phill harding is a freelance composer/soundartist based in the pennine hills of west yorkshire, england [uk]. much of phill’s current work involves the use of environmental field recordings—focusing on the sounds we usually ignore or filter out—to point out the beauty in the mundane. this blog is phill’s attempt to document his daily life.
many of these tracks were recorded binaurally—ie with tiny microphones placed in the ears, and are intended for playback over headphones only. listened to via headphones, binaural recordings tend to have excellent spatial properties, reproducing the way we actually hear, so playback feels [aurally, anyway] much as it actually felt to be in the space recorded. playback over speakers is not the best way to appreciate such recordings. other pieces here were made using more traditional recording methods, and will sound fine over speakers or headphones.
There's a lot of fuss about Google Street View at the moment - invasion of privacy and all that - we should be so lucky... our 9 year old house is not even on Google Maps! The Picture is so out of date that it just shows our estate as a building site! Come on Google before you spend millions taking photos of peoples front gardens how about updating the basic Maps!?
If your not sick of my dulcet tones by now there is another Podcast interview - this time on the Fresh Expressions web-site - Link April 09 podcast - this one particularly focuses on being a lay pioneer - I haven't listened to it yet... I wonder if they have included my comments about Ordination? ;) There is also an article telling the story of safespace - Link
The first of these two videos talks about what Tickle calls "emergence christianity" (in an attempt to get past the Ermergent or emerging confusion) and goes on to explore what that looks like in community... I have to be honest I couldn't accept Tickles premise in "The Great Emergence" that there are these great moments in History every 500 years but I did find her observations themselves helpful... I'm privileged to count Pete as a friend and have always loved his bardic spirit, the way he captures truths in story and poetry not in propositions and arguments... in the first video there are two things that stand out for me... first, Lyotard's description of post-modernity as a condition not an ideology - it is something we feel rather than decide - Pete likens the what has become known as the emerging conversation/church to this - it is not something one joins or reasons but something one feels, something which emerges from all the elements; spirit, culture, person, scripture, story etc. it's not an academic discovery but one from the heart. For me (and for many I've talked to) I began to associate myself with the words emerging/emergent/emergence not because I was convinced by a writer/teologian but because I recognised myself in the way others used those words... so rather than following a leader I found myself being reflected back thus I felt myself a peer rather than a disciple of those speaking in the emerging conversation. I didn't join the emerging church I am the emerging church!
Secondly, he describes the nature of community for him, I guess he is a little difficult to grasp on this. Pete talks about a Donut Church - a church with nothing at the centre... "Oh but surely God is at the centre!" I hear you cry... but I think he is asking us to think about that. What I hear is that the "Church" is not an entity in it's own right, there is no being called "the Church" which has responsibility for the people... we often perceive there is and that entity/centre being manifest in the leadership... "the Church" he says has no pastoral responsibility for you. Pete says "we don't care about you" because their is no centralised "we" - there is only each other, as Pete puts it "the person net to you cares for you, if they don't your in trouble"... in other words the community does not exists other that in the net of relationships... In some ways this reflects Theseus's paradox otherwise told as the tale of George Washington's Axe, personally I like Terry Pratchetts version...
This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.
Pete, I think suggests that we simply let go of the illusion of entity and see the significance of the interplay between the current parts... thus community is not held by the mythical entity embodied by a central leadership but by the network of individual commitment to care/love. Therefore rather than saying God is at the centre, we feel God in the synapses and moment that connect us. Which sort of leads into the second video where Pete talks about the idea that God is not the desription/name we use to describe the effect of God, but the effect itself - the wind of a traumtaic event not the way we describe the event. We experience God like light - we percieve light because of the effect it has on objects not as an object itslef, light is beautiful because of the way it reflects off surfaces, colours, textures etc. We can say the same of sound, we experience sound because of the effect the waves have on our bodies.
There are a couple more videos which talk about the wrestling spirit of emergence christianity and it's relationship with the inherited church... the latter one has some important things to say, which Pete was exploring last year at Greenbelt, which I may blog about later... but I'll let you chase those down yourself ;-)
Or does it make me the Archbishop of Canterbury... or (heaven forbid) the Queen!? Seriously I'm writing an article for the C of E's Fresh Expressions Web Site, having just done one about my "story", will post the link when it's up.
A few days a go I had a long conversation (via Skype) with Thomas (@headphonaught) Mathie for the Something Beautiful Podcast... little me following in the illustrious footsteps of Frank Viola and Andrew (@tallskinnykiwi) Jones... Thomas even had me giggling by calling me a hero! it's nice to get a bit of flattery from time to time (just as long as one doesn't start to believe it ;-) ) anyway it was fun and hopefully Thomas managed to draw something interesting from my ramblings... It's not up yet, will repost the link when it is.
An interesting place - a gathering place or "moot"... the web site itself looks like it's in its early days but the forum is well developed with some conversations worth exploring/following... if we are trying to listen - hear - dialogue with pagans and those exploring spirituality in a non-christian direction Pagan and Christian may be a place (or just an attitude) to start for some...
This website and accompanying message board have their origins in a desire to provide a forum where Pagans and Christians can learn about each others’ beliefs, burst a few myth bubbles and gain a greater understanding of why people believe and act on those beliefs as they do. Unlike the excellent faith specific outreach websites which fulfil a slightly similar role, the underlying purpose of this board is not to promote any specific faith path over another. The role is not to seek similarities in the beliefs to the exclusion of differences (although similarities do exist). The purpose is to provide an honest and non-judgemental area on the worldwide web where people can begin to break down the barriers to communication between two faith groups.
What's not surprising, but is sad is the amount of hurt that many people feel... and how much of it has been inflicted by those professing Christianity... some excerpts...
Though I have benefited greatly from Christianity, I have also suffered much under its teachings, and received nothing (in my opinion) that I could not find elsewhere in other faith streams. This angers me, and makes it difficult to not take things personally. It isn't Christianity per se that bugs me -- its the constant drip of my friends and family trying to "love" me back to Jesus, their fear at my "destructive" choice. I think Christianity, by its aggressive claims, is more likely to receive aggressive rejection.
....
So is bitterness towards Christianity (as opposed to certain Christians) justified? In an objective sense, probably not. But as we've already suggested, that objectivity is hard to reach when you've been hurt by Christians purporting to represent Christianity.
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