skylarwoodward

My little brother posted some good links as to furthering the conversation on the Emergent Church. If you’re following this and haven’t read his response, you should. One of the links was so good, however, that I have to repeat it here. This made me laugh at myself, which is always healthy:

http://purgatorio1.com/?p=105

Reading through this, I was quickly reminded of a post by someone considering himself as post-emergent that I had read earlier, but didn’t yet have the context or background to consider. I thought that this writer (Andre) might agree with the images in the post, and for the same reason I laugh at the embarrassment of realizing I fit the stereotype so perfectly, I realize Andre may find himself excluded from or not well-represented in the emergent dialog. It reminds me that we are all too quick to put labels on ideas and culture so that ultimately we can meet the subconscious desire we all have to belong to something, no matter how small. Luckily for us, with the shift from absolutism to relativism, there comes the specific shift from categorization to tagging, and we can represent ourselves by multiple descriptors that we best see fit, yet still see strong relations between ourselves through common, shared identifiers such as “globally-aware” and “community-philic”

Ultimately, Ben and Andre’s remarks remind that what I’m not searching for is another formula by which to prescribe my life, nor a group to give validity to my actions or thoughts. Another club or clique won’t solve the problem; what I’m seeking is an environment where my own unique thought and conclusions can be drawn out, yet the hope is that though that setting may first exist simply through people bound by a common Love, the result will be a community where the most powerful, truest, and most refined of the passions are central bonds shared between the members. With that, I realize that, according to Carson’s definitions, I am more innately modern than post-modern. I love my absolutes as surely as I cling to the passing designs of Eames and Nelson, thus there by some I would clearly not survive among the emergent faithful. Still, I have had more than a healthy share of relativism as of late and it has helped me to see the mystic and organic between the things that are sure. The cultural impacts of this age certainly weigh their influences, but moreover it has reminded me of a deeper nature that when I look outside myself I’m actually more likely to distrust certainty than to embrace it. This duality of absolutism and relativism is something lives within each of us, but it is a role of culture and our surroundings (including people) to decide which aspect is more pronounced and for me it has traditionally been more the former.

So as I am heading into my changing world – where democracies become communities, physical boundaries become opportunities, statements of faith become WikiWords, categories become tag clouds, and computer scientists become social scientists – I hope that the result is that I become more balanced, though not in a boring grey sort of way, but perhaps in more of a Pollock sort of manner. At the very least, the goal is to be more relevant to the world around me. Ben asked in his post whether the monastic or intentional community I was referring to is indeed the Church, or more specifically, my existing church. I think that is ideal, particularly in the sense that church is part of the Church which is the body of Christ and it is single in body and purpose throughout the world. But extending the analogy of 1 Corinthians 12, the body is made up of parts, which are in turn made up of functional groups of molecules. While some actions of those groups are directed or corrected centrally, there are many actions those groups carry out independently because cellular and chemical intelligence is represented throughout the system. The same is true of a corporate body, as I’ve experienced over the past some years, and very little gets done if you wait for central approval for your actions. Often, decisions in a company evolve (for better or for worse) from the momentum of compelling action or thought within the corporate organism. So it can be with the churches of today. I would not suggest that we divorce ourselves from these structures of support in search of deeper truth or community, but rather accelerate such searches by conversing and communing in smaller groups – perhaps in the way it was always meant to be done. The roles of the incorporated churches may change as a result, but I’m not ready myself to identify how at this point. However, when it does happen I think we’ll realize that the Church perhaps didn’t need to do so much emerging the discussion suggests (at least on a global scale). It seems more a challenge of changing the perceptions, habits, and mentality of much of Western culture more than changing the hearts and memberships of the Christ-following.

So I had entirely no intention of blogging about the absurd event on campus today, but after getting tagged into the corporate photostream I felt inclined to make mention. (Thanks to June and Warren for propogating the myth.) I was entriely amazed at how quickly so many people posted so many pictures so fast. Almost 400 hundred pictures were posted and tagged to flickr in the hour after the occassion, and at least as many have been posted since. Forget about the government ruining your privacy – we’re doing it to ourselves. Immediately after the event I though about how though security was tight and the auditorium was well cloaked, visuals and details on the otherwise private event were about as public as once can find – the most popular flickr tag for the day is even ytomcruise thanks to the saturation of the site’s users on hand. Pictures that you might be hard pressed to catch at a regular press event, such as close up of Katie’s ring or a hollywood kiss are easy pickings amidst a sea of trigger-happy well-connected cameraphone owners.

All that said, it seems ironic that the same photo that captures me at the event also documents a conversation that Mike and Naveen started by questioning the effectiveness of photos to prove one’s attendance to some momentous ocassion or amidst fame. At first it seems a digital photo really means very little in this day and age where bytes are easily modified to suit personal pleasure and there’s no original celluloid to help tie the owner to the print. Naveen suggested that perhaps video was the answer to that age-old authenticity; however, a community documenting relationships of this visual data appears to do more than any one photographer could to prove his association to his location or subject (in this case, Tom). In fact, it is not even important that the photographer actually took the photograph, but that someone took a photograph of the subject, a picture was taken of the person wishing to be associated with the subject, and that those two pictures are related together in time and location in a meaningful and credible way. In this case, I had rather not cared to be linked to today’s event in the short time I was there, but any photo of Tom on stage plus a candid and tagged photo of me is enough to have me incriminated in the court of unproductiveness for the morning. Also, pictures like this one don’t help.

Tom Cruise came to campus as a part of our Influentials speaker series, though while I’m sure many people have had their lives deeply affected by Mr. Cruise, the other Toms who have visited have left more lasting impressions. However, irony rears its head again this evening to suggest that while Yahoos are looking to Hollywood for influence, our ever proximate neighbors continue to be influenced by us. With Google Finance in place, it is hard to take the mutterances of “It’s not a Pohr-tal!” seriously anymore. Regardless, once weather.google.com launches, the transition will be final. Done, and done.

With every new “don’t leave our domain” product Google launches into the marketplace, the community, understandably, responds with less and less enthusiasm. I have to think it was like this for Yahoo! in the early days as well. The directory blew their minds. Finance was really really cool. Mail allowed some people to use a completely new service that was previously inacessible to them. Groups got everyone asking “Do you Yahoo?” Yahoo! Pets were kinda fun. Auctions were, hmm, done already. Bookmarks were… wait, is that still a property? Likewise, every new feature Google introduces further dilutes their identity to the rest of the Internet. In the beginning, everything they touched was gold because of the strong reputation built on their search services and it was novel to see their strengths applied to new problems like email and printed materials. Many at Yahoo! were pressed to imitate and incorpate their innovations, or at least felt guilty for the appearance of imitating, but in the process a lot of sleepy people woke up and a lot of talented people got the opportunity to do something new. Stepping back, the unfinished portait suggests that all along they are really imitating us. Certainly, some of the details in their execution are cooler, but at some point users will stop asking “what has Google done today?” and “hey why doesn’t this Google thing do what the other portals do?” (In which case Microsoft will respond, “Look over here! Where do you want to go today?”) In the end, the flattery turns cyclic. Since we’ve already identified ourselves with users (for better or for worse) as “the site that does everything,” we can collect cool points for integrating the good ideas and making the most interesting stuff really clever. And for that, it is good to know that in lesser known parts of the blogosphere, not every part of the company is drooling at Hollywood.