the most you can do

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” – Barbara Kingsolver

reacting

I’m reading a discussion paper prepared for the Uniting Church’s national assembly. The particular topic of the paper is irrelevant here, but i came across a paragraph that is becoming depressingly familiar, and it’s got me annoyed enough to have been stamping round the office all day. I’ve decided you should all share the brunt, not just my colleagues.

I quote from the report [which i won't name here - because it's not fair to single this one out over any other]:

Societal changes have meant a move from the modern belief in reason, progress and human potential to post-modernity with its scepticism concerning reason, suspicion of established institutions, pessimism about the future and relativism.

Have you ever noticed how many church reports frame post-modernity in negative terms [scepticism, suspicion, pessimism]? It’s really starting to piss me off.

Relativism is indeed a feature of a post-modern society – because we’ve recognised that the declarative truths of modernity emerged from within a particular cultural framework, and that they come with an innate bias [where the normal, for example, is male, middle class, educated, white, Christian]. The language that mediates truth is always culturally bound, so even if we’ve located a universal truth, our ways of communicating it will never be pure. Post-modernity has meant a move from ‘one size fits all’ in terms of education, belief, family structure, community; it doesn’t mean that there are no longer moral standards but that moral authority no longer comes automatically by virtue of position or status. The scepticism of progress has come because we recognise it often has a cost, and most often that cost is paid by those who can least afford it. Perhaps instead of speaking of ‘a suspicion of established institutions’, we could say instead ‘our society now recognises the limitations and failings of institutions, and readily critiques their assumptions and self-given authority’… Thank god for all of that, i say.

Of course, post-modernity is bad news for those who previously demanded authority by virtue simply of position. It’s bad news for those who equated knowledge with power, and kept it from others. It’s bad news for people and groups who want everyone to think like them, or who need absolutes to feel safe. It’s good news for everyone whose voice has been excluded, or dismissed as ‘wrong’ or ignorant because it speaks a different truth. Well, it could be good news, if we let it. Coincidentally, the church has a gospel imperative to make it good news.

Continuing the paragraph:

In relation to the church, we have moved from a Christian society to a post Christian, individualistic, consumer society in which the church has far less prominence.

Basically, the church is not the [self-selected] centre of the world anymore. We weren’t doing that good a job at being the centre of the world, and many theologians would argue that the church can only do its job when it isn’t. But that’s not what really bothers me. It’s reducing the description of post-Christian society to being simply individualistic or consumer. It’s both of those things, of course, and i wish it wasn’t. But it’s also become a global society – which means people understand the diversity of the world better. Our society understands the limits of knowledge, and the extraordinary potential and the dangers of human progress. It’s cynical, idealistic, optimistic, pessimistic, all in the one breath. Our society is made up of people who want to change the world, and others who want the world to stay as it is – much like every generation before us. The pressures to consume are enormous, more than ever before, and the church needs to speak prophetically against that. Alongside that, though, is also a capacity to be informed about the world more than ever before – and its about time the church started to celebrate that.

Surely incarnational theology would have us believe that the gospel speaks into and from within every culture, context and era. I wish that those who see post-modernity as a threat would also understand the damage that modernity has done to the gospel – and i guess it’s up to the rest of us to invite them into the world of possibility that post-modernity offers.

thanks for letting me stay…

i have changed where home is
i have become a guest in the place of your faith

no more trying to make myself fit
contorting, awkwardly

i have changed where my home is.

The Culture and Context Unit, within which i work, celebrated its first birthday last week. It’s been a fun ride so far…

I’ve been spending today writing up some medium to long term strategies to match the Synod’s priorities. One of the Synod’s priorities is risk-taking, and as part of the planning process we need to show a link between our units work and that priority. It’s a fabulous aim, but i’ve found myself having to rationalise why some of the things we do are risks. Staying as part of the church, for instance, when most people would assume the risk is in going out into the world.

