The Complex Christ

Insert Coin [3] | Final Fantasy

[Level 1]  [Level 2]

Emerging Church: Game or Ritual?

As The Believer points out, one aspect of games such as Dungeons and Dragons is that of fantasy. When you enter a game, you are entering 'role play' - becoming someone else. Becoming a fantasy self.

This is something I have critiqued in more detail here. But to summarize, if the Emerging Church risks being seen as a game for some - with rules and power accumulating - then the parallel risk is that it becomes a fantasy, and will inevitably suffer collapse at the end of a fantasy cycle. It will become an ecclesiastic Gizmondo (beautiful article, well worth reading).

So what might be a way forward? How do we avoid the game, with its disjunctive effects, de-marking winners and losers? How do we avoid the unhealthy tendency to masculine competitiveness?

We might meditate on the gospel as a D&D scenario. A wise wizard gathers characters around him. They journey from place to place, meeting monsters, overcoming problems, asking questions. They have a quest, they are immersing themselves in a new kingdom. For some, the quest is a game - there are going to be winners and losers. And certainly, Jesus plays within a defined set of rules. He plays a part.

But, firstly, he also subverts the games different groups want him to play: he plays dirty. By bending the rules he subverts the the boundaries of the game, and thus begins to play in a whole new dimension. Others cry 'foul' and get him sent off... But it's at that point that Jesus refuses to engage in this mission as a game at all. By dying, by 'losing', he presents the ultimate criticism of the competitive, religious fantasies that both his followers and opponents projected onto him.

Secondly, he presents a criticism of the power-accumulation that defines 'good play' in so many games. He empties himself. He works in the economy of gift, passing things on rather than pooling wealth.

Thirdly, he rises again to present an entirely new concept of play. The universe is now fluid and self-organizing. Where there were once rules, there are now governing dynamics. Where there were once blocked walls, places our characters could not go, limiting screens, there is now freedom to roam. Spirit. No temple.

Interestingly, it seems that games are heading that way too. Check out Spore (review here) - a game from the creator of the Sims series that begins in the primordial soup, and can zoom in and out between organism and galactic levels. Players evolve species - and their characteristics are totally within their own control. The game doesn't have a stock list, its governing dynamics simply work out how a fish with 3 legs and a huge head might move. Species then create cities, interact on-line with other cities other players have created, and take on whole different galaxies. Due to be released in Spring next year, it promises to be an extraordinary experience.

If we can face down the fantasy-self of the emerging expressions we are a part of - as Christ did in the desert - we can evolve something truly new. But unless we do so, we are destined to create something competitive and regulated, with its own winners and losers, its own D&D neeks and sports jocks. Let's hope we do so. Let's pray we don't go Gizmondo: promising so much, disappointing so many, costing someone a fortune.

Technorati Tags: Arcade Game, Dirt, Dungeons and Dragons, Gaming, Gizmondo, Religion, Spore

Soliton II | The Other

Si has posted some reflections on Soliton, and makes some excellent points about the terrible way in which The Bridge community have been treated by the local city council. A pregnant mother. Homeless. On Christmas Eve. Would your church have turfed her out? They didn't, and they've been turfed too.

But their mission of hospitality goes on, and permeated everything to do with Soliton. Which has left me reflecting: what else is the gospel, other than a gospel of welcome? Jesus summarised the law as 'love God, love each other', and I've written here before that I'm increasingly drawn to simplify this to 'love the other'. God the 'Other', asylum seekers as the 'other', our secret, hidden selves as the 'other'.

So how do we go about this? Some thoughts that came up in conversation in the sessions:

• Be generous. Gift exchange, as we explored in Peter's journey into seeing the Gentile believers as not-other, is an important way of breaking down barriers. It may be the very thing that separates us from the apes (as I explored here) and inextricably linked to the indwelling of the Spirit.
• Visit your dirt pile. Meditate on that which you consider dirt, and thus explore the boundary systems you are using to define inclusion/exclusion. Christ's radical attitude to dirt made him a major threat to the social control the religious of the day enjoyed. Have we too created a church 'purified to the point of sterility', as Jung put it?
• Hospitality begins at home. Generosity to your self does not mean going out and treating yourself to a new plasma screen. It does mean accepting yourself. As Tillich put it bluntly: 'Simply accept the fact that you are accepted'. The model that Christ showed may be helpful: in his baptism he experienced God's acceptance. In the desert that followed he battled to accept who he was. And this led to his ministry, in radical acceptance and love for the other, wherever he found them.

