The Complex Christ

Off to Soliton | Nomadic Faith | Spiritual Cartography | Vx 'Suicide'

Off tomorrow to Ventura, CA, for the Solition Sessions. Big thanks to the generous guys there for offering to fly me over. What with being off there and other recent trips, it's felt like a bit of a busy, travelling summer. But it was great to catch up properly with Nic the other night.

One of the things we got talking about was Ben Edson's post about rites of passage and the 'Vaux Suicide'. He had rightly picked up on research linking high levels of adolescent male suicide with the lack of rites of passage. Denied any well-trodden paths into adulthood, they struggled to find their own way. Ben had then suggested that this might have some bearing on the lack of longevity in alt.worship groups, and that the Vaux suicide was a good case in point.

It's a great thought, and may well hold some truth, but Nic and I both agreed that a better understanding would actually be to see our ending of Vaux as precisely such a rite of passage: to hold on to that manifestation would be to remain adolescent. This reminded me of the video I'd created for the very end of the last service before our ending meal - a piece that I suppose stands as a suicide note. Part of the text:

Technorati Tags: Art, Bede, Cartography, Merton, Mofokeng, Race, Soliton, suicide

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

On Meaning [3] | Absolute Truth | Power | Stages of Faith

On Meaning [1]  | On Meaning [2]

In the previous two posts I have been trying to set out why I still hold to a position that absolute truth exists. The discussion began as a meditation on meaning and language, and I've tried to make the connection between these and truth.

I ended the last post by positing that an extreme relativist position leads to difficult corners where it is impossible to make sensible statements about right and wrong, and thus leads us into moral difficulties. But also that, even though I believed in absolute truth, because the only way we can exchange ideas/thoughts in the public domain is through the porous and ever-negotiable means of language, I didn't expect to be able to explain fully why. It boils back down to the faith/doubt axes.

To explain further: while I believe absolute truth exists, I don't believe that any one person or group of people have full access to that truth.

I think this has 2 major implications:

Technorati Tags: Absolute Truth, Church, Emerging Church, Justice, Language, Meaning, Post Modernism, Postmodernism, Power, Religion, Science, Theology

On Meaning [2]

It's been a knackering week, so this is going to be even more lacking 'meaning' than it's going to anyway, but here we go with part two.

In response to the previous post 'on meaning', Nic wrote:

[I want to react against] some sort of pre-ordained meaning, rules of engagement or ‘isness’- a divine database with tags that define ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ usage. Any illegal use (which I love) automatically stands outside the official cannon, rendering it relative. This is why I don’t understand the notion of absolute with all its borders and restraints. It’s the space of the ‘bottom-inspectors’ and the elites...

I thought it might be interesting to add to that a quote from the godfather of Neoconservatism, Leo Strauss:

"Western liberalism has led to nihilism, and undergone a development that has taken everything praiseworthy and admirable out of human beings and made us into dwarf animals satisfied with a life in which nothing is true and everything is permitted.

"People believe that the liberal idea of individual freedom leads people to question everything - all values, all moral truths. Instead people are led by their own selfish desires. And this threatens to tear apart the shared values which held society together."

I'd better now state that I'm not a neo-con (!), but if the opposite of that (as Strauss would like us believe) is a wooly liberal for whom everything is relative and everything goes, then I'm not that either, and I want to try to set over the next few posts a) why I believe in absolute truth and b) i) what some caveats to that are and ii) what relevance that might have to us practically.

Technorati Tags: Absolute Truth, Auschwitz, Environment, Holocaust, Justice, Meaning, Post Modernism, Postmodernism, Abuse, 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

Neophilia [5] Subvert the Fantasy Church

Links: Neophilia [1]  |  Neophilia [2]  |  Neophilia [3]  |  Neophilia [4]

Anyone been finding blogging more difficult than it used to be? Lost the novelty a bit, and now what seemed so easy and freeing is more of a chore at times? Lots of people I've read seem to have done recently... Welcome to the fantasy cycle of the neophiliac.

