Where is the new ideology?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Chris Goan

It is an old academic political discussion- the end of Ideology– by which I mean the end of the time of battling grand political/economic theories that inspired and fuelled our attempts to understand and shape our society. Thatcher put an end to all that in the UK- not because she had no ideology, but because she cleared the field of all opposition. Capitalism and ‘The Market’ triumphed and gifted us with the so called free movement of capital, trickle down, neoliberalism and globalisation.

Over the next 20 years, nation after nation fell in line, cajoled by the promise of great wealth or manipulated by powerful organisations who needed scarce resources or a new market.

None of this is a surprise, but what is more noticeable is the lack of viable alternative. Sure there are voices of protest- not least the Occupy Movement- but to demand change is not necessarily the same thing as proposing an alternative (I know that the OM are in discussion about all sorts of issues, but I would suggest that no real coherent alternative ideology has yet emerged.)

There was an interesting article in the Guardian today by Aditya Chakrabortty. Here are a couple of quotes;

When the history of how a good crisis went to waste gets written up, it will surely contain a big chapter on the failure of our academic elites. Because just like the politicians, the taxpayer-funded intellectuals at our universities have missed the historic opportunities gifted to them by the financial collapse. And it will be the rest of us who pay the price…

…So have the non-economists grasped their moment? Have they hell. Look at the academic conferences held over the past few weeks, at which the latest and most promising research in each discipline is presented, and it’s as if Lehman Brothers never fell over…

Chakrabortty did a search of recent sociological and social science conferences and academic papers and concluded that pretty much the disciplines were not interested in challenging the core assumptions of the dominant ideology.

So where is the challenge to come from, if not from the academic elite? And more importantly, where are the alternative ideologies going to emerge from?

I watched the two Che Guevara films recently- a time when ideology believed that revolution was possible and even worth killing for. Revolution meant overcoming the ruling elite, empowering the poor and dispossessed and bringing egalitarian justice to society. Whilst I abhor the violence, most of us will instinctively feel the pull of these ideas.

Most of us too will have heard the spoilers- the voices that suggest that such ideas are unrealistic, unobtainable, work against human instincts and have been proved to serially fail because of the repeated failures of communist regimes throughout the world. Therefore the only option left is to continue as we are- with a few tweaks to satisfy the left field.

I want to raise my own voice in protest at this hopelessness. I want to invite my friends into a journey to find a new kind of ideology. We are not there yet, but I think we have some clues;

Start small. Start local.

Buy less, want less, make more.

Reduce waste, increase sharing and holding things in common.

Increase joint social enterprise.

In all things be aware of the impact on those who have little.

In all things be aware of the impact on the environment.

For me, the other academic/social/political group that has been near silent in the offering of a viable alternative is this one- the Church. Because as I look at the economic list above, it seems to me to be also a SPIRITUAL list. Without the life of the Spirit within us, we are mere animals, scratching and scraping at one another for the meatiest parts of the carcass.

So perhaps it all comes down to the word Love. If Economics are subordinate to love, then what might the theories look like? If political science was shaped by love, how might we organise ourselves differently? Even as I write this I feel the rise of cynicism, but- love remains.

I think this is the ideology of the Kingdom of God, and the viral vitality that we can and should bring to all these debates. And we do not have to wait until the universities write papers and hold conferences- because we can make our own small economy now- here.

An inspired life- Nick Vujicic…

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Chris Goan

I hear the words ‘Motivational Speaker’ and instantly want to run the other way with my hands over my ears shouting “OMMMMMMMM” as loudly as I can. Motivational speakers are for salesmen and pyramid selling schemes and in all other areas of life should be politely shown the door towards the nearest soup kitchen to learn some silent humility.

Then my mate Andy sent me a clip of this bloke, and I had to eat a slice of my own humble pie;

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Chris Goan

this fragile tent

I wrote this piece for our Aoradh Easter gathering… He is alive!

It was still dark when Mary left the house.

Not that she had been sleeping. The house was full of fear since Jesus had been taken. Fear of the soldiers coming by torchlight and beating on their doors. Fear that they too would face a long lingering death on a cross.

But there was something worse than fear- worse even than death. When they killed Jesus, everything that Mary had hoped for- everything she had believed in- had fallen apart.

All she had left was a dead body.

To prepare for the grave.

She would have gone sooner- but yesterday had been a religious festival, and the pew police would have been out in force to prevent anything that looked like work. Particularly this kind of work, for this kind of man.

