The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

The Long Road | Restorative Theatre

I went to see The Long Road at the Soho Theatre on Tuesday night. It's a new play by Shelagh Stephenson based on her experience of working with Synergy Theatre and The Forgiveness Project in some of the UK's toughest gaols. It's been directed by Synergy founder (and brother of Jonny) Esther Baker, and follows the story of a family grieving the loss of their son, needlessly stabbed to death at a bus stop, and their move towards meeting the killer.

The people who know best say she's done a fantastic job:

"Esther Baker’s impeccably acted production confirms the play’s suggestion that restorative justice is far from a soft option."****’
Sarah Hemming, The Financial Times

"Rare and remarkable, this is drama that cries out for attention, and richly rewards it... The acting is tremendous."
Charles Spencer, The Telegraph

And she has. When a play leaves with questions about your own life and attitudes towards living it, and challenges you to re-think, you know it's proper theatre. What the hell would I do if it was my son who was stabbed to death? I'm afraid to even peer into that abyss, and hope I never have to, but for those in and around the criminal justice system, that's what they have to do. And what society demands they do in response to that does affect us all.

If you're in town, go and see it. With great talks around the issues before each Tuesday performance. On til 5th June.

Technorati: Esther Baker | The Long Road | Synergy

Don't Piss About London: Vote Ken Or The Monkey Gets It.

London goes to the polls this week. While the rest of the country has local council elections, London votes for its Mayor. It's the biggest directly-elected budget-holding post in the UK: £13 billion annually to spend, employing 103,000 people and a £39billion transport investment programme over the next 10 years.. And there are some massively key decisions to make which will impact on London for generations: the nature of the cross-rail project, the renewal of the contracts for the modernisation of the Tube...

And people are still seriously thinking of voting for Boris Johnson? Don't piss about London - this is serious.

Let's be clear - I really like Johnson. He's very funny, and articulate on TV. But he's simply no idea, or experience, of the complexity of running of major urban economy. The biggest job he's previously held is editor of The Spectator. While doing so he gave a lot of support and work to one Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan currently works on the Evening Standard, and has spent the past 17 weeks writing the most vitriolic attacks on the current Mayor, Ken Livingstone. The Evening Standard is the only proper London evening newspaper, and their hugely biased campaign has been disgusting.

Ken is no angel - he likes a drink, and a couple of his people have been less than perfect - but Boris would wilt in a day under the same scrutiny. Boris is:

• prone to terrible gaffes, mostly on the issue of race. Not what you need in the most diverse city in Europe.

• a political chameleon, who has u-turned his way through elections since his student days.

• a useless economist, who has screwed up the figures on his flag-ship transport joke policy.

• given to violence. It is well known he offered to sort out 'disposing of' someone who had offended a friend.

So, London, don't piss about here. If you live in London, explore the issues properly and I'm sure you'll Vote Ken, and put Green at number two. The Boris joke is over. We need more than a monkey in charge. And if you know someone who lives here, make sure you tell them to get out and do something sensible with their ballot.

Technorati: Boris Johnson | Evening Standard | Gilligan | Ken Livingstone | London | Mayor

Jaime Lerner ¦ Stealth and the City ¦ The City is Not the Self

Thanks to Helen of Urban Practitioners for sending me this article in The Guardian a couple of weeks back about Jaime Lerner and his radical environmental policies that have transformed the Brazilian city of Curitiba.

I say environmental in the truest sense: he is an architect by trade, and is concerned with the built environment, as well as carbon footprints.

What is particularly interesting was the necessity of stealth and speed: with political turmoil and dictatorial governance, he was never quite sure how long he had before his authority as mayor was swept away, nor how long it would be before someone tied his ideas up in red tape. Hence:

"We had to do things quickly because next week we might not be here anymore [because of the dictatorship].' And you have to be quick to avoid your own bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything. We built the opera house in two months, the botanical gardens in three months, Niemeyer's museum in five months. We transformed the city's main street into a pedestrian area in 72 hours. It wasn't that we were chasing after records - it was necessity."

There's something of the trickster about him, and as London comes to its own mayoral elections, it's going to be interesting who people plump for. One wonders if Lerner would have won the popular vote; in the case of Ken Livingstone, many of his policies for London - like the congestion charge - have been wildly unpopular, and yet have been very successful and vital to the city's environmental awareness.