I've linked to the other posts in the series above - and in the right bar under the series clicks - but to summarize, I've been fascinated by Christopher Booker's work The Neophiliacs - Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties and believe it has strong messages for us as an emerging movement.

Why? Because he identifies the potential pitfalls of newness: falling into a neophiliac fantasy cycle:

Technorati Tags: Books, Emerging Church, Fantasy, Rebirth, Sustainable Growth

Neophilia [4] | Unmask the Fantasy Self

Links: Neophilia [1]  |  Neophilia [2]  |  Neophilia [3]

Over the last few posts I've been proposing that the Emerging Church needs to be aware of the dangers of 'Neophilia' - being in love with newness for newness' sake. Neophilia is a revolutionary mode. It tries to effect quick change, but fails to settle on sustainable, deep-rooted solutions as it flits from one 'saviour' to the next.

The process by which this happens Booker calls a fantasy cycle: from anticipation, into the dream stage where nothing can go wrong, to the frustration stage where things get more difficult, to the nightmare stage where nothing goes right, to the death-wish stage where things implode.

My concern is that in the new movement of the Emerging Church we need to be aware of the dangers of getting caught in such fantasy cycles if this newness we are looking to bring is to be anything more than a fad that people latch on to, fall in love with, get tired of and begin to destroy.

Jason and Damnflanderz make pose some important points. Firstly that such fantasy-cycles are an integral part of our lives. Fantasy is very closely linked to dreams and aspirations, and can thus be said to energise us change our reality. But we need to be careful that they don't function to escape us from reality. So, secondly, is there anything Booker suggests we can do to escape the destructive elements of fantasy cycles?

Two levels to deal with, personal and corporate. On the personal level first:

Technorati Tags: Fantasy, Rebirth, Sustainable Growth

Neophilia [3] | Christian Fantasy Cycles and Stages of Faith

In the last post I tried to argue, using Booker's excellent book 'The Neophiliacs - Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties' that we must avoid sensationalism. That we must avoid the projected image, the sensational, which in the age of screens and billboards is a difficult thing to do.

Booker warns that this cult of sensation in the late fifties led Britain, and other parts of the West, into a corporate 'fantasy cycle.' I think this is a very powerful concept that is highly pertinent for our situation. He identifies five stages:

Stage 1: The Anticipation Stage
This is when a group are experiencing some kind of constraint. However, it is a constraint, or boundary, that is actually energising them, firing their dreams of newness, even though this dream lacks a focus or outlet. At the anticipation stage people are flying around looking for the thing to grab on to, for the project to fire their energies into. It is frustrating, but exciting.

Stage 2: The Dream Stage
"A period of rising excitement... when everything seems to be going right" as Booker puts it. The focus has been found, and everything just seems fantastic, running on its own energy. It seems nothing could ever go wrong, and finally IT has been found, the perfect, the great thing we've been waiting for.

Stage 3: The Frustration Stage
Here the first tinges of difficult are spotted. Relationships fray a little, and while things on the surface are still going really well, the energy required to make it happen is more than used to be in the Dream Stage. Meeting up becomes a little tiresome. Egos begin to surface. The 'no worries' attitude gives way to agendae and slightly different vision.

Stage 4: The Nightmare Stage
This is the exact opposite of the Dream Stage. The project seems to have become an energy black hole, with no amount of time invested seemingly able to raise the same excitement levels that once seemed so easy. Relationships are strained, and people are seeing clearly that the perfect IT that they had fantasised about is actually flawed, more difficult, more time consuming, full of awkward people that we thought we'd got away from, backward, too traditional, not radical enough... OLD.

Stage 5: The Death Wish Stage
This is the explosion into reality. The project, the vision, the great new thing collapses. People fall out, run away, move on. The dream is over. We swear we won't be fooled again... Until we get that feeling that THAT is it! Some new thing, some new fantasy to get excited about... And so it rolls on.