So she carefully closed the door…

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Preston Passion…

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Chris Goan

When we visited out old church in Preston a couple of weeks ago, they were all talking about this up and coming event in the old bus station in the city centre. Lots of my friends were involved in the choir, or the crowd scenes. Today it was televised on the BBC, and the whole thing was quite remarkable. Those in the UK can watch it again here.

The Passion was a retelling of the Easter story using three short films set in Preston- a mayor dealing with riots in 1842, women waiting for the return of sons from the first world war, and a young girl (above) who was caring for her brothers and sisters because her mother was drunk. In the mix was a live performance of music and dance based at the huge Preston bus station– itself a rather famous example of brutalist architecture from the 1960s.

It made me cry lots. In a good way. It was possible to visualise an incarnate loving God permeating everything. In the muck and gristle of human existence. And to see this in the TV in these supposedly secular and post Christian times was wonderful to an old Christian like me.

Some of the places in the films were so familiar too- Michaela and I met a couple of hundred yards from one of them.

If I was to be at all critical, the black gospel bits at the end seemed tacked on, almost like the only way we Brits can do celebratory spiritual music is this way. I love this music, but it just seemed a bit cliched. Having said that, Preston has a sizeable Afro-Caribbean population so perhaps I am being harsh.

Well done Preston, and well done the BBC.

First firing of our Kiln…

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Chris Goan

Regular readers will know that about a year ago, I took a road trip down to Derbyshire to collect two kilns and a load of pottery equipment that we intended to install in our cellar. It turned out to be a lot harder than we thought as the big Kiln, weighing in at over half a ton, had to be extracted from an outbuilding at the end of a garden, carried in over and around rockeries, garden ponds and bushes and then lifted into the back of a hired van. Without a couple of Michaela’s uncles (both ex miners and used to moving big things) we simply would never have moved it.

When we got it all up here, the first challenge was getting it out of the van- stop forward some more friends, and we somehow got it on the ground without killing anyone. However, getting it down the cellar stairs was a whole different challenge.

I was discussing this problem when out for a curry with a group of blokes- one of whom, Dave, is in charge of the men who work on the hillsides keeping our electricity lines safe and functional. Dave sent round a couple of his workers, along with a winch, a ground anchor and a special sledge they use to move generators and the like into inaccessible places. They had the Kiln in the cellar in no time.

Then we discovered that the cost of wiring in the Kiln was not as simple as we had hoped, costing roughly 4 times what we had paid for the kilns and equipment! However Michaela and Pauline managed to get a grant towards this, and invested the earnings that they had already made through their craft workshops.

Meanwhile, I installed worktops, shelves, lighting, and we painted the whole cellar white to make it all a bit less murky.

After all this hard work, and kindness from friends, you will understand how exciting it was to fill the kiln with Pauline’s pots, and fire it up.

Pauline and Michaela will be running workshops soon- so if you are up for a combination of a break in Scotland and some pottery- let me know!

Spiritual maturity and the pursuit of significance…

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Chris Goan

We humans are so contradictory. Sometimes we are driven to destroy anyone or anything in our pursuit of personal gain. At other times we are capable of such incredible self sacrifice in pure service of the other. Always we hope that life is more than mere bio mechanics- it has to mean something.

For men in particular, this contradiction often creates some kind of deep void that we spend a lifetime’s journey trying to fill. We believe that the only good life is a life a success. And ultimately success has to be measurable against the failure of others- against the poverty of others, the lack of creativity in others, the lack of godliness in others, even the lack of love in others.

The problem is that success is so fickle- life moves the goalposts constantly and so we feel constantly diminished.

The void remains.

I read this today;

It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your ‘I’ is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary ‘I.’ No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever.

Richard Rohr

It seemed to me that there was a deep spiritual significance in this. What is this thing that we are becoming as we seek to live deeper, more meaningful, more loving lives? Is it really to be bigger, or is it more about recognising that we are small?

Small that is, like a beloved child, whose achievements might be indeed be celebrated, but in no way make us any more (or any less) beloved.

If only it was so simple.

But then again, I am still immature. I have a lot of growing to do yet.

Preparing for a new season…

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Chris Goan

What a lovely weekend. The sun mostly shone and the days were long.

Everything seems to be breaking down at our house though- the (new) car, the mower (so the grass will grow a little higher) and the bikes- but we spent a long time mending them, and so at least we have one form of transport.

This morning we spent a few hours down at Castle Toward, working on the cricket pitches, scraping out the moss and lichen and deciding which strips might be the best ones to use this year.

I think this sport-as-analogy-for-life is way overused but still this feeling of preparation seems right as Lent draws closer to Easter. Everything is possible again.

