Nouslife

Self Comes to Mind: framework for corporisational identity?

2012-01-29T18:38:00.001Z

On the whole, as a Chiristain taking seriously the Hebraic heritage of affirmation of matter and body and of a holistic orientation, I'm sympathtic and not particularly threatened by Damasios's perspectives. So Im interested to read this review of his latest book. The reviewer makes a really helpful summary of the basic thesis:

consciousness emerges only when – to quote the book's title – self comes to mind, so that in key brain regions, the representational maps of sensory experience intersect with the encoded experiences of past that self provides. This, enabled by the evolution of language, makes possible autobiographical memory – the narrative of our lives that we humans all possess and which is the basis for consciousness. This, briefly summarised, is the latest version of Damasio's theory

If this is rough;y right with regard to humans and other animals and if I'm barking up the right tree in thinking about the Powers /corporisations by analogy with human persons, then reading the above description as a possble description of corporisations is helpful. 'Brain' may have to be though of as systems for processing information and keeping records in a corporisation. Language may be systems of communication and it is easier now to conceive of a corporisation having a sense of self borne of history, records, data, missiosn statements and the like.

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio - review | Books | The Guardian

The Optimism Bias; Could turn into complacency, IMHO

2012-01-29T18:05:00.001Z

Some time back I seem to recall reading a bit od research that seemed to indicate that people with mild depression are usually the mosat realistic.

both neuroscience and social science suggest that we are more optimistic than realistic. On average, we expect things to turn out better than they wind up being. People hugely underestimate their chances of getting divorced, losing their job or being diagnosed with cancer; expect their children to be extraordinarily gifted; envision themselves achieving more than their peers; and overestimate their likely life span

The implication of this is that the rest of us are somewhat optimistic and unrealistically so. This article explores whay actually this may be a useful thing in human beings:

To make progress, we need to be able to imagine alternative realities – better ones – and we need to believe that we can achieve them. Such faith helps motivate us to pursue our goals. Optimists in general work longer hours and tend to earn more. Economists at Duke University found that optimists even save more. And although they are not less likely to divorce, they are more likely to remarry

Now it seems to me that it's worth noting another couple of implications -at least I think they are.
One is that another facet of over-optimism is what we call complacency: if we tend to assume things will be alright, that surely means that we're not disposed to actively do something towards changing things; we'll be fine; we can afford to be complacent. Perhaps it even relates to what appears to be widespread political apathy? This is why it takes such a lot of effort to change people's behaviour to avoid potential detriments: we have to shift the dead-weight of possibly misplaced hope and complacent expectation.

The other is if not an implication, then a cross reference: the Woman in Genesis 3 and then Adam:
is what we see the serpent doing in that story? Riding the temptation on the back of a hopeful implied future: the first couple are not disposed by human nature to think that there could be disastrous consequences to following the optimistic sugesstion...

The Optimism Bias by Tali Sharot: extract | Science | The Observer

Headphones linked to pedestrian deaths, injuries

2012-01-17T19:41:00.001Z

About 3 years ago, the crossing of the rail track at the bottom of the lane we then lived near was the scene of a fatal accident. The young man concerned apparently didn't notice the train that hit him. He was wearing headphones. It is thought the two facts are connected. This would seem more likely in view of this research:

Headphones linked to pedestrian deaths, injuries:

Researchers reviewed 116 accident cases from 2004 to 2011 in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones. Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in death to the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30 (67 percent). More than half of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains (55 percent), and nearly a third (29 percent) of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the crash. The increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to documented rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones.

The piece of work I think that needs doing now, on this theme, is correlating use of headphones with muggings and (attempted) sexual assaults. I would hypothesise that headphone users are less vigilant than they might otherwise be and so don't take elementary precautions or even notice potentially dangerous situations developing.

On the quiescence of travelling toddlers

2012-01-14T14:07:00.001Z

My grandchild often gets me thinking. Today, for instance, she woke up early, full of beans and a constant source of activity and attention. And we decided to take her into town. We decided to walk in and that she would therefore be in her pushchair (it did seem to us that asking her to walk 2 miles was a bit much for a 3 year-old). But then the everyday 'miracle' occurs, as it does so often and with so many toddlers: she was quiet and simply sat there for the walk down, for the walk around town in various shops and the walk back. Ne'ery an attempt towards active play. It was like she'd reached an altered state of consciousness.

And, on reflection, that's what I suspect it was: a quasi-trance state. Then my further question occurs: how come? Why is it that toddlers and babies tend to go quiet when travelling in these sorts of ways? Well, to me an evolutionary psychological hypothesis seems plausible. The children (and their parents, probably) who survived predation on the savannah would be the ones who stayed quiet when travelling. Then that begs the question: how would kids who cannot yet consistently form the kind of complex concepts we often express as 'if ... then ...' based on an abstract conditional ('if I make a noise /remain quiet') and a hard-to-conceptualise consequent ('we will/not attract the attentions of leopards') know to stay quiet and still? This is a question about what would cue them, presumably at something like an instinctual level. I would hypothesise that the rhythm (of walking or similar) and sight of of moving scenery cues/primes a transformation of consciousness to one that doesn't' need entertaining and is able to damp down the felt need for food or 'grooming'/interaction.

If this were so, then a further question-complex arises: does this instinct survive childhood, and if so, how does it show itself? This is even more speculative, of course, but I'm going to hazard a -hopefully- educated guess.

When I go for a walk I tend to find that my state of mind is not quite the same as 'normal'. In fact I often find that going for a walk enables my mind to produce ideas and solutions to problems that I've not achieved with conscious and focused attention to them in an office or meeting. So is this the same or a derived state of mind to that I think that our toddler grandchild seems to go into when in her pushchair? And if it is is it a good state for more discursive and creative way of thinking? Does it help meditative practice? (Seems to).

A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

2012-01-13T21:50:00.001Z

I keep banging on about the importance of the fundamental insights in Lakoff and Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh. Well here's a nice brief article with an introduction to why I may not be wrong:

our rationality is greatly influenced by our bodies in large part via an extensive system of metaphorical thought.

A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network:

Before the Ending of the Day by Andii Bowsher in Religion & Spirituality

2012-01-10T21:00:00.000Z

Till the end of January, money off my Complines:

25% off any of your books
Coupon Code: LULUBOOKUK305
Coupon expires 31 January 2012
£50 Max Savings

Before the Ending of the Day by Andii Bowsher in Religion & Spirituality

Mental Complexity, corporisations and The Powers

2012-01-07T20:22:00.000Z

I found myself with one of those moments of recognition -someone else has articulated something I've been thinking about albeit in a different arena. The recognition was in a couple of sentences here:

Mental Complexity and ‘The Astonishing Naivety of Policymakers’ : RSA blogs:

a growth in social productivity requires people to be able to disembed themselves from certain social and psychological influences that undermine autonomy, responsibility and solidarity, so that they can relate to those influences more flexibly and constructively.

This, I think, relates to one of the things I've been thinking in relation to the Powers or 'corporisations' as I've been labelling them. You see, one of my issues consequential on seeing corporisations as emergent beings arising from human (plus other 'stuff' -taking on board the insights of Actor-Network Theory) bounded complex interaction is whether humans or corporisations should be seen as more ultimate. The issue arises because if we recognise the dignity and agency of corporisations, then the question must arise as to whether they subsume individual human rights and dignities. A model for this would be the way that a brain or a human body takes priority over individual neurons or cells, or perhaps the way that the nest or the hive seems to with social ants and bees.

My reading of scripture, informed by Walter Wink, is that in God's economy humans are to be served by corporisations rather than the other way round. If that is the case, then the quote above captures also the ethical imperative in relation to the corporisations (that is the Powers). Indeed this seems to be part of what Paul is claiming for the gospel: that it enables human agents to do this -recognising that we are all to prone to ceding our agency and responsibility before God to the corporisations /Powers.

Of course, part of the issue (not really touched on by Paul) is that unlike neurons or other cells, we can 'belong to' or form part of more than one corporisation. I sense I need to consider this more fully too...

Composers As Gardeners

2012-01-06T21:43:00.000Z

For me this was a deja vu article in the sense that I recognised in it themes from elsewhere, particularly theological, despite the fact that it's Brian Eno in an interview piece on Edge. First a quote that probably sets the scene best.

Composers As Gardeners | Conversation | Edge:

for me, this was really a new paradigm of composing. Changing the idea of the composer from somebody who stood at the top of a process and dictated precisely how it was carried out, to somebody who stood at the bottom of a process who carefully planted some rather well-selected seeds, hopefully, and watched them turn into something.

As those readers alert to the paradigm shifts in science over the last 30 years or so will realise, this has something to do with chaos, complexity and emergence. But let's put it together with John Polkinhorne's line about God making things make themselves and the metaphor that Eno uses is ripe to be crossed-over into theological thinking about creation. Two things theological then occur to me: one is to recommend engagement with Fretheim's work on God, creation reflecting on passages and themes from the Hebrew Bible. Fretheim does an inspiring job of reading passages on creation and showing how they really do support ways of thinking about creation which includes the chaotic, the unpredictable and the self-assembling and so relativistic and chaordic insights.

The other thing that it links with is one of the themes in Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense where a major metaphor for God that Vanstone develops is of God as artist working with materials that have a certain recalcitrance and how the artistry lies in how the dialogue between artist and materials is worked through. This would certainly play well with the complexity science insights.

Another thing I bring to this is a conversation a few months back with an older artist who clearly didn't resonate with Vanstone's reading of the artistic task; defining good artists as being in total control of their materials and distinguished by the greatness of their vision.

Of course an artist must be capable of crafting their vision, but I still think that Vanstone has a fundamentally right insight. In actual fact, no artist can entirely reckon without some recalcitrance in materials and I think that there is a greatness in a redemptive approach which explores with the materials rather than over or simply through the materials. Therefore their vision, however implicitly and perhaps unreflectingly, is already in dialogue with the materials, the media (as Andy Crouch notes, even architects have to 'compromise' because builders rarely manage to realise the artistic vision).

And, it seems to me, Eno's reflection on what he has been trying to achieve with his generative music, tips the balance away from the modernistic 'mastery' vision of art (and theologies of creation -dare one mention Calvin here?) to the emergent, chaordic art where distinctions between artist and audience or 'public' are eroded and the event/ed-ness of art is played with and the sensuousness of materiality is often foregrounded. Eno's picking up of the gardner metaphor does a really nice job of capturing this.

Part of what is going on is also a reappraisal of what form of art gets to be thought of as paradigmatic of art. I'd like to put in a plea for drama too ... or live music: in both of these forms the trialogue between audience and performers and between author/composer and performers and directors is crucial. And who is the 'artist' in a play? The playwright? The actors? The director? There's a real issue of synergy and community in this. And this, I and others, would argue, is the important thing to capture when thinking theologically about creation and creating. Meticulous sovereignty/providence is out; it is untrue to what we experience and what we genuinely know about the way things are through scientific enterprise.

Creation and creating are actually communal, social and synergistic. We need to get away from the myth of the solitary artist and their brave vision and recognise, even celebrate, the embeddedness of art production and appreciation in human, indeed, creational community.

Religion's End

2011-12-29T20:03:00.000Z

The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus by Bruxy Cavey
Those who know me may recall that I take a somewhat Barthian view of religion: that is that it is a prime manifestation of the fall and under God's judgement. Bruxy does a nice job of presenting the implications of this for Christian living in a popular and accessible way that nonetheless manages to keep hold of good theology and to manifest the spirituality of Jesus particularly in the graciousness it shows towards 'religionists'. and the lack of stridency towards religion whether Christian or otherwise.

Here are my favourinte quotes from it.

I am not talking about the Christian religion versus all other religions. Take one look at church history and you will see that Christianity needs to hear the message of Jesus as much as or more than most religions. No, I am talking about the person of Jesus, transcendent of any one religion and a light for all. If you are investigating spiritual truth, I believe Jesus can offer you the guidance you are looking for.

Religion can be tiring-a treadmill of legislated performance powered by guilt and fear. At the same time, generic spirituality can also be a tiring enterprise because it lacks a focal point. Many people who have rejected religion have turned to a kind of smorgasbord spirituality that allows them to pick and choose their belief system as they go along. Don't get me wrong, I love a good buffet (and I've got the body to prove it!), but what works for food does not necessarily work for faith. Many of these spiritual taste-testers are also weary of a search that has come to lack focus and foundation. They feel bloated but malnourished, fed up with empty spiritual calories.

Jesus is not pointing toward a different and better religion, but instead he invites us to himself as an alternative to the weary way of religion. This is a prominent theme in his teaching,

The Bible begins by painting a picture of the ideal world-a world without religion, a garden where God and people live in naked intimacy. This was God's original intention for humankind. In the Bible, it is only after people turn away from his ideal of mutual trust and intimacy that God gives them rules and routines, traditions and teachings-but this is not the end of the story. The rules and rituals of the Bible are like a map that leads to a great treasure, though they are not the treasure itself. I think this is what the revered Jewish poet and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel is driving at when he says, "Religion as an institution, the Temple as an ultimate end, or, in other words, religion for religion's sake, is idolatry."'

The Jesus described in the Bible is scandalous. He is not portrayed as the founder of a world religion, but the challenger of all religions. He is a subversive, anti-institutional revolutionary. Now, when I say "anti-institutional," I am not suggesting that Jesus opposes all forms of organization, but that he opposes dependence on any one organization for our connection with God.

Jesus did not have the wine served out of ordinary wine jars. He directed the servants to use the sacred containers set aside for a religious ritual. When I investigated further, I found that one of the traditions of some religious groups of that day (especially those of an influential group called the Pharisees) was regular ritual hand cleansing. They would dip their hands in sacred water as a way of symbolizing a desire to remain pure from the sin of the world (see Mark 7:1-4). But why would Jesus use these sacred stone jars for the water-turned-wine? There were undoubtedly other containers available that could have held the joy-juice. If they had just run out of wine at this party, there obviously would have been plenty of "empties" around to hold the miracle liquid. Wine jars, wine jugs, wine bottles, wine kegs, wine skins-whatever they had been using-were sitting right there, empty, waiting to be filled. So why the stone jars? Why the sacred icons of religious tradition? Why intentionally do something so potentially offensive? I was faced with an unexpected but undeniable fact: Through his first miracle, Jesus intentionally desecrates a religious icon. He purposely chooses these sacred jars to challenge the religious system by converting them from icons of personal purification into symbols of relational celebration. Jesus takes us from holy water to wedding wine. From legalism to life. From religion to relationship. Jesus seems to be saying that his message of love-a radically accepting love-is too great to be contained by the old ways of religious tradition. His new wine demands new wineskins (see Matthew 9:17).

Anyone who holds too tightly to his or her religious preconceptions will sooner or later become offended at Jesus. Unless, of course, they do what countless Christians have done and tame the historical Jesus through years of conservative tradition.

I do not believe all religions lead to God because no religion leads to God. Religion does not lead people to God any more than cups quench your thirst.

Today, many people use the term "spirituality" the same way Jesus used the word "faith"-to describe the relationship one has with Ultimate Reality directly, above and beyond the systems and institutions of religion. Some religious people feel threatened by this kind of talk. Personally, I am encouraged, because I think we are finally catching up to what Jesus has been saying for over two thousand years.

At the same time, Jesus never taught that people could experience true spirituality simply by stopping those same religious rituals. Please understand-and this is important-becoming a religion dropout does not by itself make you more spiritual.

Our world is full of people who say "I'm a spiritual person" as though spirituality is their goal, that thing they have been looking for all their lives. They are like people who describe themselves as "romantic" on Internet dating sites, but who never have anyone in their lives to be romantic with. Their "romance" is just a hollow ideal without a relationship within which to express it. Just because we cry when watching movies or reading novels doesn't mean we are romantic; it means we're sentimental. And just because we don't like religion doesn't mean we are spiritual. The question is, Who are you spiritual with?

The history of the church is not an example of Jesus' teaching bearing bad fruit, but of his teaching being completely ignored, rationalized, or trivialized-and that bearing bad fruit. Most people who are hostile toward Christianity realize that Jesus is not to blame. In fact, they rightly judge and condemn Christians in terms of what Jesus taught.

Church leaders missed the point of the Passion narratives, which serve as an indictment against the blind religious leaders, not the Jewish people as a whole. And that same rebuke is transferable to the church! The church leaders ignored the fact that the New Testament's prosecution of religious hypocrisy must be applied to Christian leaders as much as any Jewish leaders in Jesus' day.

Western Christians often pour their energies into national politics as a way of clamoring for the power they once had in society. But history bears this out: Whenever the church gets into bed with political powers, the church becomes the state's whore.

Fundamentalists believe moderates have arrived at their "soft" position, not because they have discovered it within their own sacred texts, but as a result of secular knowledge and selective scriptural neglect. This may result in a more articulate and gracious believer, but fundamentalists of the same faith will never take them seriously.

Rather than motivating people to partner with God to bring justice and mercy to this unfair world, karma allows people to believe that everything is just and fair now. Those who suffer are suffering because they are supposed to suffer; they deserve to suffer. It is their karma.

Buddhists can interpret the doctrine of karma as a law that invites holy people to partner with it. For instance, if a ruler is perceived as an enemy of the good, it is right to fight against him or her, in the name of karma. In fact, murdering someone who is living a life of bad karma becomes an act of mercy from this point of view, helping their souls move to a higher plane before they acquire more bad karma. Perhaps this was the thinking of the Buddhist monk who

William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, insisted that if our concept of God is wrong, the more religious we get, the more dangerous we are to ourselves and others. But here is the strange thing about the Jesus faith (and I am not talking about the Christian religion in general, but those who follow the teachings and example of Jesus specifically): The more precisely someone commits to following his teachings as modeled by his example-in other words, the more of a fundamentalist someone becomes about the teachings of Jesus-the more loving, forgiving, and gracious that person should become

Many Christian fundamentalists do not follow Christ, but have replaced his teachings with the prevailing conservative ethos of the day masquerading as religious dogma.

Other Christian fundamentalists replace following Jesus with following the Bible. These kinds of fundamentalists are often good-hearted people who are completely sincere, but sincerely wrong. I am thinking of those Christians who love God and are very dedicated to following the Bible, but fail to realize how the Bible is meant to be read.

The One who is before and beyond all things-that is, the Grand Context for all of life-entered our human context. He lived a particular life, as a particular gender, in a particular place, at a particular time, as part of a particular people. I do not know why male and not female, why Jewish and not Irish, why first-century Israel and not twenty-first-century Canada. I have my theories, and perhaps you have yours. What I do know is that the particularity of Jesus-that is, being one thing and not being another thing-is the price of being human. Through Jesus, God paid that price and fully entered our human experience in a particular way.

"The Bible says it. That settles it. I believe it. Let's do it." But according to Jesus, that is not enough. Following the letter of the law is dangerous, as witch-burning, war-fighting, pagan-killing Christianity attests. Jesus calls us to use Scripture to get to know God's heart, to see God's love expressed through Jesus, and to follow him.

leaders of Jesus' day focused on obeying the rules and often forgot to put love first. Jesus came to recalibrate the whole system.

good news, because it is easier, or at least clearer, to follow an example of a person than to try to translate into living action a collection of commandments that have no context.

This does not mean that traditions can never be helpful spiritual tools. The New Testament speaks positively of traditions on more than one occasion (see 1 Corinthians 11:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 3:6).

These blind spots make it easy for hypocrisy to take root, which was Jesus' main grievance against religious leaders (see Matthew 23:28; Luke 12:1, etc.).

Wherever faith in God is strong, our human predisposition for using violence to enforce what we believe is right will only increase. This was as true for the medieval church as it is for many contemporary Muslims. This is why theistic faith must be partnered with a clear commitment to peace as a way of life if our faith is to be constructive rather than destructive. Jesus couldn't be clearer on this topic.

when Jesus taught his followers to pray for God's kingdom to come upon the earth (see Matthew 6:10) this could have been considered a code for rebellion against the current power structures. In fact, this is exactly what it was, but not in the ways people expected. Instead of teaching his followers how to fight against the Romans, Jesus taught them how to love their enemies. He said that if a Roman soldier commanded them to carry his gear one mile, they should obey the command, and then offer to carry it a second mile (see Matthew 5:38-47; Luke 6:27-36). The first mile is slavery. The second mile is freedom. That is the liberating power of enemy-love.

"an ambulatory parable."'

Therefore, when Jesus would say to people "your sins are forgiven" (see Matthew 9:2; Luke 7:36-50), he was not just being a source of encouragement to hurting people. He was making a decidedly irreligious statement to his culture. He was completely bypassing the religious system of his day and helping people connect with God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness directly.

God speaks, not out of a holy building or through the lips of a special class of religious leader-he speaks out of a cloud that refuses to be captured by architecture or geography.

