The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Goodbye, for now | New Book

I think the time is right to drop the curtain on ‘Signs of Emergence’  / ‘The Complex Christ’ / ‘Der Jesus Faktor’ and move on. The idea of this blog has been to give some space to extend the ideas presented in that book, and, personally, I feel that’s been successful.

But you shouldn’t keep flogging a dead horse. There have to be periodic moments of silence / jubilee / death / hidden-ness if the moments of speech / action / life are to have any meaning.

So I’m going to stop this blog, and spend some time working on a follow-up book.

The idea, as it stands in various sketches in my note books, is for an extended meditation on the idea of ‘the other,’ leaning left on the poetry/theology continuum, and hopefully drawing on the stories of some fantastic people I’ve met.

I’ve been pondering Jesus’ summary of the Law to ‘love God, and love your neighbour as yourself,’ and re-phrasing it as ‘love the other, love The Other.’ The other within the Self, the other within our communities, The Other that is immanent and beyond all… It strikes me as the core of everything we are about as people of faith. Indeed, since the birth of consciousness, it’s at the core of everything we are about as people.

And yet, with the continuing rise in anti-social behaviour, teenage stabbings in London, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, theological schism, global terror threats and clinical depression, it seems that in our fluid, multicultural, melting-pot, border-less, easyJet world, we are further from accepting the other than ever before.

Yet, despite all this. I think there are signs of hope. And we need to be those signs of hope. Personally, communally, locally, corporeally, we need to be communities that have this love for God and other at our core.

No, I haven’t got a publishing deal, or even spoken to anyone about one. I’m not sure how much that matters, to be honest. I’m just going to spend some time thinking and writing. And if you have any thoughts you’d like to throw in on the theme, any good books to read, do get in touch, come for a beer, leave a comment, or whatever.

Doubtless I’ll be around online again at some point… No idea when. But you’ll find out ;-)

Fare well, for now. And thanks. It’s been fun.

UK Wants Database of Every Phonecall, Email and Page View | Stop This Madness!!

Shocking news today: the UK government is proposing to create a database of every phonecall made and email message sent. (Update - original article in The Times here.) Yes, you did read that right: that would mean the government would effectively be tapping every phone call and intercepting every email and monitor every page view. What is this madness we're walking in to?! I actually had to check the date of the article to check it wasn't an old April Fool.

No need to ask about the reasons - it's our good old friend National Security. Just a wild guess, but I suspect it would get raided every time a crime occurred, to see if there was anything incriminating out there... and that would mean our everyday PC Plod fumbling around with data... and that would inevitably mean abuse of the system.

This from a government whose track-record on data protection has been terrible.

Oppose this now. Spread the word and raise awareness. Phone your MP. Email them. Write to them. And, if you can, get some of that 'this message will self-destruct' paper from the movies.

PS - hello lackey in MI5 trawling through suspect material. Yes I am planning to assassinate Bush, and Brown, and I have links with Al Queda, and Osama's hiding out at my house. NOW. Perhaps I'm just over-reacting having watched a Bourne movie last night...

Links: How to Avoid The Spies Around Us  ¦  CCTV 'doesn't reduce crime'  ¦  The All Seeing Soc(i)ety

Technorati: Civil Liberties | Politics

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

Clinton Defaults to Conflict: This is Washington, not Hollywood

"One of the things that makes Mrs Clinton so psychologically fascinating is her tendency to portray everthing in terms of conflict and confrontation. And one of the characteristics that makes her so interesting politically is that she is a much better candidate when things are going badly than when they are going well." From BBC News.

This is precisely why I think you Americans should not vote for Clinton. When she says in an interview that she would completely destroy Iran if they attacked Israel, her rhetoric is getting dangerous. It is highly unwise politics to threaten another nation in order to win votes in your own.

The world does not need another US President who defaults to conflict. It's fine in Hollywood: the victim finds their metal and fights back. It's just not good enough if the White House is going to be a force for good.

"America deserves a President who doesn't quit." Perhaps Hillary, but it also needs one who knows when stopping fighting is for the greater good.

Go vote Obama.

Rollins' New Book Gets Pulped. Ouch.

Poor old Pete - seems like some Fundie at the printers for his new book has taken exception to the title of his new book 'The Fidelity of Betrayal', done some reworking, and sent it out to stores as 'The Betrayal of Fidelity.'

Ouch. That's gotta hurt sales.

Both copies have been pulped.

New MA at Kings

Kings College have a new MA which they wondered if I'd be happy to flag up, which I am.

It's in 'Politics, Theology and Faith-Based Organisations', and you can read more about it in the doc attached below.

Service Interruption

Thanks to every0ne who pointed out the blog 'wasn't working' over the last couple of days... Guess I shouldn't fiddle with the design in future ;-)

Abnormal service now resumed.

Should British Kids Salute the Flag? | Identity | Symbols

A recent government report has proposed that teenagers should make an oath of allegiance to 'Queen and Country', in order to give them a 'sense of belonging.'

I'm aware that something similar exists in the US education system, though the only reason I'm aware of it is by it's bitter-sweet use in movies to suggest some apple-pie nostalgia that's going to be blown up in our faces.

I actually think it would be a very bad idea, for a number of reasons. As a teacher, knowing both the sorts of people who work in schools and the sorts of kids who attend them, I think it would be totally impossible to implement with a straight face.

However, leaving the possibility of people not taking it seriously aside, the question remains about what it would actually mean. Would we be insisting the teenagers 'take the pledge'? What would happen to those that refused? Would immigrants or temporary residents have to take the pledge too? Are we seriously suggesting that teenagers might think twice before acting in an anti-social manner, before buying cheap alcohol and marauding around high streets, because of it?

In these sort of public liturgies, the words themselves are merely symbolic, and are meant to be a public statement of some already deeply held truth. The same is true in marriage and baptism. So aren't we asking our children to actually lie if the are forced to say the words without the belief? And if so, is this not simply going to lead to deeper problems later?

Children in the UK are suffering an identity crisis. They are insecure, adrift and alone on the ocean of free-market consumerism, battered by peer pressure, told not to hold on to beliefs or foster relationships or risk being sunk by commitment.

An oath to Queen and Country is an insult to them. How about instead a commitment, a public statement by government, reciprocated by a public commitment by parents, to do better by our children, to love them and support them, to adopt laws that would support families rather than atomising them in the drive to make people work?

Once again, it's the children who are taking the rap. And, as I think the parable of the sower suggests, we shouldn't expect so much of our young seedlings.

Technorati: Allegiance | Britishness | Government | Oath | Parents | Teenagers

Sort it out gays - stop destroying earth!

The Telegraph reported recently that an Israeli MP has blamed the recent spate of earthquakes in the Middle East on gays. The Knesset has recently repealed various laws about homosexuality, and this created the siesmic events.

Gays were also to blame for flooding in Britain last year, according to one Bishop, and one might also argue that with their thrusting steel tubes penetrating and bringing down two of America's largest twin erections, 9/11 was some sort of twisted stunt to highlight the destructive power of gay love, a judgement on liberal America, if you will.

So sort it out gay people - we don't want more floods and earthquakes and terror attacks! Stop it!

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.