Flash Mob Fame :)

Hey guys, here is a bit of pondering about us causing trouble from the transit lounge

Flash Mob Fad - by Meera Atkinson

Fads come and go and, while some conform to social norms, others confront them. The flash mob craze is a case in point: social statement, performance art or childish hoax?

Wikipedia defines a flash mob as “a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse,” adding that flash mobs are mobilised via telecommunications, social media or viral emails. …..

“It’s a spectacle for spectacle’s sake—which is silly, but is also, as I’ve discovered somewhat to my surprise, genuinely transgressive, which is part of its appeal… People feel like there’s nothing but order everywhere, and so they love to be a part of just one thing that nobody was expecting.”….

Whatever the original motives, the flash mob phenomenon is now being employed by those with particular agendas around social justice issues. Adrian Greenwood, Young Adults Discipleship Educator at the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, was inspired to organise a mob by footage of a ‘freeze mob’ in Times Square in which a huge group of people froze on the spot.

Watching Youtube footage of the event Adrian was struck by an onlooker who walked around the frozen group saying something to the effect of, “What’s going on? I don’t understand. It must be a protest”…..

Read the rest here

Feature Clip - WARNING…. This poem may be to soon for you…

 

Buddy Wakefield - Information Man

Hi Guys this guy is great…. thanks Tim for the tipoff. What do peeps think?

Buddy’s piece “The Information Man” featured at the Individual World Championship Slam 2006, in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

(oh and to avoid the comments this track comes with JJJ styled language warning… )

Feature Clip - Spoken Word Journey

I loved this.

Idea 2 – Separate Church and State Marriage

So following ‘adopt an activist’, the second of the crazy ideas I have raised over the last few years in the church is to separate Christian Marriage from State Marriage.

Now this idea has been bubbling for many years and pops back in at most weddings I attend. It is to do with discrimination.

During a Christian wedding the minister makes a statement about Christian marriage and does the vows and declares them marriage in the eyes of God and the church…. Then it is time to sign the marriage certificate. So the legal bit in the eyes of the state is really the signing of the marriage certificate. What if that was optional as something we do if we chose to outside of the Christian marriage service/understanding.

Why?? I hear you pondering?

Well because I remember the Canberra government (2006) passing a law about ‘civil union’ and the federal government overturning this bill because it was about same sex ‘marriage’.   The argument used was that marriage in Australia is viewed under a Christian understanding and that is between a man and a woman. The bill gave rights similar to marriage but did not call it marriage.  Christian marriage (like most major religions) is between a man and a woman but that is no reason for the State to use a religious groups perspective to discriminate between the legal validity of same sex civil unions. Who will look to the rights of those keen to be in a civil union and know that property, children, duty of care etc will be in the hands of their partner? I would have thought the state’s role would be to not discriminate. But they have and they have used our faith as the reason.

The separation of the Christian marriage from State marriage would leave the Government to form their own understanding of marriage and not hide behind the Christian’s understanding while discriminating against same sex couples.

Now you smell what I’m cooking?

Idea 1 - Adopt an Activist

I thought I would share a few crazy ideas I have raised over the last few years in the church. First off the rank…

Adopt an Activist

This idea is sparked by conversations I have had about Christian activists glamourising arrestable components of actions. You know the feel of the speakers talk with the push to prove your stripes by getting arrested.

Basically if feel like the charismatic/Pentecostal version of “I used to be a drug addict then I found Jesus” story but for the lefty mob it reads “I used to be a normal Christian but then I got political and arrested”.

My problem with this push is not the arrestable component in the actions or even the challenge for us to care enough for (insert cause/people here) to get over the fear of being arrested and do something. It is the Christian class warfare of ‘Radical’ Disciples vs ‘Piss Weak’ Disciples.

I have had a few conversations with friends I know who have been arrested in actions and they go into this level of protest with their eyes open. They talk of the need for supporters to help with the legal costs, get the message out of why they did it, the desire for people to write them letters while in gaol and friends to visit them and their families, partners and mothers. This conversation ends up sounding more like the body of Christ, the church to me than earning stripes.  The Age authorised version of the Bible would have lines like ‘are all prophets, are all teachers, are all arrested? No but we all play our part.’

Hence I wonder what our church would be like if every church adopted an activist. The church supports, helps fund and care for the activist while engaging strongly in various causes/issues.  Imagine even just our vicmanian UCA with only 20-30 activists prepared to go in for a better world supported by the rest of our church…..

The Olympics…

Rewind…

Great post over at shauninmann.com in regards to a passage from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five:

It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

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CafePraxis how many lattes is too many?

Hi Guys
I have been asked about being on some panels and running cafepraxis at UNOH’s Surrender in July 18-20, 2008 at Belgrave Heights. (BTW- UNOH=urban neighbours of hope)

But I wonder how many events do we want to run the cafe at this year? Here is a possible list.

• Grassroots (sacred space, cafe & workshops/action) - April
• SYG (Urban Seed’s sacred space, cafe & biblestudy/chat) - June
• Surrender(cafe venue & action info, part of the panels), - July
• Praxis08 (so wee have good coffee at our gathering ) - Sept
• maybe a venue at NCYC09???maybe not? (Cafe space and panels????) - Jan

Is this too many places. It feels like a lot. I want it to be a fun and different way to chat about justice and discipleship and not a pain for volunteers.

Other motivation is that profits go into our praxis08 gathering to help people afford it.

Ideas? Thoughts?

Age’s Angels

Just imagine some cheesy theme music for a sec…..

“Hello Angels….. Your mission today is to freeze in Fed square, dockland, southbank, flinders steps with stop the traffik flyers - people should not be bought and sold. Age”

You may have notice a new widget on the side bar. “Age’s Angels”

It connects you to a site call twitter that bounces messages to web spaces and mobile phones from people - in this case me.

Rus was talking to me about twitter and the case below of an activist being able to alert his friends and lawyer when he was arrested in Egypt. The conversation flowed into doing flash mobbing styled protest ‘properly’ with large numbers like the “stop the traffik” one I led a couple of weeks back. Then the chat flowed to keeping morepraxis friends up to date with what actions and events etc are going on and this led to wondering about playing crowd games during NCYC09. So this was enough of a strange mix and fun conversation to convince me to give it a try. This is where you can sign up http://twitter.com/agegreenwood

My current concerns are around not wanting to spam peoples phones with amazing update insights into my life such as ‘drinking a coffee’, ‘playing with my kids’ etc. It is all a bit more ‘me’ focused than I really like so I am interested in other thoughts about how we could use this tool. Others experiences of it?

You will see on the side bar what I am currently thinking about posting - opportunities, updates and actions - plus a bit of fun in a large crowd or two. (Tap the arrow down to see past texts)

During large actions and weeks like NCYC when I may have fun with say 150-200 angels in the 2000 strong crowd I will pre warn other angels to turn off their phone updates. It is good to see that twitter allows you to choose when and if you receive messages to your phone or not.

So I am just starting to find out about what we can do with this. Feel free to influence me

Age

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Sorry

Well it happened!!!!  It seems a weird mix of emotions that saying ’sorry’ wells in me the need to celebrate.

I’m sure most have seen it but just in case.

Links and a full transcript here

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