Jesus claims to have successfully replaced religion with himself. Not with a new system of priests and sacrifices. 'this is important. 'Ihe symbolic meal to which Jesus invites us repeatedly points to Jesus himself as the way to God, not a new institution (the church) that replaces the old institution (the temple), not a new system of priests that replaces the old system of priests. Through Jesus, God replaces religion with himself.

Religion killed Christ. Or, I might add, religion partnered with politics. History shows that when religious and political establishments come together for a cause, it often involves violence, war, and death.

Yes, the Bible says that Jesus died for our sins.' But it also says he died for our religion. In Christ, God crucified the whole mess once and for all. In fact, by repeatedly emphasizing that Jesus died for our sins, the biblical writers were emphasizing the end of religion as a way to God.

When God opens his mouth to communicate his heart to humanity, a person comes out. His ultimate revelation of truth to humankind does not take the form of argument and assertion, page and print, chapter and verse, but personhood

The Qur'an calls Christians, like Jews, "People of the Book" (see 3:64; 9:29; 29:46). Many Christians would agree with that label, but it is born out of a misunderstanding. Christ-followers are not actually people of the Book, but people of the Person. We follow Jesus, not a book that Jesus wrote.

of whether or not we take the story of Adam and Eve as history or metaphor, the absence of religious rituals and routines in their story is key to understanding the rest of the Bible.'

A garden is a meeting place between nature and human culture. It reflects both divine and human creativity, as opposed to the extremes of a city on the one hand and a forest (or jungle, depending on how tropical you like your analogies) on the other. Genesis shows us that God's original design for humanity was an intimate, purposeful relationship between himself and humanity, expressed through a cocreative partnership. Like John Lennon, God imagined a place with no religion. He called it Eden and spoke it into existence.

If I have faith in Jesus, this means that I trust him enough to follow him, to embrace his teachings for my life. Dallas Willard states it simply, "Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so."

Jesus-followers will not try to separate who is "saved" and who is not, who is in and who is out. Policing the perimeter is what religious people do, but not Christ-followers-

With nothing to fill the void, the result of doing away with religion would hardly be an improvement. History bears this out. For every violent religious fundamentalist there is a violent secular fundamentalist. For every Osama bin Laden there is a Stalin.

Christ-followers participate in spiritual practices (like prayer, Bible study, and meditation), not in order to achieve something, but in order to better experience what they already know to be true

When Jesus talks about spiritual practices like prayer, giving to charity, and fasting, he never prescribes any one religious routine to follow. Instead he gives guidelines to keep these practices focused on relationship with God rather than on appearance. He assumes that once we have a right view of God and a right desire to connect with God, then we'll pray and dialogue with God because we want to, not because our religion mandates it

So here is the great irony-Jesus is happy to see his followers get organized in order to help spread the message that organizations are not the answer.

1:26-27, NLT) What you have just read is the only clearly positive use of the word religion in the Bible. James does not place the emphasis on ritual and tradition, and not even on doctrinal or theological purity, but rather on practical, other-centered behavior. In summary, he says we should be: • constructive rather than destructive in our words, • compassionate in practical ways toward people in distress, • countercultural in our daily life, refusing to simply follow the accepted norms of the majority (the "world") when those norms do not lead to a loving lifestyle. The only "religion" that God accepts is faith (a trusting relationship with the person of God) expressing itself in practical loving action, as James goes on to explain fervently in his writing. For people who want to follow Jesus, the priority of rituals is replaced with other-centered relationship. And that's it. That's all. That's good religion in a nutshell,

I understand that some people use the word "religion" to refer to a healthy outward expression of their inner faith,

what I most often see in the name of religion is a ritualized return to bondage. The concept of religion has been closely associated with the repetitious tying of oneself to inherited beliefs and behaviors, traditions and theologies. Too often this leaves people mindlessly committed to the institution or clan that stewards the traditions, rather than the God who surrounds each of us with his love. Religion ties us down. Jesus came to set us free.

when someone tells me they are religious, I listen for the meaning and spirit behind their words rather than argue about the words themselves. You would miss the intention of this book if you used The End of Religion to fuel harsh judgment toward anyone who called himself or herself "religious." All of us must listen to the meaning behind the words people use, and I hope you are doing the same with this hook. Every conversation demands a certain amount of translation, because of the simple fact that people use words differently.

Religious people like to hear certain words used in particular ways to make them feel secure and at home. Often, religious people emotionally bond with words as though they were the reality they label.

Unfortunately, only a small minority of Christians thinks through the implications of the fact that Jesus likely spoke Aramaic, but his followers wrote down his teaching in Greek. We don't have the words of Jesus; we have the Word of Jesus.; In other words, we have Christ's message, preserved in his teaching and example, but we don't have the specific words he used to communicate that message.

Reassembling the Social

2011-12-24T15:44:00.001Z

I've just finished reading this book. I have been trying to get it finished for months and finally managed to get the reading time in the last week or so. I can't remember quite how I got onto it except that it was something to do with finding ways to look at culture in a post-structuralist way and finding Latour's name cropping up. Having read it I can see why and am interested to note that the approach he outlines is very resonant for me. This chunk from the review on the Amazon page for the book begins to capture why:

Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a 'social explanations' of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion, and allow it to trace connections again.

In essence Latour reckons that the way that a lot of sociologist employ the term 'social' has, in effect, detached it from actual relations and turned it into a kind of 'something' independent of the actual links, ties, relational transaction and mediations that in reality constitute the social. Latour relativises the social and flattens it. It's like a shift from a container view of space to a relativistic one: instead of the social being a kind of container space which allows social action to take place, he advocates that we need to approach things by seeing the 'social space' being constituted moment to moment by the relating of actants; the relating creates the social-space out of nothing. This is the network in the title of the theory: the 'web' of relating that constitutes or mediates actants.

'Actants' (Actors) is the other thing that Latour looks at in this case by expanding the category. And for my interest in cultural studies is a significant thing. Actors or actants are not just human but anything that acts within the social arena by transforming meaning; there's a big play made of the difference between translation and mediation and the significance is that the latter effects changes in whatever it is that is passed on. This means that the artefacts and texts in the human world can have their own agency and it enables them to exert their own influence, have their own messages and even purposes.

All of this means that ANT encourages the study of the social (or cultural, for that) by paying attention to what is actually happening and not simply trying to find exemplars of social theories or predefined phenomena. I like this because it seems to me that the fun in cultural studies is paying attention to what is going on, how people are actually relating, using things, making meaning and how the stuff affects, changes and influences the culture created.

This is a powerful approach to anything that has a social dimension and I will no doubt continue to develop the fundamental insights in my own thinking and hope to read more based on this approach.

I think too that it relates to my thinking about corporisations, principalities and powers etc. What first got me moving beyond Walter Winks 'Naming the Powers' was the question of how one addressed the powers. This led me to considering that the localisation and the means of communication is important and in so doing we have to recognised the 'physiology' and 'psychology' of corporate powers and in a sense this becomes the same concern as ANT articulates to pay attention to the 'transactions' (my choice of word) which constitute the entity and its interaction with the wider world rather than being transfixed and misled by the 'big shadow' it casts on the 'spiritual' plane or even the social. An ANT-inspired approach to the spiritual would see the spiritual not as a separate but fully interconnected realm (a kind of version of the Faery land in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream) but as the flip-side of the coin of the material realities we most easily perceive.

What Latour doesn't go into, but I kept expecting, was emergence which combined with his bottom up approach would re-enable, I think, talk of social entities (or spiritual reflexes thereof) which nevertheless remains importantly describable in terms of careful observation of actualities in their own right unimpeded by theoretical or ideological construals which may or may not be helpful...

Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies): Amazon.co.uk: Bruno Latour: Bo

Faith and Theology: A Sydney psalm

2011-12-09T20:34:00.000Z

I still find myself considering a former colleague's challenge to produce a hymn that takes urban experience seriously. Well, not quite the same, but a good example of the kind of thing. Perhaps you might want also to look in on my own composition in a similarly urban vein.

Praise the Lord!
Praise him, all you trees on my street;
Praise him you TV aerials bending in the wind;
Praise him, parked cars glistening with rain;
Praise him, screeching hissing trains;
Praise him, bright clouds reflecting Sydney's lights;
Praise him you possums fighting on the roof;
Praise him, noisy M2 traffic;
Praise him from the streets and from the station,
Praise him high and low.
Let everything that makes noise praise the Lord:
Praise the Lord!

Faith and Theology: A Sydney psalm:

7 step theological reflection

2011-12-03T20:42:00.001Z

Worth checking out if this article is any indication. Alban - Building Up Congregations and Their Leaders:

Theological reflection is simply wondering about God's activity in our lives. Where is God present? What is God calling us to do? By taking time to ask questions about what happens to us—seeing our experiences through the lens of faith—we become clearer about our connection to God. We all ask questions about relationships, our work, our children, our government, and our situation in life. We all reflect, wonder, analyze, think, assess, and discuss with friends as ways of trying to understand our life. Theological reflection simply refocuses all that thinking to encourage a stronger sense of relationship with God, asking, "Where does God fit into the picture?"

What this process does is elaborate the basic 4 step pastoral cycle model in such a way as to take on board the group context envisaged, it also explicitly encourages the recognition of the affective dimensions of an experience which is remniscent of Killen and De Beer's theologcal reflection process and one of the important contributions that their process adds. It also makes an explicit step of prayer.

The Santiago Theory of Cognition - Fritjof Capra

2011-11-30T21:31:00.001Z

When I read Varela and Maturana, I confess I didn't pick up one of the following implications. I got and affirm the idea of understanding cognition whole-organismally. I think that the Christian-Hebraic understanding of humans in a holistic way is not going to be upset by that but rather affirmed. What I missed was the thing about language:

In this new view, cognition involves the entire process of life - including perception, emotion, and behaviour - and does not necessarily require a brain and a nervous system. At the human level, however, cognition includes language, conceptual thought, and all the other attributes of human consciousness. The Santiago theory of cognition, in my view, is the first scientific theory that really overcomes the Cartesian division of mind and matter, and will thus have the most far-reaching implications. Mind and matter no longer appear to belong to two separate categories but are seen as representing two complementary aspects of the phenomenon of life - the process aspect and the structure aspect.

I think that seeing language in conjunction with conceptual thought etc as characteristics of human cognition is particularly interesting in the light of the way that my thinking on the basis of Adam's naming the animals passage in Genesis 2. Understanding the latter in terms of the former (to put it crudely, but I'll refine that at another point); it would put the naming of the animals as part of the creation of humanity by cuing humanity's cognitive dimension which flows into and out of the creation of humanity's social nature in the same passage (so I would also want to add that human cognition is social and not simply about a body with its emotion and behaviour.

The Santiago Theory of Cognition - Fritjof Capra:

Culture is key to eco-housing

2011-11-30T20:09:00.001Z

I've been working on things to do with cultural studies lately and so been reminding myself and reflecting afresh on how culture is one humongous trialogue between 'stuff', 'happenings' and thinking-and-feeling. The trialogue is unstable though, like any complex dynamical system, it can have areas and times of relative equilibrium when things don't seem to change much.

What is stopping us building more eco-houses?:

It is not technology, or even politics, which is holding us back in building more eco-houses, it is deep rooted cultural and social conventions in how we live and what we expect houses to do for us

So we should note the importance of the way that we think and feel about housing in relation to the things in houses that we tend to use or not and all of that in relation to events like fossil fuel price hikes. It's not just the 'tech'; it's changes in expectations and imagination alongside 'buy-in' to the need and importance of living this way.

proselytisation

2011-11-30T19:06:00.001Z

I've been considering the words proselytism and proselytisation. It seems to me they're a bit like 'fundamentalist' or 'racist': it's always a term applied to someone else and it is always derogatory; a way to dispose of someone else; to put them beneath consideration. Our own university in its memoranda of understanding by which chaplains and the like are incorporated into working within the university has a 'no proselytism' clause and this can be interpreted to rule out any shairing of faith at all. But that interpretation, it has to be said, would be ridiculous. We need a more nuanced understanding and this is why.

It is important to acknowledge that most world faiths are explicitly or implicitly 'converting' faiths and that most are not at all unhappy for conversions to them to happen and make provision for the formation of converts in appropriate spiritual perspectives, disciplines and practices. They understand themselves to me making truth claims or at least claims to be able to help people to discover the best for themselves in life and/or beyond it and as such they each would be less than generous by their own lights if they were to collude in deliberately turning people away from this or helping others to find a fuller truth.

To ask them via their followers and representatives to refrain from explaining and propagating their perspectives and dearest convictions would be to attempt to impose on them yet another ideology which would not be compatible at all points with particular beliefs or practices. In effect it is to ask them to agree to the proposition that some other 'truth' trumps their own.

We should, by the way, in this respect, note that humanisms and secular ideologies function as belief-and-value systems and so are not neutral entities in the public arena and so should neither expect their tenets or practices to be accepted without challenge, discussion or the gaining of mutual consent. It should be noted that many secularists are clearly set to gain assent and 'converts' to their beliefs as well as the more well-known religious faiths.

In a university context it is acknowledged also that the freedom to debate, disagree and to express opinion is part of the fundamental value set implied in the search for knowledge and intellectual advance. Thus a university should be a place where different ideas, perspectives and beliefs can be expressed. Held. debated and scrutinised and where the skills of differing respectfully can be honed.

Thus we must distinguish between on the one hand expressing a belief and commending it to others and on the other hand doing so in a way that amounts to harassment, bullying and/or undue inducement. It is, in practice, this latter cluster of abuses that is really in the frame when someone is worrying about 'proselytisation' or 'proselytism'. I propose than that we should understand proselytism as pressing ones beliefs upon others in ways that harass, bully, and/or which use extrinsic inducements.

'Extrinsic inducements' are things such as power, conditional affection, money, other material considerations which are not inherent to the faith or belief-system concerned. By these things I have in mind power over someone which effectively means that not going along with them puts one in an unfavourable position whether that is explicit or unstated what is communicated is 'agree with me or things will be awkward'. The other way this can be expressed, of course, is the offer of power; that 'converting' will give access to power and its correlates. Similarly and usually relatedly, money or other material advantages could be offered openly or by implication. In effect: "Change your mind and you will be paid more /have food /gain sexual favours .... etc". What I have in mind in naming 'conditional affection' is the 'love bombing' some groups were accused of using in the 80's and still today in some cases: "join us and you will be loved, accepted and cared for (leave us and you will rediscover what a cold, hard world it is)".

One of the important words in that phrase is 'extrinsic': Most belief and value systems have some element of highlighting the advantages of agreeing with and joining them. However, in legitimate, non-exploitative and ethical faith-sharing these are intrinsic to the 'offer'; they are part of the package and can't be separated from it. When they are extrinsic they are simply bribes or threats or some combination of those. Thus Sikh's might offer food, but that is intrinsic to their faith practice, langar -and in any case is not an inducement as it is offered to all regardless of response to Sikh faith (or so I understand). Christians might offer (however imperfectly) 'love' but that is part and parcel of living out a faith in God who is Love and indeed are not permitted to offer conditional love without departing from the faith.

I think that this forms a workable perspective on proselytism that doesn't rule out respectful faith sharing or sensitive raising of faith-related issues in the public sphere.

Life co-op

2011-11-28T20:40:00.001Z

It's important to note this kind of thing; not all evolution is about competition: some is about co-operation. See here.

Life began with a planetary mega-organism - life - 25 November 2011 - New Scientist:

LUCA was the result of early life's fight to survive, attempts at which turned the ocean into a global genetic swap shop for hundreds of millions of years. Cells struggling to survive on their own exchanged useful parts with each other without competition - effectively creating a global mega-organism

This is important because there is a tendency for some to use the competitive view as justification for a eugenic ideology or cut-throat capitalism. This kind of discovery/hypothesis tends to undercut that piece of lazy political ethics.

Political poppies and not letting the Dogs of war silp

2011-11-12T11:40:00.000Z

Following some intriguing discussions at University in the staff discussion group, it was interesting to find Ray Gaston reposting this article on FB.

Poppy chatter is a distraction from remembrance of the living | Libby Brooks | Comment is free | The Guardian:

One of the bits that got my attention did so because I had felt surprisingly outraged by the suggestion in some of the debate in the media that poppy-wearing is not political:

To deny that the poppy exists in a political context, as well as a historical and cultural one, is to exhibit quite baffling levels of wilful ignorance. It's also insulting to the armed services themselves, given how eager politicians of various stripes are to co-opt them to their particular agendas

Quite so, and furthermore: try wearing a white poppy or even ostentatiously not wearing a poppy and you'll find out what kind of political assumptions are carried.

I'm particularly keen that we keep this original motivation near the heart of our thinking about the matter, at the risk of commiting the cultural equivalent of the etymological fallacy. (I think I can avoid committing it because this is actually a negotiation about meaning in the contempory):

Remembrance commemorations have of course been controversial as early as 1919, when many returning soldiers were appalled by what they saw as the glorification of a squalid and meaningless loss of life

A thought echoed by one correspondan:

One former serviceman explained: "I don't wear a poppy with pride but as a duty to remember all those who died in so many stupid and wasteful wars where young men had to pay for the mistakes of politicians."

The point of the article seems to be to note the need to have a proper care for those our society asks, encourages or sometimes effectively forces into brutal and traumatic mental and physical situations.

veterans continue to be over-represented among rough sleepers; the suicide rate among younger ex-servicemen is four times the national average; the effects of deployment on mental health, often compounded by alcohol misuse, can take years to surface, long after the limited Ministry of Defence support has ended

War is bloody hell; if 'we' justify it then we should jolly well accept to do something about these kinds of consequences.

It makes me wonder whether we should pass legislation to make sure that decisions on the part of governments to deploy troops should be reflexivised: that somehow the consequences of that decisions should be capable of being visited on the decision-makers in order to help them not to make them lightly (of course they will claim they don't anyway, but in the light of Iraq, you've got to wonder whether the stakes for them personally are high enough).

When the previous government was talking about raising the period of detention without trial to 90 days, I suggested that we should tell the politicians that they could do that only if they were willing to to be bound to serve any of the time equivalent to that endured wrongfully by any and all those who might be held under those laws. I suggest a similar reflexivity be found in the case of deploying troops. Not sure what a proper reflex should be; perhaps something like, they would personally have to break the news of the death or do service in a veterans' hospital .... or, well, what would your suggestion be?

Aboriginal Art: Jesus and Adam

2011-11-08T22:22:00.000Z

Matt Stone discovered this rather nice aboriginal Icon:

Jesus and Adam under the Trinity. Those who live under Adam are in disharmony and darkness, facing different directions. Those who live under Jesus, the second Adam, are in harmonyand light. This harmony is entered through the waters of baptism. I hope you find it interesting.

Aboriginal Art: Jesus and Adam - Glocal Christianity

What to do with your name after marriage? Why, blend.

2011-11-08T22:15:00.001Z

Going through the usual options (choose one, keep both, hyphenise) this article sets out the conversation highlights on this matter so far: What to do with your name after marriage – a great post-wedding game | Frances Ryan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. It does miss one: some friends of ours chose a new hyphenated surname based on their family histories rather than their birth-certificate surnames. However, the real aim of the article is to set the scene for ....

the newest marital name trend has ensured the long search for a solution is over. Couples are now "meshing": blending the key syllables of both of their surnames to form a brand new sparkling one.

I like it. In our case, that could make us Reynbows. Yep; that sits well with me.

The 1% are not value for money

2011-11-08T21:55:00.001Z

I mentioned a few posts back that I couldn't see how the majority of the capitalist elite were worth their pay differential relative to, say, a nurse. I mentioned how I thought that for the most part they commanded their wealth by virtue of luck and positioning. Well it looks like George Monbiot has come to the same conclusion: The 1% are the very best destroyers of�wealth the world has ever seen | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian And it's full of great quotes, for example:

Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes

Reading it, I realised that for the last 30 years we've been in thrall to, or at least silenced by, the myth that we need to reward the talented entrepreneurs, risk takers and financiers in order to create wealth. Well, George has some interesting research to bring to our attention which pretty much busts that mythology. This piece of research takes down the notion that financial success is down to skill.

the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill."

And then there is the issue of transferability of the findings; cue a nice sight-bite from Mr Monbiot:

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In fact, the evidence would suggest that not only does this 'class' not really manage to beat the better than chance threshold, but in fact it seems that the wealth they have 'created' is more properly seen to have been expropriated.

Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%

Then there's a study that disturbingly personalises one of the findings shown in the film The Corporation.

They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

In fact the way that corporate structures and 'rules' are put together actually creates a self-reinforcing situation:

Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

And worst of all we have allowed them to get away with it; there was an ideology propping it all up with an infrastructure to keep it in place in the collective imagination:

acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

Quite so: time to pull the curtain from this Oz wizardry.

Is this the future of books?

