Though I know certain friends find my struggles and complaints about caffeine annyoing, let me try and explain why it pains me so much when I make the choice to consume something like the Americano I just drank…
The backstory: I love the feeling of ‘aliveness’. I also highly value honesty, being real, feeling what needs to be felt, and following my passion (and hearing/supporting the passions of others). Conversely, I really don’t enjoy the opposites –feeling tired, sad, bored, unmotivated, lazy, aimless, etc.
What’s hard to admit, honestly, is that I find it a bit harder these days to feel ‘alive’ and ‘passionate’ and ‘motivated’ than I used to. What used to be considered the biggest sin by me, boredom or a lack of ‘wants’, is felt more frequently. (Though I still don’t really believe that’s what is going on at core…but maybe I’m just in denial.)
When I have caffeine, I get this quick boost of what feels like ‘aliveness’ and passion and energy (and I use it sparingly enough that the difference is acute, unlike many people I know who are now just dependent on it or ‘used to it’).
And when I’m caffeinated I seem to be able to bulldoze over many of my whiny blues, my tired demotivated stuckness, uber-introspection, boredness, etc.
But then, a few problems result from this choice:
1. I can crash hard physically/emotinally…feeling extra tired, depressed, upset sleep cycle, irritable, etc.
2. Perhaps more importantly, to me, I don’t TRUST the feelings/beliefs/actions that came from me during that time. Like a person who has a spiritual hallucinogenic trip from acid, I wonder ‘was it real’?
It frustrates me and tempts me to feel lame that so few other people seem to understand or want to talk about these problems, that so few people see what seems obvious to me –that our culture has a massively ‘acceptable’ drug addiction with cafe dealers only 1/2 block away everywhere -but here I am.
And I want the real thing. Aliveness. Passion. Motivation. Focus. Alertness.
Yet what I all too often find, like today, is that if getting the real thing takes more work (through who knows what -more exercise; better diet; more sleep; meditation & prayer; naps; etc.) I give into the fiend.
Okay, the truth is I love apple products. Was I happy about the ipad reveal today? Overall, yes. I’d give it a “B/B+”. It’s hard to beat the initial iphone hype without something abso-friggin-lutely amazing and different and “WOW” (especially hardware…for the iphone it was the multitouch).
However, I DO feel bad for those responsible for branding this puppy. There will be endless ipad/maxipad/itampon jokes (as has already been shown today with Twitter’s trending “itampon” meme. I’m hoping that they will eventually fade, and this amazing product will get better and better, but until then, a little fun is to be had.
What I like about the iPad?
Beautiful
Fast Fast Fast
Great Size
Great Price
Nice re-work of apps and new apps
Cool ebook reader
Can do just about anything (remember when a DVD player cost this much)
Compare all you can do with this to a Kindle… (though i like e-ink on the eyes, and 3g is free on kindle, bust much less data with kindle too…so a cheap $1 day unlimited data seems fair)
What I don’t like
No Camera and thus no videoconf. I was expected front/back camera or at least swivel
No multi-tasking so far
The name iPad
Will I buy one? Not sure. I’d give it a 50/50 on this first gen, and a 90% likely on the next.
It’s been quite a while since my last podcast and life update. Thanks to a recent surprise visit from an early bleeding purple podcast fan, I decided to share an overview of what’s been happening in my life, family, business and spiritual journey over the last couple of years. Thanks for being interested and hope to connect with some of you soon.
I’m starting a new show today called "Biznik Live". Its a call-in internet radio weekly series for the month of October and possibly beyond. I’m going to be interviewing nationally recognized authors whose powerful ideas can help us make successful choices for our businesses.
This first series is focused around the theme "Surviving & Thriving Amidst Economic Uncertainty". Our pilot show is Wed Oct 8th at 10:00am PST with Michelle Goodman (see below for her bio).
I know that many of us are feeling nervous about being self-employed ‘free agents’ during this time, so the content will be directly applicable to many of you.