Einstein once said 'the environment is everything that isn't me', and we might re-phrase that as 'the city is not about the self.' It's worth holding this in mind whenever we vote. Are we voting for our own pockets, or for the common - and more difficult - good?

Flocking to the Cities

Sorry been a bit quiet here. Kids' birthdays, other writing projects... stuff.

Anyway, a piece on the news caught my ear yesterday. Apparently a long-term study of the hunting habits of peregrine falcons has found that they have evolved their methods and are now increasingly hunting in cities at night.

The thinking is that they are using the lights from urban areas to spot migrating species - like Woodcocks - at night, and swooping in for the kill over our cities.

Why have they moved in? It's a pattern we can see in many other animals too. Foxes - once a very rare sight in my childhood - are now a daily feature of my suburban street. Animals are finding cities good places to be because of two factors. Firstly, there are lots of easy pickings for scavangers like foxes. Discarded protein, in the form of chicken wings and kebabs, are easier to hunt down than rabbits. And migrating birds crossing over cities at night are very easy pickings for falcons.

Secondly, the irony of urbanisation, and the intensive food production it requires (see previous series touching on this), is that much of the countryside is very bland. In fact, in some urban areas there is now a greater variety of plant species per square kilometer than there is in the 'countryside', with its acres upon acres of intensively farmed land.

What does this tell us about cities? What is abundantly clear is that they are heavy masses, with large gravities. Falcons didn't look at cities and think 'hey, it'd be great to go and live there'. They circled them and were drawn in by them, inch by inch. Cities do not exist in isolation from, or in opposition to the countryside. The presence of the city infects and affects that which feeds it.

There's a passage in the novel I've written* where the protagonist reflects on Forster's assertion in Howards End that 'all of Cornwall is latent in Paddington (Station)', and concludes that the flow has switched: all of London's vices are spread out and latent in the country stations that flow from its terminii.

It seems that the same pressures that drove people off the land and into the factories are being felt by other species. Nic always asserts that 'you're only out of the city when you can't get mobile reception', and that is getting a long way away now. But even in those places, the fingerprints of mankind's domesitication of the landscape is plain to see.

Masses that get too heavy exert such a strong gravitational pull that not even light can escape. These black holes are constantly hungry ghosts, never satiated. The question is, how do we avoid allowing our cities becoming these dark places, drawing in and consuming everything around them? I guess that was one of the questions I was trying to grapple with writing the book.

 

* on Lulu for a while while I flaggelate myself before agents.

"cos, you know, you can treat them like shit"

On the train to this little drinks thing for an education weekly I write some stuff for, just a couple of stops. Three guys sitting in seats across the aisle:

"So, we go from the pub to the match, and then from there onto another pub, and I'm so wasted by now, and then we go on to a strip joint, and I just spend SO much..."

"Cool..."

"And this one girl comes up, and I've already shelled out loads for dances, and begs me to pay her to dance..."

"I bet you did a bit of that, eh?" (guy mimics lifting up of a skirt)

"...and she then like promises me something a bit special, so I get my cash out, and show it to her, and she looks well pleased, then I think, fuck it, and tell her to piss off, cos, you know, you can treat them like shit"

And I look at the middle-aged lady sitting opposite. And look at them, bigger than me. And think of the broken promises I'd made to get really stuck into campaigning with The Truth Isn't Sexy, and my stop comes, and I get off, without saying anything, feeling none of the wisdom of the wise men, and none of the raw courage of Joseph, and none of the 'fear not', and all of the shame of the shit I'm complicit in and feign to shout loudly about and continue to do nothing about, pray for at least an ounce of John the Baptist's gall to stand up for what I know is right and pay the price. Because you know I know for sure that every day trafficked women are paying a lot more than that. And I let them get away with it, and treat them like shit, and go and sip my champagne.

Just another compromised day in the life. Sometimes I'm just not proud.

Technorati: London | Strippers | Truth Isn't Sexy

Watch Your Back

Ramping up the fear at my local railway station.

Technorati: Crime | Fear

Sometimes Facebook Makes You Weep...