For William it may well be. He has been picked to play cricket for a regional under 13’s side. I took him to practice at a posh private school in Helensburgh the other day and watched proudly as he spun his leg spinners into the stumps of his team mates and then crashed the ball around when he came to bat. The boy has real potential.

As for me, this new season is more uncertain. A career ending to be replaced by uncertainties. It is hard to plan or to make choices.

All I can do is to prepare the pitch.

Things you do with sunshine and a day off…

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Chris Goan

You walk down the drive and and picnic with your wife on the beach. Never was the old estuary so lovely than on a hazy Spring day;

Making missional community…

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Chris Goan

We have been away for a couple of days in England, visiting our old church, Calvary Christian Fellowship, near Preston. It has been a glorious spring weekend, full of sunshine, hazy blue skies and green shoots everywhere.

All of which felt very appropriate as we were asked to come to talk to CCF about our experience of the process of making small ‘missional’ communities. They are in the process of trying to change the structure and focus of their organisation towards a collection of such groups. It seems to me to be a very interesting and potentially difficult process- akin to turning around a large oil tanker on a lake, but if anyone can do it I think they can.

Michaela and I did a bit of a double act- I spoke a lot about the thinking behind some of the changes that we have been through, and she described the actual practical experiences. In between we showed photographs, did some activities, and we used a large double sided loom to weave together the names of our community- something that Aoradh first developed for Greenbelt Festival. It has since been used at a few different events up and down the country.

What is created is this lovely thing, messy and rough around the edges, interconnected and full of humanity. We think it is rather a good analogy for the making of community…

It is 10 years since we moved away from CCF up to Scotland. For us this trip was a chance to take stock for ourselves as to the journey we have made. There have been challenges and times of real hardship, but also very great blessings.

This morning, Michaela and I have both taken a day off, which is fortunate as we are both exhausted. We came back to Dunoon on the last (midnight) ferry yesterday.

One of the things we tried to speak about with clarity is the question of what community (or church) is FOR. It is easy for our groups and activities to become all about OUR needs, OUR spirituality, OUR comfort zones. God might then be adopted as some kind of benign mascot. I think the primary way we avoid this is to constantly make community a place of sending, as well as gathering. Hence, we used this poem;

There is a time for all things under heaven

A time for the sent ones of God

To follow the rough roads

Into the barren broken places

To look for the marks left by Jesus

On the soft tissue and brittle bones

Of the Imago Dei

The stinking, wretched

Image bearers of the Living God

.

Time for the insurgency of God

To follow the mission

Into the hostile places

To seek out the secret stains left by the love

That was woven into the very core

Of the Imago Christi

The failing, faithless

Manifest images of the Christ

.

Time for the dancers of the new Kingdom dance

To look for the music of Jesus

Amid the static and street noise

Tuning to the high fluting fragile sound

Vibrant and resonant;

To the gracenotes made there by Spiritus Sanctus

We, the discordant, cursing and gossiping

Vessels of the Spirit of the Living God

.

Time for the revolutionaries of God

To follow the long hard march

Unyoked and with easy burdens

Looking for the soft places where people are

Where freedom flickers, where hopes soar

To seek out the Participatio Christi

With weak but willing hands and sore feet

Learning to partake in the labours of love

For now is the time for holy huddles to scatter

On the winds of the Spirit

From ‘Listing’, available from Proost.

I love you will you marry me?

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Chris Goan

Did anyone listen to this programme on Radio 4?

It was a modern day fairy-tale, with a twist of tragedy.

Across a concrete footbridge high up in a crumbling concrete wasteland someone had written the words-

Clare Middleton I love you will u marry me

The words were visible for miles, and speculation became rife as to the story behind them. Who wrote it? Did Clare Middleton say yes?

In Sheffield, the stories grew like patches of mildew on the wall- some said that she said no, and the man who wrote it jumped off the bridge. Others suggested that Clare was part of a love triangle and it all ended in violence and a burnt out flat.

The presenter managed to track down first Clare’s mother, then her friends, and eventually the writer of the message, and the story took on real flesh.

Clare was a live wire who loved to dance. She was an electric presence, who was drawn to dangerous men and drugs. She already had several kids when she fell in with the writer of the message- himself a survivor of institutional child care. By then she was stick thin and toothless from amphatamine use, but he loved her.

She said yes by the way.

But three months later they were separated, at least in part because of social work’s concerns about the safety of her children.

And then she died of cancer.

However, the ‘I love you bridge’ has become a symbol of hope. Visible tenderness, humanity and romance in the middle of all those slabs of brown streaked concrete. So much so that some artist has picked out the shaky handwriting in neon lights.

Although not the name- still there, but faded. Which seems to me unbearably sad.

Clare Middleton- you were loved.