2011-11-08T21:25:00.001Z

Have a look at this. Moonbot Studios: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, v 3.0 It seems to me that it's what e-readers will be enabling. There's a sense in which this is probably inspired or at least envisionabled by the Daily Prophet in Harry Potter.

Using rich CG animation, innovative interactivity, original composed music, and unique games sprinkled throughout the book

I'm starting to think about some of my writing projects and wondering whether this is the way to go...

Ballet Shoes and Ballerinas as Technology

2011-11-08T19:19:00.001Z

In considering culture we need to contemplate the dynamic interrelationship between material things, human apprehension and ideas. It's with that in mind that this article looks really interesting:

Ballet Shoes and Ballerinas as Technology: A History En Pointe - Suzanne Fischer - Technology - The Atlantic:

Here's how it plays out with ballet dancing:

The bodies of dancers reshaped by pointe shoes are also technological. Laemmli's paper, "A Case in Pointe: Making Streamlined Bodies and Interchangeable Ballerinas at the New York City Ballet," looks at the way George Balanchine used pointe shoes to remake the bodies of his dancers into interchangeable machines

The point here is the reflexivity of the technology/artefact produced for the art which in turn reshapes the aesthetic possibilities and further developments (including the flat-footedness of dancers consequent on the reshaping of their bone-structure).

2011-11-07T19:32:00.001Z

I saw this on a billboard at a bus stop today.
As I reflected on it, I felt that this seemed to be heading down a rather more militaristic direction. You see, it seems to me that this way of advertising takes the emphasis away from supporting those bereaved by warfare, which was what I was told from childhood it was about, more towards 'supporting our troops': we are not being asked to remember the bereaved and bereft. And that message is problematic at a time when British troops are being used as adjuncts to US military adventurism. You see, it seems to me (as an antiwar sort of person) that this is moving away from what the original purpose was. As Robert Fisk reflects about his dad's difficulty with 'poppy day':
I remember that they wanted to remember their dead comrades. But above all, they wanted an end to war.
This poster, it seems to me, is not enunciating a hope for an end to war. It seems to be colluding with continuing warfare.
Unfortunately a red poppy no longer seems to be a way of articulating solidarity with that first generation of world-war-widows and orphans and veterans in their knowing-from-bitter-experience determination that war should be done away with.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-do-those-who-flaunt-the-poppy-on-their-lapels-know-that-they-mock-the-war-dead-6257416.html

Watching The Way

2011-11-05T16:36:00.001Z

Just watching this film. Like it a lot. it has humanity, pathos, humour and keeps reminding me of life in northern Spain and especially Euskadi; nostalgia also for the companionship of travellers and pilgrims. Buen Mirar; buen camino!

The Way (2010) - IMDb

Autumn in Nunsmoor

2011-11-05T16:22:00.000Z

the eye of a very big needle

2011-11-05T16:17:00.002Z

Also at Dawlish Warren.

in the wider eye of the beholder

2011-11-05T16:03:00.000Z

... in the eye of the beholder

2011-11-05T15:59:00.000Z

I too this with my phone camera in Dawlish Warren the other week. So glad the onboard camera seemed to be up to what it was that I saw iwth the naked eye. Thinking that this might make a nice picture to put on a wall. What do you think?

There are 3 “J’s” in the Gospel Debate

2011-11-05T15:15:00.001Z

According to Scot McKnight. Justice, justification and ... well read it here:

The Three “J’s” in the Gospel Debate | Jesus Creed:

If you preach Jesus as the gospel you will get both justification and justice.
If you preach justification you may get Jesus (but I see only some of Jesus and not the whole of Jesus) and you may get some justice (I’m skeptical on this one).
If you preach justice you may get some justification (but I’m skeptical on enough justice gospelers ever getting to justification) and you get Jesus, but again only some of Jesus (often only his teachings, his life, and his life as an example).
If you preach the Jesus of Paul’s gospel (1 Cor 15) or the apostolic sermons in Acts or the gospel of the Gospels, you get all of Jesus and all of Jesus creates both justice and justification.

I think I may agree, though I fear that this may be a bit simple and those who tend towards the two first varieties of belief probably wouldn't recognise the distinction because they think that they are the third category, in fact. But Scot is certainly right, imho, that Jesus is the centre of it all and that if we put justice or justification first we loose the plot.

Honest scrap award

2011-11-05T14:52:00.000Z

I've been ages (and then some) responding to this, but thought I'd give it a go ...Re-vis.e Re-form: Unknowingly memed and awarded: "10 HONEST things about myself and then nominate 7 other blogs that I think deserve to receive the Honest Scrap Award."
So ...
1 I don't drive. I've had about four lessons and have tended to either have too little money to learn when I've had the time or not enough time when I've had the money. Then the cost of car ownership and the fact that the thing loses money as soon as you take it off the forecourt, that cares are a major cause of death and injury (if they were cigarettes, they'd carry health warnings) and contribute majorly to climate change, have not encouraged me more recently to learn, either.
2 I watch TV at weekends and those days when I'm working from home -it's often a background noise for me (childhood thing). I'm amused and sometimes annoyed that heavy reain disables the satellite signal -so I rue that our area is not cabled.
3 I like reading alternative timeline stories: I really like that 'what if' thing and how plausible the author makes it. That goes for sci-fi in general.
4 I'm a top-down thinker rather than bottom up: I really function best when I'm able to situate new ideas in a big picture, otherwise I'm missing things while I'm asking myself how 'this' fits in with 'which' bigger framework.
5 I'm an ordained Anglican: been deacon for 23 years and in presbyteral orders for 22; I was ordained in Sheffield Cathedral by David Lunn and have spent most of my ministry in Yorkshire.
6 I really enjoy helping people connect with important insights (either personal or educational or faith-wise)
7 I've been discovering more and more that I fundamentally think theologically in ways that resonate with Barth and Moltmann. I seem to come to conclusions that they write about; so I read stuff by them with a sense that I recognise what they are saying and that they have articulated it better than I could have done (perhaps unsurprisingly).
8 politically I'm on the 'progressive' end of things but suspicious of a lot of leftist agendas even though I'm not at all convinced by much of the self-serving of much rightist thinking.
9 I have lived all my life in England, except for about nine months when I lived in Spain (San Sebastian /Donostia) In Spain I learnt Basque, to probably, intermediate level.
10 I was brought up in a commuter village so I'm never quite sure whether that makes me rural or urban by background. However, I prefer living in or close in to cities.

And in turn, and this this the hard bit (finding others who I think will be okay with it), I nominate 7 others ...
1 http://pursiful.com
2 The Elves are heading West
3 Staring into the distance ....
4 Paradoxology
5 Pashfish
6 Nonsuch
7 Greenflame

What the *%$k!? Vicar resigns

2011-11-05T14:34:00.002Z

It is almost enigmatic: Church Times - Brynmawr’s Vicar resigns. Surely there must be more to it than this: "An unnamed cleric told the Western Mail that he had formally complained about Mr Grey. “I was very concerned at the language he used in a conversation he had with me. It is entirely inappropriate for a clergyman to use four-letter words.”"
Can it be that a clergybeing has really been 'encouraged' to resign for swearing; or is that 'cussing'; or even 'profanity'? And there you have it. We can't even agree what to call it because the issue differs according to who is judging and where it's happening. 'Swearing' puts it in the territory of not taking the LORD's name in vain in particular by making some kind of oath or truncated oath (thereby also trespassing onto Jesus' 'Do not swear' from the Sermon on the Mount). 'Cussing' seems to have distinctly dialectal overtones -perhaps even of the wild west and may well be a variant of 'cursing' (certainly would be in Black Country dialect) -which probably means saying nasty things to or about others but possibly God. 'Profanity' seems to be taking the idea that the profane is something that shouldn't be uttered in God's hearing; it's beyond the bounds of decency.

Of course there are all sorts of difficulties here. Taking the LORD's name in vain would, strictly speaking, be nigh on impossible. The Jews of yore did such a good job of protecting the name so that it couldn't be taken in vain, that no-one now knows how to pronounce it. That's why many English Bibles put the word in capitals: to signal that it's "that" name -God's special name -which we don't know how to say.

Quibbles aside, though, we know what is meant here in actual fact. Using 'holy' titles and names to express anger, disgust, surprise and so forth. But this doesn't seem to be the what was being referred to. "Four-letter words" are not generally characteristic of 'swearing' in the sense of using 'holy' words in profane ways: most of those words are not four-letter words. "Four-letter words" geneally refers to a set of allegedly 'Anglo-Saxon' words referring to copulation, excretion or genitalia (mainly female). It is one or more of these which I think we're are supposed to understand to be 'inappropriate for a clergyman to use', or at least to do so as freely as it appears this gentleman is accused of doing. I know clergy who, in moments of extreme frustration (for example) and where they feel safe enough to do so, will use the occasional such word.

What I'm curious about is why such language should be considered 'inappropriate' for clergy. And this may require us to think past our first reactions and our cultural reflexes into places we so take for granted that the mere questioning of them seems almost ridiculous and /or offensive. But there we must go, dear reader.

You see there is a problem with all of this 'swearing' stuff. The stuff to do with invoking God or Christ 'in vain' is one thing: many believers find it jarring to hear words that, for us, have affectionate and devotional connotations being bandied about with aggressive or casual intent. However, the words to do with sexual acts, bodily wastes or genitals are another matter. There isn't a God- or devotion agenda involved with them. It might be understandable that a vicar could be leaned on to reconsider his position if he was in the habit of misusing God-words. But what would be going on with these other words?

Well, I think we need, first, to ask what is offensive, to whom and when? The first is partly answered above, Ttough some more things should be said: we should note that what constitutes offensive language differes from language to language and culture to culture. Broadly speaking it seemss that sex, excreta and the sacred normally provide the referents but which of these is considered most offensive varies. In Quebec French, for example certain catholic symbols are the most offensive, similarly in Spanish (where 'milk' is an offensive thing to say, because it's short for 'milk of the Virgin'). And of course it isn't the word itself; there's nothing mystical about the sounds. Indeed there is amusement to be had in finding innocent words in one language which sound like 'rude' or offensive words in another\ (even if on a visual pun like Thailand's Phuket). We should also note that it isn't the referent either, or at least not on it's own: most of the referents of 'four-letter words' can be expressed with more polite or acceptable words or phrases: "sex" or "poo", for example.So I'm not entirely convinced by Stephen Pinker's neurological explanation regarding the disgust factor. It's not the concepts that are taboo (though I will admit that in some company and circumstances the subject matter may be considered 'indelicate', but that's not really the same though it may be linked to the extent that the Stephen Pinker view works).

The second (offensive to whom) is something of a sociolinguistic issue as is the third (when) which also takes in pragmatics. Asking 'who is offended?' can yield some interesting observations: class differences are often involved: working class swearing hooking middle class offence, for example. This can then act as a group marker expressing solidarity and enacting differentiation: 'we' are the ones who dare to say what 'they' can't bring themselves to say (and the concomitant possibilities for image-building as, say, 'tough'). So was the vicar actually committing social class 'sins' by swearing. I'd guess there is likely to be a big chunk of this aspect in the matter: (I'm guessing on the basis of precedent) a middle class congregation for whom these words are taboo find a vicar using what they associate as 'common' and even 'offensive' terms which are certainly not acceptable in their normal speech. His choice of such language marks him as someone who is not 'one of us' and so suspect of moral deficiency or of allying himself with the 'wrong' sort of people.

And then there's the 'when?' question. There are social circumstances in which it might be considered relatively 'okay' to swear/cuss: sports occasions (see picture above !?) are often such. And some occasions where a word might be shocking (a royal banquet, perhaps). Sometimes the pragmatics of cussing is about enacting a solidary relationship: by greeting someone with an insult, one can be saying, in effect "We're the same, we are (potentially) friends ...". That's why the N-bomb can be used among black people but not in a mixed race conversation, for example. And of course, the words can be used as distancing even repudiative: when we want to express our disgust with or violent objection to someone or something, the 'profane' words can be very helpful (hence the apostle Paul's use of a word supposed to be such, in one of the epistles).

This latter usage, though also shows up the problem over time. The power of such words tends to lead to their overuse which lessens their impact over time. In my lifetime and experience words like 'bloody' and 'shit' have become so common that their impact is now like 'damn' was when I was a kid (ie no-one thought it heavy duty except for a few older people). This leads to a search for new sufficiently 'offensive' terms to use for the more extreme ranges of emotion and circumstance, hence "motherf****r" seems to be coming into range.

See my previous posts on 'profanity'

Buddhism in the west -let's be mindful of what we learn from it

2011-11-05T13:36:00.001Z

It was interesting to see here Beyond me - Philosophy and Life Mark Vernon's own comments on why he wrote a recent article in Third Way. Buddhism, he says:

... addresses modern everyday concerns – the desire for happiness, the anxieties of stress. Indeed, policy makers are growing increasingly interested in the ability of mindfulness meditation to achieve everything from reducing aggression to warding off aging.

It is a genius piece of spiritual positioning in a secular culture, like ours, that associates belief with half-forgotten myths, at best. Psychology, not theology, is trusted as a source of truth. The individual, not the divine, is what really draws our attention. And I have to admit, as someone who entirely understands what it is to be metaphysically agnostic, Buddhism drew me too, for a while.

But I’ve changed my mind. I’m inclined to think that Buddhism’s easy ride into western consciousness should be challenged. A moment for critique has arrived – a moment that, I suspect, serious Buddhists will, in fact, welcome. Conversely, Buddhism’s undoubted appeal raises questions that Christians would do well to reflect on too

On this very blog I have at various points mentioned that we can probably learn a lot about how contemporary Western people are linking spirituality and culture at the level of plausibility structures by paying attention to the popularity of Buddhism in some circles. So this article is welcome.

The real challenges of chaplaincy ...

2011-11-05T13:31:00.000Z

I discovered I'd drafted this a few months back and then forgotten to post it. So....

The bishop of Newcastle, at my interview for the post of co-ordinating chaplain to the University of Northumbria, said, “I reckon this is the hardest job in the diocese, why on earth do you want to do it?”* A good question; why did he think it was hard? I supposed that he meant something like: being a university chaplain in a large and secular university means that you don't have a settled congregation to pastor and your role is widely misunderstood and you are in a very pioneering situation with regard to discerning the mission of God and playing your part. So it's hard because you need to have a good degree of resilience, imagination, ability to cope without the normal encouragements of working in ordained ministry.
The lack of a settled congregation may be a surprise to some -remembering chaplaincies from student days as vibrant nexuses of Christian gathering and growth. Not so now: the demographic concern for falling numbers of young people participating in church life is showing up acutely in university chaplaincies; they rarely attract enough people for a critical mass of consistent and regular activity. young people who do identify as church-actively Christian tend either to go to the RC chaplaincy (by dint of a strong 'brand loyalty' on the part of the catholics and even here the numbers can struggle) or they are attracted by the vibrancy of the Christian Union -and whichever churches are most fashionable among the CU's members.
The role is misunderstood quite often because of this: the assumption is that a university chaplain is concerned mostly with students. And while some of it is, often in a quite expanded role working within teams concerned for student welfare, international students and religious equality and diversity, much is also concerned with staff and with broader institutional matters. I sometimes in the past described my role as being “an industrial chaplain to a knowledge-based industry” to try to get over the idea that it was a more institutional~ and staff-related ministry than many might have realised.
It is a pioneering role in that, with the traditional student role being less to the fore, more scope is given to encouraging wider and different forms of participation and offering different forms of ministry. In Bradford, I organised faith-related art-exhibitions, text-prayers, spiritual direction, meditation training as part of a de-stressing programme, vigils for peace at the time of the Iraq conflict, group facilitation services, life coaching, and fair trade advocacy among other things.
I am aware that this kind of institutional and staff-related ministry is much more like chaplaincy work in other sectors. In common with them I would also say that part of the role is to affirm and to facilitate ministry in Christ's name by 'ordinary' Christians in the workplace. The chaplain by their presence says, I hope, “your workplace is somewhere that God is active, a big part of the wider church's mission takes place there”.

*Interestingly, in the diocesan newspaper version of this, I toned down the actual quote; I was worried that some clergy in the diocese might take it amiss that the implication could be construed that he didn't think their job was. But of course, that would be an unfair implication; I'm sure that he was indulging in conversational hyperbole.

How your friends' friends can affect your mood

2011-11-05T13:25:00.002Z

One of the aspects of our being inherently social is that, well, look at this: How your friends' friends can affect your mood - life - 30 December 2008 - New Scientist: "Recent research shows that our moods are far more strongly influenced by those around us than we tend to think. Not only that, we are also beholden to the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends - people three degrees of separation away from us who we have never met, but whose disposition can pass through our social network like a virus."

Now, cutting a long story short, but something I keep banging on about, the reason is probably empathic mimicry.
"Some researchers think one of the most likely mechanisms is empathetic mimicry. Psychologists have shown that people unconsciously copy the facial expressions, manner of speech, posture, body language and other behaviours of those around them, often with remarkable speed and accuracy. This then causes them, through a kind of neural feedback, to actually experience the emotions associated with the particular behaviour they are mimicking."
My interest spiritually is recognising the corporateness of faith living both in terms of 'not giving up meeting together' but also in terms of the effects of living in faith-hostile environments. Also we should note the likelihood of certain kinds of behaviour, notably and most extremely those associated with certain kinds of revivalism, are more about empathic mimicry than about the spirit of God. That's not to say God may not be involved, but we should be wary of making it all-or-nothing. God can indeed be touching people's lives and this may show through psycho-somatic means. These may then be picked up by others. In some cases doing so may enable them to 'tune in' to some degree to the presence of God. In some cases, however, it may only transmit 'odd' mannerisms. Our bodies are sacramental, in a sense, but not ex opere operato: the behaviour does not 'produce' or necessarily connote the presence or move of God; though it may.

Of course, it is possible to go to the extreme of saying that such scientific research disproves the God stuff: it's all just a somatic-psycho-spiritual 'infection'. This is, of course, as much nonsense as saying that such things 'prove' God. We need to recall that as embodied beings, if we are to have spiritual experiences they will have to be mediated through our bodily (=neural) experience. Conversely we should note that in evolutionary terms our vocal apparatus is not 'designed' for speech, however, that does not mean that language does not really exist. Similarly, just because certain of our somatic systems can be co-opted for spiritual experience does not mean that something genuintel spiritual does not underlie that co-option.

49% - How much? How can that be justified

2011-11-04T21:15:00.001Z

This is likely to produce a rant in me ... oh dear, it begins .....

"directors in FTSE 100 companies have received an average pay increase of 49% this year" Why? Because they can, not to put to fine a point on it. Our legislative framework hasn't evolved to produce a more ... what? ... rational? fair? system.

Why would I say 'rational'? Well, several reasons: how can the value of these people's work really be worth so much more than, say, a nurse or a refuse collector? I rather doubt that the talent these people have is any significantly greater than dozens if not hundreds or thousands of others, the difference is that these particular people had the 'right' combination of birth, schooling, networking and chances of openings at the 'right' time to find themselves in a position commanding great wealth. So I say rational because happenstance is massively at work here and that isn't really rational. Rational would be taking a view about the relative values of the work and the costs to society .... see where that would be going? And then if we add to that the consideration from The Spirit Level about the deleterious effects (read therefore 'costs') to society of greater inequalities of income.

So, I contend, it is not fair, rational or acceptable for civilised societies not to address that kind of idiocy in so-called 'rewards'. Too often 'we' are rewarding chance and good-fortune not effort, creativity, intelligence or any of the virtuous things that most of us would say is deserving of reward.

Rant over ... thank you for bearing with me. I feel better now. And who knows, I might even be wrong?

49% - the astounding average pay rise for FTSE 100 bosses | The Equality Trust:

Teenagers begin high court challenge against tuition fee rise

2011-11-01T21:31:00.001Z

I don't think they'll succeed, but it'll be interesting if the case enables the facts to be heard. See here: Teenagers begin high court challenge against tuition fee rise | Education | guardian.co.uk:

Two teenagers have begun a case in the high court against the government's decision to let universities almost treble tuition fees next year

It will all hinge on two main challenges:

(1)... the rise in fees is in breach of the right to education protected in the Human Rights Act 1998. That right does not guarantee free higher education, but it does place curbs on steps that limit access to higher education ... and

(2) ... the government failed to give "due regard" to promoting equality of opportunity as required under the Race Relations, Sex Discrimination and Disability Discrimination Acts.

I don't think either will succeed because I suspect that the conditions under which the finances are actually granted are likely not to be considered a bad deal. In the case of the first objection, the fact that the student finance arrangements are arguably better than the previous arrangements (and I would say, in effect, closer to grants and a graduate tax) and in relation to the second objection; it's not debt as we normally understand it: it is written off if unpaid by a certain point, it is only payable on a PAYE basis once ones income reaches a (higher than present) certain point. It's in effect, a hypothecated graduate tax. The odd thing is that a Conservative administration has swallowed the idea -it's occured because it has been dressed up to look like a safely capitalist loan. But in effect, if the investment doesn't produce a graduate with the kind of lifetime increase in earnings usually predicted, well, the government picks up the bill. That's the real worry: sometime in the future, the books may not balance ...

