a community in ideals

“What is your community dream? Can you write it down and email me? I want the ideals at this stage – what does that look like for you? Hope you're doing well. a”

What is my community dream. I was this week challenged to consider my ambitions.. I guess this is a second prompting. On this theme of things hoped for, of which community occupies a central junction, I am looking for a hope of a mode of direction, a force of purpose that has all of a zest for life in its specificity without committing itself to the tidy bounds of my imagination and my present blindnesses of circumstance, I'm looking for a hope measurable without being modernist, observable without a suppression of mystery, hopeful without resorting to a loose canon naiveté.

The question is not unlike my own favourite, “What home are you hoping for?” I will try not to write my own question over yours, however indivisible the two notions are.

What is my community dream?

I think at the end I want my life, relationships and education, home, resources and energy to have born fruit of Place, ornament, and adventure. A community I hope in will entail a relentless commitment to hospitality and intergenerationality and learning and Sabbath. I want to see a household so ordered as to catalyse healing, a body quietly committed to the knowledge that there is a God whose will it is that dead people come alive.

With knowing reservations about the term 'ideal' I use it as it was in the question, but hope it will not induce notions of Platonic form or utopian dreams.

An ideal of agriculture, or redeeming soil, of knowing the freedom, if one of poverty, that comes in being submitted to the weather, rather than the oil economy. Not a paranoid self-sufficiency, religiously fair-trade, pathologically localist, neurotically organic, but rather a happy abandon and on going pursuit of the possibilities of imperfect foods nurtured by friends from their patch of Earth towards a gradually more completely integrated, relational, gift sort of diet..

An ideal of art, music and poetry. The pleasure of participation in imperfect art, providing space for the expression of story, legitimising ornament. Yes to an artist in residence, yes to film nights and formal occasions, but above and beyond that, slow space in the everyday for impromptu collaboration, I'm not sure how to aim for this without it being contrived. A precedent needs to be set that legitimises the frivolous, and affirms excellence, and laughs at silly things made along the way. This is a fruit we will know community by rather than the blueprint of some 'ideal' wrought by force of will, conformed by the discipline of the unwilling. To allow a community to be organically creative, it seems to me, needs to be freed from whatever it is that so suffocates the larger part of the world that settles for a blandly-culture-consuming, one-dimensionally-pragmatic, brutally-elitist or religious-prohibitionist approach to art and delight.

An ideal of intergenerationality. I think fleeting gaggles of dinky twenty and thirty somethings can do a pretty good run at playing community, burning the candle at both ends, hindered by no weaker parties, no kids, no aged relations. And within the limits of a project, phenomenal good can be effected, poor served, hungry fed, schools built. There is a better use for these the most energetic years of life, indeed a better arena in which to dream and effect those same saving, school building dreams. I believe that if we have kids and parents on board, with the baggage that entails, and if we submit ourselves to the inconveniences of place over time, we lay the foundations for such joy, wisdom and efficacy. I do not want to die the long death of the demographic ghetto, of cruise ships and bridge clubs and wasted old age, but I will unless I earn the right to serve within an intergenerational community now. Further I do not want to see my kids for but an hour a day and a few holiday weeks of the year, these are the death of wisdom for the young and the theft of all that Fox and Amie offer to our view of the world, all the refreshing colour, surprise and imagination. So, the ideal of intergenerational community so to set in motion something which at least has the potential to live breathe and grow in perpetuity.

An ideal of growth. Unbranded but infectious, unselfconscious but purposive. Growth is a tainted word, for me evoking number bashing church growth types hoping to calculate the world into the kingdom. Growth should imply life, and importantly it should celebrate that a consistent DNA is at work and effective regardless of size, and by this give hope that here in the mustard seed knot of two or three of us gathered is the beginning of something. So growth is to say that size categorically doesn't matter. Perhaps this leans on the hospitality imperative.

An ideal of industry, craft, the provision of work. So to prevent the creation of a dormitory ghetto that retreats and serves only itself and relies on an economy beyond. An ideal of a provocative economy. Any household is an economic identity, a tool for conducting dominion through, a order for managing resources through, and here in Oval we are not doing anything radical, we are in all fairly self-serving, but people are startled at what I pay to be here. It is good, because it allows me to volunteer in Singapore next year, and it is good because it allows me to imagine the possibilities that exist in the given fabric of London.

An ideal of learning. I would have bookcases for walls. This may be my own delight rather than a theme applicable to a whole community. I love the thoughts of thinkers. I love the feel of books. I am concerned at the disembodied head space of academia. I want for a mode of knowledge that is meaningful and every day.

An ideal of leadership and accountability. I'm not sure about this. The management of a body, the degree of submission, a line before cultdom, the role of belief, the nature of democracy.. There needs to be a cause beyond the comfort of the parties involved, both/and God and something geographic.. Not sure.

