"Memory of the Berlin Wall" Copyright, 2012. Geoff Hall

What happens if governments around the world don’t receive a mandate from their people? What if a majority of registered voters choose not to vote? If only 25% of voters choose to vote, whose interests is the government representing? The bigger question of course is how do the 75% majority of the population respond?

Considering the chaos and destruction caused by the grasping of power, why do we vote for our political parties and their sales representatives? Democracy is like any other product, it has currency in an internal market, but recently it has expanded to the export market.

Why is the choice of parties restricted to two in America? What if the population desired more choice, for isn’t choice the sign of a free-market, of a civilised society? How would, how could that political choice be provided? When the global economic crisis has been caused by non-elected trans-national, ultra vires corporations, why are my elected representatives powerless to do anything about it? And, more to the point, why must WE the voters around the world, pay for it?

A word about such ultra vires corporations. If, as is the case, such entities are operating outside of the law, beyond authority, then how should we classify them? Is there an example we can follow? How about this? Usually we call this kind of operation ‘organised crime’ and the authorities are supposed to bring such organisations to justice, yes? But why has all that has happened been government subsidies to aid the continuance of such entities? Are our governments complicit in criminal activities; in subsidising organised crime? Why do we perpetuate this madness?

If the concern of a government was really for peace, for the happiness of its people, then why do they only bring misery? Where has the human equation gone in their policy-making?

We take for granted that the institutions, governmental structures, democratic principles are somehow irreplaceable, that they are the only logical development of a civilised society. The reverse is true, these mechanisms, anti-human machines have become the strongholds of untold misery, perpetuators of slavery in the world today. Is this the kind of world I wish to bring children into?

Such institutions will not change themselves, because the grasping of power has totally corrupted them; they are no longer here to serve the people, but to be served by the people. This is slavery, whether the institutions are spiritual, political, educational, artistic etc. – the only thing that will change them, is if we ourselves are changed. Transformation starts within, not without. God in a box is no God at all. Democracy by the rich, for the rich is a totally different principle than democracy by the people, for the people. Non-cooperation with these mechanisms of slavery is a starting point, but only a starting point.

When the mechanisms of power continue to shock us into compliance – for this is not a peaceful rule for the good of the people – what can we do but refuse this shock treatment by rejecting the diagnosis in the first place.

Erasing the world and the imago within is an attempt to eradicate this memory, so that the corrupted powers can re-image, re-imagine us as slaves and not as free people. Not as precious and beautiful in our fearful and wonderful making, but as limited in price and shelf-life; life as a commodity, sex rendered meaningless, love rendered meaningless, promises of a peace made hollow.

I, you, we…rendered disposable.

Should this process receive our passive assent? Jacques Ellul’s anti-process of resistance moves along this axis: silence, accusation, provocation. In this we have a ‘spirituality of resistance’ for the artist, for the community and thus destroying our collaboration with those who desire to be our owners.

Theoretically related:

• The Church is a Box
• On listening and on not listening
• Affirmation for the world, the flesh and the rebel

I was reading Jacques Ellul’s challenging book ‘Anarchy and Christianity’ and he has this to say about God.

“God’s is a self-limited omnipotence, not through caprice or fancy, but because anything else would be in contradiction with his very being. For beyond power, the dominant and conditioning fact is that the being of God is love.” (p33 Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1991.)

Please note God is ‘self-limiting’ by his love and not limited by humanity’s design; for Designer Gods are not really Gods at all.

So in this bureaucratic regime, with this ‘God in a box’, where are the servants? I’m reminded of the little-known saying, ‘If the Church serves itself, it is no longer the Church.’

So I sat in a Church building on Sunday and heard that the latest model to carry ‘us’ into the future is one of cell groups and church planting! The oxymoron here of course is that you can’t plant churches – organisations, administrations – you can only plant and nurture community. As soon as one starts talking of ‘church planting’ all you are doing is extending the power of the bureaucrat and replacing ‘Thy Kingdom come’ with ‘Our Empire come’. 

Where have ‘we’ gained this church planting insight from? Here we go!

The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. (My emphasis – Tim Keller, ‘Why Plant Churches’. PDF available from www.redeemer2.com)

Please note the use of the word ‘congregations’. So this is not about nurturing community per se, aiding christians to mature in their faith, honouring their calling and vocation in this world. It is simply about numbers, ‘the numerical growth of the Body of Christ.’ Keller’s justification for this is based on a selective reading of the Great Commission, which in his eyes focuses not just on ‘making disciples’, but to baptise them into the new congregation (page 1), it is a ritual undertaken so that one can be a part of the Bureaucracy, the organisation.

Thus ‘church planting’ is all about power and I wouldn’t expect a churchman to offer anything other than a model for growth in the power-base. You cannot plant an Administrative Department, you can only impose it on others! Bureaucrats control, servants serve.

So when the speaker in the Box says that “Community is the Local Church” I begin to see that we need a new context for christian spirituality today, which embraces and nurtures community, common unity, not hierarchically imposed unity, wherein we are only permitted to compliment the thoughts of the Leader. God forbid there should be unity in diversity, that we should follow the little regarded Godhead model!!

Community exists outside of that Box with the neatly written label. The God in the Box is no God at all, but a manufactured replica of the real thing, a simulation. When growth is equated with numbers and not developing maturity in our calling and vocation, in our intimate life with God, one is only after power and we know the end result of power.

As Bonhoeffer noted in ‘Life Together’, the spiritual community “will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis”. Under Keller’s model, discipleship is about making good conformist church members, who have performed certain ‘rites of entry’ and who use Scripture to establish not freedom, but yet another form of slavery. If it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, then why do we collaborate with Empire builders?

Keller ends with this.

New church planting is the only way that we can be sure we are going to increase the number of believers in a city and one of the best ways to renew the whole Body of Christ. The evidence for this statement is strong–Biblically, sociologically, and historically. In the end, a lack of kingdom-mindedness may simply blind us to all this evidence. We must beware of that. (p5)

Book 3 of the Series 'Spiritual Direction in a Postmodern Landscape'

We see that ‘kingdom-mindedness’ is claimed as the inspiration for this strategy. However, the ‘evidence’ (Biblical, Sociological and historical) has been tampered with to give this strategy the sanction of God for a holy convocation of sanctified, accountable members. This God is used to justify the subversion of Christianity into a form of Institutionalised Spirituality; a simulation replacing the reality of God and we should note that it’s this God which is dead to the world. The real God however, is awaiting another revealing through a new context for the spiritual community; unveiled as the Word becomes flesh again and again in our lives. It is to this context and unveiling that our series ‘Spiritual Direction in a Postmodern Landscape’ is dedicated.