What was so refreshing about the whole Soliton experience was that all of these traits were not just talked about, but lived out. It was a generous, dirty, accepting, hospitable place. Too often we find ourselves in places that appear to love either God or the other. But here was a place where the other was God. One that recognised that our mission to love the other is simply a journey to the place where God already is: the place of radical acceptance.

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church, Love, The Other, Soliton

The 3rd Economy: Gift, Market and Plunder [3] | Relationships and Transactions | Hunters and Plunderers

[ Gift, Market and Plunder [1] ] | [ Gift, Market and Plunder [2] ]

In the previous two posts I've begun reflecting on Thorstein Veblen's Conspicious Consumption thesis about 'the leisure class' - a group of people he identifies who feel that work is somehow below them:

'The upper (leisure) classes are by custom exempt from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a certain degree of honour attaches. Chief among the honourable employments in any feudal community is warfare; and priestly service is commonly second to warfare.'

He also adds to warfare and priestly service governance and sport, and goes on to explore how:

'When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase of life [...] the activity of the men more and more takes on the character of exploit. Tangible evidences of prowess - trophies - find a place in men's habits.'

I've suggested that this implies a change in the thinking I set out in the book, and adds a third economy to the pair of market and gift. I've decided to call this the 'plunder economy', and, like the other two, has its own relational characteristics, which I want to set out here before exploring what the implications are for us in terms of urban spirituality.

I've often used the examples of food transaction to think about these different economies. The economy of the gift is characterised by having someone round for dinner. It would be a) offensive to offer to pay for the meal at the end of the night and b) strange if the gift was not reciprocated in some way at some later date. In the gift economy there is a movement of the empty place - and thus a virtuous circle of relational potential built up.

The market economy is analogous to going to a restaurant, or the supermarket. You pay your money, and get your food. The scales are balanced, so there is no 'empty place' to move, and thus no relational potential. For better or worse, the market is typically relationally benign. You don't go hugging the chef after a meal and demanding they must come over to your place some time. The money deals with it.

So as an example of the plunder economy, I'll suggest another culinary situation: stealing food from a shop, or walking out without paying. In many ways, plunder is thus 'anti-gift'. There is an empty place again, but it is a place of hurt, a place where relationships are destroyed, not built up. And this empty place is in danger of moving on, as people seek to fill their empty place by plundering themselves. A vicious, not virtuous circle.

On the surface then, it seems we can summarise things this way:

Lewis Hyde has expressed much of the idea of gift using hunting as another analogy. (See my chapter on Gift in The Complex Christ) But we can now expand on this and contrast it with Veblen's view of the Victorian 'leisure' hunter as plunderer. Hyde's hunters saw their activities as part of a cycle. The forest gives prey to them, they give the food to the priests, the priests offer it back to the forest. Veblen's hunters are in no way part of such a cycle. They take from the forest, and hang the stuffed heads on the walls as trophies. By thus emptying the forest, but not replacing, they will destroy the eco-cycle. And what they fail to recognise is that this will, by turn of the vicious circle, destroy them.

Plunderers are therefore a symbol of those who consider themselves outside of life's cycles. Outside of the normal economy of work. Outside of the cycles of gift that sustain us. And outside of any ramifications that might have. They, like the celebrities I have mentioned are one modern equivalent, consider themselves immortal.

And its to the implications of this 'set apartness' - you might call it holiness, self-righteousness - of the plunderer that I want to turn to next. Because I think we have been guilty of collusion with this economy more than we might think.

Technorati Tags: Books, Consumption, Environment, Leisure, Plunder, Veblen, Work

The 3rd Economy: Gift, Market and Plunder [2] | Individual Ownership and The Root of Warfare

In the previous post I began to set out some further thoughts on gift, springing from my reading of Thorstein Veblen's 1899 satire Conspicuous Consumption. I want to continue to develop the thoughts outlined there about the 'leisure class' that Veblen describes.

Essentially, we might now see them as the aristocracy, or celebrities. They are those who do not feel they ought to work. Tara Palmer-Tomkinson is perhaps the best example I can give for a UK readership. I'm sure there are similar figures in other countries. These people are allowed to work, but classically only in 'governance, sport, priesthood and warfare.' *

Veblen notes:

Technorati Tags: Consumption, Leisure, Technology, Veblen, War, Work

The 3rd Economy: Gift, Market and Plunder [1] | Christian Leadership and the Leisure Class

As some of you may know, I've been working on a novel for the past few months, playing with themes, among others, of the links between identity and consumption. One of the books I've picked up to feed the furnace has been Thorstein Veblen's 1899 satire Conspicuous Consumption (an excerpt from his longer work The Theory of the Leisure Class, available as part of the lovely Penguin 'Great Ideas' series), and I'm glad I did, as it's nudged me to re-thinking some of the ideas on gift within The Complex Christ. These are unrefined thoughts, but I wanted to set out a few posts on what I've mulled over.

