will leave us empty.... But all that's to come.

I'll be posting some further thoughts on it over the next week or so.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church

Graham Doel Blog

See from TSK that Graham Doel is blogging through the book.

If you have any questions Graham, don't hesitate!

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Will the Emerging Church Become a Denomination?

Following on from my post on the subject, Ben has posted some excellent thoughts.

He's just started his own blog, which I've added to my list. Will be good to check out.

Advent: Journeys and Gifts

Perhaps it was the mixture of darkness, waiting and the great mulled wine afterwards, but Advent was always my favourite time of year at Vaux, and as this will be the first year for about 7 years when we won't be doing something I thought I'd offer some resources from the services we did on this theme.

Firstly, a link to the liturgy 'Journeys and Gifts' from the Vaux archive, which explores the coming incarnation through the 3 traditional gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In typically obtuse style, the service sheets ended up being triangular. Beautiful, time-consuming and totally unnecessary. Summed a lot of what we did up nicely.

Secondly, a video-liturgy simply entitled 'Wait', personally one of my favourites of all the things we produced.
This was filmed one night at the local station (screen-shot above), and is simply a single shot of the bank of 3 platform monitors that the drivers use, plus a remix of Sigur Ros' Svefn g englar, followed by a liturgy on waiting bouncing off Whitman's poem 'finally comes the poet'.

"As Christ waited, waited to be emptied of power self sufficiency, so we should wait.
For one advent, finally shall come the poet, the true son of God, singing songs."

It's around 12Mb, but streams nicely over broadband. If you'd like a full-size version on DVD, just get in touch.

Thirdly, a 4-voice meditation which combines themes from the nativity with Rumi's words "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home."

Liturgy for the Dedication of a Child

As requested, (see previous post) the files from the dedication service we wrote. For background info, it was held in a CofE church one Saturday (ie not in a normal service) and was led by the Vicar... It happened literally the day before the last Vaux wake, so was in the Spirit of Vaux, though not run under that name, and we had to work with the Vicar on various bits to make it 'official'. Politics schmolitics.

One prayer inspired by the New Zealand Prayer Book.
The rest CopyLeft Vaux. [ie feel free to use, but with an appropriate reference, and with some imagination]

1st PDF a full text version. Other 2 the service sheet for info. Service title comes from a Dave Brubeck tune 'Charles Matthew Hallelujah', which he wrote on the birth of his first son.