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Like me you might have enjoyed the benefits of the web 2.0 revolution, but also be wary of the harm it is doing.
I found a book by Andrew Keen, he’s a silicon valley insider, who reveals the dark side of the current technology utopia.
He describes how egotism, meets bad taste, and leads to mob rule, and the result of things being interacted with by what is most ‘popular’, rather than what is most useful, helpful, accurate etc.
Keep that in mind next time you are ‘googling’ something, and the results are what is most ‘popular’.
He talks about how we are losing the ability to think, as a generation is raised that think cutting and pasting some-else’s material on a blog is an original and creative act.
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Jonathan writes… I hear it quite often on a Monday or Tuesday afternoon: ‘I can’t wait until the weekend!’ Sometimes I can relate to that feeling depending on my schedule but mostly I wonder what the person is trying to say: What is behind the comment? What are they trying to escape from in the moment that isn’t satisfying? What am I? Often it is to do with a job that doesn’t fit the person doing it, a relationship that is tricky, a hobby that they can’t wait to resume in their free time (outside work)… because when they do ‘THAT THING’ they feel truly alive. Yet, I am convinced that when we live for Fridays we fail to truly live.I believe with increasing conviction that learning to live in the moment is the secret to living a life in abundance!
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I got this from Jonny Baker, some information for a Blah event that’s coming up, with two great writers. Pass it on.
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“Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat are over in the UK doing some stuff for Bristol diocese.We have managed to scoop them up to do three blah… days. I absolutely love their book Colossians Remixed and have been a fan of Brian’s writing over the years. His book Transforming Vision changed my life!
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Laure Anne writes… For the last few months I’ve felt like I’m in a spiritual ‘no mans land’. What do I mean by that you might ask?Many will be familiar with the analogy of the ‘mountain top’ and ‘valley’. The mountain top being a place of excitement, reward, happiness, a place where you can see the world from a bigger perspective. A place of sunshine and joy. A place where you feel literally on top of the world.
The valley is the opposite – a place of darkness, a place of death, a place of pain, of fear, of loneliness, of struggle. A place where it’s difficult to see the world, because your view is mired by looming landscape making you feel small and insignificant. Valley” experiences may also be associated with the ‘desertplace’ or ‘wilderness’. Continue reading »
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I’m having major problems with my word press installation, so please excuse any lack of posting, and lack of editing on my last post.
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‘Identity politics’ is the reduction of an individual, an embodiment of their entire identity as a whole, around maybe one thing they are associated with.
I was reminded of this on my last recent trip to the USA. Where democrats and republicans refer to each in short hand derisory terms, on the basis of their political associations.
People are de-humanized, and have their being reduced in totality, so that they can be dismissed as ‘a democrat’, or a ‘republican’. In the UK, we might see a conservative MP, and dismiss anything he has to say, because he is ‘privilege public school Tory’.
And the church does this all the time, or rather the Christians in church do this, as people have always done.
One of the helpful things the emerging church has done, is to expose some of these lazy, ill informed, and incorrect reductionisms. Some of the most common identity reductions have been ‘they’re just a liberal’, and as many turn their attention to the emerging church we hear ‘those emerging church people’, as short hand for a variety of pejoratives.
And it is the exclusion of ‘identity politics’ that a large part of the emerging church has sought to respond to.
Yet is the emerging church, just as guilty of ‘identity politics’, reducing people to ‘they are just an evangelical’, with lazy stereotypes and straw men, as it seeks to criticize the church. Is the emerging church ultimately just as exclusive with it’s own ‘identity politics’.
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Lynn writes… I’ve been having a bit of an identity crisis lately and I don’t think I’m alone. As in the words of one of my daughter’s Dr. Seuss books “There are days when I’m not sure who or what I am.” I am, of course, talking about how I describe my faith, my brand of Christianity, my belief system or what ever else you would like to call it. I’ve been involved with the emerging church movement / new ways of thinking for some years now. Six months ago I would have been quite comfortable describing myself as an “emerging-missional” these days I’m not so quick off the block. I’m realizing that there are lots of elements to my faith that make up my individual walk with God. Emerging, missional, monastic and even traditional all feature in my make up. For weeks now I’ve been wondering why identification is so important to us as individuals. Maybe it’s to do with belonging? If I owned up to some of my traditional beliefs / values I might no longer belong with my post modern friends, even though I very much have a post modern view?
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Are you a blogger and would like some free books to review, then see this request below.
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The Ooze, the Web’s most prolific ‘emerging church & friends’ website, is looking for 50 participants in a unique partnership with quality publishers. You will be mailed books for blog review on an every-other-month to quarterly basis, free of charge. These are books on culture, theology, church history, justice, faith & science, global issues, spirituality, novels–you name it. The Ooze pre-screens each title brought up for our consideration to ensure you that it is a book of singular distinction.
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May we find Jesus this easter weekend, bringing our loss and pain to His cross, and there find Him and the power of his resurrection.
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You asked, and now it’s available. My site now has full and partial RSS feeds.
Links to the feeds are at the bottom of the site, and if your browser/news reader auto detects feeds, you’ll see the option for the full or partial feed.
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