But perhaps I've misunderstood something.

Of course, that is not to say anything about the rights and wrongs of various approaches to financing HE.

While we're on the topic, however, I think it may be worth considering an article about the future of HE. In this case in the USA, but I think some of the issues are transferable.

http://faithoncampus.com/four-disruptions-that-could-shake-up-college-ministry/ I'm particularly interested in the demographic issue combined with the issue of whether HE will continue to be considered a good investment. And on that issue, it's also worth having a read of this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/oct/31/university-open-days-soar; the consumer approach is finally coming home to roost; the faint beginnings have been with us a little while, but it seems to me that here it arrives in fulness.

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London

2011-11-01T20:53:00.001Z

This is a somewhat scary expose:

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

In it we learn that democracy is a non-starter in the Square Mile:

"among local authorities the City of London is unique". You bet it is. There are 25 electoral wards in the Square Mile. In four of them, the 9,000 people who live within its boundaries are permitted to vote. In the remaining 21, the votes are controlled by corporations, mostly banks and other financial companies. The bigger the business, the bigger the vote: a company with 10 workers gets two votes, the biggest employers, 79. It's not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who "appoint" the voters. Plutocracy, pure and simple.

Indeed:

The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile.

We also learn:

The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons. As the French investigating magistrate Eva Joly remarked, it "has never transmitted even the smallest piece of usable evidence to a foreign magistrate". It deprives the United Kingdom and other nations of their rightful tax receipts.

It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible. Shaxson shows how the absence of proper regulation in London allowed American banks to evade the rules set by their own government.

Monbiot suggests that one interesting effect of trying to draw up a written British constitution would be to expose some of this jiggery-pokery; after all, how would one possibly defend this in order to put its preservation on a 'proper' footing. It certainly makes one wonder if the Occupy LSX protest should be attempting to bring some of this into the light of day. Indeed, is the stuff with St Paul's cathedral some clever diversion?

Peer pressure ... conform their public opinion to the majority

2011-10-25T20:37:00.001+01:00

It's not new knowledge in the sense that teachers have long known that it can be a struggle to get kids to think for themselves and to "have the courage of their convictions". I'd guess that the psychological dynamics that feed this probably transfer to fashion and likes too. The research is briefly presented here:

Peer pressure in preschool children: Children as young as 4 years of age conform their public opinion to the majority:

Humans do not only conform to arbitrary fashions but also to majority opinion even when they know better. This conformity plays a crucial role in the acquisition of one's group's behavioural repertoire. We learn group specific behaviour by observing other group members. When confronted with information that stands in conflict with our own beliefs or preferences, we often succumb to the point of view of the majority.

Naming animals artistically

2011-10-25T20:24:00.000+01:00

Today at the Artists' Hub meeting at the Holy Biscuit, I led the main reflection. Here it is (though I should warn you that the sound is low and Slideshare has lost some of the formatting for the words which consequently appear in a long line -and therefore don't always appear at all!)

Naming animals artistically

View another webinar from Andii Bowsher

Naming animals artistically

Pinyin in practice

2011-10-13T20:46:00.000+01:00

I've been starting to learn Mandarin for about 3 years (still not got very far) But this had me fascinated because learning to speak and listen to Mandarin is a different ball game to learning the ideographs traditionally associated with Chinese languages. So, what happens when a quite different way of writing starts to be commonly used, quite the variant on diglossia; digraphia. See here: Language Log � Pinyin in practice:

many Chinese police cars and uniforms have written on them GONGAN ("public security") rather than "police", and sometimes not even 公安.
When I encounter such situations, I often wonder:
1. why they choose to use pinyin and NOT Chinese characters
2. why they choose to use Mandarin in pinyin instead of English
3. for whom the sign is intended

One of the comments says this in response, which seems possible to me.

1. pinyin is unambiguously Mandarin the national language and not other Chinese languages
2. pinyin is China's legible 'face' to the world, as a lot more non-Chinese can read and ecognize 'Beijing' than would recognize the characters.
I'll also develop Carl's idea. If it's true that school children learn pinyin before*characters then the argument might be made that more Chinese have a fuller awareness of pinyin than they do of characters. That is anyone who's spent a year or two at school and can more or less speak Mandarin can at least decypher pinyin while only those with a lot more schooling can decypher characters.
Those who have becomevery literate in characters might find it harder to read Mandarin in pinyin but average folks on the street probably find it easier, especially in short messages as in public signage.

It's the interplay of meaning-making, power, economics, perceptions ....

Media habits of young people may make them drink more; What should be done?

2011-10-10T20:57:00.001+01:00

I can remember, back in the 80's I used to get told that there was no evidence that what people watch significantly altered their behaviour. It seems that those days are gone:

Media habits of young people may make them drink more; What should be done?: There is a well-documented link between watching programmes that show alcohol, such as TV reality shows, and increased drinking

My position was based really on two things; one was the 'common sense' self observation that the things I fill my thoughts with tend to become the things that I seek out in real life and that I tend to notice and become involved with. This, it seemed to me, was pretty much what was endorsed by the apostle Paul as the basis for learning to focus our thoughts in what is wholesome and to eschew thinking centred in less-than-wholesome things.

I'm now also linking this with meditation disciplines which, among other things, seek to train us to be able to give attention rather than simply having it captured and to create positive thinking patterns rather than simply reactive and unwholesome...

We're suffering a 'crisis of bigness'

2011-10-09T20:34:00.001+01:00

I find this really intriguing:

Kohr's claim was that society's problems were not caused by particular forms of social or economic organisation, but by their size. Socialism, anarchism, capitalism, democracy, monarchy – all could work well on what he called "the human scale": a scale at which people could play a part in the systems that governed their lives. But once scaled up to the level of modern states, all systems became oppressors. Changing the system, or the ideology that it claimed inspiration from, would not prevent that oppression – as any number of revolutions have shown – because "the problem is not the thing that is big, but bigness itself"

I think that it intrigues me because it seems to me that a reading of the story of the Tower of Babel might well be saying the same thing. It has always seemed to me that part of the point of that story is that aggregating human endeavours is liable to lead to a growth of ill and that God's 'solution' is decentralisation and reverting things to human scale. I rather suspect Fritz Schumaker would have agreed: his Buddhist economics seems to me to point in the same direction.

I'm also considering how this relates to a Wink-derived take considering Principalities and Powers....

.This economic collapse is a 'crisis of bigness' | Paul Kingsnorth | Comment is free | The Guardian

Easily embarrassed? - people will trust you more

2011-09-29T20:05:00.000+01:00

Since my youth I've been embarrassed by being embarrassed. Partly it's being a redhead; blushing comes easily. And in the last few years it seems to have got worse. However, there seems to be a silver lining in that cloud.

people who are easily embarrassed are also more trustworthy, and more generous.

The reason, the research seems to indicate is simply, and probably unsurprisingly, that

embarrassment signals people's tendency to be pro-social,

I will console myself with that thought the next time I feel myself reddening for some minor error of judgement or whatever.
Easily embarrassed? Study finds people will trust you more:

Evolution of Collective Violence

2011-09-24T17:17:00.001+01:00

I've been aware, as I've been collecting and reflecting on the corporisation of human agglomerates that the phenomenon of mobs may be a significant dimension of the matter. So it was interesting to find an article specifically referring to this.

Freedom to Riot: On the Evolution of Collective Violence | The Primate Diaries, Scientific American Blog Network:

From a crowd made up of individuals, each possessing the ability to make a free choice, something more powerful had been unleashed in which normal rules of conduct seemed not to apply.
“For some reason some kind of force filled me,” testified one of the rioters during his trial. “Until this day, I do not understand how I got into this. What kind of devil was it that asked me to go and forced me to enter into the police department?”
Collective violence, extending from riots to warfare, presents a challenge to our ordinary understanding of free will. Actions that would rarely be taken by an individual on their own seem to be embraced when supported by a larger group.

I'm interesting in two dimensions of this: one is the way that the individual feels their personal subjectivity is subsumed by a 'bigger' entity and the other is the issue of responsibility. The latter, certainly, is a dimension that others such as McFadyen have explored. Now I wrote 'subsumed' above as if there were a kind of loss of identity; on the other hand it could be interpreted in another way:

“You didn’t lose your identity,” says Bell, “you gained a new one in reaction to a threat.” As Bell points out in the case of riots, that threat is often excessive force from the police that turns a disgruntled crowd into an angry mob.

The new identity is a solidary one. And much of what follows in the article is an examination of how social stresses seem to be flashpoints for the emergence of a (violent) social solidarity. The point for me is that there is a function in human make-up which is clearly 'meshable'. The interesting thing (which lies beyond the scope of this article) is the possibility that this meshable-ness can be evoked and harnessed in other ways -including the emergence of corporisations with less violent modi operandi or raisons d'etre.

First women fined under France's Burka ban

2011-09-22T21:06:00.001+01:00

Well, I've been wondering when it would happen, and here it is:
First women fined under France's Burka ban | RFI:

A French court on Thursday imposed fines on two women for wearing the full Islamic face-covering veil, for the first time since a law was passed making it illegal to wear it in public.

You may remember that the enforcement of the law mostly depends on other citizens making a complaint given that often police would not be around to observe it. I wonder whether, as well, some of the other people who said they would try to get arrested for fulfilling the law's strictures without a niqab. When will those cases come to court.

One of the things I pointed out in earlier comments is that this arguably flouts the EDHR, and so it is no surprise to read that this will be tested:
"Yann Gré, who is the lawyer for the two women, declared that they will appeal against the ruling and are ready to take the case before the European Court of Human Rights."
Of course, this is a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut situation. It is estimated that about 2000 women in France wore niqab before the law. This may now have halved. I'm no fan of niqab, but I don't think that bearing down on people's beliefs like this is a terrible afront to freedom of conscience. Which is the point of the EDHR's protecting of life-stance beliefs. Far from creating a neutrality, the French form of secularism creates a public sphere in the image of humanistic rationalism. It is itself a belief-system and it, ironically, persecutes other belief systems whose actors cannot enter the public realm shorn of their life-shaping commitments.

Memory and representation

2011-09-21T21:24:00.001+01:00

Broadly speaking this is a good corrective to the moral panic sort of stuff we've been seeing lately that this title refers to Google Is Not Making You Stupid : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR. I found myself, musing over a side-bar this time though.

We have evolved not to be representers-of-the-world, but to lock-in and keep track of where we find ourselves. We use landmarks and street signs to find our way around;

I'm not sure the two things are so far apart or even fundamentally different. Representation surely involves picking out particular features out of a large potential field of percepts and using those features in communication based on, among other things, a sense of what other people may pick out (and this is heavily influenced by culturally-driven convergences). These features are probably landmarks in the relevant communicative transactions and, by analogy, landmark-like things in other kinds of discourse. I'm hypothesising, I guess, that the psychological mechanism for using landmarks, therefore, is recycled into perception-for-communication: ie representation ....

Pay differentials and the adverse impacts on UK plc

2011-09-19T20:26:00.000+01:00

Worth checking out, this report.
One Society � The gulf between employees’ pay and chief executives’ pay, and the adverse impacts on UK plc:
One of the findings caught my attentions:

Pay levels in the private sector have impacts which go beyond the company itself. Excessive incentives at the top can produce perverse behaviours. Excessively low pay externalises costs to the taxpayer (e.g. through the benefits system) estimated in the billions of pounds and is likely to reduce the ability of the economy to recover. Excessive gaps between incomes are associated with costly health and social problems as well as with higher levels of debt and economic volatility.

And it caught my attention because this issue of externalising costs means that the issue really is of interest and concern to the tax payer, aka the voter aka government. It is in our interest to be wary of private enterprise which talks the talk of the market but is surreptitiously sponging off the public purse (and it happens far more than the rhetoric would have you believe, the free market is rarely what it is cracked up to be).

The recommendations of the report seem, in this light, eminently sensible.

chotomising in your head: starting to nam

2011-09-18T11:58:00.001+01:00

Yeah, I just made up the word 'chotomising' (from 'dichotomy' -I didn't want to retain the idea of simply cutting into two; perhaps 'polychotomy' and a cognate verb might do the trick in some cases...). Any how, the main point is to highlight this research which shows that the already-established 'statistical learning' tool that we humans seem to have, is what enables the mental boundary-making which enables 'naming' to take place. See here:
Watching the world in motion, babies take a first step toward language:

"Although these babies were between just 7 and 9 months of age, they were already dividing the world into events" using the "tool" of statistical learning. "It is these events that will be named with words," she continues. "A few months later, when they can hook up words to the events they see, they will begin to use language."

This is something I'm now pondering in relation to my theology of culture work relating to the naming of the animals... obviously!

Better to light a candle ...

2011-09-16T21:18:00.001+01:00

When I started my new job as co-ordinating chaplain at Northumbria University, I inherited a strapline for the chaplaincy; an old favourite Jewish saying: "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." There was a simple drawing of a lighted candle that tended to do duty as a kind of logo. While trawling through the university's archive of approved images for publicity I came across the one that this one is based on. It has now been made into a large screen-poster for standing behind tables when we do fairs, induction events and the like. I really like it because it focuses visually on the lighting rather than the candle, which feels more at the heart of the saying. And also, the image is lush.

At home with the Unitarians

2011-09-16T20:54:00.001+01:00

Just along the square from the building where I now have my work-base, there is Newcastle's Unitarian Church. I've met Unitarians -I think there's a relatively regular reader of this blog who is Unitarian- and I'm interested in the way that it seems to show that faith in rationality can be so culturally particular: rationality isn't culturally transcendent, it turns out. So Theo Hobson's encounter with USAmerican Unitarianism is intriguing (Theo is no cheer-leader for orthodox church life). Not least because he gives some background of the way that Unitarianism influenced the founding and consolidating of the USA.

What we're left with seems ambiguous, though.

I came away with the feeling that it was very harmless. And maybe that's the key difference from Christian worship. In Christian worship there's a certain sense of risk: we risk affirming an idea of truth that is somewhat at odds with natural wisdom, inner peace. And we risk affirming a tradition that has an aura of violence – the violent rhetoric about the Lord of hosts and so forth – and the references to death and blood in the sombre ritual. There's a sense of potential danger in Christianity – this religion has been used for violent ends, and people have suffered martyrdom for it too. There's a disturbing absoluteness. Unitarianism carries about as much sense of dangerous otherness as a tots' singalong at the local library.

However, the sense of worship being dangerous, in some way, is intriguing, don't you think? I certainly relate to the sense at some occasions of corporate worship that we were not dealing with a tame God, and the awe of that was not necessarily the anxiety-funk sort of thing that would be dehumanising but somehow is about awakening us to Otherness which lies, I would argue, at the heart of learning love. An ennobling awe; an inside-outing awe; an awe that calls us beyond who we were before...

Check it out: At home with the Unitarians | Theo Hobson | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Downwardly mobile: When consumer decisions are influenced by people with lower socioeconomic status

2011-09-15T18:46:00.001+01:00

A lot of advertising uses 'high status' role models to stimulate consumer desire. However this study (Downwardly mobile: When consumer decisions are influenced by people with lower socioeconomic status) shows that people may actually look sometimes to lower status people to emulate:

under certain circumstances higher status consumers are more likely to emulate the choices of lower status people, a phenomenon called the "low status user effect." For example, observing a janitor using the latest tech gadget may lead a person of higher status to question his own technological innovativeness. "This scenario might lead the observer to think: if a lower socioeconomic status person owns the latest tech gadget and I don't, what does this mean about my relative technological innovativeness?" The authors found that the low status user effect only occurs when the product symbolizes a clear and desirable trait and when the observer is unconfident about her relative standing on that trait.

Actually this isn't surprising if we consider the matter of emulation more widely. For example in language we know that for some speakers forms of speech that may be considered 'lower status' may actually be what they wish to emulate because of the symbolic value of those 'lower status' speakers as fashionable or 'cool' or 'hard' or some other desirable trace which may not be conventionally linked to their socio-economic status. This is further linkable to the way that fashion is often led by trends in black and working class youth culture. It's actually about what is considered desirable and that may not actually be linked to 'fame and fortune' or wealth but rather to other traits such as 'hipness' or cultural creativity or lifestyle or ... well, you get the picture.

New beatitudes?

2011-09-11T16:40:00.001+01:00

I liked this article, but I felt it calling to me in a different format ...

Blessed are the good listeners for they will learn the fulness of God's ways.
Blessed are the different, for they will awaken us to our smallness and draw us to grow.
Blessed are the lovers of justice, for they will feel God's heartbeat.
Blessed are those who are compassionate of heart for they will undermine complacency.
Blessed are the lovers of truth, for they will see God's fingerprints.
Blessed are those who defend the future, for the earth will inherit their love-labour.
Blessed are the women, for they will reconfigure the context.
Blessed are the spiritually sensitive, for they will enliven us to God's creative aheadways.

Now, I missed out the global business experts not because I didn't relish the counter-culturality of seeing them as potential agents of God (at least in the circles I tend to inhabit), but because I think that those of them that merit being called blessed will be so because the other characteristics apply.
So, in the spirit of the proper and original beatitudes ...
Blessed are you when people revile your efforts to make the intuitions and priorities of the Highest Power into practical business and culturally embedded, for great is your reward in the lives of God's beloved now and in the Age to Come.
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � Calling Open Minds: The Kingdom of God Needs You (by Dr. Bradley Duncan):

Dutch Muslim MP launches anti-fatwa campaign | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

2011-09-11T14:53:00.001+01:00

I love the sound of this, but I can't help feeling that it may not turn out to be such a big deal. If it did, then it'd be rather like the Wittenburg Door receiving the 95 theses at the hands of Martin Luther. Though, I gather, that there were perhaps quite a few people proposing similar things (and had been for 150 years or more -witness Lollardy in England in around 1350). So perhaps its not that some Muslims are thinking like this, but whether there is a 'critical mass' of Muslims who think similarly. And of course, that's a question about the historical/cultural moment.
Dutch MP launches anti-fatwa campaign | Radio Netherlands Worldwide: “The Last Fatwa”, aims to “free Muslims from top-down decrees issued by a handful of scholars”. Muslims, the Dutch MP says, “should learn to think independently and make their own choices”.
The intriguing thing, and scary, of course, is that an anticlericalism (that is, anti-ulemaism) is part of the discourse of some at least of those we currently fear -the Islamists. What I'm not sure about but suspect, is that in this case the anti-ulemaic impetus may have something to do with disallowing critiques of their homicidal tendencies using established traditions and authority structures to remind them of uncomfortable and well-established (and often humane evolutions of) thinking based on Islamic sources and consensus. But then, that describes the situation at the Reformation in Europe, and let's not forget that our current religious pluralism is a result at least in part of religious violence and finding ways to get beyond it whilst allowing for freedom of thought and conscience.

So the question remains; is this the right time for this the right time for a reformation and is this the right way in?

James Hunter, Neo-Anabaptists, and the Ekklesia Project | Ekklesia Project

2011-09-08T20:52:00.000+01:00

This looks like a book to get hold of (once it's on Kindle, in my case); it addresses culture and power from a Christian theological point of view and in a way that I think is helpful.

.. his contention that power is unavoidable; we must exercise it. Indeed, Christians are to transform it. But power relations are also complex, coming to play in all our roles. Just as no one exercises it absolutely, so no one is totally without power. This account of power allows Hunter to accept its reality in human life and name its temptations. There is no question that gross disparities can quickly arise as power is allocated. The Christian is to name such disparities and ameliorate them...
This vision of transformed power provides a support for Hunter’s call to Christians to be faithfully involved in their culture and its institutions. While the Christian Right and Left have mistakenly adopted worldly power as an end in itself, the Neo-Anabaptists have mistakenly attempted to have nothing to do with power.

This I like because, while I have many sympathies with the anabaptists, I have tended to feel that the mys-engagement with issues of power in, for example, the Post Christendom series of books is a shame and disallows cultural and political engagement in such a way as to make it unlikely that people outside of the churches might take them seriously as agents of change. I look forward to engaging with this book in due course, hopefully before I next teach Engaging Culture.
James Hunter, Neo-Anabaptists, and the Ekklesia Project | Ekklesia Project:

We crave creativity but reject creative ideas

2011-09-04T18:38:00.001+01:00

Actually this is so true, now that I have seen it laid out in this report of the research, I recognise that (as someone a lot of people would characterise as 'creative') I have spent a lot of time in my life either trying to get people to give a creative idea a chance or to at least let me give it a go to see if it could work. So I think that they're onto something here (and yes, when I've been able to try stuff out, it has often 'worked' and when it hasn't it has often generated newer and better ideas).

Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary. ... The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identify how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity.

Why we crave creativity but reject creative ideas

Entering. Word. Meal. Sending? Is the analogy right?

2011-09-04T11:32:00.000+01:00

On the back of finding and commenting on a piece on orders of service and liturgy, I found myself wondering this:

So here has come the question: how do we do appropriate liturgy for a situation which can encompass as cradle sharing of drink and some food and ‘godly conversation’. And the other factors we think are to do with building community rather than simply letting individualism and simple prima facie affinity rule. The difference between going into a cafe and a corporate liturgy resides hereabouts, I think

I'd be interested to hear any further intellingence either here on this blog or here:
.4orty2wo � Blog Archive � The Order of Christian Worship:

Beyond me -that article on Western Buddhi

2011-08-28T20:27:00.001+01:00

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/surdThe article I mentioned a week or so back on western Buddhism which was in Third Way has been made available online:
Beyond me - Philosophy and Life

One of the reasons I find it interesting (apart from flirting with Buddhism myself in the past) is that it articulates well some things I have occasionally jotted down in this blog. Here's a bit that intersects nicely with my interest in what the western interest in Buddhism may signify in terms of culture and plausibility structures:

The growing appeal of western Buddhism highlights a massive issue for contemporary Christianity, at least in the UK. Theism has stopped speaking to many people. Christianity’s symbols and voice, its understanding of the divine and what it is to be human, have not been refuted, just increasingly ignored. It’s a predicament observed by Carl Jung, who died 50 years ago this year. Human individuals are in spiritual crisis today, he wrote, because they are in search of themselves and their soul. He also noted that psychology has emerged over precisely the same timeframe as Christianity has declined, for the reason that though religion has ceased to speak to people, those same people still need a means to understand themselves. That is why western Buddhism is clever when it presents itself as a practical psychology free of beliefs.

However, there is a critique to be made. Western Buddhism offers a model of the self that is, in fact, complicit with modern individualism. Christianity, though, can claim to be radically different. Its discovery is that we are who we are in relationship, with others and with God. To be human is to be the creature for whom our own existence is too small for us. That, it seems to me, is both true and avoids the narcissism and the nihilism with which western Buddhism flirts.

I would have said that the kind of view of reincarnation that many westerners have corroborates that analysis. It does seem to me that (in the Buddhisms I've encountered) what is 'reincarnated' is a knot of karma rather than the personality (in some way) that westerners crave (! -interesting thing to find myself writing in this context) to find.

What is important to realise is that the intuition that if personality/personhood matters, then ultimate reality has to, in some way, encompass personhood ... if what is ultimate is not in some dimension, personal, then our intuition is a surd.

Asymmetric insight

2011-08-24T21:06:00.001+01:00

I'm finding these things increasingly fascinating because they seem for me to connect with other things I know from other parts of my life. So, it starts with an intriguing title like this one:
Why You Can't Truly Know Other People (and What You Can Do About It), and what then catches my attention is this:

This phenomeon—what psychologists call the illusion of asymmetric insight—creates a lot of problems. For instance, it allows you to completely reject what others believe because you think you understand it, and remain convinced that they'd agree with you if only they understood your point of view. Basically, you think you can understand everyone else and nobody can understand you

Which seems to be related strongly to that crucial and basic counselling insight; active listening is important because it actually helps people get beyond the isolation that can be brought about by asymmetric insight (no-body understands me) and it also helps get past the first-foot attitude we all tend to start with; that others don't understand us. Active listening helps overcome both those related things.

Note too the importance of this insight for everyday peace-making (and remember 'blessed are the peacemakers ...'); we have to make sure that we do both learn to understand and empathise with others and also demonstrate to them that we really do and that perhaps we understand their point of view. This requires a great deal of humility: the insight that we all think we understand ourselves but no-one else does. It is also part of the 'deal' that if we start from a perspective that others would agree with us if they understood our point of view, then we can't really properly consider changing or moving from our pov until we grasp that the someone else really does understand it. After all, if it's not understood, how can we consider dropping it or modifying it in favour of someone else's unknown perspective? When we truly grasp that our pov is properly understood (in a way that we could recognise it as our own) and yet not necessarily agreed with, then it is that we can move on. This, of course, is the reason why real reconciliation and peace-building is so hard: getting people to listen and to feel heard when the situation is a clash of stereotyping, miscomprehension and dismissal.

The other thing it reminded me of, though, is the acute inner embarrassment (I can't think of a better term just now) as I catch a glimpse of how I might be perceived by others and that they may understand something about me that I hadn't really got hold of. The asymmetry doesn't grant us unique and wholly accurate insight into ourselves. How could it? We are because others are; some of who we are is 'out there' in our social world.

Re-discovering values after the English riots | openDemocracy

2011-08-20T13:31:00.001+01:00

Worth checking out this article: Re-discovering values after the English riots | openDemocracy
I was particularly taken by this bit:

If people have learned through their close relations to have no hopes for their future, to confuse cruelty with having a laugh, or to see society as so unfair as to make any morality absurd, this can only be changed through patient relationships that can nurture alternative ways of seeing. Support services for children know that the most successful interventions are long-term ones, but these are not the most attractive options for politicians seeking eye-catching, new policy initiatives.

It helped 'name' some of the things that I've been finding important to throw into the debate but it does so in a way that I think helps capture the imagination and remember some important truths that the frames of usual public discourse tend to elide. My question however goes beyond it: if it is true that the most successful interventions are long-term, how do we build a political process that can support them? Especially when the latter sentence of the quote not only does not support them but actually undermines them by building in insecurity and early termination?

That's the real policy issue I think we need to face and it affects also the way that we politicise about the environment and even the economy. How do we feed the longer-term into the now of policy making so that it can appropriately trump the short-term?

Forest Fringe

2011-08-16T20:16:00.001+01:00

Wish I'd come across this set-up before we went to Edinburgh. It's the kind of thing I'd have been interested in in general anyway. So here's hoping I'll remember next year. Here's what they're about.
Forest Fringe: "Now heading in fifth year, we’re an artist-led organisation making space for risk and experimentation at the Edinburgh Festival and beyond. We’ve worked with artists from a range of different backgrounds and contexts to help them develop new and exciting work, from one-on-one encounters to epic folk operas, from posters for imaginary events to a whole travelling library of intimate audio experiences. More than anything else we want to try and make a home for artists and for projects that couldn’t find one elsewhere. We want to be where people go when they’ve had an incredible idea they don’t know what to do with. We’ll help try and find somewhere for that idea to exist, and an audience to encounter it."

A favourite album: Graceland

2011-08-16T18:39:00.001+01:00

I had a sense of happy congruence when I saw this article. My favourite album: Graceland by Paul Simon | Music | guardian.co.uk. I find that there are probably only a handful of albums that I keep coming back to. One of them is Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon and another is their Wish you were Here. However, one of the other front runners for my all-time best is Graceland and for reasons pretty similar to this writer's, for example: "First those indelible, idiosyncratic lyrics that you just can't help singing along to. Have you heard a finer insult than 'roly-poly little bat-faced girl'? Was there ever a more brilliant union of west coast vibes with east coast urbanity than in the rhyming of 'sunlight' with 'Fulbright'? For some reason the tongue-tripping 'incidents and accidents, hints and allegations' always makes me think, rhythmically at least, of TS Eliot's 'decisions and revisions/ That a minute will reverse', only Simon's words, of course, are a lot more fun to sing."
Like her, the eclectic blend of Western folk and rock with Township Jive produces a sound that really, to my ears, does not age. It's a very clever album lyrically and musically with a real joie de vivre. If you have never listened to it, give it a go.

With 'friends' like this, who needs other faiths?

2011-08-14T09:56:00.000+01:00

I got this email recently. Interestingly it was picked up as spam (rightly) -but as it's not everyday I get faith-based spam, I thought I'd look it over. I wonder whether someone has a list of CofE related contacts especially for this kind of thing?

I was just taken by the tone of it: it is so unwinsome and so unloving. It does not commend itself even at the simple level of creating rapport with the reader. It couldn't possibly persuade or create an opening to try to win hearts or minds. It merely 'shouts' frustration and rage. Question; would I really want to to join a set up who are so enraged and whose writing seems so distant from Christ's spirit?

On another point: it accuses the CofE of "preaching a different gospel". This is clearly untrue: since when has a moral issue been gospel? To suggest that it is, seems more like salvation by works -and that really is a different gospel in Paul's terms.

Next question: how often do we come over like this?

To Representatives and
Believers
of the Church of England

God’s anathema upon the Church of England

General Synod of Your Church resolved that “homosexual orientation in itself is no bar to a faithful Christian life or to full participation in
lay and ordained ministry in the Church”.

You have rejected God’s laws and the authority of God the Creator and Supreme Lawgiver. You no longer call evil evil, a sin a sin, an
abomination an abomination. You exchanged the truth for a lie and turned the Church of God into a synagogue of Satan (Rev 2:9).

The fruit of perversion is no blessing but a curse and self-destruction.
The apostatical Church of England has ceased to be a blessing for the
nation and brings down a curse upon it as well as upon all Europe.

The Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate, by authority of the apostolic and
prophetic office before God and before the Mystical Body of Christ, which
is the true Church of Christ, hereby declares before all Christians of the world (Mt 18:18): The anti-Church of England is no longer the Church of Christ but spiritual Babylon and the harlot of antichrist (Rev 17:1-6). We hereby call upon every member of this Church to be converted, to repent and to go out from that spiritual Babylon (Isa 52:11). The spirit of antichrist cast the Spirit of God out of this Church. All who want to be saved must separate from this anti-Church because it leads the deceived souls to eternal damnation in hell. This anti-Church has become a synagogue of Satan (see Rev 3:9; Rev 2:20-24) and preaches a different gospel. “Even if an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel to you, let him be accursed.” (Gal 1:8-9) By reason of apostasy from the Gospel of God, God has cast this curse upon the anti-Church of England.

On behalf of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate

+ Elijah
Patriarch

+ Methodius OSBMr + Timothy OSBMr
Secretaries of the BCP

Lvov (Ukraine), 12
July 2011

Copies to:
- Queen Elizabeth II and Government of Great Britain
- Presidents of EU member states and MEPs
- All Churches of Great Britain and Christian Churches of the world
- Mass media of Great Britain and the EU

Dear publishers: a word about Kindle Pricing

2011-08-11T14:24:00.002+01:00

Dear publishers, (and ps to my other readers: if you agree with this, re-tweet, blog, like or otherwise pass on so that it might stand a better chance of getting to the eyes of the people who commission the pricing software).
I think that you may be wise to consider what many of you seem to be doing with your pricing of Kindle format books.
You see, we, the Kindle-buyers, know that you have no costs associated with producing an electronic book analogous to raw materials, paper, printing, shipping and only low overheads for cover design. So it is a puzzle why a situation like this, taken from a recent Amazon listing, should exist.

"Formats         Amazon Price   New from   Used from
Kindle Edition £12.34    --                --
Paperback          --                     £6.72            £8.10"
Note how some sellers are offering the book as a paperback at nearly half the price of the Kindle edition.
Knowing what we know (or reasonably presume) about pricing and costs, it is annoying to see this. In fact it makes us rather crotchety and ill-disposed to publishers who seem clearly to be attempting to profiteer. I suspect that authors may start to be aware of this and prepared to move publication routes to make their work available possibly better margins and almost certainly higher sales figures.

They are presumably obtaining copies from you, the publisher, so we know that your overheads should allow you to offer the e-version to us for less than the 'new' price listed. There is at least one site dedicated to watching price lists for Kindles and some of us are prepared to wait or to fill our kindles with other publications. It is rare that the book is an 'absolutely must have (now)' item.

Do yourselves a favour. Look at the wholesale paperback price and undercut your own cheapest offering to the trade when pricing Kindle editions. We are aware that there are costs to do with marketing and with editing and nurturing writers, but we are aware that if those can be covered by paperback prices to wholesale trade at half of the asking price in cases like the above book, then there really isn't much excuse for asking the price above, for example. You're still going to be making a killing and with less risk of remaindering.

You risk driving authors more quickly into self publishing and social-media promo which would make you, as publishers obsolete or radically redefine your role. Your best chance to retain a niche is to roll with the wave not mis-serve your authors and readers by profiteering.

Sincerely yours,
A Kindle Reader

Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage Our Multicultural World (Youth, Family, and Culture) eBook: David A. Livermore: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store:

To be better organised, know yourself

2011-08-09T21:09:00.001+01:00

It's true: Want to be organized? Know thyself. | Unclutterer: "Someone who is easily distracted shouldn’t have an intricate paper filing system based on numbers and codes. Someone who takes his shoes off at the front door shouldn’t have a shoe organizing system in his bedroom. The more a system reflects how you live and your preferences, the more likely it is to work for you."
When I started out in ministry I bought Michael Saward's filing system. It's a well thought out system and I was able to use it, but found it a bit of a faff. A few years later, I came across a piece of advice that led me to abandon the system. You see, I'd found that Michael's system reflected his interests and priorities. There were things that her was clearly interested in and thought to be important for a clergybeing to have in their filing system which I just didn't use at all, and there were things I needed to add in that were relevant to my interests and priorities that clearly weren't his. So there were point at which his filing system creaked or echoed hollowly.

The piece of advice that helped me to recognise the reality and re-think how I organised my filing cabinet was this: "don't construct a filing system but rather a finding system". In other words we need to think about how our own minds work in order to think about how we might re-find information at a later time. So I began to ask myself: where am I likely to look if I want to re-find this? I recognised that, quiet often, I work by visual memory (whereabouts I might put something) and by my own classification system. So I grouped things according to semantic groupings that meant something to me and had the labels on the files in different positions so that a visual element was introduced.

I'd suggest trying it yourself, if you don't already.
Of course, this means that some of us also need to ask a further question: "Do I really think that I'm going to want to find this again? Or is this developing into an information graveyard where I respectfully bury things that I won't want to disinter?"

Bashir Lazar

2011-08-09T20:02:00.002+01:00

Of all the things I've seen at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Bashir Lazhar is probably the one that stays with me.

It started life as a play in French set in Quebec, you can read a bit more here: Coolopolis: Bashir Lazar, quickie drama review: "It tells of an Algerian immigrant who loses his family to fire and then comes here, fakes teaching credentials and becomes a passionate and committed substitute teacher. However some of his methods are misconstrued by the bureaucrats, which leads to some conflict."
What I enjoyed about it was that I could tell it was working on several levels for me but I've not yet fully teased them apart, but it's a good feeling. There's some play with writing both on a blackboard but also on other surfaces and even on the characters themselves. This motif mixes with the theme of identity (with a subtext, I suppose, of narrative's role in identity formation). What I was left with, though, was the way that this version took what was evidently a one-actor play and put one another actor in who plays at the fringes of the monologue but at the end gains a speaking part which gives a sense of hope that, despite the bleakness of what has happened to Bashir Lazhar, our lives can nevertheless have a positive impact and enebale others to find their voices. Ironically -from my perspective- this atheist character illustrates the idea that in is losing our lives for others that we find it. Or perhaps, it is in opening our narrative out to others' stories, that our narration finds significance. Again ironically, because this perspective is explicitly rejected in the commentary offered by Bashir.

This is a moving play well presented. If you are going to the Edinburgh Fringe this year, go to see this play. It's in Assembly Two at 1425hrs.

Corporal punishment = long-term negative effects

2011-07-31T12:17:00.001+01:00

It is congruent with the proposals that creating low-anxiety, inclusive learning environments produces better learning. Write up is here: Corporal punishment may have long-term negative effects on children's intelligence: "Children in a school that uses corporal punishment performed significantly worse in tasks involving 'executive functioning' -- psychological processes such as planning, abstract thinking, and delaying gratification -- than those in a school relying on milder disciplinary measures such as time-outs,"
I wonder whether this has some bearing on learning outcomes for different communities in Britain. There are some distinct educational outcome differences between different cultural communities inhabiting the same socio-economic spaces in cities in on instance I know of, the attendance of male children at after school classes where corporal punishment is often part of the the environment, is not only getting in the way of their being able to do the homework and be rested for the next day's work, but may be creating a higher anxiety response to classroom/learning situations. The further danger is this:

These results are consistent with research findings that punitive discipline may make children immediately compliant -- but may reduce the likelihood that they will internalize rules and standards. That, in turn, may result in lower self-control as children get older. ... corporal punishment does not teach children how to behave or improve their learning. In the short term, it may not have any negative effects; but if relied upon over time it does not support children's problem-solving skills, or their abilities to inhibit inappropriate behaviour or to learn

Praying against famine

2011-07-31T12:03:00.001+01:00

It bears thinking about that Britain is not self-sufficient in food production and yet we don't have famine. This issue should start to figure in our heads as we deepen our praying for east Africa.Abbey Nous: East African famine: preventable and prayable: "when we pray 'give us ...' we are praying inclusively in principle: if our food can come (as it does) from the furthest parts of the world from where we live, then we cannot shrug our shoulders and say that this is nothing to do with us. If our money can call forth food and drink from Australia and New Zealand (those of us in Western Europe, that would be, Perhaps South Africa or central Asia for those in America) then we realise that we are contemplating a problem with the way that food is produced and distributed. That is a political, economic and humanitarian matter."
So we pray, but if we are serious we pray for fairer economic conditions and systems, for greater justice, for the will on the part of (we who are among) those who have the means and the clout to change systems that overwhelmingly favour them/us. God normally supplies via the systems we co-create, God calls us to co-create with God and with the poor. I tend to think that God, when we pray for help to famine-struck areas might well be saying in response something like, "Yes, but organise it better for the long term; challenge greed and injustice; remember what you can do when you put your minds to it ..."

Stayover relationships

2011-07-29T19:42:00.001+01:00

Just as the Christian churches in the West seem to be getting a handle on cohabitation, along comes something else to make life difficult for working with principled relationships.
Trend in young adults' dating habits, committed relationships may not lead to marriage: "found that 'stayover relationships' are a growing trend among college-aged couples who are committed, but not interested in cohabiting. However, little is known about the effects of stayovers on future commitment decisions or marriage.
'A key motivation is to enjoy the comforts of an intimate relationship while maintaining a high degree of personal control over one's involvement and commitment,' said Larry Ganong, professor in HDFS. 'We see this interest in personal control nationally in more single adult households, and in the growing phenomenon of 'living apart together' (middle-aged and older monogamous couples who maintain their own households). It may also help explain why marriage is on the decline, particularly among young adults.'"
So how to evaluate? How to engage constructively and critically? How to disciple?
Any lessons from the last 30 or 300 years?

McLuhan's vision still matters today?

2011-07-26T17:33:00.001+01:00

I pose the title as a question because I do believe that McLuhan enunciated a really important insight in the soundbite "the medium is the message". The article I've linked to Why McLuhan's chilling vision still matters today | Douglas Coupland | Comment is free | The Guardian is to be commended at the level of giving a reasonable account of McLuhan's insight but I'm concerned that for some reason, the author slips back into the hand-wringing popular trope which essentially sees anything new media-wise as a dire threat to civilisation and a sign that the barbarians are at the gates.

"what's spooking us all is the inevitable message of these new media: what will be the psychic fallout of these technologies on our inner lives?
Time seems to be going much faster than it once did. We don't remember numbers any more. Certain forms of storytelling aren't working for us as they once did. And what's happening to democracy? As with TV in the 1950s, don't be fooled by the content of texts or blogging or online shopping. Look at what these media are doing to our souls. That's what McLuhan did."

Of course, I'm concerned that I'm taking issue with Douglas Coupland! But it does seem to me, puzzlingly, that Coupland writes with an emotional veneer of the woe-to-us variety. He is right, I think, that we should ask what the psychic effect might be. It is right that we should consider that among the effects will be "fallout". What we need to remind ourselves also is that among the effects will be ways of doing things that will have positive dimensions as well as challenges. Let's remember (and I keep banging on about this) that mass-produced books and high literacy rates met with similar doom-mongering back in the day. Yes some of that doom-mongering was accurate (people don't memorise books and the way that we process and retrieve information and make arguments was affected) but it also didn't figure on the way that we are freed up to concentrate on flows of argument and to be able to question authorities. So let's not just have a wake for the things we like that will be harder or obscelesce but begin to make space for the new and helpful things that can come to birth.

McLuhan also clues us in to this: in talking about media as "extensions of man (sic)": what capabilities does it extend and how can this help us at its best, and how do we plan to minimise the down-sides?

Begin Your Email with a Deadline to Get a Quicker Response?