One of the principles that formed the unit was the idea of being a guest at the world’s table. I suspect that one of the reasons why this team gravitated together at the beginning was because that was our natural instinct anyway. We like being out there. We know ourselves in the world. And increasingly, for many of us, the church is almost a parallel universe, operating in a different orbit. This is where we feel alien, not there.

I don’t know where home is, but i don’t mind not having one. And in letting go of the need to make the church my home i’ve found unexpected appreciation for it. Not wishing the church different has meant I’ve started to recognise its worth. I’ve given up the fight, relinquished my right, and found its goodness. It means that while this is not my home, and i doubt it ever will be again, i love that it’s yours, and i love that you let me stay when i need somewhere to crash for a while…

so thanks. that’s all.

Feature Clip - Pee in the Shower

This is clever and made me laugh (Almost enough to pee my pants)

go there instead

i’ve been writing, writing, writing… everywhere but here.

i have 15000 words which are the beginnings of a book about the work we do in prisons. I’m at that quagmired stage. The best editor I’ve worked with said to me once, ‘when you think a sentence you’ve written is clever, you need to go back and write it again’. So I am.

Fortunately there are only one or two clever sentences out of the 1500 or so I’ve written. The rest are just crap. Luckily, this is the stage of writing i love: where you’ve got the right words on a page, they’re just all in the wrong order.

Anyway, if you’re here because you’re looking for inspiration, or simply a way to pass a few minutes, you’ll be left lacking. Go here instead. Beautiful.

Zizek, prisons, justice and investment

We are currently talking to some rural congregations about the connection they have with the prisons in their community, and how we might develop those relationships more fully. I’ll talk more about that down the track – it’s a really exciting new direction – but a lovely part of the process at the moment is the time we are spending with rural communities hearing about their motivations and passions for being involved.*

There were two big areas of conversation with the members of one rural community yesterday: the first was on what difference faith can make in the prison. Chaplains are not allowed to proselytise – the potential for manipulation is too high. Prisoners are surrounded by psychologist and self-improvement programs. What is it that those representing faith can do? And, as importantly, what is the promise that faith can make and then deliver?

‘These Christians,’ said Alex, on my second visit into the prison, ‘They promise the world and then they give you an atlas’.

As I drove home from the meeting last night, I caught the end of a radio interview. I have no idea what the program was [i was waiting for the news about leadership spills!], or who was being interviewed, but the I heard him say that the primary question for his faith was not ‘what do you believe in?’, but ‘in what do you invest your life?’. He said he could no longer invest his life in ideas about God, but that didn’t mean he’d lost faith. His primary investment now was in justice and love; they were the things worth living for, even if they came to no end. That was the other big area of conversation yesterday – how much working in the prison changes your life. It becomes your investment.

I’ve learnt that someone has the potential to be a good chaplain when they talk about how they will change in the process, and how they don’t think they have what it takes to do this well. It seems that those who think they are cut out for it find it hard to recognise the holy ground they’re walking on…

The cliche about prison life is that I am actually integrated into it, ruined by it, when my accommodation to it is so overwhelming that I can no longer stand or even imagine freedom, life outside prison, so that my release brings about a total psychic breakdown, or at least gives rise to a longing for the lost safety of prison life. The actual dialectic of prison life, however, is somewhat more refined. Prison in effect destroys me, attains a total hold over me, precisely when I do not fully consent to the fact that I am in prison but maintain a kind of inner distance towards it, stick to the illusion that ‘real life is elsewhere’ and indulge all the time in daydreaming about life outside, about nice things that are waiting for me after my release or escape. I thereby get caught in the vicious cycle of fantasy, so that when, eventually, I am released, the grotesque discord between fantasy and reality breaks me down. The only true solution is therefore fully to accept the rules of prison life and then, within the universe governed by these rules, to work out a way to beat them. In short, inner distance and daydreaming about Life Elsewhere in effect enchain me to prison, whereas full acceptance of the fact that I am really there, bound by prison rules, opens up a space for true hope.

