Pilgrim's Progress

Talking of Time

Time for a break ... am off now till mid August, so probably no postings till then. Have a great summer!

New Kinds of Time

Here are some new kinds of time for a consumer culture:

(P.S. Not to be taken too literally - just playing with some ideas!)

Splink (n.) - the time it takes for an activity to cease to be exciting or stimulating or pleasing. Once the splink has expired it is difficult to maintain concentration or focus, so the activity is often abandoned, boredom sets in, and the individual wanders off in search of fresh stimulation. Splink time is "consumer time" - the time it takes to lose the buzz after an act of consumption.

Children naturally have short splinks and need to be constantly entertained. However, in our over-stimulated culture, splink length can remain short into adult life if the individual remains committed to a pleasure-seeking lifestyle.

However ...

Time to Stop and Stare

Back to the beach today ... more time to stop and stare.

Tomorrow I'm helping out at the DREAM EXPERIENCE at the St Helens Show ... I trust many show visitors will also take the opportunity to stop and think ... and catch a glimpse of something above and beyond.

More Than Skin Deep?

Felt the need for a blog redesign ... but it's still the same content underneath ... a blog doesn't really matter, but what about a life? A "new expression of church"? Same old stuff redesigned?

This is not a call to sever ourselves from the past, far from it, but rather to be honest about the new stuff we're coming out with.

Open Our Eyes

A prayer for every time the Bible is opened ...

P.S. There's a secret hidden in the verse above. It's amazing what comes to light when the text is examined more closely, and what is missed if we skate over it too quickly.

Tired of Shallow Consumerianity

"Christian Spiritual Formation is really hammered out in the harsh realities of ordinary life—ear infections and broken arms and bosses filled with guile and stock market slumps and neighbors who deceive. Hence, these are the very places where our hardest study and most careful work in Spiritual Formation must go on."
(Richard Foster in his article on The Ooze).

And now, if you'll forgive me, a rant:

1. I'm tired of marketing for Christian products (books, worship CDs, conferences) that is dishonest and worldly and full of shallow promises that only fuel consumerist spending habits and offer false shortcuts to true worship and holiness.
2. I'm tired of worship albums that promise to lift me into the presence of God if I buy and listen to them.
3. I'm tired of Christian books that claim they'll transform my life.

I speak to myself as much as anyone - I'm a sucker for good packaging, but I'm tired of letting myself be manipulated by shallow consumerism sprinkled with holy water, which is what too much Christian marketing amounts to. For related thoughts, check out Richard White's blog.

Does anyone else ever feel like having a good clearout and just giving stuff away?

The Meaning of BLIFF

Bliff (n.) - one's existence on the blogosphere (from the Greek "Blios" meaning "blog life)
Blobligation (n.) - the sense that one ought to post something even when there's nothing to say right now.
Blunderdogging (v.) - what one does when one considers oneself a newcomer to the blogosphere whose blog is not yet worthy of widespread acclaim.
Blenvy (n.) - the nagging sense that someone else's blog is more interesting or more worthy of attention
Blanity (n.) - the nagging sense that one's own blog is more interesting or more worthy of attention
Bletdown (n.) - the nagging sense that one's most recent post was motivated by blobligation. (see also Blemptiness (n.))
Blemptiness (n.) - that nagging sense that one's most recent post was motivated both by blobligation and blenvy
Blespair (v.) - to experience a sudden vacuous anxiety that you might be pouring your soul into the ether and no-one's reading it (see also Bloblivion (n.))
Blacuum (n.) - the imaginary and terrifying and possibly inhospitable "space" into which one pours one's soul regularly through blogging. When one ponders this, one normally experiences blespair.
Blorry (pronounced blurry) (n.) a sudden tensing of the stomach as you realise you've poured all your gripes into a blog post and your boss or your bishop might have read it
Blacktrack (v.) - to revisit and edit an earlier blog following an attack of blorry

Other additions to the blictionary?

Am I Getting Through To You?

We live in an area with a fair bit of anti-social behaviour on the streets, and groups of kids roaming round aimlessly often getting into trouble. Yet when I have spoken to young lads one-on-one, in various contexts, including prison, they are usually vulnerable and open and searching.

This "offering" was inspired by a bunch of street kids I saw yesterday, and I came home with a renewed desire to reach them with the liberating good news of the Christian gospel.