I’d love to have some of you there in support, as well as to gain some great insights from Michelle Goodman. If you can’t listen live, please do still download and listen to the show at the above link as it will help as well.
1st Show Summary In this first Biznik Live show, we’ll be interviewing author Michelle Goodman on how ‘free agents’ can survive and thrive as business owners amidst economic uncertainty.
Author Bio In addition to her recently released "My so-called freelance life", Michelle Goodman is author of the nationally acclaimed "The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube", an irreverent handbook for aspiring cubicle expats. Her articles and essays about alternative careers, human mating rituals, and cultural trends have graced media outlets such as ABCNews.com, CNN.com, Salon.com, The Seattle Times, BUST, Bitch, and The Bark, and have appeared in the anthologies Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness and The Moment of Truth: Women’s Funniest Romantic Catastrophes. In her fifteen years as a full-time freelancer, she’s had the opportunity to wrangle text on computer games, marital aids, dog pajamas, home colonics, and just about anything else that can be sold. She lives in Seattle with her eighty-pound lapdog, Buddy. For more scoop on the so-called freelance life, visit her blog at Anti9to5Guide.com.
This podcast is our second in the series of interviews with presenters for the upcoming applied improv network conference in Chicago. I had a blast interviewing “Dr. Thiagi“, he was so easy and enjoyable to speak with. In the interview we cover all kinds of topics, including:
The difference between ‘engagement’ and ‘fun’ when teaching/facilitating groups
How to keep authentic/engaged as a leader when, frankly, you’re having a crap day
How to not take oneself too seriously
The dangers of Exptertism
Seeing the genius in others
Work that Thiagi is currently doing and passionate about
I challenge the term ‘performance technologist’ and Thiagi explains
Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi”Thiagarajan is the Resident Mad Scientist at The ThiagiGroup, an organization with the mission of helping people improvetheir performance effectively and enjoyably.Thiagi’s long-term clients include AT&T, Arthur Andersen,Bank of Montreal, Cadence Design Systems, Chevron, IBM, Intel,Intelsat, United Airlines, and Liberty Mutual. On a short-termbasis, Thiagi has worked with more than 50 differentorganizations in high-tech, financial services, and managementconsulting areas. For these clients, Thiagi has consulted andconducted training in such areas as rightsizing, diversity,creativity, teamwork, customer satisfaction, human performancetechnology, and organizational learning.Thiagi has published 40 books, 120 games and simulations, andmore than 200 articles. He wrote the definitive chapters onsimulations and games for ISPI’s Handbook of HumanPerformance Technology, ASTD’s Training &Development Handbook, and the American ManagementAssociation’s Human Resources Management and DevelopmentHandbook.Thiagi currently writes a monthly online newsletter,Thiagi GameLetter. This newsletter, now in itsfifth year, features Thiagi’s training games and other creativeinterventions that deliver results quickly and effectively. Heserved as the editor of NSPI Journal andPerformance & Improvement for more than 10years. He currently edits the simulation/game section in SagePublication’s journal, Simulation & Gaming. Heis also a contributing editor of the monthly journal,Educational Technology.Thiagi has made hundreds of presentations and keynote speechesat professional conferences. At ISPI, Thiagi holds the “records”for making the most presentations, conducting the mostpreconference workshops, and being invited to make the mostEncore presentations. Thiagi is also a regular presenter atLakewood’s TRAINING Conferences and the annualconferences of American Society for Training and Development(ASTD) and North American Simulation and Gaming Association(NASAGA).Thiagi has been the president of the North American Simulationand Gaming Associating (NASAGA), International Society forPerformance Improvement (ISPI), and Association for SpecialEducation Technology (ASET). He has received 17 different awardsand Presidential Citations from ISPI, including the society’shighest award, Honorary Life Member. He alsoreceived an Honorary Life Member award fromNASAGA as well as its highest award, Ifill-RaynoldsAward.Internationally recognized as an expert in multinationalcollaboration and active learning in organizations, Thiagi haslived in three different countries and has consulted in 21others.