Slavo Zizek, The Fragile Absolute

*It’s times like this where i love being part of a denomination. I know many people are saying that the religious institutions have passed their time, and are no longer places for innovation and experiment, but i’d be devastated if denominations were to end. So much of what we do in the prison and broader community is possible only because we are a denomination. The major decision making and policy implementing bodies within our community are constructed in a way that relies on communication with institutions – I’m not prepared to let our institution go until that reality changes. Denominations are trusted with this because we have a history that lasts beyond any one person or generation; we have the depth of resources and breadth of wisdom that means we are worth listening to. We have proven that we carry through on promises and can [to a large part] be trusted with people’s vulnerabilities.

That doesn’t mean to say that I think everyone has to be part of a denomination, that i don’t think there are some fundamentally sick things about institutions, or that i don’t want denominations to change – but i get disheartened by those who refuse to acknowledge what it is that would be lost if the institution were to fold, and who define institutions by rigidity and lack of imagination. Of course, if you think the stuff of the church is simply local then none of that matters. But if you think the church has a broader role to play within the community and world, then we need to stay faithful to those collections of people and communities that together have a chance of making that happen.

alt worship workshop

I’m running a workshop on alt worship for the CTM in Parkville on August 14. Details and a registration form are available here:
Alt wship wshop Registration form

doublespeak

I suspect I’ll regret posting this, but i’ll throw it up anyway. It’s time for a confession. I have this unhealthy obsession with uber-fundamentalist christian blogs. It began a few years ago when i realised that i didn’t get what people in the emerging church were emerging from, and where the fights about theology were coming from [why were Brian McLaren's books so controversial?] so i started reading some evangelical christian websites, and it only took a few clicks from there until the really scary stuff caught my eye. It really is a whole other world out there – and it’s really not pretty – and I think i’m finally beginning to understand why the USA context is so completely different to Australia, NZ and the UK, in terms of worship, spirituality and community.

Anyway, long story short, and all that. After reading some stuff last night – in the Guardian*, not the Vision Forum website – I realised that it’s time to start using another word instead of ‘God’. It was this comment that tipped me over the edge:

As David Attenborough says, there is a species of parasite in Africa which lives by burrowing into the eyeballs of children and blinding them. If God exists, God made that parasite.

I can re-theologise and explain that away: I don’t believe in an omnipotent being who created the world; I try to have faith in the fragile event. But interrupting a liturgy to include that disclaimer disrupts the all-important poetry. The unpacking and re-interpreting of theological language – of which ‘God’ is the ultimate example, really – is not what i want to spend my time doing. While i’m sure there’s virtue in reclaiming the name, just like there’s virtue in reclaiming the church, I’m happy to leave that to others to do. And I’m really happy to leave behind language that might ever put me in the same camp as the uber-fundamentalists. So I want to find ways to speak of the event of God without ever speaking of God.

The only time i use the language of God is when i’m writing for a Christian audience. And while i’ve been happy to be ambiguous or multivalent with language, i’m increasingly uncomfortable with people thinking i mean something i really don’t. Wish I knew where to start though.

*the whole Guardian article is another blog post in waiting – thanks to Blythe for sending it my way.

when the need for hope to come doesn’t make it happen…

just thought i’d throw this out there to see what anyone thinks… it’s a draft of a paragraph in the book i’m writing for the prison.

Christian witness sometimes confuses hope with optimism, and pastoral care with making people feel better; and the harder a situation is, the more desperately we cling to the belief we can resolve it. Christian hope is not an attitude, but the unexpected, miraculous birthing of a different possibility in the midst of death and desolation. Hope is not another way of looking at things, an attitude readjustment that is transplanted onto our truths; it emerges from within them when we dare to live our truths: to know our deaths, to feel the pain of it, to know the depth of it, as Leunig says. Most heartbreaking of all, our need for hope to come doesn’t mean that it will, which means that we cannot speak hope with the assumption that our words will create it. Our task of faith isn’t to preach hope; to know how to keep living when there’s no hope to be found.

don’t you hate a travelogue when you haven’t been there yourself?