Firstly, an outline of Veblen's ideas.

His thesis begins with an examination of what he calls the 'leisure class' which 'is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or Japan. This leisure class is basically what we might now call the aristocracy, but his labeling is quite deliberate and, I think, rather contemporary. What obviously separates them - and Veblen gets us to think about this in more ancient cultures, rather than just in terms of stately homes etc. - is their employment:

'The upper (leisure) classes are by custom exempt from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a certain degree of honour attaches. Chief among the honourable employments in any feudal community is warfare; and priestly service is commonly second to warfare.'

Actually, Veblen continues to list four main lines of activity for the leisure class: government, warfare, religious observance and sports. And, as World Cup fever truly grips (perhaps for only 4 more hours as England face Ecuador at 1600) it is interesting to note our continued fascination with the leisure class - we might call them celebrities now I suppose - who play for £120000 a week.

I want to explore the links Veblen identifies between warfare, consumption and leisure in another post. What interests me briefly here is whether Christian leadership is still seen as part of the 'leisure class' -  a get out from real work, an escape of some sort.

Perhaps I'll do no more than present the question; what I would like to add is this fascinating quote from a letter a great friend and critic of Thomas Merton wrote to him. It talks of 'the monastic', but made me think on the insularity of some full-time Christian work:

"The point of being a Christian in the city is to try to humanize modern technology and modern society, and you [Merton] are trying to escape this. Let us admit that at the outset I am radically out of sympathy with the monastic project. […] All monasticism rests on a mistaken confusion of creation with this world, and so they suppose that by withdrawing in some symbolic fashion from creation they are leaving the world. But creation is precisely not the world, but its antithesis, and so what they do is essentially the opposite of salvation. They withdraw from creation into the desert taking ‘this world’ with them and then they dwell apart from creation, but in a newly erected kingdom of the prince of this world. You have not withdrawn from this world into heaven, you have withdrawn from creation into hell."

Rosemary Ruether writing to Merton. In Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong, p 287

Technorati Tags: Books, Consumption, Leisure, Merton, Ministry, Ordination, Religion, Veblen, Work

Seeing Red ¦ The Commodification of Poverty

There's been a lot of media attention given to Bono's initiative 'Brand Red' recently. The Independent is edited by him today (nice cover by Damien Hirst). And yesterday saw the launch of a Motorola phone which, when bought, gives £10 to development charities, and, when used, gives 5% of call charges too.

I have to say I'm sceptical. I like Bono. I think his heart is right in the right place. But I wonder if those eyes have seen through expensive shades for too long, if he's just spent too much time among the glitterati, and whether this Red idea is simply the commodification of poverty.

As you know, I'm a fan of the concept of 'gift', and this idea seems to me to be anti-gift. We buy the phone because we are buying into a brand. Not because we really care. If the only way we can get people to help those in dire need is to have to offer them something cool in return for their pennies, then I think there's something very wrong.

The Independent today carries an interview by Stellar McCartney with Giorgio Armani. In it he states:

"The best way to make a contribution in fashion is to promote the idea that a fundamental interest in preserving the environment is itself fashionable."

I disagree. If environmentalism, or aid, is simply a fashion statement, it will go out of fashion like bell bottoms and floral shirts. And this is the problem. Brand Red is a brand. And the companies involved are involved to make money, not to give it away. The want to align themselves to something that is 'cool'. If Armani was serious, he'd fundamentally change his business practice. He'd rather window dress.

I'm not sure starving children or aids orphans want to be seen as cool. They don't want people buying more clothes and mobiles so a cut of the profits can go to them. They want you to not buy the damn thing, be happy with what you have and give them the lot.

"If a man has two shirts, he should buy another one, Brand Red, and give the profits to the poor." No. Give the poor the other damn shirt.

Technorati Tags: AIDS, Bono, Capitalism, Justice, Poverty, Fashion, RED

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

Via Crucis Grid Blog: The Cross

"

An image which frequently appears among the archetypal configurations of the unconscious is that of the tree or the wonder-working plant."
Carl Jung

The Golden Bough, the Burning Bush, the Tree of Life, the Forbidden Fruit, Golden Flower, Ambrosia... The healing plant has a long history, and appears to be 'rooted' in our very subconscious as a potent symbol of life and transformation.