Geoff Hall, Bristol. 2012

Theoretically related:

• Passive assent or non-cooperation with evil?
• Affirmation for the world, the flesh and the rebel
• A crisis of faith

And yet through all these educated guesses, we know that we cannot make these calculations without proper instrumentation, and that the instrument of our brains has been long incapable of this without external tools. Complex mathematical equations confuse us. We are aware of their necessity and existence, but even more aware of our inability to apply them. For many of us, we know we would be unable to calculate these equations even with the use of the proper external tools, and yet we continue to stir and stir  based on our educated guesses.

If we continue in thought and remain aware of our efforts as we consume the coffee, we may be tempted to analyse the correctness our of guess – is there sugar left at the bottom of the cup? If not, how long were we still stirring after it had been totally assimilated? Or was there only a tiny bit left after our stirring efforts which simply dissolved over the exact amount of time it took to drink it all? These questions plague the basement of our minds – they are like mould growing, slowly and almost undetectable. Until one day we stroll by and notice the door is ajar. We peek in and are reminded of all these unanswered questions.

Some are tempted to go into this mental basement with a bucket of cleaning products and give their best effort at tidying, but most of us know that if we enter, there is a real threat of being unable to emerge the same person – if we are lucky enough to emerge at all.

Week after week we are reminded of the mould growing and growing in this basement. A relationship conundrum, a moral quandry at work, a tiny question of the fortitude of our personal ethic. What to do with this basement? Some indeed have practised ignorance for so long a time that walking by no longer creates anxiety. It has become simple. For others there is a daily struggle. Is it morally right to try and tackle this mould problem? Does it affect who we are in the world? How we parent, love, study or work? Am I a measurably better person for having a clean basement? Is it possible in this life to obtain such a lofty instance?

Only some truth remains after these questions are asked; that the basement is indeed a dangerous place for mere mortals, that cleanliness is good, but to err is to be human.

My own relationship with my basement is one of mixed emotions. I tend to watch the progress of mould growing quite regularly, and feel as though I’m only willing to scrub what walls I can reach without actually stepping down the stairs. I am aware of some effect—if only residual—that it has on my life. I ask God to give me strength and wisdom so as to slow any undesirable growth. The basement is an ugly by-product of the human condition. And as with all things, our only lasting peace comes from abiding in Him.

Theoretically related:

• The Elusive Mystery
• Changing God’s Mind
• Life forges philosophies

Yes, I believe there is.

In the Judaeo tradition, hearing was not simply an auditory act; for if you had no impediment, you could hear God speak through the prophets. However, there are many times when we are informed that they did not listen to the prophet, they did not take it to heart; they did not act upon it.

Well, that’s all well and good for God and the prophet, but what about our work as artists? How do we hear what people say about our work? How do we listen and take to heart what is said to us, often in the public domain? We must hear, but we must be wary of taking everything to heart.

Chris has told me that we are searching for an audience, for people who share in what we’ve published with ‘Spiritual Direction in a Postmodern Landscape’. There have been those who have dismissed what we’ve released as being against publishing standards (Wilderness), or that some don’t understand it, therefore it must be badly written! These are not the people we have been writing for, we hear what they say, but we have confidence that we are going to meet a need in those who have been marginalised or rejected by the Institutions of Spirituality or the Secularised galleries.

What we’ve done with the books is to focus on a journey rather than a destination; we start with The Wilderness and the Desert of the Real, which is personal and intimate; its attention is solely on an artist’s experience of attrition, of isolation but it also resonates with a longing to pursue a relationship with God despite their Institutional rejection. It is a book of fragments, for the Wilderness is a place not of fine-sounding, academic concepts, but of picking up pieces to aid us on this journey in preparation for our departure from the arid terrain and into the Postmodern ‘Desert of the Real’. The artists who have read the book understand this without explanation it seems; however the non-artist appears to have looked for an expansive tome of eriditous pontification. Alas, I have disappointed some people!

The Cultural Way of Being outlines the need for a spiritual community to flourish, so that the artist can have a culturally transformative impact. Eschewing the distorting forces of Individualism and Institutionalised Spirituality, we begin to understand that we do not need to walk alone. ‘Being’ an artist is the focus, not the ‘doing’ of art practice per se. We are created to experience, perceive and make sense of this world in a different way from an accountant! This spiritual community offers a different context for a walk with God.

Translating the Invisible Wind offers that longed for spiritual philosophy and it plants the seed for a ‘spirituality of resistance’ by rejecting the much flaunted cry of exile, proclaimed by so many disillusioned and culturally dislocated theologians! I put forward that this is not such a time, but as with Jesus, it is a time of Occupation and that it warrants a different, more subversive cultural response, for gone are the hallowed bastions of Christendom.

The Artist’s Autobiography took me by surprise, because I’d conceived it as the pastoral swansong of the series. It is in many ways more than that, as it goes on to ‘clear the ground’ by proclaiming Jeremiah’s calling ‘to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant’. 

Why did I write the books? 

Because I was listening.

I have mentored artists for close to 11 years; stood alongside them at times of discouragement and encouragement and listened to what they have been saying. Through this, I understand that I’m not alone, that they are not alone and that together we can flourish.

I was asked recently if I reviewed my work as a filmmaker. I think that this came from a negative conception of the artistic act; that what one sees on the screen, (or canvas, or page) is a linear process, of getting down what God has inspired and that it needs no further tweaking, re-forming, re-fashioning. The creative act is informed by thinking and rethinking the concept, or percept, of chipping away at the proverbial rock to find the beautiful horse inside it!

In reviewing my work, who do I listen to? Well, I start with God and move out, but not everyone has a voice you can trust, nor are they someone you should listen to.