As part of the previously announced series of interviews with speakers for the upcoming Chicago Applied Improv Conference, I interviewed Charna Halpern of the Improv Olympics theater. Unfortunately, within weeks of our interview, Charna found she had a schedule conflict and had to cancel as a preconference speaker. However, I’ve decided to still post the interview as the content is just as interesting and relevant, and I’m sure many of you will enjoy it. I apologize in advance for some of the audio levels.
For those of you unfamiliar with Charna, here is her Wikipedia entry: Charna Halpern was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago. She is a co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as The iO. The theater has locations in Chicago, Los Angeles, and (the now defunct iO South) in North Carolina. In 1981 iO Chicago opened and then in 1984 with partner Del Close she began teaching The Harold to many students in the Chicago theatre community. She and Close co-authored the book Truth in Comedy:The Manual of Improvisation with editor Kim “Howard” Johnson in 1994. In 1996 the iO Celebrated it’s 15th Anniversary at the Vic Theater. iO West Opened in 1997 and is now under the direction of James Grace. Close passed away in 1999 and had Halpern bequeath his skull to the Goodman Theater. 2005 saw the iO 25th anniversary at The Chicago Theater. She also penned Art by Committee in that year and later in 2006 it was revealed that the skull purchased on line due to a Mortician’s refusal to remove Close’s head. Halpern studied acting and worked in radio before propelling long form and improvisational theater forward, making it in to the art form it is recognized as today. Variety Magazine called her one of the top ten women to watch in entertainment. Mike Myers named her the Uta Hagen of Comedy.
Enjoy the show, and look for an interview with the amazing ‘Thiagi‘ within the week! (I’ve already interviewed Thiagi, which was one of the best conversations I’ve had in a while, I just need to find time for some editing.)
Hi folks. I hope to get a more detailed post and/or ‘life-cast’ out sometime soon, but here are some quick updates of things happening in my life right now:
I’m excited to say that I’ve started working for Biznik part time. You’ve heard me talk a lot about them out of genuine fandom, now I get to work for Biznik as their “Community Catalyst”. You can read an interview about it on the Biznik Blog, or checkout my biznik thread for more details.
We’re scheduled to facilitate another ‘Soul Tech’ workshop in Vancouver BC on October 4th. If you missed the Seattle Soul Tech workshop, covered by the Today Show, and you have a goal of having a more balanced life with technology, then come join us!
My daughter Zinnia is starting Kindergarten and I’m just so dang proud of her. She says she “love love love love loves it.” I wish I could constantly walk in rememberance and thankfulness for what an amazing daughter and wife I have. Anna & Zinnia, I love you!
I’ll be traveling out east much of this October for a couple of trainings -the Applied Improv conference in Chicago(10/23-10/26), and the NASAGA conference in Indianapolis (10/15-10/18). They are both going to be amazing conferences, so if you’re interested in the world of experiential education, interactive/engaging training and facilitation, etc. then come and join me!
Attached, and in your wonderosity podcast feed, is a little audio experiment called “Fly” –it’s my first ‘techno mix’ song. The idea came while I was jogging at the Y recently, and wishing I had music that had a few ‘life keys’ that are important to me woven into the song. Hope you like it
Speaking of podcasts, I will finally be getting back into podcasting -yay! The first few, which you should seen in 1-3 days, will be a serious of interviews with international recognized facilitators, trainers and artists –each who has some connection to the world of ‘applied improvisation’ and who will be speaking at the aforementioned conference. So stay tuned!
I’m this week in Banff, Alberta at the Banff centre. I was flown up last minute to perform in a preconference play called “Death by Powerpoint” by Paul Levy, for the ‘Art of Management’ conference. It’s a conf that is right up my alley but that, unfortunately, I’ll only get to attend the first day of.
Speaking of that play, I need to get back to rehearsal –bye!