2011-07-25T21:31:00.001+01:00

I normally like Lifehacker's suggestions on productivity, but I'm a bit concerned about this.
Begin Your Email with a Deadline to Get a Quicker Response: "Skip the small talk and throw a deadline in the first sentence—for example, 'Attached, please see the draft of the Tuesday meeting notes, please reply with changes by 9 a.m. Monday.' Be clear about the deadline and the expected turn-around and don't waste their time with anything else. Check out the full post at Stepcase LIfehack for a few other helpful tips for inspiring prompt email replies."
A'm all for making a clear request. However, having been at the receiving end of terse emails in the workplace, I think that I would counsel the would-be writer of such emails to consider the emotional impact, paying particular attention to the possibility that if you already have prior record of dealing with people in a way that fails to acknowledge their difficulties, humanity or need for reasonable esteem, then an email of this type runs a high risk of coming over as officious or even with some kind of hinted criticism. Small talk can have the function of cementing, massaging, re-opening relationships. Failure to pay attention to the relational dimensions can be counter-productive. In this case, for instance non-co-operation from the colleague could be a way of reasserting their own power or sense of esteem.

A Click-Thru (sic) Culture?

2011-07-23T16:16:00.001+01:00

This is a helpful observation from this article, TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � A Click-Thru Culture (by Eric Wright):

"rushing toward the next thing without taking time to enjoy the beauty and presence of what is in front of us. We are looking for something to excite us, catch our attention, thrill us, or appeal to us all in the first 6 seconds! If we don’t find it we declare, “There is nothing here!” and we move on.
We have turned into a click-thru culture."

I think that the habitus that click-through encourages may well be as stated here. What I'm more troubled by is the way the author suggests we respond.
I’m no longer interested in catering to the click-thru crowd. They are a fickle and lazy

group; needy and selfish. So lately I have been asking a new question, “Who am I going to invest my time in?

”
My difficulty is that it seems to exemplify an approach that is unlike that which God takes towards humanity in Christ. While there may be some justification for investing ones time in those who are hungry and willing (that seems to me to be the way that significant chunks of Jesus' ministry are constructed), I'm concerned that effectively writing whole groves of people off a priori seems a bit more Flood than Incarnation. What I mean by that is that in the Flood the approach is to write off all but one family, whereas in the Incarnation the approach is to find a way to presence and communicate even amidst those who are 'yet sinners'. What this may mean for the "click-through crowd" would be to find ways to entice them, intrigue them and to encourage them to linger with images, ideas or whatever that may both help disclose something that leads Godward and to (re-)develop the habits of lingering, contemplating and spending time in slow reflection.

This is not a new problem: spiritual exercise writing and teaching down the ages is full of advice to help people make the same adjustment to reflection, meditation and contemplation. It's just the medium and influence that has changed. I fear that the author may have fallen prey to the old problem of thinking that modern life is throwing up unprecedented challenges. I tend to think that it throws up precedented challenges in new guises. Our task is not to decry the new guises but to spot the precedents and re-work tried and tested responses in appropriate ways, understanding the new and the old helpfully. I would hazard that we will rarely need to come up with a totally new tactic. I would also suggest, contrariwise to this article, that we should be wary of writing off whole and easily-identifiable populations: the gospel seems to me to suggest that there are likely to be receptive people in every group, our issue will be how to connect with them meaningfully.

Academic Congregations - Northumbria University

2011-07-22T19:22:00.001+01:00

Last week I attended three congregations for the admission to degrees at Northumbria University. I have a few reflections which I managed to get down to writing up today.

This was the first time they had been held in the newly-opened Sport Central. This is essentially a sports' centre and the congregation was held in the main hall with the guests on the banked seating around three sides, the graduands in blocks in the middle facing a platform on the fourth wall. It was a typical 'call the name, walk across stage, shake hands' kind of ceremony. It was preceded (as people were taking their places) by extended promo videos on the two large screens set either side of the platform. The promotional films were well made and upbeat about the student experience and the benefits of a studying at Northumbria University. There was a brass band whose main function was to provide processional and recessional music. There was in the programme, and announced at the start, a request for there to be no clapping of individual graduands and no calling out or whistling. With regard to the former, every so often (every 20 or so graduands or at a change of subject area) there was an announced pause for applause. In some cases families or other well-wishers simply 'couldn't help themselves' and called or whistled a few particular candidates. This was particularly so towards the latter end of the longer of the congregations. I suspect a kind of boredom coupled with a sense that others got away with it emboldened people.

The ceremony opened and closed with formal announcements by the MC of the fact. The VC made a 5-10 min speech which I wondered whether it needed to have so much about the university as the pre-ceremony promotional videos had already kind of covered that ground. One of the things I find myself reflecting on most from the speech is that he mentioned that the intstitutiton that became the university was founded by "a Victorian philanthropist". I've been looking into the history of the Uni a bit and know that Rutherford was in fact not just a Victorian philanthropist but one who was motivated by his Christian faith and was able to mobilise the support among other support of his own Congregationalist Church in Bath Lane of which he was the minister. Admittedly Rutherford's vision was a non-sectarian (ie without religious tests or particularities) education, but I think that to elide the religious dimension altogether is perhaps significant and the possibility of reminding us of the Christian (Socialist) basis (albeit one which was 'non-Christendom') of the precursor institutions might be helpful in terms of handling religious diversity today by asserting that there is a place for a hospitable, co-operative, seeking-the-common-good kind of religious faith.

One of the other things I found myself reflecting on was the ceremonial use of space. It seemed that really what they'd tried to do was to recreate the kind of proscenium arch kind of experience much used in school halls, university halls where the space has been designed with a stage for theatrical experiences as well as to allow the platform party at assemblies and the like to see over the heads of others and to be seen by most of the assembled masses. This layout then dictates the form of ceremony.

The thing to note, though, is that if the space changes then new possibilities arise and old formats don't need to be followed. So there was a feel that the space was fighting the ceremony: the space is designed with sporting events such as basketball (Newcastle Eagles play there) in mind. In such a space everyone sees not because the spectacle is raised above their heads or to eye-level but because the seating is banked to look down on the central space where the action takes place. Arena not stage.

So I started to wonder whether there might be a more in-the-round, arena-style way to do the ceremony with the central point being for the central action and things being arranged concentrically around that. I take it that the main action is the handshake which represents being admitted to the degree (note not being /given/ a degree -though I saw graduands being given beribboned scrolls as the began their walk across stage, I took this to be a dummy rather than the actual degree certificate): the handshake is one of fellowship from a representative of the university and the action is performative; bringing the graduand into the fellowship of graduates of the university; a change of status is conferred. Thus the walk is from being an undergraduate to being a graduate: one enters the stage (or arena) un-degreed and leaves degreed; the performative point is the handshake. This might suggest, too, that they be handed the symbolic scroll as they leave the liminal space.

It would open up possibilities for ceremonial to attempt to use rather than fight the arena layout. Possibilities such as having the 'platform party' (consisting of representatives of the university senior management and governance and the school whose degrees are being awarded in that congregation) gathered around the central point of action (perhaps a quartered circle with four entrance and exit points). The screen could then be used better as ways to convey action from different vantage points to the guests (I did appreciate the use of two camera angles and screening the names of each graduand as they went across the platform, this capability could be extended and come into its own in the arena schema). It might be possible to consider assembling the graduands (given the extra space afforded by the venue) behind the guests and for them to come into the central arena space and perhaps be seated, having been admitted to their degrees, in the central area. Then at the end they could all be invited to stand and to turn to face the guests and be applauded and cheered, perhaps even to bow and wave, throw their hats in the air or whatever.

The band was interesting: they played nicely and suitable sorts of music (Handel, for example). However after they had played the processional piece they left the arena, and returned shortly before the end. This was a little distracting. I would guess that having them sit through an hour or more of naming-handshaking-clapping might be the reason to let them go, but I do wonder whether a less obtrusive way of deploying them could be found.

I also wondered whether having an obvious gathering of a cohort who would then be standing together to be clapped would help with the intrusive clapping/cheering/whooping that happened from time to time. I must admit the constant ripple of applause for every candidate that I have usually experienced is helpful in this but it is wearing, particularly when you come to the last quarter or so. So I applaud Northumbria Uni for trying to deal with that -I was really pleased when I saw in on the programme.

I was also interested to see the processional objects: a mace (of sorts -more a squared silver club than the spiky object that I usually associate with the term 'mace') and a sword (which I'm told has "Newcastle Polytechnic" written on it. I was interested because they are such martial objects which is rather at odds with the equality and diversity ethos of the institution. I found myself wondering whether it would be better to get an suitably artistic member of the university to design a way to turn the sword and mace into a figurative or perhaps literal ploughshare.

Academic Congregations - Northumbria University, Newcastle UK

Praying amidst daily life

2011-07-19T12:17:00.003+01:00

Another thing I am researching is resources for people to use to pray while at their desks -prayer breaks, so to speak. These come in various types: meditation; intercession; offices (that is forms of set-liturgical prayer like morning or evening prayer). Below is what I found today. I have an impression that I have seen others, but my bookmarks show no others and search engines show few others that I'd trust. What I've got less of is bible-devotional sites and, of course at this time, other faith traditions. I would rely on you, dear Reader, to advise me or at least make further suggestions. I'm hoping to produce an 'Amidst the Day Prayer' page myself in due course which would use the structure of the Lord's prayer as it's framing principle and having Northumbria University people as its target users in the first instance.

Meditational prayer sites.
Re:Jesus have a daily prayer site which is more reflective or meditational in feel and will often have things to do as part of their suggested journey of prayer. It also is time-aware, so adjusts to the time of day.

Quiet Space (which seems to be based in Australia) has an 'exercises' approach to a reflective time in front of your monitor based on an examen pattern. . Supported by lots of white space and 'calm' graphics to give a sense of 'space'. They also have a useful gospel reflection page which has sound files.

In the same spirit the Irish Jesuits have Sacred Space, with a similar ethos and approach; this has been quite a popular site and probably inspired most of the others we find of a similar ilk. Their visual presence is even simpler and the use of fade between items is quite calming in effect too. One nice feature is that the scripture passage has an option with it to get a few more thoughts to help reflect on it, or you can simply move on when you are ready.

Also in a similar vein but with a title that may inspire others is 3-Minute Retreat which does what it says. It has a sound track for the meditation of quiet guitar playing -which may be important to know if you're doing it at your desk at work!

Explore Faith has some interesting options for meditative prayer: through visual art; music; poetry; reading.

Intercession or petitionary sites.
Re:Jesus also have a virtual candle-lighting stand where you can manipulate graphic candles and write a prayer for someone (and even post an email to let them know you've done so if you wish) and the candle will burn down virtually over time. By touching the candles on the stand you can read the petitions of others and pray for them you can click the candle and in so doing add an 'Amen' and these are totted up so you can know for any prayer how many people have 'amened' it.

The commendable 24-7 Prayer network have an online prayer wall which invites you both to leave a request and to pray for one someone else has left. I quite like, too, their invitation to join them in dropping everything at 12nn to pray the Lord's prayer. Not least because this imitates a Christian practice going back to the early church.

Office-prayer.
The Church of England has pages for morning and evening prayer which have all the readings and Psalmody for the day collected together along with the prayers that go with that day -so no fiddling around with lectionary and collects; it's all there, ready to go.

Recently-formed the Order of the Black Sheep has a daily prayer feed which includes video embeddings of songs (with a tendency towards metal style, as that represents their cultural context) as part of the liturgy.

A traditional Breviary approach which is adjusted for the day offering a menu for the various times of the day and Roman Catholic reflections and sanctorale is at the Universalis site. The site gives guidance on how to produce your own monthly e-breviary from the resources on the site. Similarly the Mission of St Clare has an online office which gives you the control of moving through the sections with a menu of the elements on the left hand of the page. At the Explore Faith site you can choose your time zone and be presented with the office that most closely fits your time of day. These are very simple and short with a lot of scripture in them.

Anglicans Online gives a set of links to various options for daily office-style praying: one of these is the much-used and loved Celebrating Common Prayer (modelled after the Franciscan office) which has links for the various days. What it doesn't do is intergrate the readings so you have to make separate arrangements for that side of things. The online Breviary linked to from here is another version of the CofE's Daily Prayer but on a simpler page format.

I like this site because it links to a simple aural office based on the NZ prayer book. This is great if you don't want to read or find it challenging but would like to hear the prayers and readings. The reader is not heavily-accented NZ.

A basic Divine Office with readings inserted can be found here, it's Catholic in feel and offers all the hours.

There's a page on the Taize site with basic liturgy but it's not a fully integrated multimedia thing though elsewhere on the site are resources for learning the music.

The Northumbria Community office is available online and with some helpful advice on how to pray it. It has links to open the readings in new windows when you get to them. My main beef with it is that it doesn't do seasonal variations and what they call a canticle isn't; it's a prayer.

Labyrinthine wondering

2011-07-18T17:17:00.003+01:00

Yes I know the title might look as if it should be "wandering" but -see what I'm doing here?- it's a near pun because I'm trying to collect together a bunch of what seem to be useful links about this. Y'see, I'm currently in discussions with our counselling service to put on a couple of days events on 'mindfulness' and the labyrinth has been accepted as something we should do as part of that. The thinking is that mindfulness meditation has developed a body of research-based affirmation as something that can help mental health. It was mentioned that Edinburgh University has a permanent labyrinth which I must go to see, it raises intriguing possibilities, of course ...

So, one of my resulting tasks (self-offered) was to research some resources that we could put into the hands of students and staff of the university. This in turn means that I need to be able to select a good set of websites which have something for (nearly) everyone as our equality and diversity approach means that such resources need to be accessible as widely as possible and reasonable.

So, what have I been finding?

One page "The Labyrinth" takes a more general view, perhaps with a New Agey feel where there is something of a personal development focus and edge though some of the pages seem more Christian. It's part of a bigger site called 'Lessons4living' which is something of a clue about that. It has a number of links to further pages giving succinct information in each case. One helpful page -for the purposes of my research here- is on building a labyrinth. One of the things it mentions is having people work together to build one as the culmination of a labyrinth workshop. There is a further link to constructing a labyrinth here if you can put aside the 'mantic'/shamanic approach informing the general site (for me the main thing to take away was the need for 8 or 9 metres of space). For the context I'm thinking of using it, it was intriguing to find a page on using it with youth, "As a part of their training they were to walk a seven-circuit labyrinth and to reflect on the meaning of the labyrinth as a symbol for life's journey. In small discussion groups they listed their insights and then shared them with the larger group. " and it lists some of the things that came out of those discussion groups, for example:

Life is a journey in which every day doesn't necessarily bring you closer--sometimes you're closer to your goal than others, sometimes you're further away, but ultimately you'll get to where you want to go if you stay focused.

Beginning, middle (center) and end are connected with the same thing (God or whatever it means to you).

Sometimes it seemed like you were in the same place you had been, but you weren't. (Life doesn't end once you reach the focus or center.)

On the path, you pass people who have been where you are, other times you have been where others have been, but you're never at the exact same place at the same time.

Many twists and turns around rocky journey of life.

There seems to be some validity in keeping in mind a certain cross-cultural and spiritual poly-valency of the symbol/practice; "from Northern Europe to India a common pattern appears: the labyrinth is a symbol of a distant, more or less mythological, city, destroyed in the past. Although the identity of the city symbolized by the labyrinth varies, it is never a nearby or contemporary city" (from here). This would fit with the medieval Christian usage as a kind of substitute for actual pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

In terms of some Christians (normally EPCs) there can be mistrust of the use of labyrinths. This is well and succinctly articulated on this CANA site. The articulation is to be commended because it is reasonable and simple and boils the problem down to basics. Nevertheless, I think that there are responses that could be made and I hope to do so in due course (if I don't find another site that does so -and this one hyperlinked, is quite nice in terms of a theological reflection and even comes up with a very intriguing take on the Garden of Eden story in the light of Ouroboros myths). The tenor of this article contrasts somewhat with this one which from a Christian PoV questions the craze for labyrinths but does so by the dubious tactic of choosing a position which doesn't necessarily seek to engage with the concerns the writer's audience are supposed to have and to dismiss the whole thing by disposing of those positions. This, of course, misses the possibility that there may be legitimate reasons for using the 'tool' in terms that might be acceptable to at least some EPC Christians. The tactic is like dismissing Christianity because of unbecoming behaviour of a few people in a prayer meeting (cf the Toronto Blessing). Admittedly it doesn't help that some of the protagonists of labyrinth walking within the church are a bit 'eccentric' theologically, but the solution to misuse is not abuse ... Perhaps part of the response to these detractors is to read a good attempt to appropriate the practice in a reasonably orthodox Christian way, like here.

It's intriguing to find that Islam doesn't have much on Labyrinths, but there is something -though latent, as the article says.

Here is one example of a Jewish use of labyrinth which seems to illustrate the idea that this is a tool whose metaphors are usable by a number of religious (and indeed non-religious) traditions. I found intriguing the idea that the Jewish history with labyrinths is more verbal than actual; more info here.

As for Sanatarma dharma, well, there's some intriguing info here and there is some evidence for links with Buddhism too.

There's a fairly well-known thoroughly Christianised version produced originally by Jonny Baker and friends. The site has a diagram of how to make it (it is useful if you want stations and a separate exit and entrance, the only downside is that it is so square and blocky. a curvier alternative would be good).

There is also an online labyrinth, as in a virtual walk, on the re:jesus site. This uses the YFC format and so the main content is essentially a version of the prayer stations that feature in that site. Pretty much the same thing on the Labyrinth site by Jonny Baker and friends.

Transitioning back to reality after holiday

2011-07-17T15:25:00.001+01:00

This is the time of year to consider this, though it may be too late for some to take this piece of advice: "Take an extra day before heading back to work. I like to think of this spare day as the vacation from my vacation. It’s the day to get reacquainted with your routines."
If it is too late (and that's a life-tactic we discovered for ourselves a few years back -in fact we try to take a couple of days if possible), then at least this other piece of wise counsel may be helpful: "Give yourself a free day the following weekend. Playing catch-up with your life can be exhausting, so take a weekend day to sleep in, leisurely drink a cup of coffee, catch up on items around the house, or do nothing at all. If you have kids, this applies to them, too."
And how about this: "Arrive an hour early to work. You’ll want to get a solid footing on your day before you’re bombarded by co-workers asking about your trip and giving you more things to do."

Now I'm wondering whether anyone has any other useful advice to add?

Transitioning back to reality after vacation | Unclutterer

Setting up Good Diagrams for slides

2011-07-17T14:21:00.001+01:00

This has a lot of sensible advice to improve your visual communication. Definitely worth viewing if you do projector slides reasonably often.

How to make Awesome Diagrams for your slides

View more presentations from otikik

There's a good sense of typographic nous shown in these which are not produced by a professional designer, just someone who has reflected on what they have seen and done.
How to make Awesome Diagrams for your slides

Voting in elections is stressful

2011-07-05T21:30:00.001+01:00

Followers of this blog (and incidentally, apologies for a long gap -I've been moving house) will know of my interest in Electoral Reform. And so it won't surprise you to learn that this piqued my curiosity.
Voting in elections is stressful -- emotionally and physiologically:

A new study, conducted by scholars from the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, has found that the level of cortisol -- a hormone released when a person is under pressure and helps the body cope with threats -- in individuals immediately prior to casting a vote was significantly higher than in the same individuals in similar non-voting conditions.

There are two things I want to say in response to this. And they're just initial thoughts; this is a 'watch this space' sort of thing. The first thing is that this was conducted in Israel. The question (perhaps naturally) is whether this would replicate in other societies, and under other electoral systems. My suspicion is that conditions in Israel might mean that the results are an unusually high stress response. And what's more is that this could be because of one or both of the fact of the kind of stakes involved in Israeli politics, and/or the very wide multi-party choice and the electoral system. Might it be less stressful to vote in France, or the USA or New Zealand, or the Czech republic or Bolivia?
So more studies in a variety of cultural settings supplemented, I think, by more qualitative studies in the perceptions of voters (and perhaps non-voters as a control?). Stress is at least partly due to the way that the stressed frame things, so examination of those frames would be important.

The other thing that could be interesting therefore, is whether there are voting systems that are less stressful for voters and whether that correlates with voter participation. I suspect that systems that involve less tactical voting may fare better, but I'm not sure whether the Israeli case tends to confirm or discount that.

Freaky job interview questions

2011-06-25T20:57:00.001+01:00

It's hard to see it getting asked in many places but how's this for an interview question.
Crazy job interview questions: "UBS: If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn?"
It's hard to second guess what they'd look for: at face value exhibit your knowledge of statistics. But I think my answer might be, in the spirit of the response on the referenced site:
I think that I'd file the request as harassment and report it to HR. There's no way that such actions could pass health and safety and the macho culture that would generate such a scenario in the workplace is likely to be one which generates bullying. So I'd rather not do either of the alternatives: I'd rather reframe the situation altogether. And then, would I want to work for UBS if I'm likely to be shot?