My first film (‘One‘) was a black comedy about the madness of Imperialism and was set just after the First World War. For this I located the characters in a Military mental institution for those who had suffered psychologically from the effects of trench warfare. The audience in the USA loved its Englishness and the preposterous view of the world according to the failing British Empire! 

Michael Polanyi wrote that we should look not at the finger but where the finger is pointing; he used this metaphor to talk about how a metaphor works! This is how we should read art, not just as a multi-coloured surface, or moving figures on a screen, but as a perceptual means of understanding the world through suggestive means.

Guess what happened? Some read this film as taking the piss (sorry, that’s the only way of putting it) out of mentally ill people. When asked about it, one of the actors said the critic should bear in mind that three-out-of-four cast members had suffered from mental health issues – indeed one had been institutionalised! All the actors thought it was just a funny film, that it was looking at the madness of warfare and Imperialistic territorial claims. 

Do we hear such comments?

Yes. 

Do we listen to these critics and change the way we make films?

No! 

For the creative act is not a democratic process. Whatever you produce, someone somewhere will be upset, annoyed, curse you, misunderstand you, but you may get some who actually bless you, who understand that you cannot read any art-form literally. This, for film, is what you get when your critics have indulged their imagination with too much social realism. Notwithstanding this, it is Robert Bresson who reminds us in ‘Notes on the Cinematographer’ that realism is “the vulgar imitation of nature”!! It’s not just a cheaper way of producing a film, a budgetary concern, but a philosophy of life (call it Neo-Marxist or Socialist)!

If I take to heart the comments of people who are unknown to me, pay attention to every voice that offers an opinion of my work, then I won’t make a thing again, or if I am mad enough to follow their advice the work will lack focus, lack coherence. The effect will be like a thousand voices simultaneously shouting at you from the Screen and with the same volume.

As Heather Distant-Taiwo pointed out to me one time, art is about the future, for you start with a blank sheet of paper! The element of time in film, in art is central. Whilst we point to the future, we also make time stand still, we arrest its flow.

How? 

Because, like anything which seizes the attention of our imagination time stands still when we focus upon it! A good film doesn’t offer an escape, but we beckon it into our world. It enters ours as a friend and holds us there. This happens because of the coherence of the work; disbelief is suspended by the lucidity of the particular vision of reality on show. The story can offer you a credible alternative, the possibility of a paradigm shift from your world to the renewed world being revealed, in front of your eyes.

Such coherence doesn’t come about in isolation but through the aforementioned spiritual community; from the conversations undertaken during the creative process, from people who share the vision, or as Chris (Lorensson) would say, from those who get it, from the ones who don’t need persuading, from those who love you and your work and wish to participate in the worlds you create. They want to walk with you on the journey. (The artist should always be open to company when they set out on a walk). In other words, your audience and your artistic peers and not the hit-and-run critic who like the sound of their own voices too much to listen to your response.

What does this kind of conversation look like? 

The best way of showing artists is through art, through means of perception. Below is a link to a piece of music by John Coltrane (Ole). (I was introduced to this work by my friend and the designer, Barry Dunnage). This is what I mean by conversation, as evinced in the responses of the musicians using saxophone, drums, piano and bass. Listen to what they say and be inspired. Listen to their voices and not the ones who curse or criticise your work through the ‘clashing cymbal or banging gong’. Don’t mistake their voices for Love.

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/ole/id50236314?i=50236319 

Peace, Love and a Happy Christmas,
Geoffx

Theoretically related:

• Passive assent or non-cooperation with evil?

I believe our identities are a sort of lost key to the locked door of community’s progress. I believe God made us each for a specific purpose, and that purpose is written in our identities. But speaking broadly—as the Community of Christendom, do we know who we are?

Sure we do—we’re the bride of Christ, children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, beloved, cherished, treasured. Hang on a second—when someone asks me what do you do, I don’t reply with I’m a full-service design agency, specialising in user experiences on a digital platform because to say that would be to describe my company, not myself. I think that what we call ‘identity’ nowadays largely is a description of our company—our community. It’s what we do and who we are as a whole— rather than as individuals. When I’m asked that question I reply I design experiences, and when I’m asked who are you? I reply I’m Chris because I have a name, a purpose, a father and a community around me, wherein my functions and purpose are exercised. My point is that I am not my community— I am an individual who makes up a key part of my community, but there are two identities here, not one.

I’m not talking about individualism or even humanism, I’m talking about the fact that we’re made in His likeness, and that our commission is a worldly commission with an eternal outcome, rather than an eternal commission with a worldly outcome. We are here to bring glory to Him (if we’re painting with a broad brush), and to be with Him eternally, but not yet. But it doesn’t end there. If we were only created to be the same; to do the same thing, there would be no point in making us in such a diverse measure—in creating us each so differently. If we were just glory-engines, we’d be far more productive as robot-clones, rather than unique humans. Our identities and purpose are missing from this equation.

The concept of identity, however, in our day, is changed. It’s easy today to start thinking about our identity by looking for ways we desire recognition from others. “I’m a successful designer, a responsible father and a selfless husband.” Our public culture has built up a pressure to be successful. To appear successful. In fact, our society is largely built around this. Makeup, for example, is one of the largest direct-to-consumer micro-economies in the West. Cosmetic surgery is on a steady increase over the last 20 years. We have become masters of fabricating the impressions others have of us, and the market has made this possible. We’ve bought it hook line and sinker. Funny thing is, people are naturally intuitive. We all see through each-other’s fabricated personas. We know we’re lying to each-other and ourselves, and no culture understands this concept more deeply (and perhaps dangerously) as in Britain—where the cultural peace and stage-play is maintained at a high cost. But across the West, we’ve bought into the lie that our personas can be fabricated—that we can be whomever we want on a day-to-day basis.

The problem with these fabricated personas is that they’re clearly disingenuous. This is obvious. The deeper problem is that they’re distracting us from exploring who we really are. Instead of living up to our genuine purposes, we’re dolling ourselves up in the mirror and remembering to hold our shoulders back as we walk. It doesn’t leave much time and effort for exploring our inner-selves, our identities.