How are these, are they making sense as a whole? I want a big front door which is never locked, a long dining table, gathered strangers about the piano, high chairs and wheel chairs and miscellaneous reclaimed chairs, a workshop out back beyond a long allotment garden, a bike rack hallway, semi-autonomous cells fused under a shared architecture in wood and stone, every colour joinery, murals we made, space to work from, rest under and play between..

of being sent

I knew where I was in London, here I'm not so sure.

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Because the readership of phil-blogs enjoys polemic to chew on and because this house is so empty - I've only the parents to banter these with and that only after they've burnt their day trying to keep the NHS from toppling over - I am posting these here. They are not questions keeping me up at night or unravelling faith.

Of Mission and the Environment: I am over-due posting “On why I am not an Environmentalist”. It can be reduced here to the conclusion that it is an -ism predicated on guilt-driven behaviour modification rather than grace-fuelled heart change, it is too small an '-ism to ascribe value to nature, too small to motivate saving action and ultimately never far reaching enough to tackle the issue at the root of environmental degradation. However, to we who believe we have an -ism big enough, in the -ism become flesh who dwelt among us, the challenge presents itself: How shall we then fly? Shall we then fly? Neatly and savagely worded by the man himself in Matt 23v15. Modern mission carries with it all the colonial baggage of former folly if we are uncritically complicit by flying on, and thereby preaching the Good News of, imperially cheap oil.

Of Prayer Letters: There is a typology of dispatch assigned its own genre, the prayer letter, it presupposes a certain christianism in its readership that I would be at error to presume, further, it implies that there should exists non-prayer letters, ones concerned to be celebrating with gratitude every gift gifted and expressing with humility those needs needed. So these letters will be letters.

Of Prayer Letter etiquette: I'm just going to batch you all who RSVP to my first in a spiritual spam bcc, I cannot say that this is what Jesus would have done, and I am not unaware of the contradictions of its disintimacy. Anyone on this, advice on carbon copying, techonology and authenticity?

Of Praying and Receiving Prayer: Something else I have given time to chewing on in this empty house, a fear of what may tacitly affirm an arbitrary dichotomy of those whom we send in prayer, and those, the civilian laity, who do so called ordinary work - a divisive splitting of ones whom the church supports financially and those expected to make their own tents. So I will venture timidly on but probably make no great length answering accusations of a brazen sense of entitlement or unqualified notion of the desert of this cause over and above the urgent and glaring needs of the global unfed and enslaved and the more local unreached or unhoused.

Of self-conscious 'Christian' work: There are two soundbites which sound great in a sermon but muddy the water somewhat when wrestling with the imminent practicalities of christian work in a mission context 'Mission is not crossing the sea, it's seeing the cross' and 'Christian: good noun, poor adjective'. The first, valid at one level that the sum of mission is not the airfare, tacitly makes light of the challenge of crossing the sea. The latter, again valid in trying to reign in the nominal and shed the sprawl of paraphernalia calling itself 'Christian Shampoo' risks losing a category of helpful distinction. That which we create both aids us in our task of, and is imprinted with the image and story of, patience, generosity, self-control, joy.. If we are going to discount 'Christian' for this purpose, RB should supply us with another and better adjective to label our ambitions.

Of Sending and Being Sent: For those considering mission themselves I would stress the importance of a meditation on Rom10v15, to which must be added in its tidy cascade, "..And how are they to be sent unless they pause long enough to belong?"

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..an addiction to hands and feet.

the bothersome man

Here was a very strong film, accidentally apt in my recent trickle of films on this bleak theme. I was not alone in being remembered of Kitchen Stories, further, the blurb cites Jacques Tati as precedent comedy, this film would have sat happily on the bill of the Bri's last film weekend, and joins a cloud of urgent appeals to reflect on the Hells we build for ourselves. Other rememberances included the conversion by music piped into the dusty cracks of socialism's architecture as the Lives of Others. And the heroic tunnelling of Shawshank. And the childlessness of Children of Men.

“Nothing tastes..”

We know Hell when we see it, we know it, no one need invoke Theology, we know the grind of number punching in a bleak dead end nameless cubicle, affection without commitment, food without flavour, fact without meaning. Hell is as close as breathing, as near as hands and feet.

Cycles, circles, repetition and Hell. Nothing ends, nothing begins, nothing risks, nothing hurts, most of all nothing hopes. There are no children, no age, no birth, so the fire of the present state burns without ceasing yet does not consume. In Hell, we find ourselves going through the contextless motions of a closed circuit reality, our bus has arrived from nowhere and this never ends, all that we have left to do is rearrange our measurable utilities, ordering our lives as an elaborate game of distraction.