The hell of aural leakage and imposition

2011-06-24T19:57:00.001+01:00

A thought provoking piece from Kester, here: Kester Brewin � Tsskk Tsskk… Why Do Kids Play Music on Buses?
As a teacher Kester is rightly concerned in this article to understand the thing from the participant-actor's point of view. First of all on 'aural imposition' (my term): "Some students who were interviewed for the piece didn’t think that playing music was antisocial, just that the bus was too quiet and they wanted something to listen to. However, a sociologist sees it being more about marking out ownership of space. This can be done physically – by lolling out and taking up a number of seats. It could also be done graphically by ‘tagging’ around various places. But the most immediate and obvious way of stating that you have control over a space is aurally because it flows so widely."
Now this is relatively rare in my experience (mercifully). And I think that I disagree with the sociologist's interpretation. Drawing on my own youth when, I confess, I went through a phase of doing rather similar things (only the technology was different -remember cassettes?) what I was doing was not claiming space. In the exuberance of youth I wanted to share what I enjoyed musically. I just didn't really have any idea that -as I now realise- if others didn't really like Wishbone Ash or Pink Floyd that I'd be vexing them greatly. So that's what I've assumed is going on. However, it hasn't helped me devise an intervention that I could feel would work without getting awkward or nasty. Sometimes bus drivers intervene to enforce no-music, often not.

Aural leakage, on the other hand is when someone has the ear-buds in but they are in the process of going deaf (and there is a chicken-and-egg conundrum in that) because the thin, tinny, escaped sound is irritating fellow passengers. Sometimes I've seen this challenged, particularly in the quiet carriage on a train. It seems easier to challenge: after all the user by having ear-buds in signals that they are trying to be considerate of others, so there is a basis on which to approach them to ask for the volume to be turned down.

So maybe the leakage scenario helps us to understand the imposition scenario. In the latter there is clearly no attempt to use means to minimise intrusion on others: it is desired that we should hear. Well, perhaps not always; quite often what is happening is that a handful of teens (in my experience) are sharing snippets of stuff they like with one another; perhaps they aren't really considering the wider impact at all, or if they do they may consider that they are educating the rest of us in what real music is.
I'm considering carrying around a set of those cheap £1 earbud sets and offering them to the polluters so they can share in private.

A misuse of linguistics in theo-cultural comment

2011-06-12T23:19:00.001+01:00

There are some good points made in this article and I think that the point -as I understand it- of transcending a blame-victim mentality, is a good one (after all I have recently made similar arguments):
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � The End of Blame (by Brittian Bullock).
But I would advise the reader to start at paragraph four to avoid an off-putting misapplication of linguistics. I'm really sorry to do a bit of a cutting things out job on this, but it really is hard to read some of these things with a linguistics background in place. I'd encourage Brittian to develop the basic insight (best put in the last couple of paragraphs) which I really think are helpful, but to ditch the linguistics, and the reason for that is what I'll note down below.

Here's the first faux pas: "The English language is structured very aggressively. It’s officially a S-V-O type. Which means that full and proper sentences contain a subject, a verb, and an object (and in that order)"

Yes, English is S-V-O. How is that 'aggressive'? That value judgement has no real genesis within the simple fact of syntactic system; it's hard to know where it's come from. Or why a VSO language such as Hebrew or Japanese isn't 'agressive'. It's the choice of verbs and nouns that achieves 'aggressive' language not the syntax per se. Because the syntax has to be used for both pacific and aggressive -and other- moods and descriptions, it is relatively 'neutral'.

Similarly, "In SVO language there is [sic] always three things present. First there is definitely an action–something’s happening. Second there is a clear object or person it is happening to. And thirdly there is absolutely a subject inacting what’s happening." Yes that's true enough (I'll not quibble for the moment, it's broadly okay). However, that is a description of the roles that are necessarily implied by a transitive verb. Case grammar, for example, is an attempt to construct an approach to grammar that starts with such basic semantic relationships rather than rules for relative ordering of elements (again simplifying). Those relationships are logical and universal and not inherent in SVO languages; VSO have the same things to try to express, they just do it slightly differently.

So, the next move: "thirdly there is absolutely a subject inacting what’s happening. There is always a victim. There is always someone to blame. “Johnny kicked the dog.” is an example of this. The poor dog is being victimized and little Johnny is at fault. ... our brain is constantly throwing around systems of blame." The 'victim' is only properly a victim in sentences where something violent or oppressive is being described or implied. Otherwise we are simply talking about the grammatical object who might in other circumstances be the recipient of a gift ("Johnny stroked the dog" or "Johnny fed the dog") or perhaps the something more neutral ("Johnny saw the dog" or "Johnny called the dog").

And so this is a valid point: "But what if there was an additional sentence I tagged on to the beginning of the earlier phrase about Johnny and his dog? “the dog bit Johnny. Johnny kicked the dog.” well it changes things doesn’t it? Suddenly Johnny doesn’t look so bad."
It just doesn't need the mistaken linguistic analysis that preceded it. The valid point about that is simply about what information is communicated and could be summed up with the old adage 'circumstances alter cases'.

"In fact the Garden/Fall narrative in genesis holds similarities"; yes, and it's told originally in a VSO language; blaming can be done through either syntactic system, clearly. I'm all for a good chunk of what is written about blaming in this article, I'm (as someone with linguistic training) not at all helped by the misleading language analogies.

Then we have another not uncommon but still unhelpful language strategy that a number of preachers and writers engage in. In this article we find it here: "Glory literally means fullness or wholeness". This is a form of the etymological fallacy; the idea that a word (typically, but not exclusively) means "properly" (or "literally" or "correctly" even) what its etymological origins did. This simply isn't so; we need to pay attention to how it is being used in its context (linguistic, social etc). It's etymology may even be misleading as a guide to what a writer or speaker may mean in the present context.

No Hell = No Jesus?

2011-06-12T22:26:00.001+01:00

This is a good quick way into why many evangelicals are skeptical about universalism: "Without Hell, can Jesus have any value, any meaning, as our savior?". I think Christian Beyer is right in picking up this characterisation; it fits with the way that I have heard a lot of 'everyday evos' characterise their position. However, he doesn't then really wrestle with the force of the position in articulating his own universalism, which is a shame because there is a more christological way to respond which holds strongly to the idea that the Cross really did accomplish something.

You see, the force of the position he characterises in the quote above, I believe, is that there has to be some purpose to the cross, and if it isn't salvation (by implication from hell) then what is it? It is hard to see it as other than a martyrdom which achieves something by its witness and ability to evoke sympathy or commitment. This seems to me to be a fair, even strong, position which has roots in scripture and subsequent Christian thinking.

An evangelical universalism, if there is to be such a thing, must surely be based on something that the Cross (and by that I mean the whole salvific action of Incarnation, Passion, death and Resurrection, in actual fact) has indeed created a salvation. The salvific universalist in an Evangelical mold would surely be saying that the salvation that the Cross has achieved is ultimately one which ultimately destroys hell by emptying it of occupants: no-one could find release from hell were it not for what Christ did. The main difference between that position and the more usual Evangelical positions is in the numbers -and perhaps the estimation of how efficacious the salvific events may be in relation to the problem of sin.

TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � No Hell = No Jesus (by Christian Beyer):

Finding explanations in charity

2011-06-12T19:21:00.001+01:00

This is so important. I didn't realise that I'd internalised it and a held-principle until relatively recently when confronted with people not doing it. It's always humbling and salutary (in the sense of salvation- and health- bearing) to look back at oneself and realise that one may have been guilty of, in this case, immature and uncharitable judgementalism. "It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.” Of course, the ironic reflex of this is noticing the temptation to fall again into judgmentalism -this time of the judgmental!

7 Tips for Minding My Own Business | Psychology Today:

We prayed, I started ...

2011-06-11T08:39:00.001+01:00

Since we finished later on Thursday evening and I had to get up early to come to college in Nottingham, I didn't really get much chance until about now to note here that the service for the inauguration of my ministry at Northumbria University had taken place and, I think, went off well. The liturgy is below. I'd like to specially recognise the contribution of members of the university choir and of the girls' choir from the cathedral: it's a difficult occasion to plan for singing because of the variety of people present, so having a good musical lead (and they were) is really helpful.

There were several things that I wanted the liturgy to achieve humanly: to engage those of Christian faith in prayer for the chaplaincy; to recognise and engage some significant partners (the VC's office, the 'department' chaplaincy works out of, the students' union, local churches); to involve my colleagues in leading the liturgy; to begin my own ministry formally by leading us all in prayer for the university; to use embodied symbolism.

In leading the prayers I started with the university statement of values and wove those into prayers relating to the areas represented by those who gave official welcomes at the event. (I haven't got the copy of the prayers with me here; I'll blog them when I have the digital copy to hand). Having asked the welcomers to bring a symbolic object, these were laid on the table at the centre with each welcome. Then when I led the prayers I picked each symbol up and placed it, as I prayed, in the centre of the three candles we started the service by lighting -on top of my licence. I had made my statutory declarations and affirmations before a small party of witnesses earlier.

Set up: Rutherford Hall. Layout: table central surrounded on four sides by seats. Three candles in centre of table.

Gathering and opening

Candle lighting: (based on Iona ceremony) Three chaplains; a line each, as a candle is lit with each line.

A Light in the name of God; author of all being, who lights the world with Life
A light in the name of God the eternally begotten, who invests the world with grace
A light in the name of God the Go-Between who energises all with God-ward-ness
[together] Three lights in honour of God in whose three-fold friendship we now gather.

Greeting and Welcome: Bishop Frank White

§ O God beyond all praising (tune: Thaxted) [This was chosen because it is a well known and stirring tune by Elgar (?) -used for 'I vow to Thee my country' and suitable for starting. I also wanted to show that the tune could have other words!]

O God beyond all praising,
we worship you today ...

Futher welcome and context setting: Chris Dalliston

Ministry of the word

Reading(s): (chaplains);

Acts 11: 19-26
John 15: 12-17

address: Bp Frank White [He made connections between Rutherford after whom the building we were meeting in was named, and the readings. Rutherford was the founder of what became Northumbria University]

Welcomes, declarations and prayers.

declarations:

... Therefore I now ask: Andii, do you believe that you have been called by God to work as Chaplain in this University?

Chaplain I do.

Bishop The charge of Chaplains is to work with staff and students of all faiths, beliefs and value-systems and to be available to offer pastoral and spiritual care. The Christian Chaplains work together with people in the University to discover God’s purpose for themselves and for the University as an institution. The co-ordinating chaplain is to be fully involved in the life of the University, and to seek the flourishing of life and diverse community in the University. Andii, mindful of this charge, will you commit yourself to serve the community of staff and students in this University of Northumbria?

Chaplain I will.

Bishop reads out the license and presents it

Bishop The University Chaplaincy is a Local Ecumenical Partnership, created by the University and the Churches of this Region as a sign and a symbol of our commitment to one another. Will you commit yourself to working ecumenically with all the Chaplains, and on behalf of the Chaplaincy, supporting and contributing to the activities of the Chaplaincy team, and working together also with representatives of other faiths for the peace and welfare of the University as a whole?

Chaplain I will.

Bishop As Co-ordinator of the Chaplaincy Team you have responsibilities to the University. Will you, on behalf of the University Chaplaincy, undertake to be involved appropriately in the structures and management of this University?

Chaplain I will

Bishop And I invite the other Chaplains of the University to support Andii: will you offer support to him in his ministry.

Chaplains We will.

Bishop Let’s reflect in a moment’s quiet. ... [and he did leave a good long, but not too long pause]

In light and in darkness, in joy and in pain, in clarity and in confusion, may the Lord sustain you. May you be humble and just, steadfast and true, serving Christ and all people in righteousness, in holiness and in peace; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you always.

Amen.

Welcomes: VC, SU, LAG, and others, each with a few words of welcome lay an object on the table

Reading from TS Eliot [originally the Buddhist chaplain had hoped to read this, but she was ill, and so the Anglican chaplain to Newcastle University, Catherine Lack, stepped in and read the excerpt from the Rock from her own copy of the volume]

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
[Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.]
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
[But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.]
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Prayers: Andii

§ O Lord hear my prayer: -music led by choir,

O Lord, hear my prayer, O Lord hear my prayer,

When I call, answer me.

O Lord, hear my prayer, O Lord hear my prayer,

Come, and listen to me.

Andii to lead petitions based on welcomes and declarations, gathering objects or visiting objects on the table.

Closing.

§ Rutter -The Lord Bless you …. ; Choir.

Dismissal: Bp Frank White

Nouslife: Ora pro me; 9 June

Success Starts With Failure

2011-06-05T11:06:00.001+01:00

Given that many humans have a preference to learn by doing, it is inevitable that in order to learn to do something successfully we will have to coach ourselves through many failures. Why we collectively find it so hard to apply this to public life, business and organisational development beats me given that this is clearly a big part of the human scene, I don't know.

So it is no surprise that the history shows (and see here for more info Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure by Tim Harford – review | Books | The Observer) that "Disruptive innovations bubble up in the marketplace by a process of trial and error. The more players there are, the higher the likelihood of something brilliant appearing. But, by extension, a reliable measure of how efficient a system is at generating success is the volume of failures it can safely expose".
I like that phrase 'safely expose': we need to be able to allow it to be okay to fail, to recognise that it is part of learning to succeed. That is one advantage of the old British thing about 'not the winning ...' and that it is important to try, and to celebrate good effort as well as success. I think that we would do well not to lose it in the light of this argument: perhaps it had more to do with the innovative drive in the 1800's that characterised Britain than we have given credit for. Of course this also links to my tag-thread on failure which I find I keep adding to.

One of the things I found myself also agreeing heartily with was this:
"an ego blow to swaggering executives who think their tremendous commercial acumen is what has saved them from ruin and earned them their fat bonuses. Luck and timing are just as important, if not more so."
Quite so; I would like this to be more widely recognised and is part of the argument for reining in the hubristic bonus culture which has helped to bring our economies to their knees recently.

Anyway, moving off my soap-box; the article introduces

a check-list of conditions that must be in place for good ideas to chase out bad ones. Big institutions, whether corporations or governments, should create safe havens where experts can try new techniques and fail without bringing the whole system crashing down. Prizes for achieving specific goals work better than grants for open-ended research, since the latter are prone to be captured by lazy establishments fiddling around the margins of orthodox thinking. Regulations dictated from on high by controlling managers are less effective at preventing disasters than corporate cultures that invite dissent from the lower ranks and heed whistle-blowers.

I'm putting the book on my get-list and have got the Kindle sample.

Kicking the Geordies when they're down

2011-06-05T10:30:00.001+01:00

I was intrigued by this article because its account of the North East (my adopted region of work and residence) is not one I readily recognise. Here's the heart of what I 'incomprehend':
"political and economic developments have been paralleled by a resurgent culture of stereotyped nastiness directed at the region's inhabitants."
You see, I look at the media and see Geordies being used in advertising in a way that seems to presuppose that the accent connotes solid family values and fun-loving-ness. Or have I missed something? This is far from nastiness towards the NorthEast, rather a kind of role-modelling.
"As the British working class has increasingly become an object of ridicule for a technocratic London elite, public figures from the predominantly working-class north-east have become special targets for media humiliation. From Gazza, the archetypal proletarian drunk, to Cheryl Cole, who risks becoming a Jade Goody for the 2010s, Geordies are consistently portrayed as half-articulate buffoons – figures of fun at best, ritualised scapegoats at worst (witness the glee with which certain members of the media followed the 'manhunt' of gunman Raoul Moat in July 2010)."
Again, I'm not sure I'm seeing it. Admittedly Gazza was pitied and reviled, rightly so; but I'm not sure that it was particularly associated with his Geordie-ness -was it? (Maybe I missed it). I get the impression that Cheryl Cole is still widely liked and the recent USA thing brought something more like amazement over the USAmerican supposed inability to cope with the accent and some sympathy about that and some sense of identification with the plight of a Brit in the miscomprehending States. But again, I may be missing something.

And as for Raoul Moat, I don't think the Geordie-thing was part of the glee -after all the heroic police officers are also Geordies for the most part. Where I think that the article may be right is with the portrayal of the working class. Though I'm still not convinced that this is the right label for the phenomenon: I think that the term 'working class' is obsolete and that there are several cultures represented by what would once have earned the label including some that pretty much buy into "middle class" values. Where, then, I think that it gets it wrong is trying to make a full link between the term 'working class' and 'Geordie' or 'north east'. I won't wash. This is an article ostensibly about the North East but mainly about perceptions of certain kinds of economically disadvantaged groups in Britain.

So there is some truth in this:
"In a politically correct era, light condescension and Little Britain-style caricature stands in for outright bigotry, a process that mirrors the discreet economic bias visited against areas such as Tyneside and Teesside by shrewd Westminster policymakers."
There is some truth in the accusation of bias and it may be that the London chattering classes are disdainful of anything regional. Only a thorough-going decentralisation to the regions can combat that. I think that what has happened in Scotland over the last 10-20 years begins to tell us what can be achieved. If Scotland becomes independent, I'm wondering whether the ancient Northumbria should be re-united (it once stretched from the Forth to the Humber) this time looking to Edinburgh rather than London.

Kicking the Geordies when they're down | Alex Niven | Comment is free | The Guardian:

The Blame Game

2011-06-02T21:36:00.001+01:00

I'm really enjoying the reflections on this blog by Patrick Goh. The usual theme is reflecting on organisational life in a Christian perspective. I really found myself resonating with this post
The Blame Game | gohbyname Go by nature. 'Resonating' because I have observed this in several workplaces or organisations I've been acquainted with:

In a blame culture, people behave in blaming ways. These behaviours are self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. It breeds a suspicion, politicking, backbiting, draconian organisational practice and non-risk taking. In these cultures, feedback such as “you should do better next time”, and even training and development events are seen as threats.

And, perhaps, what he goes on to say, therefore, is part of my mission in the job I began officially yesterday. Patrick says,

We can change our social world by changing our organising grammar to:
Let’s discuss a helpful process for creating change.
How can we inquire into and build on the best of what is?
What can we help people to learn?
How can we value everyone’s contribution?
Who else, amongst us, do we need to involve?
What processes do we need to put in place to help us improve continuously?
How can we develop, coach and mentor people through a project

I love that 'organising grammar' phrase! He goes on to point out that it is an attitudinal shift, and he's right. I'd say the secret is to contrast a culture where a central tenet is blame (and it's even more unlovely concommitants, scapegoating and unjust assumptions) with a culture where the central tenet 'rightwising' -ie problem-solving; how to put it right and save the post-mortems for relaxed appraisal in an open and inclusive learning environment marked by positive regard for all.

You see, in my experience, workplace cultures where blame is to the fore are workplace cultures where people don't feel respected, feel victimised and scapegoated -often because the blame-drive doesn't really care about truth and justice, just sounding off and covering its own backside -it's easier to blame someone, move on and avoid facing ones own part in the systemic failure. A blame-reflex fails to encourage genuine collaboration and, ironically, creates the conditions for further 'blameworthy' in/actions by increasingly 'jobsworth' workers. All too often, in fact, when something goes wrong, the reasons are complex and both systemic and individualistic. Blame usually oversimplifies to the point of injustice and therefore foments discontent.

Patrick ends by asking a Christian question: "“How might we create a ’forgiveness’ rather than a ‘blame’ culture”?"
I think I'd like to suggest that we need to start a step back from 'forgiveness' since starting there seems to presuppose we know who is to blame for what right at the start. And we normally just don't. So what is needed is a fundamental orientation to fixing problems that arise and creating an atmosphere where honest, respectful and supportive communication can take place. That can support finding out what really happened and encourage people to take appropriate responsibility and offer support to each other.
This means unwinding our own 'blame reflexes' and remembering that we fallible too. A healthy dose of recalling that for every speck we can find in someone else's eye, there's probably a log in our own.

Ah, but the danger is that people don't take responsibility. Actually that's paradoxically not the case. By creating a constructive culture we enable adult responsibility taking. A blame culture encourages parent-child transactions, self-justification and hiding problems.

Megachurch: succession issues

2011-05-31T15:22:00.001+01:00

It's a fascinating thing to think about. There are several points to think about in
Megachurch For Sale one is to do with personality and succession, this one I've seen at first hand in a different context: "The difficulty in finding a successor to Robert Schuller has resulted in declining attendance, increasing debt, and now the loss of the church's most valuable (earthly) asset--its property." The problem is when a church is built, in effect, around the drive and personality of a particular (charismatic) individual it is almost impossible for it to continue 'business as usual' once that person moves on or dies. It is just so unlikely that those who have been involved and/or attending because they like the 'star' pastor will all find a replacement just as congenial.