Kate Moss’ new Lipstick: Step 1

Identity lives up to Jesus’ teaching about gaining and losing our lives; it functions the same, and like so many things, follows the ‘death-cycle’. Our fabricated personas must be left to die, abandoned, in order for our true identities to be able to break through the hard-candy shell of decades of rotting makeup. We must stop faking it in order to be positioned for deep excavation. Two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid: Step 2

I’m not advocating the “I am a rock, I am an island” mentality. We need eachother to be free. We were created as social, inter-reliant beings. We don’t function well on our own. We were built to stand on one-another’s shoulders and peek at our destiny. Discovering your identity is not in opposition to community, the opposite is true: individual identity is the channel for power in our communities, so it’s no wonder that many communities today feel powerless. To become deeply powerful communities, we must each know our identities. Take a journey together in your community to kill the fabricated personas and, together, excavate your own identity.

Not Just ‘Collateral Damage’: Step 3

I would suggest this is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Without identity, our communities are powerless because it is made up of faceless individuals. Contrariwise, our individuals and communities are powerful because the knowledge of personal identity is the gateway to your calling. If you don’t know who you are, how will you know what you’re supposed to do or who you should become? To not invest time into cultivating and excavating our personal identities is to lose the battle before it has begun. It’s going into a war with untrained boys, rather than expertly-trained soldiers. It’s not just collateral damage, it’s throwing in the gauntlet.

By the Power of Grayskull: Step 4

Know the power that lies within your identity. Think of it like a geode: it’s hard to find, and when you find it you’ll need to not just dust it off, but to cut it open to find the treasure inside. It is hidden somewhere inside you, and you’ll need to dust off the surface of fabricated persona and crack the mysterious shell of true identity. Inside you’ll find a unique treasure. The beautiful thing is that we have capable communities around us to facilitate this journey of discovery.

I would love to hear your stories of self-discovery, how you discovered power by learning your identity.

Theoretically related:

• The Joy of Prioritisation
• Oh shit, the ‘cursing’ issue again, and related conundrums
• A Core Value of Lifestyle Minimalism

For the past 6 years I’ve carried a memory of a span of time in my life when I felt closest to God. The more I recall this memory, the more romanticised it becomes in my mind. Now, the reality of it is so far from me that I’m not sure it happened at all. But I’m not quite ready to let it go, yet, and this post is all in the dim light of that distant memory, which I will refer to hereon out as the good ‘ol days.

The Good ‘Ol Days were simple—God had broken through my desire for significance by simply replacing that hole inside me with Himself. The Good ‘Ol Days lasted, for me, about 3 or 4 years. I spent a lot of time walking and talking with God. I was constantly starved for the Bible. In everything I did, I thought of Him.

But as I grew older and life became more complex, it became more difficult to ‘hold on’ to that closeness. Worries and responsibilities overcame me, and I once again found myself far from God. I no longer prayed, and my hunger for the Bible was gone. I was too busy now— I was now an adult, and these new responsibilities were ‘more important’ than my silly, romantic ideas about enjoying a real relationship with God. Oddly, this shift coincided with my entrance into the graphic design world, where I quickly rose to the top (within my tree house), and the tickle of human recognition woo’d me to the dark side. I had never felt significant to any person before I became successful as a graphic designer—my only sense of importance only ever came from God up to this point.

After diving head-first into my design career it took me a few years to realise I had left God standing at the edge of the pool. The community of design had become my new personal atmosphere.

Shortly after that I met my wife Ruth, moved to England, had our little boy Titus and here I am—realising that I’m getting old, still hungry for significance and fighting tooth and nail for it. Part of me wants to think it’s just a guy-thing, that it’s just how we’re built—to need to feel important. But knowing how ambitious my wife is, I can’t really settle at this conclusion. We all need to—not just feel significant—but to be significant.

In the wake of the recent death of Steve Jobs—an inspiration to many—we can all learn a lot about how to live life. This need to be important, I would argue, is not a flaw. It’s not a simple plea for recognition or some Freudian void accidentally bored by our parents. I believe this need is something we were designed to have, which brings me to priorities.

I used to think The Good ‘Ol Days were simply a case of the planets aligning—having a good hand in the card game of life—making it easy to maintain a relationship with God. But this wasn’t the case. My circumstances of a good job, a nice house and a nice car were not circumstances that enabled me to maintain a close relationship with God. In fact, the opposite is true: My close relationship with God is what enabled me to experience a sense of deep fulfilment. I recently realised that nowadays I’ve got it all backwards; I’ve been trying to engineer my life so that a relationship with God might be possible, but God wants me to cultivate my relationship with Him so that a deep life might be possible.

This is not groundbreaking stuff here. This is fundamental, and I admit I’ve known it for years, conceptually. But it has many applications, and for me, this one’s new.

Upon internalising this recent revelation, I’ve made some changes. I’ve cut off a few things which were taking up my time. For me, that was several little bits of design projects on the side. I’ve committed that new spare time to getting back into my Bible (app ;-). I’ve consciously coached myself toward being more mindful of God—to abide in Him. Every morning the family sits together and reads a chapter of the Bible and then prays for eachother (Titus mostly just makes slurping noises). And after having recently read Kester Brewin’s Other, I’ve also been inspired to spend less time on social networks and thinking up new ideas. I’m trying to just be, which means to rest in who God has made me, knowing that I’m not quite there yet.

I’ve only just started, and I’m not sure it will last, but my experience so far is that, by simplifying my life and trying to abide in Christ always, I already feel more peaceful. I don’t feel like I’ve got it figured out, I actually feel more lost than ever because I’m not resting in human recognition for my sense of significance. But I know I’m on the right path, because this is the same path I took in The Good ‘Ol Days. I’m determined to avoid the ‘tail wagging the dog’ in my life, and I’ve resolved myself to the worst possible scenario—that God actually doesn’t have any big plans for me. That I will never be successful, or famous, liked or even loved. But deep down, I know I already am. Just not here.

