way out west

moving...keep on moving

MOVING DAY IS UPON US!

Email

OK so my masking address does not seem to cope with Web-mail... so if you need/want to E-mail me during September please use...

[email protected]

Spiritual... but not religous

Beliefnet has an abridged version of Robert Fullers 2001 article "Spiritual, But Not Religous", where he claims that more than one fifth of Americans describe themselves in this way.  He tries to unpack what it means...

Before the 20th century the terms religious and spiritual were used more or less interchangeably. But a number of modern intellectual and cultural forces have accentuated differences between the "private" and "public" spheres of life. The increasing prestige of the sciences, the insights of modern biblical scholarship, and greater awareness of cultural relativism all made it more difficult for educated American to sustain unqualified loyalty to religious institutions. Many began to associate genuine faith with the "private" realm of personal experience rather than with the "public" realm of institutions, creeds, and rituals. The word spiritual gradually came to be associated with a private realm of thought and experience while the word religious came to be connected with the public realm of membership in religious institutions, participation in formal rituals, and adherence to official denominational doctrines.

I have to say it is a pretty basic article with not a huge amount of depth but I found the final section well put...

Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issue of how our lives fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things. This is true even when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is "spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.

E-mail etc.

Blimey even though we have moved 8 times in 13 years of marriage you forget just how much work is involved... how many bin bags, telephone calls, spiders, sticky residues (!) etc. there are to battle with!  Fortunately Lou seems to fending off the virus and I am recovering... though last night was completely sleepless... this maybe way to much information but my body's way of expelling lurgies and nasties is to sweat them out at night... big time!  So I have spent the last two nights on a camping mat... anyway... (don't try to picture it!)

Just in case you are still reading after that ;-)... I won't have Broadband until the end of Sept. as it will take BT till the 12th to reconnect the study/second line and then 7-10 days for the connection to go live... so I have set up a web-mail account and redirected my main E-mail address - [email protected] to it, many of you use this anyway so please continue to do so.  Secondly I will be doing an Ian (Youthblog) Macdonald, using other peoples wifi to post etc, I doubt it will be more that once or twice a week (unless my new next door neighbour has a network <evil grin> ) but as many of the 'pay to play' wifi hotspots (mainly The Cloud) are Pubs... you never know...

prayer etc

Two things today...

• Some of you probably already have this link... but I have just found the Biblegateway it is simply a site which allows you to search and cut'n'paste from a wide variety of Bible translations/versions inc. The Message.
• Prayer needed!  Nat had a virus last week which saw him suffer with a very high temp and sore throat/glands... he recovered after 3/4 days but then 2 days ago I came down with the same virus and not only is it pretty nasty and extremely draning... it of course comes right in the middle of the run up to moving!  Lou also has noticed a sore throat developing so please pray she doesn't come down with it too!

Brother Roger (Taize founder) killed

I don't know what to say about this (BBC) it is not only shocking, upsetting but extremely bizzare!  Why a man of peace who founded a community of reconcilliation should be the victim of such an act of violence is beyond me.  Our prayers go to God for all of the Taize community.

Blogging moratorium

Sorry to say that for obvious reasons... moving then getting the new broadband account in Telford I doubt there will be much in the way of posts for the next couple of weeks...

If anyone is going to Greenbelt and fancies a coffee/pint/lunch etc. my mobile will be on (07771925556)

Church/Mission? Chicken/Egg?

It just doesn't get better than this post on the chicken and egg of Ecclesiology and Missiology from Phil... yes I know I refer to his Blogs a lot but hey credit where credit is due!

Popular culture/art and spirituality

I am naturally enthusiastic about art and culture so, even though I taught a module on 'Human personhood in contempory art' last year, I have had to learn to be more cautious and have become suspicious of an over eager interpretation of popular art.  It is too easy to look for confirmation of ones own beliefs in the media... e.g. interpreting the Matrix as Christian messianic parable.  I have heard many people say a film or song is good because it mentions Jesus or has some echo of a Christian message e.g. Puff Daddy.  So I am cautious of doing what Romanowski subtilties his book Eyes wide open - 'Looking for God in popular culture' if it means trying to find something I agree with or is sympathetic to my world view in a piece of art/entertainment...  But as Romanowski says...

