Back in the late 90s, David Bowie was quoted as saying that if he was starting out all over again, he wouldn’t be creating a band, he’d be building a website. Unfortunately not enough people heard him say that. I was just approached today by a guy who asked me if I was into hip-hop. He wanted to sell me a $15 CD, but was prepared to negotiate. I asked for his website address, and he kind of looked at his shoes and told me that he didn’t have one. But he’s really proud of the positive message in the music, and the fact that there’s 7 guys in his crew–

Waitasec. You’re trying to tell me that none of your 7 colleagues can write the content for a site? That they can’t take pictures and post them? That you’re not planning any events you think other people might want to know about? You do know that there’s this thing called the Internet, you can put stuff up for free, and you can access it from any public library, right?

If you’re going to do anything expressive that needs other people, you’d better have a brilliant reason for not having a site. It’s a no-brainer. For starters, it’s the one way that you show the world that you believe in yourself. If you can’t show that, my $15 isn’t going to help you enough to make it worth it. Despite the fact that I really would like to hear your stuff and maybe even get to know you. Sorry.

Does your faith
Hold you up
hold you down
hold you back?
That not faith
that’s faithless lack!

Faith is what compels you to act
to extend a leg, a foot
an arm a hand
to do your part to heal this scar-faced land

To illuminate what matters
the sower and the seed he scatters
that we may each die
and so to thrive
each a flaring match
that comes alive
to share the flame
that’s been thus lit
is our path
and we’re burdened by it.
The burden is light.

In the Bible, when God asked something of someone, how many responded: “Well that makes perfect sense! I’m fully qualified for this, I’m eloquent, I’m a born leader – I’m your natural selection!”?

I can’t think of one. Lots of people followed through on stuff (the Bible would be pretty boring if they didn’t!), but rarely if ever was it done eagerly, simplistically and without question.

“You want me to build an ark!?” “You want me to preach to Nineveh!?” “You want me to give birth to your son!?” The first instinct was to flee – every time!

When God makes a God-sized request, we start to feel very human. We see our abundant weaknesses and shortcomings so very clearly. We start to plainly see how ‘other’ God is. That is appropriately humbling.

Recently someone expressed disquiet at “weird” stuff surrounding faith. Sorry, all of this stuff is weird, and perhaps among it, God is most especially so. We can know God in a meaningful sense, but not in a comprehensive sense. When God reveals something new about himself to us, he is most certainly other. (Don’t kid yourself, you’re not prepared for that. Really.) We however are his creation, and he knows us completely. He knows the motivations behind our motivations. And he is the only being that promises to give us the desires of our hearts if we trust him first. (Curiously, trusting an omnipotent being that knows the desires behind the desires, and who promises to fulfil them is not, for some reason, as easy as it would seem.)

It’s humbling and awe-striking when God acts and invites our participation. How that’s expressed, and how it turns out is unique to each situation. But instigator-God tends to allow us our free will. In the conversation that he initiates, God generally allows no to be an option. It’s just a sadder, poorer option – especially compared to the intricate, life-giving possibilities that a yes brings. And of course, there’s the odd time when a no has landed someone in the belly of a whale…

People are getting more and more reliant on weaker and weaker tools. Their messages are getting lost in the clutter of people’s lives, and it’s causing all sort of misses, glitches and drops. Texting gives instant feedback, but doesn’t allow for much elaboration. E-mail is safe and convenient, but is easily overburdened with complicated messages or multipart questions.

At issue here is that our tendency to share cursory messages is insufficient to achieve the results we desire from the people we connect with. It isn’t real communication until they get the whole idea, until they have probed into the idea with their own questions — really until they voluntarily imagine the level and scope of their involvement. Then you’ve communicated. You’ve given your contact the best possible chance to understand your concept and the most likelihood that they’ll buy in. We should acknowledge that communicating is separate from deciding. That is to say that it isn’t a communication failure if there’s a ‘no’ — it’s actually success because it’s an informed ‘no’. By contrast, an uninformed ‘yes’ is generally catastrophic!