Alpha Male

Alpha Male, Mr Bombastic
With your underage street crew
Trailing meekly behind you,
Jostling round your table to catch the crumbs
Of respect and acceptance
That you grasp in a tight fist

But you ain't got none to give
Because you've withdrawn in a prickly shell
Your soul wrapped in plastic
Alpha Male, Mr Bombastic

You pick up the first brick
And beat your chest as the curtains twitch
You terrorise the 'hood,
You and your cocky brood
But underneath your nylon skin
The lights are on but no-one's in
The verdict of the neighbourhood jury
Is you're all sound and fury

If you come at me with your bravado
It doesn't take long to see right through you
Into your brittle soul
Where your woundedness screams to be made whole
I picked up your distress call easily
Because I'm scanning the frequencies
The cry of your broken heart
Is bold and emphatic
Alpha Male, Mr Bombastic

But I'm not going to feed your brokenness
By cowering at your destructiveness
So step away from your posse
And your self-made podium
And come, let us reason together
Here on these streets
Or at visiting time in the barbed wire perimeter

If your soul feels empty
I know how you can fill it
One beggar to another who's found a rich supply
Not crumbs from the table but too much to satisfy
A slow train to freedom if you'll only get on it
Alpha Male, Mr Bombastic.

RKL 13.7.04

A Voice and Not an Echo

"People recognise when someone has something to say and flock to listen ... so often we are echoes, repeating what we have been told with little conviction and no authority ... we find our voice when we find God in the desert." (Mike Pilavachi in "Wasteland"p56,7)

Living in a postmodern cut-and-paste culture, where we're used to creating messages by rearranging existing ideas in new configurations. I believe that sooner or later each of us will hear God's call to leave the soundbyte culture behind and head out into the wild places and find our own voice.

"Boys, you've got to find your own voice. If you leave it too late to look, you might never find it at all"
(Mr Keating in "Dead Poets' Society")

I want to be a voice and not an echo.

Click here for a short anim ... (Flash again: about 30K, 7 sec@56K)

Can't See Heaven for the Flashing Lights

Pictures best viewed with "I Want More" from new Faithless album "No Roots" in the background (Spotted it on Playlist of Hopeful Amphibian's blog)

Ideas and visions for new expressions of church can be very "structural" i.e. what's new church going to be made of?

These snaphots of the foyer of the City Art Gallery in Manchester reminded me that it doesn't matter what the lifts and stairs are made of, or how attractive they look. The question in worship is "where will they take us if we climb them?"

Are worshippers taken up into the presence of God, or do they stay on ground level oohing and aahing at the nice "architecture"? (It is nice architecture though!)

I want worshippers to be curious - what will happen if I go with this? Where might it end up? Do we show them where the first step is? Where the lift button is? Is it obvious where to start climbing should they wish to do so?

Recent experience would suggest that the first step in creating curiosity might be asking the right question and resisting the temptation to rush in with an immediate answer.

As mentioned in a previous post, someone said recently that at the end of the Christian basics course in which we used a Matrix clip, they were curious "to follow the rabbithole to see where it went."

Whatever is lovely ...

So many voices out there screaming for our attention ... it's so easy to get distracted.

Round and Round it Goes

Returning to one of my favourite themes with this new animation, "Self-Made Man". To a postmodern mind, identity is what you make it ... at best, the endless freedom to create, at worst, a never ending search for the true self.

I wonder how many young (or not so young?) people grow up feeling trapped in this endless loop of continual reinvention in search of self ...

Click here to view it. (Flash 6; about 200K) ...

(P.S. When it gets to the end, press [Ctr]+"R" together to play from the start. It maybe moves a bit too fast to get it all first time round!)

Why the Long Face?

Taking infant school assemblies are great - they're so responsive. Today we did "Jonah and the Whale" except that the whale was an inflatable shark with a water pistol concealed behind it, which was used to great effect (by me of course).

(PS When it gets to the storm, get the kids to make noises, and for the stormy sea do a "mexican wave". Great fun.)

Also thinking about the scenes from around the country when England scored - no inhibitions there!

Got me thinking about how people behave in church, and why it is that such glorious good news leaves us so often unmoved.

"Will you not revive us again, that your people might rejoice in you?" (Psalm 85:6)

More, Lord ...