Having read this analysis I was immediately struck by how this is paralleled in so many Christian stories. What worried me in particular was that we might well, in certain arms of the Church, be selling people a fantasy cycle. Inviting them on this great ride - it's fantastic, it's new, it's perfect! And they are just ripe for it, and its starts like a dream and they are up and clapping, on fire... And then gradually get frustrated.

They have to sing harder, or be in bigger groups to get the same worship hit. Things don't make quite as much sense. The people are awkward buggers. And the illness has come back... And the real worry, as Alan has brilliantly written in his book A Churchless Faith, is that once the Death Wish phase is entered, people simply leave.

A couple of questions to leave you with:

// Have you been through this cycle before? I know I have.
// Is the Emerging Church movement somewhere on this fantasy cycle?
// If so, where?
// And should we be trying to stop the fantasy cycles, and get real?

"Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you." Then he said to his disciples, "The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them."

Should we be trying to do something more solid, rather than run after everyone who points to the latest fad, the latest gimmick, saying 'the kingdom of heaven is over here'!

Booker, and Christ, would say yes, and it's to how that might happen that I'll try to post on next.

Peace,

Neophilia [2] | Emerging Church and the Cult of Sensation | Keep it Real

'In this our time, the minds of men are so diverse, that some think it a great matter of conscience to depart from a piece of their old customs; and again, on the other side, some be so new-fangled, that they would innovate all things, and so despise the old, that nothing can like them but that is new.'

Thomas Cranmer, Book of Common Prayer 1552
Quoted in the introduction to The Neophiliacs

Christopher Booker's 'The Neophiliacs - Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties' has, I believe some powerful messages for us as an emerging movement. The book is an analysis of those remarkable years when much of the West did undergo a remarkable shift in attitudes and major new forms of music, theatre and political mood took root. By weaving together events from the worlds of music, film, literature, politics and fashion, Booker presents an extraordinary take on a very exciting time in history, prompting Malcolm Muggeridge to hail it as a "remarkable book. Immensely stimulating"

Booker's concern is to explore how much of this supposed revolution was, in fact, little more than a collective fantasy, a mass of culturally spun sugar that appeared on the surface to be offering some genuine new order, but in fact collapsed into little of real substance.

My concern, using some of the thinking from his book, is to consider how we might avoid that path ourselves. In other words, how can we best help the Emerging Church movement to be something that effects genuine change, rather than a revolution that over-eggs its own importance and does little to change the reality on the ground.*

Firstly then, some thoughts on The Cult of Sensation.

"If we consider the exemplary expression of fantasy of mass-advertising we can see at once that a great many advertisements associated with pictures of pretty girls, burning flames, jet airlines, boats rushing along in water, speeding cars [...] and such words as crisp, instant, ice-cold, compact, high speed are built up, regardless of the product they are selling [see this post], of nothing more than indiscriminate collections of vitality images."

Booker is writing at the end of the 1960s, nearly 40 years ago, so his idiom is bound to be slightly archaic. However, he touches on something very important. The new movements in all ares of the arts, politics and fashion were very much about sensation, about getting closer, touching. And at the same time were very much about a new vitality.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with that per se... but, as Booker carefully sets out, fantasies are about promising this vitality through what he calls "nyktomorphics" - night images, cats that become fierce tigers in the darkness of our imaginations, lingerie-clad advertising that promises vital sex, but doesn't deliver.

In other words, to avoid being swept along in fantasy, you need to avoid promising more than you are delivering. Avoid spin. Let the truth be on show, not some projected idealized image. Don't fall foul of sensationalism.

This can be harder than one might imagine, as often it is others who do the projecting for you. This was certainly true at Vaux, and I know through many conversations with Jonny about Grace too - the huge international image, with the local reality somewhat different.

So the first point to take from him is this: don't allow the projected image to distort too far from the reality. In other words, keep it real. If we can do this, and not overblow our claims or influence, we're one the road to avoiding entering a fantasy cycle... which will be the topic of the next post, and which I fear much of Christianity has fallen foul of.

*If you've read the book you'll recognise that this is one of the major themes in it. Unfortunately, I came to Booker's book too late to integrate it... Hence this attempt now!

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church

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