Poor thing!

Technorati: Facebook

Howies: Tales of the City

OK, so Howies opened a store in Carnaby Street - their first in London. Which is great. I hope they do well. But I have to admit their attitude to the city - and to London in particular - has been mostly negative. Indeed, their catalogues in the past have regularly been virtual tracts for country-side life, waxing lyrically about how fabulous it is to live by fields and go biking in the woods at lunch time. Which it is. Trouble is, the vast majority of their customers don't live this life, and it sort of pisses me off when they so blatantly bite the hand that feeds them.

Of course, many of their more vitriolic rants against the city ("We're flying in and out for a day - it's all we can cope with! - to do our sale" etc.) have been removed from their site - although one raging against big money remains, which I hope their new owners Timberland don't mind about.

As I say, I hope Howies do well. I love their products and the rest of their ethos. But it's an attitude to the city that is quite prevalent: we'll go on and on about how shit it is, about how noisy and how grey and how unfriendly and how violent - but hell, it's where the money is, so we'll happily plunder it for its wealth.

I love the countryside - I'm off to darkest Wales this weekend - but let's not pit city and country against one another. Everything in the city is raw material from the countryside - rock, stone, ore - that has been processed by human hands into metal, glass, brick. But where is virgin countryside now? Everywhere has been managed. Everywhere has our fingerprints on it. We simply need to ensure that those prints are lightly made.

Technorati: Howies | London | City

Dump

Still on holiday here, and doing some clearing jobs around the house/garden that have been building up for a while. Which means I've had to go to the dump today - one of the finest, most joyous experiences in the urban environment.

You go heavy loaded, driving slowly, suspension almost topping out... and leave it all behind. The priests who preside over this sacrament at our local place are fantastic too - helping you with the bigger stuff, directing you as to which skip to dump stuff in, advising whether something ought to be recycled. Everyone drives away feeling lighter, happier, going home to a simpler, less cluttered place. It is distinctly sacred.

This isn't, of course, to be naive about the problems of urban waste. It is incredible to see the stuff people do chuck, when most of it could very well be posted on a site like Freecycle. At least they sort stuff for recycling now, which they didn't a couple of years back.

Technorati: Dump | Freecycle | Waste

Autumn

Trees sense a moment when the balance between night and day changes. The shorter days trigger the development of a suicidal hormone in each leaf which creeps down the stem to the joint with the woody twig. Here it stimulates the growth of a sphincter of brittle, hard tissue that gradually closes in on itself, cutting off the supply of sap. Thus deprived of water, the chlorophyll in the leaf disintegrates, and the colours of the leaf's other underlying constituents are revealed, before the stem joint finally snaps and the leaf floats to the floor.

From Wildwood by Roger Deakin

I love autumn, and this passage really struck me. I'd somehow thought that it was the 'core' of the tree that got rid of the leaf, but it appears that it is the leaf that takes the decision to die, for the better of the whole organism.

Somehow this struck a chord. Heat. Life. Lowering sun. Falling temperatures. Ice. Thaw. New life. And so it cycles...

Technorati: Autumn | Deakin

Is Your Faith Endo- or Exoskeletal?

Manuel de Landa, in his brilliant book A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History writes of the two skeletons that humankind have developed. Our endo(internal)skeleton "made new forms of movement control possible, freeing [us] to conquer every available niche." Later, around 8000 years ago, we then developed the urban exo(external)skeleton, whereby "bricks of sun-dried clay became building materials for homes [...] and defensive walls."

Snails have exoskeletons. A protective shell within which to hide. Our early cities were simply exoskeletal defensive structures to protect communities against constant pillage and plunder, thus allowing culture and community to grow.

Mammals have developed endoskeletons. Non-protective, they instead allow huge improvements in a body's motion control. We can stand, run, hold, sew, build.

So, in the manifestation of the Body of Christ that you are a part of, is that body endo- or exoskeletal? Is it there as hard external shell to protect and shield us from the plundering of 'the world'? Or is it an internal strength, allowing new forms of motion control, allowing a gathered people to join and stand and build?

The question is pertinent for all of our networks. Are they protective covers that help us feel connected, but prevent real engagement, and are they in fact in danger of being so big-boned that they crush us into inactivity?