Well, Biznik’s Seattle Bizjam starts tomorrow (July 9th-10th, 2008) and I’m getting excited. I’m also getting prepared as I’ll be presenting on the topic of “Raving Fans: Building Rich Online Community for Your Business“. Here’s a link to my short video introduction of BizJam and to the bizjam conference itself. Here’s the blurb on my workshop:
“Believe it or not, amidst the diverse masses of the internet are multitudes of people who are as passionate about your products or services as you are. They have great ideas and they want to see your business thrive. Why not create an online community that helps them connect to you, build trust in you, find your products and services, and connect to and refer each other? The results will be growth and satisfaction for all parties. Biznik is a perfect example. Come learn from Leif how to get started…”
For those who are coming, or who are simply curious, here’s more detail on what I’l be covering:
My basic outline:
A short intro (2 min)
Jump into some thought-provoking interactivities that demonstrate the upcoming ideas (10 mins)
Presentation: (20-30)
What are the dimensions and qualities of community?
Can true community happen online? Where is it already happening?
How does online community benefit business?
Case Studies, Stats & Quotes
Upcoming Trends: Rich Media, Live Media, Status & Location
Potential Pitfalls in the Social Media Future
Best Practices & Strategies for Building Community around your biz.
A Few Sample Platforms
Small group brainstorm and strategy sessions (15-20)
Another note. I’m excited to say that I’ll finally be getting to carve out some time for podcasting again. My first will be a life/work update, but then I’ll be doing monthly interviews with some really amazing ‘applied improv’ teachers, trainers and facilitators who will be presenting at this year’s Applied Improv Network conference in Chicago. I think you’ll really enjoy hearing from the game-changing people I’lll be interviewing.
Lastly, in additional to Bizjam this week, I’ll be at the Woodsong Music Festival on Orcas Island most of next week (July 17-20), so I’ll be pretty busy for a while.
It’s funny, well, sad actually: I really used to love blogging and podcasting. I enjoyed the creative act, the experiments I conducted, the excitement of being heard by others, and the pleasure of getting feedback on my thoughts and creations. Then something happened. Certain factors crept in and killed the joy. And now I’m wondering out loud what they are for me:
By far the main culprit: When I started doing ’social media stuff’ professionally, my fear of ‘looking unprofessional’ increased dramatically -the inner censor (”Grammar!”, “Stupid, unoriginal idea”, etc) got loud.
The #2 reason is that somewhere I lost my soul, my passion, my freedom to express myself honestly. Partly this is just practical –life got busy and took on priorities. But the other reasons, having to do with deeper issues of spirituality and idenitity, are things I need to deal wi th.
After leaving my last job, and starting two different businesses, life got really busy. But I don’t really believe that’s true as I spend plenty of time ‘consuming’ others’ media.
Comparing myself to other bloggers and podcasters, which I now consume more of, contributes to that #1 issue big time
For podcasting, production time can be a bitch.
Endless experimenting with and indecision between various tools and platforms.
I could list more (what about you?), but I think those are the main reasons and its time to change. So, to all those inner and outer critics: screw you, perfection and people pleasing is not what social media is about.
I just gotta be me, like it or not, buy it or not, ‘digg me’ or not.
I love remembering that I can live differently, do normal routines differently, experiment/play with my ‘everyday life’. I know that part of this is out of a fear of being ‘normal’ or boring, but it is also genuinely from a passion and excitement about exploring, experiencing new things, seeing things differently, etc. Throughout the years I’ve been known to tweak my life (go blind or mute an entire day while at college; try to only think hopeful/optimistic thoughts; etc.).
I’ve fantasized about the idea of doing a daily ‘life hack’ or ‘daily quest’ that I share with others. Well, instead of doing what I usually do, which is to state some grand plan/commitment and then gradually giving up or forgetting about it, I’ve decided to commit to doing this –but to do it intermittently. One thing I’ve found is that, while it is usually fun and I learn a ton, it’s harder than I thought (I’m already experiencing left-handed mouse use fatigue).