What I see every day is people choosing the lazy way (e-mail is easy, low-pressure, etc.) when a phone call, or even a shared meal, would get them where they want to be easier(!), fuller, and with a greater likelihood of of a viable connection. If people stepped even one level richer than their default, they would generally get more satisfying responses. That would certainly break them out from the rabble, and make connections and messages memorable. There is an increasing need for that, even with close friends.

I’ll wrap this up by stipulating that there is a danger of going overboard, and forcing an option that is too rich (eg going out for coffee) when a simple answer is all that is needed. But I maintain that we have a lot more relational capacity than we’re currently using with our tech toys tools and our overcrowded lives. Without intentionality we’ll never achieve it.

Humans tend to try to satisfy craving with more craving, rather than trying to find something to fully, finally satisfy it. We go with what we know, even when it’s obvious it’s not working. This is addiction, and it manifests itself in many ways that aren’t defined clinically.

It’s also clear that people aren’t honest about this with themselves. Repeatedly through my life I hear the expression “I had such a great time last night — I don’t remember any of it.” Okay, waitasec — you had a “great time” that you can’t remember? What you are aware of the next day is how horrible you feel, and taking stock of the dangerous activity you engaged in that put you in relational and physical jeopardy. And you can’t wait to do it again!? That’s a crazy way to live. But, you know what? I sort of get it. I think.

Here’s my take: it’s a quest for adventure. People use a substance to get them to a place where they’re creating something, feeling something or thinking something that they won’t permit themselves to naturally. Sometimes however there are very good reasons for them not to. What people create under the influence often carries real danger and real consequences, and it’s really hard to decipher those when inside it. So then they’re always trying to get themselves out of a jam. There’s no denying that it’s fun to get out of a jam — it’s called drama for a reason. (I do it by going to the limit on a deadline, and then surfing the adrenaline surge to finish on time. Usually.) But these are artificial, meaningless crises. And sometimes you just can’t get out of unscathed.

I think we need to recognise that there are shades of that in all of us. There is always a vice nipping at your heels. Maybe it’s lying dormant in an unconsidered part of yourself — some secret assumption you’ve never questioned. More likely it’s right on the tip of your tongue. What is the vice that leads you to make your itch more itchy, instead of finding the scratch? What lengths are you prepared to go to remove it? Or are you really just content with that glass of salt you’re drinking?

Check out this great podcast on hip-hop (I love the Kindlings’ Muse!). It’s interesting to take in something from a culture that I have very little familiarity with. I was surrounded by hip-hop growing up, but I didn’t own it, didn’t invest or investigate enough. Now I kinda regret that — though I still think I’m too white to pull it off. :-)

Hip-hop is the voice of the shtreet (and you gotta say shtreet, or it ain’t hip-hop, y’all). I never gave credence to what that actually means. It always felt like it was counter-cultural, in a sort of brash and pointless way. Like have you seen Airheads? (This isn’t an endorsement — it’s very low-brow, if you get what I’m saying.) These guys take over a radio studio, and finally the DJ says okay, you’ve got the mic — what is so important that you need to tell the world. And the guy says “Rock and roll!” That’s it. It’s loud and empty.

But here’s what caught my ears in the above discussion: in hip-hop culture, the standard that everything is judged by is how much it inspires others to create. A song could inspire graffiti. Or grafitti could inspire a DJ.

The ideal of perpetuation has been constantly eroded from within most of our current cultural dialogue(s). Most people’s cultural interaction drops off at the consumption stage. There are tons of important reasons for this (it’s the system, man!), but none of them concentrate on the tools. The tools are easier, more accessible and more global than ever before. I think we’ve got to grapple with that, to get perpetuation to work — because imagine if that became reality! Imagine a local group of people that simply inspired each other by creating. A group of people that got really interested in the issues. That got fired up to make a difference in the places they live, and with the people they live with. Hey, it’s a lofty, gilded goal. But one that we’re always getting closer to realising. It just needs a catalyst and a leader.