Technorati: de Landa | Endoskeleton | Non-Linear History | Exoskeleton

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

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

Tales of Two Buildings::Two Cities::The Divine Vision

Mika Brzezinski recently refused to lead with a story about P@&i$ Hi%ton over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In a similar vein, Wired reported in 'A Tale of Two Cities' that a trawl of the web revealed more interest in the iPhone than the recent triple-attempted bombing on London and Glasgow.

Celebrity::Security::Gossip::War :: These are all the hallmarks found branded on the urban belly. We'd be foolish to try to pare them. London wouldn't expect us to stop and stare in the face of car bombs. Crowds and spectacles, criminality and terrorism. Londinium's clay has been trodden on and burnt by them for millennia. It's a wise and rooted place.

On Thursday and Friday I was fortunate enough to see the resurrection of two of the city's iconic buildings:

First Pilotless Police CCTV Drone Launches

Following up on the recent post about CCTV, I just had to post this story.

Am I alone in thinking this is seriously worrying? That we are sleepwalking into a Stasi-style surveillance society?

Get your catapults and air guns loaded my friends, the battle starts here.

Technorati: BBC | CCTV | Drone | Police | Surveillance | Stasi

CCTV ¦ The All-Seeing (soc)i(ety) ¦ Faceless

The other day I was walking along our high street when I saw this 'mobile CCTV'... tank parked up. They were snapping, so I thought it only polite to reciprocate.

It seems we've totally resigned ourselves to being discreetly observed at all times. Speed cameras, CCTV, Congestion Charge cameras... I the novel I've been working on I talk about a 'black atlas' of London, plotting the routes you could drive without being filmed. I'm not sure you could get 200 feet any more.

Teaching a class of 12 and 13 year olds the other day I asked them, in the context of a debate about terrorism and security, whether they thought CCTV everywhere was an infringement of their civil liberties. Initially most of them thought it wasn't. It was 'a good thing, to stop crime and terrorists.' Of course, we then began to discuss what sort of level of filming one would need to really achieve this, and it basically boiled down to Big Brother: someone watching everyone's every move.

We're not far off. This evening on the news there was an item about drone planes being deployed in the near future to track terror and crime suspects. I for one would have a shot at one if I saw one ;-)

Which brings me to the excellent piece about Manu Luksch - an Austrian film maker who has created 'Faceless', a film shot entirely from CCTV footage of herself she has obtained under freedom of information legislation. Predictably, many were very unwilling to give it, despite clear guidelines for speed and cost of delivery of the images. It's a step up from the Dogme 95 manifesto: the Manifesto for CCTV Film Makers is an even harder taskmaster. But one that I think is highly relevant for these strange times.

Technorati: CCTV | Terror | Faceless | Dogme | Luksch

Doing No Favours | Non Violence [2]

What a terrible tragedy in Virginia. The families - and whole community - are in my thoughts and prayers as they try to find some way through this.

The soul-searching has already begun here. The UK press have been pointing out the all too frequent nature of these such attacks. Guns and stressful modern life do not mix well. As I've written before here, the same technology that allows us so much freedom, and unprecedented leisure, also has again reared its dark head. You simply can't kill over 30 people with only your bare hands. You need tools to do that.

My knowledge of the socio-political climate over the issue is limited to Michael Moore's output, plus some other partisan material, and I understand that comparisons are tricky to make between countries. Either way, a factor of nearly 35 times more gun-related homicides in the US than most of Europe has to be explained.

For me, I can't help but wonder each time such news breaks again: surely gun control has got to mean more than using both hands?

Technorati: Gun Control | Michael Moore | Virginia

Spring | The Compost Christ Flowers Again | SymbolLife™

Spent a glorious sunny Spring day on the allotment today. Jonny recently posted a photo celebrating the great weather we've had (on and off) recently. And today was another stunner.

Having oh-so-mocked, it's good to see Grace have an allotment now too... In fact there are record waiting lists at most plots across London. I'm not surprised. In a time when leisure has been sold up and marketed in malls as mass entertainment, genuine re-creation is hard to come by.