Theoretically related:

• A Core Value of Lifestyle Minimalism
• The Dance of Mystery in Art
• Lifestyle minimalism

This was not particularly surprising, considering Bristol for all its swagger and self-imaging as a radical city, has a very conservative, provincial mindset. As far as a distinctive policy for developing the Creative Economy, Bristol isn’t even a member of the Dance Consortium, whereas radical cities like Bradford and Milton Keynes are! Figure that one out. Bristol seems to get its radical self-image from rioting, which isn’t radical, but misplaced self-indulgence. Go figure! If you are working-class or black in Bristol you will experience a greater sense of marginalisation, this doesn’t mean the power of the place is radical, (unless radical = tense?) it informs us of a city which is diverse in its cultural makeup, but which doesn’t embrace difference too well, as diversity threatens the conservative well-being of Bristol.

Cultural Diversity – oh, what’s dance got to do with it?
I first came across the Dance Consortium in Edinburgh, where my wife and I were staying one weekend to celebrate our wedding Anniversary. We went to see the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan and the work of its marvellous choreographer Lin Hwai-min at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. If the city where you live doesn’t have a coherent and divergent policy to develop its economy through the arts, then you miss out on spectacles such as this. Bristol should learn from Edinburgh’s example!

Sponsorship and Wellbeing?
When you look at the Bristol Festival of Literature website, there is one thing you’ll notice and that is the lack of sponsorship, even from the City Council. I hope I’m wrong, but at the time of writing the digital evidence reveals its absence.

Creative centres provide the integrated eco-system or habitat where all forms of creativity – artistic and cultural, technological and economic – can take root and thrive. Richard Florida, ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’, Published by Basic Books, 2002, p218.

If your personal economy is based on one source and if that source contracts then your whole economy is in trouble. However, if your personal economy is based on multiple complementary income streams then if one stream contracts, you still have others to rely on and potentially expand. So it is with the City.

Bristol’s Creative Economy isn’t strong enough to sustain the creative class and so they move to other centres like Manchester and London. Life as a ‘creative’ in Bristol means you eke out a living from other divergent sources, thus diffusing your creative energies and adding to the retardation of the city-wide cultural economy. (This is a common story of many artists in The Group which I facilitate, not a mere visceral complaint!)

How do we understand this thing called a Creative Economy? Here is one definition:
UNCTAD’s (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ) Creative Economy Report of 2008…suggests this definition of CE, it is

‘the interface between creativity, culture, economics and technology as expressed in the ability to create and circulate intellectual capital, with the potential to generate income, jobs and export earnings while at the same time promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development.’ Cited in the British Council Creative Economy Unit’s Publication, ‘The Creative Economy: An Introductory Guide.’ 2010.

So, what can we expect from the Bristol Festival of Literature? Well, it starts with Lunch at HMP Ashfield with GP Taylor and ends with Tania Hershman’s Cure for Writer’s Block as if to lead on to next year. The Festival programme is diverse, covering genres such as Children’s Fiction, Crime and Thriller as well as Science-fiction.

‘Bible: the Most Dangerous Book in the World’ For the spiritual writer what does this mean? How would the bible be the most dangerous book in the world? Held in the hands of the Institutional Priesthood or embodied in the work of living writers? If your answer affirmed the Institutional route, then this is like Hitler proclaiming victory from his Berlin bunker. Institutionalised spirituality demands an intermediary, whereas most of us live and work outside of the edifice these days, which infers to some that we have no contact with God. Perhaps we consider that our radical socialism is validated by the bible, fitting so snugly with our political and social ideology? It’s good when God thinks the same as we do! When you think of the future do you think ‘bible’? Or does this make you ponder the past? Ancient civilisations and ‘primitive’ cultures, pre-Enlightenment societies?

The work of the writer speaks of the future, it builds expectation, it evokes the hope of redemption; not of triumphalism and the ‘Christus Rex‘ of Christendom! If we have any hope, any expectation for the future, it will be the storyteller and not the Priest who rekindles it, who envisions and embodies it for all to see, or read! My life is like a book, written on my heart!

I like the look of the session on Sunday 16th ‘Comedy and Error’, with Simon Day, about overcoming addiction. This very human connection with frailty and creativity, tinged with humour looks very tasty. As for the rest, I’ll leave you to sort it out. 

The Potential of the Festival
The Bristol Festival of Literature adds to the cultural assets of Bristol, as it focuses on the creative capital of authors and I should point out it does so with meagre resources. It is this creative capital which is the key to economic growth in Bristol. The Arts are a difficult industry to try and live from the fruits of your labours. Whilst funding for the Arts is reduced due to the pressures of financing the 2012 Olympics, no doubt a spike in our National Economy will ensue and I have no doubt whatsoever that the current incumbent of No. 10 Downing Street will try and take credit for this. However, in the long-term what is needed in Bristol is a more expansive and diverse creative economy; to stem the exodus of creative talent.

Let’s embrace the UNCTAD definition of Creative Economy, for the celebration of creative diversity can also assist in the process of social cohesion; reducing the stigmata of marginalisation, aiding human development by celebrating ‘creative capital’ whatever its source and effectively increase cultural diversity. And you thought this was just a Festival of Literature! 

Showcasing humble things like literature and dance will help our well-being, creating a place where success brings peace to the streets and homes of Bristol. We are starting the process here with literature and so I say, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall read books.’

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This principle was the principle of releasing others. Standing on the shoulders of giants, if you will. It’s the concept that, from your own favour and accomplishments, you can exercise that favour by giving it to others. Giving them a leg up, so to speak, so they might get a bit further than if they hadn’t received a little help. For example, Ruth has been preaching & teaching at our church for years. She’s become quite well-known throughout the city and wider because of it. She’s built a reputation on it, and that reputation gets her a lot more speaking engagements. But often if Ruth gets a call asking her to speak, she’ll suggest someone else—perhaps someone who hasn’t had so much opportunity, and often they’ll go for it. Someone else gets to speak and share their what God has put on their heart, they build a reputation and the cycle continues. It’s an interesting way to do things when you consider that, without these types of opportunities—people giving you a bit of their favour—you might not be as far ahead. It’s an uncommon break in daily terms.

This was a concept that fascinated me.

It’s is not a new principle, we’ve seen it in The Bible for a long time; the way it says that little children will inherit The Kingdom, and that it’s very hard for a rich man to enter into Heaven. All that business had got us in LoveBristol thinking where is all this coming from? Why is it like this?

