Archive for July, 2005
Tuesday, July 19th, 2005
I installed Skype today, inspired by Steve Addison of World Changers.
Within minutes I had a call from Bessie Pereira of Oikos House Church network, following up plans to bring her to Queensland in October. A Melbourne to Brisbane phone call on the internet - for the cost of internet connection only.
The sound quality was better than a normal phone call. I believe it will improve with the use of a headset.
My user name is “postkiwi”. Give me a call when you’re free.
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Tuesday, July 19th, 2005
Here’s an article I’ve just written for Jubilee Primary School newsletter. It’s a school connected with four Christian churches - Catholic, Anglican, Uniting and Apostolic.
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What’s been the most important investment you’ve ever made? Perhaps it’s investment in a house? Or in an engagement or wedding ring? Maybe it’s an investment in education? I’m not looking for the right answer. What I’m looking for is the point at which we realize that we’ve found something worth investing in. We’re prepared to go without some things because we need all our resources for this purchase.
When my wife and I bought our first home we lived like paupers for a while as we saved for a deposit. Paying rent each week, we couldn’t easily find the money to put a deposit down. Both of us came from large families and there was no inheritance expected. We would have had to wait a much longer time if it hadn’t been for the generosity of friends who helped us out with an interest free loan. But when it came time to pay the legal fees, valuation fees and broker’s fees, we had to find the cash. We found buyers for our television, book and music collections.
That’s the kind of scenario Jesus is talking about in many of his stories. In Matthew 13:44-46, he says, “The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when someone finds a treasure hidden in a field and buries it again. A person like that is happy and goes and sells everything in order to buy that field. The kingdom of heaven is like what happens when a shop owner is looking for fine pearls. After finding a very valuable one, the owner goes and sells everything in order to buy that pearl.” (Contemporary English Version)
So how does that apply to being part of a school community? The “kingdom of heaven” Jesus refers to is not the end result of a warring crusade against infidels - as portrayed in the recent movie. It’s about living in community with others around us, reflecting the character of God. It involves adults and children with attitudes and actions that show God’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, generosity, gentleness, and self control.
There is a cost involved in following in the footsteps of Jesus. I’m glad he acknowledges that. Putting into practice God’s intentions for community living may mean giving up some of the lifestyle we find precious. Looking out for others may mean having less time to ourselves. Being part of a diverse group of Jesus followers may mean we have to give up the luxury of being with people just like us. We may even be called to give up “being right” all the time.
I’ve written about the cost. But Jesus reminds us that we’re prepared to pay that cost when we discover a passion for a new way of living. That excitement comes when we learn to see the big picture of our lives together. We invest in the future when we get a taste of the potential that comes from this time together now.
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Monday, July 18th, 2005
I finally succumbed, after days of enticement, to downloading Google Earth on to the laptop. I’ve used Google Maps before, but now with the acquisition of Keyhole, Google have rolled out an interactive community based on global satellites.
The software (10 MB) is only available for PCs. It includes maps and is able to calculate distances and routes from one location to another.
Pictured above is our home on the Gold Coast, the block with the green (CG) shading over it. We’re in a cul de sac as you can see. You can catch a few cars in the fly over of our suburb. Only thing is the photos are about 12 months out of date. So there’s not too much danger of being spied on in real time. We can see who’s got swimming pools in the back yard now.
I took a look at my home towns in New Zealand and was a little disappointed. Obviously the Gold Coast has more money invested in aerial photographs. Eventually though I imagine NZ shepherds will be able to keep an eye on the flocks from their computers!
Craig at Mountain Masala suggests using Google Earth during the prayers for the world at church. What a good idea. It certainly beats using an earth ball to stand in for the world and having it bounce on to the communion table, knocking over the chalice and bread and offending sensitive people.
Posted in Worth Reading, Worth Viewing | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 18th, 2005
Posted this morning on Victor Turner’s concept of ‘liminal space’ and its connection with Romans 8 - at [Praxis], daily reflections on Scripture.
I first engaged with Victor Turner’s work on liminality while reading for a course on postmodernity and ritual at San Francisco Theological Seminary, back in 1999. I found Turner’s work liberating.
The concept of liminal space was developed in Turner’s book, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Emerging approaches to worship need to take seriously what Turner calls ‘liminal symbols’, symbols that have a common intellectual and emotional meaning for members of the group, qualiffied and enriched by the unique perspectives of each member of the community. These liminal symbols come to reflect the collective experience of the group.