The photo tells a lot about why I'm such a fan. The paving slabs were from Freecycle, picked up yesterday. The onions I'd just planted a gift from our neighbour who'd had a double order delivered. The tools shared in a shed we bought for £20 from someone else on the plots. Allotments are all about these simple gift exchanges, and the relationships to others and the earth that they bring. A borrowed wheelbarrow, a helping hand lifting stones, a gift of food, a word of advice.

Of course, we have no need to grow our own food. But doing so is a small part of the attempt we are making to 'live symbolically'. These little acts do not themselves change much, but point to something bigger, and thus perhaps add to a building resonance of hope for a better future. There is actually a long history of the socio-political in allotment gardening, and there are strong connections to parts of the anarchist movement insomuch as it is about taking back under your own control something that corporations have ruled. There are myriad other benefits: good exercise, reduction in food miles... and the simple pleasure of getting 'sur les pavés' and back to the earth. But, most importantly, it's about entering a cycle of gift; if you read Lewis Hyde, you can't help feel the soil pushing through his soul.

Technorati: Allotment | Christ | Compost | Grace | Hyde | Anarchy

Everything That Is Wrong About Living In The City Can Be Summed Up In Two Words:

Aggressive.
Drivers.

Technorati: Aggression | Driving

The Trouble with Black Boys | Where is Stage 4 Pentecostalism?

Tragically, last night a 3rd boy was shot dead in South London, the latest victim of a possibly-connected spate of black on black youth killings. The police have responded by saying they are going to have armed patrols on the streets now. Like that's going to work. Two of the boys were shot in their beds.

This morning I was reading the page proofs for the US release of the book, and came across this end-note to a part of the book discussing Fowler's stages of faith:

I am perhaps stepping beyond my remit, but in my work teaching in an inner city comprehensive I have seen many, many examples of students from families from strongly ‘Stage 3’ Pentecostal churches who, in their latter years at school, develop real problems with discipline. I wonder if this is because they have so few role models at the latter stages of faith, and once they begin to appreciate the complexities of their situation in the city, have few resources for helping them cope with it and so end up kicking hard against the system. It is for others to comment in a more informed way on these casual observations, but perhaps absence of any Stage 4+ expressions of faith in Pentecostalism is doing young people in troubled communities a great disservice.

Perhaps I am speaking out of turn, perhaps there is a 'Stage 4' / doubting path within the black churches?If there is, I've never seen it. All the literature you see - and masses of it - is all about 'Holy Power Apostolic Life Church International Healing Power Ministry Prophecy with Big Pastor Somebody and his Shiny Suits.

And I think this is a very deep problem. In my, admittedly small, experience working with teenagers, there needs to be a path from infancy (dependency on the mother) into adulthood (walking alongside the father). Adolescence is the difficult in-between stage, the stage of doubt. The stage where all that Stage 3 certainty is debunked.

It is here that all systems are challenged and all authorities are questioned. And I think ideally this tricky place is best negotiated with one hand still on mother, and one hand reaching out to father. Not only that, but the other social structures that these becoming-adults are part of also need to walk this stony ground with them.

If I am right about the lack of any clear path beyond Stage 3 in the black churches, then, combined with the horrific statistics about absenteeism among black fathers, these young men are being let down on two out of three counts. Believe me, I've met the mothers, and they are desperate. Their boys - who tend to be angelic up to age 11/12 - suddenly leave them, and they have no way of helping them.

Other cultural factors are at work here too. It seems that music is letting these boys down too. If you are middle-class and white, then you have a whole catalogue of depressing, soul-searching music to act as your soundtrack for this journey. The Smiths, The Cure, Radiohead... all these are bands who are playing music for that journey beyond Stage 3. But, tragically, there is almost no angst-ridden hiphop or garage. And again, in the absence of other support structures, this leaves these boys with almost no resources to negotiate this journey into adulthood.

So what do they do? They do what anyone else would: help each other. That's what a gang is: a self-help group when no one else is around to do it.

The solution? Obviously this is a massive problem that is very deep-seated. This Sunday is 'Amazing Grace' day, and thousands of churches will sing out heartily to raise awareness of modern-day slavery. Quite rightly, but old-world slavery still has it's fingers of shame and worthlessness round so many necks. What will not work - and what is just political posturing to pander to us middle-class whites - is arming police. The solution must lie within. The black churches must find some way of holding on to young men beyond 12 years old and resource them with wise guides-men to listen to their doubts, affirm their challenges to authority, and lead them out of the maternal into adulthood.