My friend Geoff

Most of you know that in late 2010 we (finally) started Upptäcka Press—our publishing label. Publishing was the original goal of Upptäcka Network—we wanted to publish books from the beginning, but it took 6 years to get to that point, and this is a little bit of a story of how it finally happened.

Geoff Hall is an Upptäcka Author, our eldest I believe. He is a close friend and an inspiration to many. He’s the type of guy that tells it like it is and doesn’t make apologies for being who God made him. I instantly liked Geoff when I met him at an Artisan event here in Bristol. I had only been here in Britain for a short while and couldn’t yet identify accents very well. Geoff’s from up north, but his accent was so foreign to me I remember at the end of the meeting I went up and asked him if he was Scottish. When I think of that now, it’s really embarrassing!

Geoff and I stayed in touch over the years. I frequented many of the art events he put on and they were always a breath of fresh air. I felt like Geoff was someone who wasn’t interested in the art of Christian culture, but in art itself, and his relationship with God always flowed through his words as he spoke. One day about a year ago (I think), we met up and Geoff mentioned he had been writing, like, for years and years. He told me about some of the things he was writing about. I asked if he ever thought about getting published, but his English humility took over ;-) I asked him to send me some of the things he’d written.

Over the course of the following weeks Geoff flooded my inbox with Word Doc after Word Doc. Short essays, long essays, ideas for books, and all sorts of incredible thoughts. It would have taken me years to get through much of it. I read a few pieces and instantly saw God’s, ahem, word for today in his works. God had brought Geoff and I together for a reason, not just to publish books, but to form a deep friendship and even brotherhood. Geoff and I, today, have become very close and I wouldn’t trade his perspective and input into my life for the world. Those days sparked the launch of Upptäcka Press.

Favour and a leg up

The principle of sharing favour or whatever you want to call it, in my friendship with Geoff, has been hard at work. Geoff has an incredibly strong background in art, philosophy and (probably) countless years of writing. Without Geoff and his unusual insights, Upptäcka Press would have taken years longer to get off the ground, if at all. Geoff’s willingness to work hard, collaborate on crazy ideas and let me drag him through the gruelling editing process was just the right ingredient Upptäcka Network needed. Upptäcka Press was birthed by the legacy and foundation that Geoff had forged in his years. By standing on Geoff’s shoulders Upptäcka Press bypassed years of hard work.

Upptäcka Press today

To-date, we’ve published two of Geoff’s books: The Wilderness and the Desert of the Real and The Cultural Way of Being, and we’re working hard at getting the remaining two (in the series Spiritual Direction in a Postmodern Landscape) out before the end of the year. We’re working on a super-secret side-project (a multimedia experience called Apocolyptika, oops) and we’re looking for new authors to publish. We’re learning as we go, but one of our priorities is to do things differently. Not just for the sake of it, but to embody Kingdom-principles such as this one. We’re not there yet, but I suppose it’s the journey that counts.

Against the grain

It’s such a joy to see the culture of the Kingdom hard at work today. People like Ruth and Geoff inspire me. In a Western ‘get-mine’ culture, giving favour is going against the grain. It’s a great example of how to live differently in this beautiful world, and to give away what you’ve been given. You can see Ruth’s writing and sermons at her website, ruthlorensson.com, and Geoff writes for Upptäcka Network, Arts Mentoring and on his personal website at GeoffHall.co.uk

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What we know as the World-Wide Web is nothing less than a storehouse of human knowing. We may not agree with much of it, but hopefully the more knee-jerked, bigoted and ill-educated comments on YouTube which can be filtered out and need not attract our attention the better!

In this Neosphere you have to be careful how you talk, tweet or update your status, because you could end up in jail. Talks of rioting are strictly forbidden and so if you wish to overthrow your Government you have to be careful how you phrase it! It would seem that any form of resistance is undesirable and when we don’t give in to rather basic urges of rioting, looting and burning down other people’s businesses, our silence or inactivity is presumed to give tacit assent to what our Governments get up to in the ‘name of the people’.

Much of this limits our sense of resistance to political action and not spiritual, as if of course there was a great divide between the two. In terms of spiritual here think of we we do usually carve up reality with some very dualistic tools, but what if we started to talk in terms of a spirituality of resistance, what images does it conjure up in your imagination? What would be the jail sentence for that? (See our forthcoming book ‘Translating the Invisible Wind’ on Upptacka Press. http://upptacka.com/ )

The whole notion of Upptacka’s ‘unorthodox thoughts on christian spirituality’ suggests that all is not well with orthodoxy. Now this appears to mean something quite different on each side of the pond, for in Europe the age of Christendom is thankfully dead and we no longer have to fret about the Roman and Orthodox traditions of spirituality. In the US however, orthodoxy seems to be strangely limited to Evangelicalism (a mistake if ever there was one), as evinced by the rabid gnashing of Evangelical teeth on the legs of the fallen-from-grace, Rob Bell. (No, I don’t think he has and anyone who thinks so is decidedly limited in their view of orthodoxy, as noted above!)

But for Upptacka to posit this ‘unorthodoxy’ it reveals a little dissatisfaction with both Orthodoxy and orthodoxy. So, whether you are East or West of The Pond, you are covered by a sense of, let’s call it dissed-ness!

I have come across so many people involved in the arts and business, who are dissatisfied, disaffected with and disenfranchised by contemporary christian spirituality. They seek to follow the Way, to continue in an intimate relationship with God, but are impeded by the Church, or should I say the current model of church. The desire for community is great, but it is thwarted by the Institution of Spirituality we call the Church. When all talents are utilised for the upkeep of this Institution, then there is little if nothing left over for the world of our calling.

The more desperate this Church has become, the more it subsumes everything in its path to maintain its position in life. However, this is not the Great Commission, nor is it the Gospel. Jesus didn’t die so I could go to Church. Jesus died so that no intermediary is necessary for an intimate life with God and that the outpouring of love from this relationship will be seen via the gifts I have; whether it is education, engineering, science, technology, health-care, the Arts or Business. How does the Great Commission expound this kind of calling and vocation in your Church? If it doesn’t then you have problems. If it is only seen as a utility to preach the ‘Gospel’, then you’ve missed the point of the good news!