[Christop and Craig have more comprehensive wrap ups of Just Worship, including photos... Craig's blog includes more detailed stuff about Peter Majendie and Dave White's presentations]

[photo stolen shamelessly from Christop]

I am back in Melbourne which is deliciously balmy after Christchurch. I had a fabulous time. It’s really good to be home.

Just Worship was a great event. Thanks to Mark Pierson for making it happen, and for enticing an amazing group to come together for the weekend. I was inspired by the stories of imagination and creativity from all over New Zealand and Australia, and from the passion of those who hadn’t yet begun but knew they were ready to. It was a reminder – if we needed one – that the imagination and creativity lies at the heart of each of us.

It was lovely to be able to tell the story of what’s happening here. The danger, as we kept saying on the weekend, is that it can sound much grander than what it is, and much more difficult. Stuff only sounds creative when it’s something you never thought of doing, or never thought you could do. If i were to highlight only one of the things that i said on the weekend again, it would be that you can’t actually tell if you’re ‘creative’ until you start trying to be creative. I didn’t know I could write until just a few years ago. Most of the time now I still don’t know if I can write, but the only thing that ever stops me from writing is the idea that maybe i can’t. So now I just say ‘yes’, and see where it goes.

I remembered again how the most disheartening comments in any conversation are ‘but that wouldn’t work for me’ and ‘we couldn’t do that with our people’. When those comments come up, it feels like we haven’t communicated the most important primary principle behind alt worship / sacred spaces: that what works for me – or my people – will not be what works for you and yours.

[actually, I know that I said that over and over on the weekend, so perhaps my question is 'why can't people hear that?'.]

As you might have seen here, I curated a space on the last night. It’s always an honour to be asked to do that, and also one of the most challenging tasks. It’s really, really difficult curating worship that isn’t a showcase, with a group of people you don’t know. When I ‘design’ worship, I do it with a person in mind – it’s the singularity of the person that gives me inspiration [I'm reminded again of Kurt Vonnegut, and his great line 'If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.']. I remember conversations I’ve had with the person, the moments of resonance where I’ve caught a glimpse of a bigger story in their story. Honing in on that gives me a reference point for curating the worship, where i find the connection between what’s human in them [and, most often, me] and the story. My instinct, otherwise, is to create worship that’s too big, too proclaimatory, too generalised [what everybody 'needs' to hear/experience]. It preaches rather than entices.

As always, the best part for me was the conversations with people that go beyond our best ideas, and start to bring to light the questions and provocations that each of us encounter. I’m so grateful for the few interactions I have each year that push me into that different space – that let us bring the unanswered questions to the surface, with no expectation of resolution; the moments that aren’t about ego or expectation, or things we’ve done, but simply an enjoying of the shared inarticulable longing for something beyond us. There’s a lovely comfort in those conversations. In that vein, Jemma Allen’s stuff about invitation and risk was really important. I also really enjoyed Mike Crudge’s presentation from his masters’ research, in bringing to light the perceptions that people outside the church have about the church, and the factors that lead to those perceptions. I think i’ve got more to learn from Dean – what is your surname Dean? – who works in one of the less advantaged areas of Auckland, who obviously really loves the people in his community, and creates experiential moments with them that seem simultaneously understated and amazing. Spending time with Mark is always food for the soul. I loved meeting some of the prison chaplains in Christchurch, and finding some like-minded souls there, which in turn gave me some confidence in the thinking around prison stuff we’re doing here. In fact, the entire conference was filled with amazing conversations and people – I learnt a lot. thanks.

I stayed in Christchurch for a few days after the conference. I set aside three days after the weekend to write, deciding that if I couldn’t get a decent start on a book about the stuff we do in prisons, then I needed to let the idea go. It worked brilliantly as a motivation; as did the rain / hail / freezing weather which made doing anything outside very unattractive. I deliberately rationed my internet use last week in order to not get distracted. Apologies if you’re waiting on email from me – i’m not quite game to look at them yet…

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