At least, that's what one white, middle-class, Anglican teacher thinks.

Rest in Peace, Billy Cox.

[PS - great representation from the 'From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation' on Channel 4 news tonight. They need our support.

Technorati: Amazing Grace | Billy Cox | London | Pentecostalism | Shooting

'Stay in the City'?

Steven Johnson, who wrote the fabulous book 'Emergence' [USA | UK] which inspired so much of 'Signs...' has a really interesting post on his blog about Leaving Brooklyn.

It seems two friends of his were the victims of crime in the area and have decided enough is enough - they are moving out. Johnson's post is a plea for them to stay, backed up with some great thinking.

Connectedly, in preparation for the release of 'Signs...' in the US, I've been going through the UK version with the fine people at Baker, with them suggesting amendments and clarifications. One of the trickier points has been whether to tone down the deliberately city-focused UK text and generalize it to 'wherever you live.'

In many ways I've been doing my best to resist, partly because I feel that while humanity has urbanized massively - over half of the world live in cities now, whereas only 15% did 100 years ago - the church has failed to respond to what a city is really about. Its theology and ecclesiology have thus remained 'pastoral' - from the countryside - I am convinced that we need to rebalance that.

But for that to happen do Christians need to 'stay in the city'? If the grand sweep of our faith is the movement from a garden to a city then what impact ought that to have on how we live? If a city is simply 'where humanity and divinity gather to co-operate and co-create' then does it matter if this is in London or Chipping Sodbury, as long as we connect with people?

Technorati: Emergence | London | Crime | Steven Johnson | Urbanization

Before you can love thy neighbour, you've got to meet them first... | Social Networking

Which is where Peuplade comes in. (You can read the BBC's article on it here.)

It's a Parisian social networking site that is helping people to meet their neighbours.  Which is great. Sort of.

Of course it's a positive thing that people are meeting up. But it worries me that it has taken the mediation of a website to do so. The proof of the pudding will, of course, be in the eating: will the site reinvigorate community and neighbourly feeling so effectively that it won't be needed in the future?

I hope so. I am currently reading The Challenges of Ivan Illich - a series of essays by some of Illich's collaborators - and there is a piece there entitled 'Hospitality Cannot be a Challenge' which I think is pertinent...

In Conclusion: Love thy Neighbour

So here's the first proper post of the Signs blog. The book itself comes out in July, but why wait that long - I'm hoping we'll be able to engage in some discussion way before then. (If you really can't, you can order a copy of the UK version or download a sample chapter ;-)

Having written the book and reflected on it for a while, I've been wondering what the essence of it really is. In a world where brutal dictators are hung, with violence piled upon violence, where the birthplace of our faith rips itself apart in acts of frustrated self-harm, and - as the BBC reported the other day - in a country where four fifths of the population don't think that good relationships with neighbours is important... In such a world as this, what possible relevance could a book paralleling the theory of emergent systems with the gospel have?

As 2007 begins, I'll begin with the only conclusion I can come to: love thy neighbour.

Complex, emerging systems such as you might read about in the book - or in more depth in Steven Johnsons Emergence - rely on the local, neighbourly connection. The grand designs of our minds, the viral web of the internet... neither of these rely on high-level connection. They work because at the low level they are interconnected.

In 2007 what can we do to stop the global violence, to prevent climate change, to improve our cities, to build bridges across the divides in and around our beliefs? Only one thing: make low-level connections. Walk, don't take the car. Be kind. Show love to those who disagree with you.

A recent commentator on the radio highlighted the problem of dealing with anti-social behaviour in a world where there is no neighbourly relationships: the only route is to call the police, which ramps up the tension and solves little in the long term. It's very hard to be antisocial when you are in good relationship with your neighbours.

So perhaps we are left with this single resolution as we head into 07: try to love our neighbours more. Why? Well, as the aboriginal leader Lilla Watson said,

"If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together."

This interdependence is, I believe, at the heart of the gospel, and at the heart of what I've tried to write about.

Peace,

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