I read a recent post about Conan O’Brien’s apparent failure. This is referring to the whole contract debacle that happened a few months ago where they reinstated the previous guy into Conan’s agreed-upon time-slot. But hang on, how is that failure?

I’m starting to see a lot about failure, painting it in increasingly softer, gentler terms, suggesting even that we should embrace failure as part of the path to success. I get the motivation: fear of failure causes a bundle of problems. Trust me, I know about this. I’m the one that’s usually being reined in, and most often it’s for fear of failure (when it’s not for fear of success, that is, but that’s another story). But in this new-found friendliness toward failure, too many things are getting lumped in.

Failure isn’t when something is beyond your control. There are no profoundly personal lessons to be learned there. It’s a blow, and it’s hard to swallow. But it’s not failure. Failure is when you make your play and you come up short. It’s when you let your weakness overcome your strengths. Actually there are a lot of things that failure is. But there are plenty it isn’t.

We need to get this framed properly; lumping more stuff under the banner is just as bad as (possibly worse than) not owning it enough.

I don’t know who said it, where, or why (I saw it on fffound which is where every meme eventually ends up). I just like it.

Thinking it through, I think this sort of the foundation of a burgeoning new philosophy. (I’ve posted about psuedo-modernism recently.) When thinking fails you, feel. There are massive pitfalls to employing that as an ideal, so let’s build in some safeguards. Because there is incredible power in it, too.

Magazines, television news, newspapers, etc. are all being replaced by websites, blogs and tweets. The old guard is wringing its hands and for now seems to be trying to out-blog blogs. Content is becoming shallower and is being treated more trivially. There is little emphasis on quality, either in images or writing (why are cell-phone pictures showing up on magazine covers!?). They seem to be on a general quest for (the same) celebrity-oriented news. They are chasing (the same) attention-grabbing headlines. This is the surest way to fail. Simply put, the internet is a better source for the temporary fluff-stuff.

What they can and should be offering is perspective. Not only is there a greater need for them to fill that role, the more drawn-out publication process facilitates that better than blogs. They have a great network of reporters, pundits and commentators; ADD-riddled blogs generally don’t. Blogs are written by people without the benefit of a team or varying perspectives. This means that in order for a reader to achieve balance they must do more self-directed research, but in my experience that is not likely. You embrace the most attractive opinion and carry on with your full, rich, distracted life.

Magazines need to go deeper if they’re going to survive. Tell the history of the conflict you’re showing me pictures of. Tell me what’s being done on my behalf that I should ‘own’. Tell me what I can do about the story. What has been tried that hasn’t worked? What do I need to own, how can I make changes in line with what’s being presented. Information for information’s sake is no goal at all.

Provide me with an experience like that, and I promise I’ll blog about it. :-)

Let me open this up a little further: Where is a trusted, valued place that you get news that’s actually important to you?

Pointed to it from several directions, I recently checked out a well-known company’s newest release video. It announced the new iteration of a product that has become impressively more versatile, faster and simpler. But what has stuck with me is that there are several corporate positions with the job title “Evangelist”. I get the cute, winking reference. On one level I think it’s flattering. However, there is also a dark side. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Are Christians just sales people hawking a message? Are we trying to get someone to buy the next upgrade? To initiate some kind of monetary transaction? No. We’re about a whole different thing. We’d better be clear enough about that with ourselves, that we can clearly reflect it to the world.

Seriously, we’d better get our act together. I want us to deeply, deeply own the whole concept of evangelism. (On the other hand, televangelists can keep televangelism — ick!) I want us to embrace this concept so thoroughly that if it was used in a commercial, corporate context it would be jarring. That it currently isn’t says something both significant and sinister.

The world has taken the concept of evangelism from the church. It’s time to steal it back. And breathe into it the depth and richness that sticking it on a snappy salesman’s business card has sapped.