I have mentioned before some of the advice I’ve been given for my career in the Arts. You may recall one such word of wisdom, that ‘I’d have been successful by now, if God was in it’, but you may find hard to believe what I’m about to tell you. Here goes! A friend of mine had been told he’d been too successful as a business man! The problem seems to be how do we in all faithfulness become less successful and ergo, more Godly? How do you stop the blessing of God?

The Church as we know it is full of Job’s Comforters on the one hand and now, well just what is the opposite of this – Abraham’s Detractors perhaps? Imagine the great Patriarch being told off by local elders because he’d been too successful? The Church it seems is fearful of both failure and success. The ‘failures’ are comforted by mealy-mouthed words of God’s rejection and the ‘successful’ cautioned by devilish double-tongued words of suspicion. You can do nothing in the Church nowadays other than be mediocre, a gift worthy of celebration with the endless production of religious kitsch. 

This spells a fundamental crisis that is people-centred, as the Body of Christ disarticulates its members in the service of the god of conformity or perhaps the god of mediocrity. One can be shaken, but alas one cannot stir.

The problem is what to do next. If in our industry groups we feel disenfranchised from the Church, where do we go? Do we assume that the current model of Church has been prescribed by God? When the Diss-ometer rises above 8 what do we do?

I remember reading Thomas Kuhn’s ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ during my University days and one of the great impressions it left me with, was that a ‘paradigm shift’ doesn’t occur until a credible alternative is found. It is at this point that scientists make the jump, the shift to a new paradigm.

Now it has been said that Upptacka can be too spiritually diagnostic, that we see the shortcomings of the current Church paradigm, with its hierarchical structures and linear (literal) truth, but that we offer no alternatives. Now please be aware that the Kuhnian paradigm shift doesn’t occur because of a lack of alternatives, but the lack of a credible alternative. Whilst one model or paradigm may have hegemony over others, there has yet to be realised a credible alternative, into whose arms the business and arts fraternity can safely jump!

We hear of different idiosyncratic views of truth and Church, which essentially generate the same hierarchies, but only form a different ideological administration with the same people and tithed income as before! Ostensibly it’s an administrative shift (which we call revival!) but which desires the same control and enslaves the talents of those dwelling in the Middlelands, between (too much) success and (too much) failure – in other words those to whom the maintenance of its monolithic presence in the spiritual marketplace could be entrusted. We have replaced a heart of flesh with a heart of stone, institution comes before people and the religious spirit of control ensures the Institution’s own longevity, by limiting sacraments to Church-occupied territories.

Way back in the days of proper church, well, when it was ‘people and community’ focused, when giving was to the personal needs of the Body of Christ, (not to be confused with a Golden Age or a Proto-Communist civilisation) it flourished and began to develop as a cultural power, which had the potential to change the world for good. However, it was strangled shortly after birth and an institution was carved out of stone to takes its place – hoping that the parents wouldn’t notice the radical change in the child’s weight, demeanour and dexterity. This stoney-child controlled both the medium and the message and didn’t allow for the free-design of new forms of communication. Language after all, is power, or rather the control of language is power!

So, forgive the harking back to days of yore, what about now?

Well, it seems we have a choice. We can ignore all those who are dissatisfied, disaffected or disenfranchised and frankly…totally dissed people and pretend it is just a diabolical attack, or we can do something about it. Can we embrace those who wish to be passionate and faithful Followers of the Way in a different context, living and working in the Arts and Business? Can we nurture those whom the Church has smothered and is incapable of responding to, with a heart of compassion?

How? What we see before us is a very big problem, which instills fear and a sense of impotency in us. However, if we consider it locally rather than globally, we will find the means of undertaking a radical change. I have talked of industry groups and it could be that business people meet together to understand the station of their calling, their mode of life? The same goes for the artist. It may also be that these two groups to come together to understand how life can be enhanced through reciprocal relationships, forming a community which celebrates success and encourages perseverance in the face of ‘failure’. (2Cor 4v8-10 resounds with me again.)

The common core of all this is – ‘the Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it’. We are not owners of it, nor of the ‘truth’ for that matter, but we are stewards of the whole of Creation, including the bits we don’t understand, or that we fear.

It is time for artist and business people to come together and share a vision which unleashes them from their umbilical tethering to the Institution, helping them fall into the warm embrace of adult community. I’m not promoting the old model of Renaissance patronage, but new and radical support akin to the Reformational growth of an arts industry outside of Ecclesiastical control – benefactors for new talent and business partners for the more mature artist, embellishing the life of all, in a communion of those ‘called out’ to make a difference.

Theoretically related:

• Affirmation for the world, the flesh and the rebel
• So, this is what Atheism looks like, up-close and personal?
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“Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents in a dimension incompatible with society.” Jacques Ellul

My! How far we have fallen short of this? Jacques Ellul, a critical, perceptive writer who was once a member of the French Resistance and author of such classics as ‘Propaganda’ and ‘The Technological Society’ kind of stirs things up for us with this little thought. We immediately reject it, don’t we for we are not called to be troublemakers, but peacemakers, creators of certainty and not uncertainty, aren’t we? Agents of incompatibility? What is he driving at? Surely this is hyperbole, right? He’s said it just to make us think and then we can run back into the safety of our churches? Isn’t the world unsafe enough already?

It seems to me that Ellul’s call is for the artist, for those with subversive gifts, artists of the subtext, in other words artists of uncertainty. The clue is in his former job title, ‘Member of the French Resistance’. Think about it.

I wrote last week of ‘giving up’ and wondered why we seemed to have cultivated a theology of ‘calling it a day’. We have developed a set of measures, the success criteria, whereby we may judge someone’s call from God by the material success of their work. I reject the churchified term ‘ministry’; leaving that to the professional holy person, for it is a term not of the laity, but of the clergy! Think about it.

In this disavowal of a cultural way of being, of a cultural calling and vocation we have used worldly judgements. It seems that Scripture can be used in the service of anyone, or any point-of-view when it is taken out of context and utilised to declare the will of God. So, if I’m adjudged to be failing because of my lack of income, lack of tangible contracts or sales, it is therefore correct to doubt my calling. (I leave it in the first person here, but this is not just a personal story!) It would help of course if people understood I was doing this with ‘the Lord’, but generally this is not the case, as the arts are a worldly domain where the flesh and the devil roam about like a wild chimera.