Another aspect of liminality in shared worship is the slowing down of time - in which participants step outside the normal effectiveness-based tempo of life to re-engage with God in a mystical relational space.
In his book, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, Turner applies his thinking on liminality to the arts, exploring the ways in which community values are supported and challenged by cultural forms.
Turner introduces the concept of the ‘liminoid’ - idisonycratic, quirky forms generated by individuals or schools, competing with one another for recognition. These are often parts of social critiques, exposing injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities of mainstream economic and political structures and organisations. Ironically the liminoid works best when it is treated like a commodity by the community, even as it challenges the values of that community.
Back in 1999 as I was reading this I explored the Bill Viola SFMOMA exhibition and The Matrix as examples of the liminoid - using familiar forms but challenging our perceptions of reality.
Victor Turner also introduces us to flow and communitas. Flow is the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement, when action follows action according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part. Communitas is that sense of flow experienced by a community.
It’s a good thing we’re not always consciously thinking about all this when planning or participating in worship! But I’m glad to have Turner’s insights available to me when developing environments for fresh experiences of the Divine.
Posted in Blogging, Gospel, Worth Reading | No Comments »
Monday, July 18th, 2005
For those with a chance to get to Canberra in the next four months, I highly recommend taking a walk through Bill Viola’s video and sound installation , “The Passions”, at the National Gallery of Australia.
You can preview “The Passions” at the web site prepared for it.
I walked through his exhibition in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1999 - it was a life changing experience for me. The exhibition is no longer running live but can be ‘postviewed’ here.
The images to the right are from Montage-A-Google
Official Notice
The National Gallery of Australia presents Bill Viola: The Passions, a mesmerising exhibition of recent works by the internationally-renowned American video and sound installation artist. Organised by the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, then shown in London and Madrid, Bill Viola: The Passions is on display in Canberra only, from 29 July until 6 November. As well as 12 works from The Passions series, the exhibition includes Five Angels for the Millennium 2001, an all-enveloping environment of sight and sound.
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Sunday, July 17th, 2005
Graeme Codrington, who’s thesis on inter-generational relationships is listed on the links here, is blogging in a couple of places worth checking out.
Graeme’s thoughts on the emerging church, 21st century technology and the role of young people in the future of the church can be found at Future Church Regeneration.
Graeme is blogging with a team of consultants at Tomorrow Today dot Biz. Living in Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, Graeme has around him a team in South Africa, USA and the UK. As consultants the company provides training frameworks:
Mind the Gap
Bright Young Things
Balancing Today & Tomorrow
Savvy Leadership
Innovation UnManagement
The Organisation of the Future
The World of Women
The Enneagram
Graeme was very popular with the Anglicans in Wellington back in the 1990s. I wonder if he’s ever spoken here in Australia?
Graeme’s book “Mind the Gap” was written with Sue Grant-Marshall, was published by Penguine Global in May 2005. The editorial blurb says:
“This book is for you if you want to know why your 18-year-old son isn’t interested in being a doctor - he wants to save the whales, or why your grandfather gives you Big Band CDs for your birthday. This book is also for you if your secretary knows more than you do or your grandson calls you Peter instead of granddad. In short, this book aims to promote understanding between the generations. This is vitally important in our most defining relationships-those between parents and children. We are so influenced by our parents that understanding them will help us to understand why they influence us - and, therefore, help us to better understand ourselves.
What can be learned from this book can be extended to all other relationships-with bosses, teachers, grandparents and so on. Once you understand their ‘generational’ behaviour, you’ll have a clearer picture of why they are like they are.
So, chuck the tranquillisers and read this book. Life will never be the same again”
Looks as though Graeme’s writing for Baby Boomers.
Posted in Blogging, Generations, Worth Reading | 1 Comment »
Sunday, July 17th, 2005
Weeds among the Wheat
Jesus then told them this story: The kingdom of heaven is like what happened when a farmer scattered good seed in a field. But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and scattered weed seeds in the field and then left. When the plants came up and began to ripen, the farmer’s servants could see the weeds. The servants came and asked, “Sir, didn’t you scatter good seed in your field? Where did these weeds come from?” “An enemy did this,” he replied. His servants then asked, “Do you want us to go out and pull up the weeds?” “No!” he answered. “You might also pull up the wheat. Leave the weeds alone until harvest time. Then I’ll tell my workers to gather the weeds and tie them up and burn them. But I’ll have them store the wheat in my barn.”