Polygamy and Hell. How shall we then love? We all watching winced audibly at the Hell of his wife's apathy, her concern privileging the trivial and practical over any zest for life, love or meaning. There equally is a Hell in his hypocrisy and commitment-averse, covenant-averse connubial dabblings. So enter the Great Divorce.

'Azure', 'Cool Coral', and the Hell of branding's assault to language. Here we see that in Hell nothing has a quality of its own, only those relative and feeble assigned titles claimed by Babel's brands under whose banners we find security. Pointed that, of all things, they should discuss colour in a world so desaturated, in a film whose palette is all of shades of grey. Here in Bothersome, where colour has ceased even to be a memory, these blind semantic jousts hold table in knowing small talks debating branded colours, so now for us, sometimes, with 'community'.

On that, shallow expression, dispassionate small talk, and the Hell of social niceties. Everything is easy, everything is polite, everything follows its predictable, appropriate, conservative course. Can we ascribe moral categories to the gravity of that absent in small talked exchanges, what consequences a lack of imagination, what fallout propriety's sacred monopoly?

Further Hells are here shown in numb comforts, sound-proofed, swept-clean, sanitised, uncluttered, hard-landscaped urban environments, unstoried, anonymous and hermetically sealed.

Could we discuss: Potted plants, affected nature and Hell. Gratuitous gore, Derrida's zombies and Hell. Mies furniture and Hell. Electric cars and Hell. The slow sliding camera pan, inhuman in its calculation and Hell. Watch this film, beautifully-crafted, it offers layers of metaphor beyond even its own challenging thoughtful intentionality.

So, Hope breaking in, hope of sponge cake, a memory of former order, Hope in the sweat of physical work, real work alongside fellow Hopers. Hope breaks in phenomenologically. Hell's antithesis Is as it is beheld, it Is as it is anticipated. The Bothersome Man would have us be God-botherers just as zealously as we are bothersome to our given city by so doing, and praying and digging a Heb13:13 tunnel, never surrendered to the ever-pressing banality of empire.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808185/

caroles

not one to a cajole
if you'd like to carole
there's a superlative service this sunday
with all of the hits in,
mince pies and blitzen
mulled wine and mittens..

home

man on wire - (labri)

Here is a breath-taking film to stagger out of. Here is subversion of Babel. Here is a picture of the fine line between madness and genius. Here is a fearlessness in death. Here the gift of wire-walking is married perfectly to the gift of faith, faith, that passionate drive to do it, that infectious zest for the unpragmatic. If a faith such as his bears this fruit, offers this message, and moves people to imagine another way, what then of your faith, what then of mine. At every new combing of this spectacle, my own small minded submission to a life less adventurous is convicted. All the fearful ways I move from day to day, ensuring bread is on the table, that no one gets offended and that decency and propriety retain their place in my line of worship.

And there is a temptation to worship this man, and yet this heist deflates as our proud but still compelling hero allows himself the moral failure, the model failure of abandoning the love of his youth. The honest and untriumphant conclusion allows the art to stand as the gift it should be. That he would want such an honest biopic to be made is a certain repentance.

Do the dishonest means by which the team achieved their beautiful end detract from its vitality, or does the beauty of the act pour scorn on our petty morals? In what ways might or ought our lives demand a why to be asked by passing pedestrians?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1155592/

tsotsi - (labri)

The rolled dice which open the film are lots cast by the silent oppressor HIV. The baby here is Post-Apartheid South Africa and Tsotsi would be its mother (this, Ellis ventures, is evidenced in dialogue, in lighting the illusion of breasts, and in the powdered milk for mothers without milk). Fathers here are dog-crippling, culprit mine-owners, Mothers are the HIV victims, maybe. So we look for a way out of a cycle of violence and blame. Set against the backdrop of “HIV/AIDs affects everyone” billboards, we see this truth played out but Tsotsi moves in the film from a victim to one who takes responsibility.

'Decency', a notion the character Boston espouses, is illustrated in those characters who are most aware of beauty where they are, the cripple who likes to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, Miriam who delights in the colour and light of broken glass and who allows herself to be moved to expression of joy and sadness – rather than bottled into the violence of gang crime. Decency is to be found in something fragile beyond ourself, in this way love and beauty save us?

The baby is Moses in his basket. Here Moses happens into the camp of the oppressing force of gang violence and is there cared for by a certain Miriam and this helpless babe by his vulnerability is the bringer of some measure of peace. The baby of a new South Africa demands to be nurtured both by the rich and the poor, the guns must be put down, rightful ownership restored.

Something limited about the production and design might better have suited a theatre, compared perhaps to Slumdog, which takes better advantage of the fabric of sprawl, with its high contrast and hand-held sprints under and over. There is much to love in the film but I never really felt the film was necessary, essentially why did he pick up the baby?

If we adopted children would Generation Y live with more decency?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468565/