But, God so loved the World, right. And the words used are ‘agape’ and ‘kosmos’, the arrangement, or beauty of Creation, the people and everything in it. However, is John conflicted, because later in one of his famous letters he tells us not to ‘agape’ the ‘kosmos’, so what’s he on? Was he a secret Gnostic? Nah, of course not, but this only appears anti-world, anti-creation if you are working from a dualistic, anti-material philosophy of life. The first mention however, is the act of love from God, the second is about a misplaced love towards something created which should be only for God, ‘agape’, but not for the world, ‘kosmos’. In the first mention John is talking about God’s Creation and in the second he’s talking about a fallen world. Darn those Greeks for forming a language which has multiple meanings for the same word! I’m so thankful for being English, because that doesn’t happen with my language, because I know what literal truth looks like and hey, once the Scriptures were translated into English I knew I could start to talk about literal truth; English being a conservative, precise language and all that!

So, if people ask me if I’m worldly, I point them to the John’s first mention in his good news story. I tell them that I’m worldly like God! And if you get the drift, you’ll realise that if there’s a difference in context then there’s likely to be a difference in meaning, because God is just being Creational. However, if your worldview starts with Original Sin and our most infamous act ‘The Fall’ – not the season by the way, my dear American readers – then you will not have any perception of a Good Creation nor the Creator of it; Who is still active in our everyday lives of joy and sorrow, storm and calm.

The next great divide and reason why we don’t give a fig about the Arts is that it’s fleshly, sensual. Its appeal is to anything other than the spirit. Not even a thousand Renaissance theologians could convince us otherwise! We may make a claim that Reformational theologians had it sussed in their anti-image Iconoclasms. Sad then for us, that they were not anti-image, but anti-church art; the art which was controlled by the Church Institution. Instead of closing down artistic practice it actually expanded outwards into God’s good Creation and hey presto, landscape was born. Thank you Holland!!

Anything that makes its appeal to the senses is of course fleshly, so here’s another reason why we shouldn’t affirm the call of the artist. In terms of sin, it is probably seen as a move from Idolatry to Adultery! But people’s sense of ‘spiritual’ is decidedly anti-incarnational, it’s a disembodied spirituality, more akin to Eastern Philosophy than Scriptural Truth and Worldview.

Notably Artists paint nudes; it’s as simple as that! They have barenakedladies, or barenakedmen waltzing around their studios and if they weren’t in their studios then those dear ‘Die Brücke’ artists seemed to have no qualms about getting ‘back to nature’ at some of their holiday retreats. An appalling level of depravity!

We have decried the calling of the artist, leaving the church without means of communication to an aching world and we thus rely on outmoded means of communiqué (preaching) to tell the greatest story ever told! But, but, Jesus preached and Paul preached, you retort. Isn’t hearing one of the senses, I quibble? You see there’s a reason why Jesus didn’t appear on the ‘Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ and tell his story, nor be interviewed about his latest cunning parables. You see my dear friends it’s as simple as this…Come closer to the screen and hear me whisper this personal message to you. “In those days there wasn’t any television!” Now I think the Romans and Pharisees would have been more aware of what Jesus was doing if they had Jon Stewart reporting on the political context of the day, but hey even great civilisations have their limitations, right? Would the Romans have trusted Stewart, because he’s, y’know, he’s, er, ahem, Jewish? Probably not, but not because of his ethnicity, but more down to them being Republicans!!

So, where were we? Oh yes, we’ve done the worldly thing and the fleshly thing, now it’s time for the rebel thing. Now perhaps you think I meant to allude to ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ and not ‘the world the flesh and the rebel’, but I think enough has been written by yours truly about diabolical art, so let’s look at the other reason we don’t like the arts, REBELLION!

You see, you just can’t trust artists because they don’t toe the line. Hitler didn’t trust them! Stalin didn’t trust them either. Although Hitler made a big faux pas by having an art exhibition and allowing people to see how better this stuff was than Nazi Art i.e. propaganda! Note to tyrants – don’t have degenerate art exhibitions if the stuff you’re renouncing is better than the art you’re espousing! In trying to control art you kill art and hey, a Beckmann, Schmidt-Rottluff or a Kirchner is infinitely better than a Hitler watercolour!

Artists go out of their way to be troublemakers, they upset the status quo, they create images wherein reality seems to melt into the air, or is fragmented to such a state that you can’t tell the difference between the guitar and the wallpaper. Shocking, Seņor Picasso!

All of this avant-garde behaviour leads to the distrust of the artist. They ask too many questions and don’t give enough answers, or make unequivocal statements. You cannot trust an artist because they refuse literal (representational) truth and appear more at home with those awful relativists.

These are totally biblical concerns of course…of course not! 

‘Agents in a dimension incompatible with society’ don’t attempt to follow or collaborate with the status quo, they don’t reduce their art to theological codes and keys, they refuse to be a slave to the Institution because they know that art only has a voice for freedom and humanity, is only able to critique reality by remaining on the margins, in ‘sub-communities’ of rebellious, troublemaking, aesthetically animated artistry. The art of the prophetic voice or vision is not located in the soft-centre of ecclesiastical power structures, or as I’ve called it elsewhere being ‘Armchair Prophetic’.

What is necessary for the church to do is to relinquish power and be a servant community. The Church’s worldview needs to denounce its self-service activities and serve those who are marginalised and disenfranchised. It needs to affirm those whose call is outside of its defensive structures and support their vocations in those isolated, wilderness-like places of our society. (BTW – The aim is to resurrect spirituality in our day). A church which can show that troublemaking doesn’t have to be in the form of rioting on the streets, but which can by the Spirit of God give purpose and meaning, value and affirmation to the artists of uncertainty, shunning the materialism and opulent consumerism of our day and communicate this to those dying of thirst. Oh, sorry did I just appeal to one of those forbidden senses?

Theoretically related:

• So, this is what Atheism looks like, up-close and personal?
• “It helps if you just TELL me what to think”
• Passive assent or non-cooperation with evil?