Matthew 13:24-30 (Contemporary English Version)
I’ve just finished reading J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. One thing that amazes me is the capacity for Professor Dumbledore to work with staff and students who have the capacity to work for good or bad. Hogwarts as an institution has boundaries. People are expelled for destructive behaviour. But there is a willingness to allow each person to prove themselves in the long term.
As I look at the church around the world, over time, I see the same dynamic at work. Jesus has a huge number of people gathered around him who have proved in the long term to be perpetrators of evil. At the same time there are repentant rascals who have become the most loving proponents of the gospel.
We constantly face the temptation to jump the gun, to anticipate how people will turn out. We have our own criteria by which we decide who’s in and who’s out. And yet Jesus takes the risk with all of us. He knows we have the capacity to blow everything. And he knows we have the capacity to follow through with our redemption. Even when people have blown it Jesus has the capacity to redeem a flawed follower.
At some point each of us will be accountable for the way we’ve lived our lives. But it’s our lives, not the lives of others, that we speak for.
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Sunday, July 17th, 2005
Just finished reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Bought it a Kmart yesterday morning and have managed to share it with one of the family since. Merrin and I had both read a spoiler on Friday night - alerting us to the death of ***** and the identity of the Half Blood Prince. Needless to say the book’s a good read, hard to put down right from the start.
The opening chapter is sited in 10 Downing St, with a newly elected British Prime Minister trying to respond to apparent acts of terrorism. Throughout the book we’re invited to explore with Harry why Dumbledore continues to trust Severus Snape.
Harry comes across more well-adjusted, a relief considering the depression and anxiety that affected him so strongly in Book 5, The Goblet of Fire.
Themes that come through strongly:
Love as a redeeming, saving power (not just romantic love)
Discernment - where do we draw the line in trusting those who have dabbled in ‘the dark arts’?
Power of persuasion as opposed to coercion and confrontation
Ethics of Reading Harry Potter
No doubt there will be some who will not be reading the book on principle. Some people choose to keep anything like this out of their lives, concerned that books and movies can ‘give the Devil a foothold’ in their family’s life. I respect that choice. But personally I don’t see my family being tainted by reading fantasy, especially as we have a God-centred, life-focused life, with a healthy distinction between reality and imagined worlds.
We don’t read the Harry Potter books as literal invitations to practice witchcraft. We read them as set in a ‘make believe’ world in which characters must choose between the paths of truth, love and sharing of resources and the paths of fear, acquisition, domination and evil. It’s life and death, good and evil. However because of the increasing grimness in the Harry Potter series, we’ve said that our youngest child can only read as far as book 3 before she’s 12.
Posted in Worth Reading | 1 Comment »
Saturday, July 16th, 2005
Andrew Hamilton (Hamo) has moved his blog, Backyard Missionary out of Typepad and is now hosting his Wordpress blog with Justin in Seattle (blogging at Radical Congruency).
Given the fact that Hamo lives in Brighton, Western Australia we’re presented with a truly international collaboration. The transition seems to have worked very well - with all the archives intact.
Backyard Missionary features Andrew’s involvement in a local missional community in Brighton, his work with the Baptist youth ministry in Western Australia, coordination of Forge Missional Training network in WA, along with occasional family, fishing and surf reports.
I appreciate Hamo’s capacity to ask honest ‘missionary questions’ and connect us with the international community.
Posted in Emerging Church, Worth Reading | 2 Comments »
Friday, July 15th, 2005
I’ve started two weeks of daily posting at Praxis, a project I’ve joined recently. John O’Keefe, of Ginkworld, started this blog back in June and called for partners. So far we’re the only two.
So what does praxis mean? “Praxis, ['prak-s&s] n: exercise or practice of an art, science, or skill”.
Each week day one of us posts a scripture and reflect on what it might look like when we put it into practice. We’re using ‘The Message’, Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase. There’s room for conversation from anyone…
John’s on the road for the next two weeks, moving to North Carolina, so I’m it until August. Come on over for a visit. Today’s reading is from Matthew 11, Jesus’ invitation to explore the unforced rhythms of grace.
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Postkiwi Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