The article goes on to outline the growth of megachurches in the USA and notes that they are largely led by dynamic baby-boomers who over the next decade are going to be retiring, in all probability: "The question looming over the megachurches is--how do they transfer leadership to the next generation in a way that maintains the enormous funds and personnel required to run them?"
Indeed.
I'm wondering whether this question is perhaps a bit like asking: how does the Elvis estate transfer fans to another icon? Which probably frames the issue in terms of how unlikely I think it actually is: if it's personality-dependent then the leadership will have to recognise a likely 'hit' in numbers and support while they establish a new 'brand' which will attract a new fan-base. Does it sound awful to put it in those terms? Probably, but I think we should not baulk from such analogies out of squeamishness which is borne of misplaced religious sensibility. The reason such things happen is that a certain degree of what is happening is hidden behind religious talk and posturing. Some of it is sincerely meant, perhaps a lot of it; but we should be wary of the Elmer Gantry effect sneaking up on ministries. Realistically, fans (religious or otherwise) are not going to transfer allegiances wholesale; they will move to the next items in their hierarchy of needs/desires. That may or may not be the church.

But let's notice too that part of what I've not been talking about is the relationship to God in Christ ... just so ... the success of megachurches is partly to be measured by how far they are able to help re-order the desires of their attenders and participants to 'seek first the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness'.
It may even be that we should question the value of such churches where there is a personality cult at work: do they actually serve the Spirit in Creation and Redemption or hinder?

The article rightly notes that this is not just megachurches, though the stakes are huge in terms of money and debt; frightening, in fact. So, how is succession to be managed? I see a number churches suffering from 'post-big-name' blues and woes. Well, I think that 'grow your own' might be part of the answer and careful and timely apprenticeship of possible successors. Along with the recognition that succession will involve 'churn' and planning for that it a sensible, no blame, sort of way. But I also wonder whether actually limiting church sizes might be a way forward.

I'm presupposing in thinking about this that personality is bound to figure to some degree, and that it can be part of God's design and ministry. It's the response to and deployment of personality that is the issue -including a grown-up recognition that it is a factor and then planning and praying around that. God creates us diverse and with personality, I don't go for that doctrine that seeks to eliminate personality from ministry. That's a recipe for a sneak attack by the unacknowledged. Insetead a sober assessment of the contribution of personality and an organising of a diverse team where personality is sought in a balancing way and where less dominant personalities are built up and publicly appreciated is needed. And if the big personality can't wear that, then isn't that a warning signal?

Ora pro me; 9 June

2011-05-29T13:36:00.000+01:00

Although I'm starting work on 1 June (though having a few days out for moving stuff and doing a few finishing things at St John's during June and July), my formal inauguration of ministry (as Chaplain and faith advisor to Northumbria University) is not until Thursday 9 June. It is booked to take place from 6 in the Chaplaincy (Wynne Jones Building) with drinks and nibbles moving at 7pm to the Rutherford Hall (just 10 metres from Wynne Jones) for the ceremony followed there by further refreshments. If you can be there, I'd love you to come; just let me know so I can make sure that the refreshments, and set-up organisation is all that we might hope!

I'd love it if you could pray for me about this new beginning and for us as a family as we adjust to new circumstances and possibilities. In your holding us before God please consider Tracy as she seeks a right way forward in her ministry and vocation and for our children, Jo, Ben and Bex who each in their own ways are making significant transitions this summer (Jo seeking employment after his MA studies; Ben graduates and will be seeking business in graphic design; Bex continues at University into her final year and will be preparing both for marriage and post-graduate study).

I think that this may be the first time I have ever mentioned by name all of my immediate family on this blog. Since they are all now over 18 and have their own web footprint, I guess it may be about time!

The Americanization of Mental Illness

2011-05-26T20:54:00.001+01:00

Here's one of those things where I get that sense of 'I'm not surprised to hear this but I hadn't quite clocked it before'.
The Americanization of Mental Illness - NYTimes.com: "the forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another". In other words 'madness' has an element to it of cultural construction. That's not to say it is entirely so, merely that we tend to form the expressions of mental illness according to cultural mores and that in some cases cultural tensions exacerbate different underlying mental or emotional dysfunctions.

To take one comment from the article commenting on a cross-cultural study of anorexia: “Culture shapes the way general psychopathology is going to be translated partially or completely into specific psychopathology. When there is a cultural atmosphere in which professionals, the media, schools, doctors, psychologists all recognize and endorse and talk about and publicize eating disorders, then people can be triggered to consciously or unconsciously pick eating-disorder pathology as a way to express that conflict.”

And it is also to do with the way that mental illness is received in the host community (which, of course, will have a reflexive effect as the ill person will potentially view themselves and their condition through the cultural lens they have to hand). For example, in east Africa in those areas where schizophrenia tends to be understood as a spiritual affliction; "An ill individual enjoying a time of relative mental health could, at least temporarily, retake his or her responsibilities in the kinship group. Since the illness was seen as the work of outside forces, it was understood as an affliction for the sufferer but not as an identity." And surely that kind of attitude must have effects on the health, over time, of the sufferer.

Part of the point is to recognise that we, in the west, are exporting more than medicine with our mental health treatments; "Western mental-health discourse introduces core components of Western culture, including a theory of human nature, a definition of personhood, a sense of time and memory and a source of moral authority. None of this is universal,"
I find this quite intriguing when it comes to the care of people in a multicultural environment like a modern university. Not yet sure how it 'cashes out', but it's a perspective to hold beside what we see unfolding.

An Open Apology for the Church (by Joe Boyd)

2011-05-26T20:28:00.000+01:00

I suspect that a number of readers may find a lot in this to make common cause with. See here
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � An Open Apology for the Church (by Joe Boyd): for the whole thing. Here's a flavour of it "I ask your forgiveness for every sin of every priest, pastor, minister, reverend, teacher, elder, deacon, pope, nun, monk, missionary, Sunday school teacher, worship leader, and for every Christian who has ever come into your life for any other reason than to love you. If any of us came to you and hurt you, we are the ones at fault. On our behalf, let me say that I am very sorry. It’s not who we are supposed to be"
I like the idea that every so often he adds to it...

Mapping, knowing and propaganda

2011-05-23T20:24:00.001+01:00

Some readers will know that I enjoy a good map. It's the colour, pattern and promise of new places. I also find myself intrigued by the idea of mapping. The way that a map picks out certain features of reality in relationship to others to guide the reader through a literal, metaphorical or mixed territory. And while the map is not the territory, it shares with language more generally the ability to make us think it is -kind of.

Now the article here: 513 - Then We Take Berlin: When East Ate West | Strange Maps | Big Think: helps shine a light on the way that things that we take as natural, unproblematic or starightforward, are actually freighted with ideological, hegemonic perspectives -just like ideas and other cultural artefacts. See ...
"Take this map of the urban transport network (1) in Berlin. At face value, it is a purely utilitarian map, giving its readers a no-nonsense, schematic overview of the transportational possibilities of the German capital. But context matters: this map was produced by the East German government, for its captive citizenry. It mixes information with propaganda as it tries very hard to ignore an inconvenient truth - too big to hide completely: the existence of another Berlin."
So this is a great idea for cultural studies teaching and learning: a way in to a central idea...

Language Log � Translated phrase-list jokes

2011-05-22T21:29:00.001+01:00

Some of you have no doubt seen the chart of English phrases and how they are heard by Europeans and what is really meant. Well, there's a short one with a handful of French phrases, the same treatment.

French Phrase	Literal Translation	Idiomatic Translation
"je serai clair"	"I will be clear"	"I will be rude"
"Il faut la visibilité Européenne"	"We need European visibility"	"The EU must indulge in some pointless, annoying and, with luck, damaging international grand-standing."
"Il faut trouver une solution pragmatique"	"We must find a pragmatic solution"	"Warning: I am about to propose a highly complex, theoretical, legalistic and unworkable way forward."

Language Log � Translated phrase-list jokes:

Military Social Influence in the Global Information Environment

2011-05-15T14:30:00.001+01:00

A short while back, in giving my reactions to Dr Who of that week, I mentioned the Myth of Redemptive Violence. Well, this article brings home to me just why we need to pay increasing attention to the issue: the military are actively seeking to exercise hegemony in global society, that is they are seeking to win acceptance and a perceived 'naturalness' to their agenda.Scholarly commentary invited through December 2010.: Military Social Influence in the Global Information Environment: A Civilian Primer - King - 2010 - Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy - Wiley Online Library: "This ongoing “revolution in military affairs” (Metz & Kievit, 1995, p. iii) has precipitated, among other things, a steady increase in U.S. military capacity to conduct social influence campaigns at every level of the modern world's information environment: in local, national, regional (or “theater”), and global spheres; in domestic and foreign populations; among individuals, groups, organizations, and governments"
Whether or not this is explicitly tied to MoRV, said myth is clearly a 'sleeper meme' in our culture that can be easily activated to mobilise a population to support, fund and give bodies to the war effort. Particularly when the military use phrases like "perception management", we realise that they are after our minds and consent. The article referenced here is written with this end in mind: "it is now possible, if not imperative, for those who study and teach about social influence to understand U.S. information operations, arguably among the largest, most controversial, and most influential social influence campaigns in modern times."
This is more, for the most part, than simply the old propaganda battles, the new realities of weapons and IT mean "Our military's enemies, ... are most likely to be small, rogue groups who attempt to prevail by winning popular support and undermining U.S. political will for war ...The argument here is that in most modern war, physical battles, if they exist, will be for the purpose of defining psychological battlespace ... terrorists are “armed propaganda organizations”" -perhaps that latter remark is at least partly exponented by Al Qaida.
The other factors impinging on this are the greater transparency that IT tends to foster so that atrocities are harder to hide and for those whose soldiery are from democratic regimes this brings a change of role, particularly when combined with heightened awareness of human rights and international law: "the transformation of the role of the individual soldier in the context of the increasing transparency of the global information environment, the decreasing utility of conventional weaponry, and the increasing power of social influence. It has been suggested that the modern soldiers of western democracies are essentially “heavily armed social workers” ... These troops work to change behavior in the glare of a multi-technology-based global media. They are obligated to minimize casualties, manage the perceptions of the global audience, and influence behavior through nonviolent means."
Now, much of that has been stated in terms that sound as if there is a push towards the more ethical and applaudable end of warfare. And not particularly supporting the tone I set when I began the post. However, we should note that all of the above can be used -is used- simply to make the case. What is still going on is the violent and repressive exercise of brute force in furtherance of political goals by non-consensual means. Iraq has shown us that information manipulation and spin are also weapons of war. The mention of the soldiers of western democracies carries with it a certain irony since their most recent deployments have, it seems, been to impose democracy by non-democratic means. I know there is more nuance to it than that, but it is really hard to tell it any other way to ordinary people in Muslim-majority countries -just take a look at the bit and pieces of reportage about the way that Libyans, and others, have viewed NATO involvement there: there is a lot of suspicion around.

Of course, trying to do this in a global environment which has a lot of bottom-up about it is (or can be) like herding cats. It's working in a complex environment and so MI and IO is going to be about trying to find 'strange attactors' in information and opinion terms that allow the forming of opinion round certain perspectives most conducive to the interests they represent. It's always going to be a dicey thing: there is a lot of awareness of power interests and their wiles.

So it is important that we as Christians, following the Prince of Peace and the one who said 'Put away your sword', should continue to 'fight the good fight' (Blake's "mental strife") to demolish strongholds; ie we resist MoRV and other alibis for keeping elites in power and most people in the dark -sometimes violently herded into the dark.

Sitting is killing

2011-05-11T19:30:00.002+01:00

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

The Curse of the Black Spot

2011-05-08T10:44:00.001+01:00

I enjoyed last night's Dr Who, and I've found myself musing over a couple of aspects of it. Check out here (at least for the time being) for some further info or reminders: BBC - BBC One Programmes - Doctor Who, Series 6, The Curse of the Black Spot: "Beset by terror and cabin fever, the pirates have numerous superstitious explanations for the appearance of a mysterious Siren."
So, what I found intriguing having slept on it is the plot structure. A lot of popular viewing, and indeed literature, employs a plot line which is basically 'heroes and others are threatened by some malevolent force (whether a thing, a population or something more amorphous) and the goodies work together using their resources (usually cunningly) deployed to destroy, neutralise or rout the malevolents'.
Of course, that kind of plot arc is basically reinforcing, normally, the myth of redemptive violence (MoRV) which is arguably a key mythic pattern in our culture (I happen to concur with Walter Wink that it actually is). What I enjoyed about this plot is that it opened up the imagination to other ways of plotting the things we face.

In the classic MoRV take, the scenario that the episode opens with would be resolved by either leaving things with the discovery of how the Siren accessed their ship or hiding places and closing it off and getting away or, more usually, discovering something that enabled them to destroy or 'neutralise' the monster. What happened here was the discovery that the 'monster' isn't really but is actually an intelligent programme (an emergency medical hologram -borrowed from Star Trek Voyager?) whose mission is to save the injured and ill by taking them to a life-support unit and keeping them alive albeit comotose pending a visit by real medics. In this case, because the crew of the space vessel the Siren is from, have died from an earth virus (shades of War of the Worlds?), the medics are never going to come and, unlike Voyager, this holographic medic hasn't evolved beyond 'her' programming. So the EHM paramedic simply snatches anyone injured or ill and warehouses them. The resolution here is not from the MoRV script but by understanding the 'enemy', trusting their intelligence and working with their beneficent desires for an outcome of win-win. MoRV, of course is not about win-win but a zero sum 'game'.

I salute the win-win storyline. What this also tells me is that in the struggle for a more peaceful, safer and more just world a big part of it is to expand the moral imagination. Part of our problem as a global society is, I would contend, that our ability to think (collectively) about how to resolve conflict, differing aims and objectives etc is infested by MoRv in such a way that it disables possible win-win plotting. We need to big up stories of win-win plotting (and other kinds of non-MoRV) so that the resources that we have, collectively, to put ourselves into plot-lines-in-life that enable human flourishing for all. So let's have more of these win-win plots and let's celebrate them and encourage them to fill our hearts and minds and so drive from our real-life plotting the automatic recourse to win-lose and MoRV which, I think, made the mistakes of responding to the Twin Towers attack by going into Iraq.

The second thing I've been musing is much less cosmic but nevertheless still intrigues me.
The Siren (whom we discover is an emergency holographic paramedic) looks remarkably like the stowaway lad who we discover to be the captain's son. Maybe this was a co-incidence or merely a resemblance in my own mind, but maybe it has further significance. Within the information from within the story, it could be that the lad was the basis for the programme's choice of form to appear in (the alien skeletons were clearly not human and probably, in our eyes, properly monstrous -big teeth, bony crest on the skull). But then, if this was the case, how did it know (a) to put clothes on and (b) to put female garb on given that all the models it had on the ship were male?

Should we implement the Easter Act 1928?

2011-04-29T17:28:00.001+01:00

I'd thought that the Easter Act 1928 was contingent on the agreement of the the Christian Churches in this country -like that would ever happen! But maybe not -see this article from a couple of weeks or so ago. Unthinkable? Implement the Easter Act 1928 | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian:
The occasion of writing, is, of course, the very late Easter this year. And I have to admit that I had mused in odd moments about whether it'd be a good thing to implement it, but I thought that there was very little chance of the churches agreeing to it.
So what would it do? Why might it commend itself?

"the Easter Act 1928, a prescient piece of legislation which is already on the statute book, ready and waiting for a government brave enough to issue the implementation order. The act sets down that Easter Sunday must fall on a fixed day – the Sunday following the second Saturday in April. The effect would be that Easter Sunday, instead of falling on any date between 22 March and 25 April as now, would fall in the narrower window of 9 to 15 April."

Well, perhaps not quite 'fixed' as Christmas (which, incidently, I think perhaps should be tethered, probably, to a Sunday) but certainly de-coupled from the lunar-Gregorian calendar mash-up currently employed and held into a much tighter window.

And it doesn't need for the churches to agree: "the act merely requires that "regard shall be had" to their opinion"
Which is not quite the same as giving us/them the veto. There's no way that the RC would go with it, and I can just imagine the "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells" reactions from the likes of the professionally-outraged at the Daily Mail and its ilk. But consider, a de-coupling of a Christian high day from public holiday has already taken place (and there are still rumblings) in the case of Pentecost -rather 'Whitsun'.
"Churches would rightly still be free to celebrate Easter on the day of their choice rather than over the public holiday – as the Orthodox church already does. The secular majority, however, would at last have an annual spring break that makes a bit more sense."
I'd want to say that we should consider this seriously. Let there be an early April bank Holiday weekend, but let the churches celebrate Easter our own way and at times that our traditions and collective bargaining determine. The advantages would be that we may be less likely to 'lose' attenders to extended weekends away and more likely to find others to invite to the feast alongside us -you know: who might like to consider responding positively to what we're celebrating... not to mention perhaps it might erode the post Easter 'flop' when instead of continuing to celebrate we all retreat and don't celebrate together further for a fortnight (I exaggerate, but not by much). Shame to lose the Easter Octave of celebration linked to Church life.

Though of course, it'll happen that quite often Pascha will fall at the same time as the public holiday too so the advantages I see would be some years but not others. But I'm not sure that linking Christian festivals with public holidays actually serves us well in post-Christendom.

empathy, evil and justice

2011-04-29T16:14:00.001+01:00

No doubt I'll have to read the book of the article: Simon Baron-Cohen talks empathy, evil and justice at the Royal Institution | Carole Jahme | Science | guardian.co.uk: "Empathy is a primal ability that evolved long before our ancestors developed spoken language. By focusing on empathy as the foundation of virtuous behaviour and acknowledging its absence or erosion as a fuel for human vices, Baron-Cohen has unified the whole of human psychological behaviour"
As the article presents it there is a lot to commend the principle of taking note of empathy and I intuit a good set of connections to my puttering thinking about forgiveness and the Cross (bascially trying to take a practical theology approach before the systematics kicks in too early). There are big claims: healing of global society, definitive insight into the nature of evil ... but I'm concerned that it may be missing a thing or two. I'm wondering, for example, what about the evils that are brought about not by too little empathy but too much? Isn't this heading towards a reductionistic approach: lack of empathy is evil; what about the moral status, then of those who are on the autistic spectrum? I hope that the book has some nuance in the face of those kinds of issues... particularly as Baron-Cohen has published on Autism and Asperger's.

infostripe

2011-04-29T16:00:00.001+01:00

This looks like a pontentially useful little service. the basis for a e-business card. It even automatically generates a QR code. It can also be pressed into service for events. So, as you can see, I've been playing with it in terms of the job I move to on June 1st.
Andii Bowsher (andii) on infostripe

Better typing on touch-screen phones

2011-04-29T14:23:00.001+01:00

I've only been using it about 5 days but already I'm moved to recommend this. and this is why:
"MessagEase has fewer, larger keys. With it you enter most frequent characters with a tap on relatively large key. Less frequent characters are entered with a drag or slide. The position and relative location of each letter and character is calculated based on letter frequency and letter-pair frequency, so that your finger\s movement is minimize, and therefore your text entry speed is maximized."
It really doesn't take long to learn, and there is a handy wee app that helps 'train' you in a bit of a gamey way. I reckon I've probably spent no more than an hour playing the learning game and already my input rate is up compared to the keyboard that came with the Android OS. It's basically because it's ergonomically designed. All you need to do really is get the most frequent characters into your motor memory.

I do have a bit of history with keyboards to confess. I few years ago, when I had a bit of time on my hands I taught myself to touch-type using a computer programme (well, actually, an internet site). However, because I also had moments of concern about typing-related RSI, I learnt to use the Dvorak layout because that is ergonomically designed (unlike the qwerty set-up which was, reputedly, designed to slow typists down to avoid key-arm snarl ups). Most OSs now have Dvorak key maps in the settings and if you've learnt to touch type, it doesn't matter that the letters on the keys don't match with the letter that goes on the screen. Oh, and my RSI is a lot better :)
MessagEase - A killer app keyboard for iPhones, gPhones, PDAs, Tablet PCs, and other touch screen devices:

Apocalypse FAIL -or: imposing our agenda on scripture

2011-04-29T13:33:00.001+01:00

Matt Stone, istm, has got it right and does us a favour by finding this visual 'statement' that so badly misses the point of the apocalyptic imagery and actually subverts the Bible's message.
Apocalypse FAIL - Glocal Christianity: "Where we expect to see a sword coming from the mouth of the Messiah, symbolizing the power of the word of God, we now find a sword in his hand, symbolizing power of a more earthly kind. Where we expect to see a white robe dipped in blood, symbolizing his sacrificial love and servant kingship, we now see a smart and sanitized red robe. Where we expect to see many crowns, relativising the Imperial claims of Caesar, we now see a more conventional, single crown. Where we expect to see writing on his robe and thigh, encapsulating the symbolic significance of these visions, there is none. Where we expect to see eyes blazing with fire, we see something far less amazing. Where we expect to see heaven cracking open, emphasizing the visionary flavour of such images, we instead see clouds and clouds alone, minimizing the mystery.
What we have here is a domesticated Jesus, who mimics the entrapments of empire rather than radically subverting them"