So how does the Cross fit in? It is clearly part of the 'healing plant' archeype, but perhaps with some essential differences. For the tree that Christ hangs on on this Good Friday has been ripped from the ground. It has no roots anymore. It has been 'manufactured' by humankind. Given shape and form by technologies. This healing tree is therefore in touch with death.

As God hangs dying, the two poles of creation and death meet, and within their potential difference lies our healing, our re-rooting, our re-grafting. Separated from the earth, hung above it, God is then thrust in death into the earth's dirty bowels. It is here, in these places where the two poles are forced together that our ressurection begins.

On Music

This year's Reith Lectures, to be broadcast shortly on the BBC, are to be given by Daniel Barenboim under the title 'In the Beginning was Sound'. I'm hoping they live up to the excellent title, which reminded my of Claude Levi-Strauss' Overture introduction to his seminal work on myths The Raw and The Cooked, which he dedicates 'To Music'.

For Levi-Strauss, music is:

"the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man."

Nature, he goes on to argue:

"spontaneously offers man models of all colours and sometimes even their substance in a pure state. In order to paint he only has to make use of them. But...nature produces noises not musical sounds; the latter are solely a consequence of culture..."

I have argued in the book that the city is the place where we best see the divine and human co-operating. We take the raw materials of creation and process them into glass, concrete and steel. So the city stands as a testament to both the beauty of that co-operation, and the dangers of doing so assymetrically.

What I love about Levi-Strauss' comments is that it puts music on a similar plane. Nature is full of colour and sound. But music only comes when we co-operate with nature and arrange those sounds. Music is therefore another symbol of the possibilities of the divine/human co-operation.

In other words, at best,it is essentially metaphysical. Good is an epiphany. Music touches us, universally, in ways that no other art form can even begin to. It appears to have direct access to the most ancient areas of our brains. The areas that existed before language (making it, as it were 'pre fall').

And this is the beauty of music: it takes us to that ecstatic place - ex stasis - off the ground, where language has nothing to add.

Last night I went to hear Sigur Ros. It was for the most part a good gig, but the final piece they played was one of the amazing pieces of music I have ever heard, and fully supported Levi-Strauss' opinions above. It was the last song on their second album. A translucent screen came down over the band, so all we could see of them were distorted shadows back projected. (Nic told me the best way to enjoy the Sigur gig would be to keep my eyes closed. He was right: the visuals were not great. I've always thought MTV a paradox; surely music that needs video support is inherently impoverished?)

It was as if we were meant to see through a glass darkly. We weren’t to look. For this most euphoric of moments, the visual was minimized. This from a band whose lyrics are basically glossolalia… Beyond language. And the power of the sound, the volume and the sheer richness was overwhelming.

It was music that was literally ‘obliterating’. Destroying text or language or explanation. One felt as if one wanted to be annihilated by it. That if one could jump into it, one could actually rejoin the divine myth. And this, I believe is the promise that true music sings to us: the promise that one day we will be finally caught back up in the divine composition.

Now that's what I call worship.

(Thanks to Jana for the photo)

Technorati Tags: Art, Beauty, Creativity, Levi-Strauss, MTV, Myth, Sigur Ros

Pay per View | Poverty is an Expensive Business | Grace

In a landmark government ruling today, a British utility company has won the right to compel their customers to have water meters installed. It's probably a good thing, as their use tends to encourage less use, and the UK - with the south east in particular is facing a huge drought this summer.

What interests me is the inexorable move towards a metered society. Pay-per-view television. AOL wanting pay-per-email for businesses. Per-mile road tax. Advances in technology are allowing companies and states to be able to track our use of their wares more stringently, and thus get us to pay for our exact use.

A problem? Perhaps not. But the worrying trend we have seen, led by mobile companies and now taken up by many utilities, is to put a premium on pay-as-you-go services, and allow those with the capital to pre-pay effectively cheaper access. This is classic capitalism: if you've got money, you can more easily make more. Poverty is an expensive business.

As I outline in the book, one of the key challenges the church faces is to work out how best to offer an alternative to the all-pervading market economic. To be an organisation that has its gift-practice sorted will be to be a hugely prophetic and inviting place.

In a heavily metered world, grace, free, immeasurable, fully pre-paid, will surely become even more the most exquisite and beautiful thing people have ever encountered (until the collection plate is passed round.)

Technorati Tags: AOL, Grace, Capitalism, Taxation