...popular art provides stories, symbols, images, metaphors, and melodies that depict cultural values and assumptions, behavioral norms, social and gender roles.  In this way, the popular arts mediate between culture and life, that is, our cultural conceptions and our social and environmental realities.

So popular art may offer us some insights to the contemporary human condition, but believing in a universal story that is simply outside of Church is unrealistic, Seyla Benhabib says...

Transcendental guarantees of truth are dead; in the agonal struggle of language games there is no commensurability; there are no criteria of truth transcending local discourses, but only the endless struggle of local narratives vying with one another for legitimation.

There are as many truths, searches, questions as there are stories... we cannot appropriate culture, nor read our story into anothers.  What we can do is look for signs of searching... the Matrixists and the Jedi may tell us about some peoples yearning for spiritual meaning, association and a need to belong.  Lets be honest though forming religions was not the intention of the film makers... asking contemprary, timeless questions may have been.  It seems to me to more important to listen for the questions in art than look for any answers...

Ok so I am not keen on "using" popular culture to teach a message that simply isn't there in the art... that seems to me to lack integrity... nor should we classify art as bad or good in terms of how much it agrees with me... but love it and listen to it as Anton Karl Kozlovic writes (link from Phil Johnson - cheers)

Turning ones’ back on popular culture in an Ostrich-like fashion is also unnecessary and unwise. Why? Because popular film is a cultural touchstone and an intellectual legacy that should be proactively employed as a legitimate product of the 20^th (and now 21^st) century. It is also an effective means of social empowerment. Indeed, to “ignore popular culture is to allow it to act upon us blindly. To reflect upon it critically allows us to make choices” (Forbes, 2003, p. 245). Therefore, religionists need to go forward, not backwards in meeting the challenges of the future. As Ian Maher (2002, p. 5) succinctly put it: “Christians cannot afford to be out of touch with popular films if they are to remain in touch with the swirling currents of contemporary society.” Or as Don C. Richter (2001, p. 76) more colourfully put it: “being Christian does not remove us from the world like some Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie.” Ernest L. Simmons (2003, p. 254) came to the same essential conclusion. He argued that: “For many people today, especially the young, popular culture is culture, and theology, to remain true to its calling, must take such cultural expressions seriously.”

morning musings

Before I get into posting proper today... which I will I have a couple of things kicking around in my frontal lobes... Three things...

1. I call these posts musings... cause thats all they are; they are incomplete, often unstructured, unprepared, not formed enough to be called ideas, sometimes incoherent streams of what masqerades as my conciousness... as such I am in awe of those who post much more thought out, academic, rigorous and intelligent offerings.
2. We (in the UK) seem to have bought into the us-centric world view and just expect America to be the dominant force and focus of thinking/doing.  What seems to get missed off the radar is the Southern Ocean... it seems to me that many of the people I have met and read who inspire/challenge me most are from Aus/NZ - e.g. Steve Taylor, Phil Johnson, Matt Stone, Hirsch and Frost, Darren Rowse, Andrew Jones (OK he is the North Sea now - not literally, well you now what I mean) etc.  I think I may have to get over there at some point
3. I am on a journey... at a bend in the road... unsure what lays around the corner but determined to press on anyway... at this moment although there is no real way of knowing I have my ear to the ground, listening for clues... reading the thoughts and experiences of those who travel ahead and those who make it there business to try to map the terrain... not all of these observations agree and not all are useful... but I try at first to be a magpie, to gather to me all the information I can... only then and in the light of each days experience can I discern what makes sense and what doesn't...  I do not believe it is possible (for me) to know the outcomes before I take the steps... I may feel I have an idea, I may feel I have prepared as well as I can.. but... but I am just going to have to press on!