The Plan:
Decide on the day’s real-life hack (name subject to change). I’ll probably keep an idealist somewhere, so if you have one, please feel free to share it in the comments or email me.
Write a short blog post here at Wonderosity in the Spark Life / Everyday Living category (possibly with an Eyejot Intro)
Live it out, play the game.
Today’s Real-Life Hack: I’m going to switch use of my primary hand (right) to my left hand. Why? Primarily, like usual, I’m just curious (hey, this is the wonderosity blog). I’ve also heard research that this can be good for the ol’ noggin, get the other side of my brain activated more. We’ll see…please join me if you feel so inclined and able to do so.
Tomorrow is International ShutDown Day and, as many of you know, this is not an insignificant topic to me. I’m excited to see that the concept of dethroning technology’s dominant role in our life, even for one day, is getting so much attention. The stated purpose of the Canadian organization who is sponsoring this event is:
“The idea of Shutdown Day project is simple — just shutdown your
computer for one whole day of the year and involve yourself in some
other activities: outdoors, nature, sports, fun stuff with friends and
family — whatever, just to remind yourself that there still exists a
world outside your monitor screen.”
Because this is falling on a Saturday, and my normal ’shut down day’ (my tech sabbath) is on Sunday, I’m going to go the whole weekend as low tech as possible. This is still really hard for me and I know that the One Ring, I mean my iPhone, is going to be itchy in my pocket.
I have so many conflicted feelings right now as I write, that the only way to get them out is a quick brainstorm (I also really need to get to bed, but wanted to say something before this weekend.) I’m feeling:
Excitement that people are thinking more and more about these things, and taking steps like this day, taking our Soul Tech workshops, or joining efforts like Ariel’s 52 Nights Unplugged (though I haven’t seen a blog from her about this for quite some time now -is she still unplugging one night a week?)
Feeling stupid for feeling jealous that I’m not getting as much attention/press I’ve gotten in pasts months for our Soul Tech workshop (which, if you didn’t know, was featured in many national and international papers, and then eventually on the Today Show -see the link before for more info including a video from NBC.)
Feeling guilty that I still struggle with this issue so much
Feeling concerned that people don’t really ‘get’ how serious this issue of increasing technocentricity is and could become
Feeling anxious to finish my book on this topic
Feeling, well, its time for bed…
Good luck to those of you doing it, and hope it turns into more of a habit.
I hope you enjoy this fun, power-packed interview by the wonderful ladies (Wendy Garrett and Sandy Jorgensen) over at a new Talkshoe.com show called “Conscious Living“. While we (mostly me, caffeinated ) talked about many things, we focused on:
How Soul Tech received so much press and what the workshop is about
The various projects and businesses I’m involved in
The pros and cons of technology/Social Media and where I think things may be heading
To those of you visiting wonderosity from this show, you can follow this link to receive the free eworkbook we talked about. And you can follow this link if you are interested in seeing how you can use social media (blogs, podcasts, social networking sites, etc) to enhance your business, organization or other passion project.
If you have not yet seen this TED talk video by stroke-surviving neurologist Jill Taylor, please please please treat yourself to 18 minutes of pure inspiration and then, like me, you’ll want to pass it on to everyone you know. I’m tempted to tempt you more by telling you what its about, but would rather just let you be surprised…
A number of blog readers, podcast listeners and other friends have been wondering why I’ve been so quiet lately. The main reason is simply that a lot has been going on in my life and every time I imagine blogging or doing a podcast, I feel overwhelmed from how ‘behind the updates’ I am. And then another ’something’ (challenging or blessing) comes up in life and the overwhelmed feeling increases. So, in case more ’somethings’ come up and I end up crushed, blissed out or stretched thin, I thought I’d start out with updating you on the main sad news. Next post will be on the main good news happening in my life…which there is plenty of as well.
About three weeks ago (February 24th, 2008) my father, Jorgen Hansen, passed away (Santa Barbara Independent obituary). Though it was a sad surprise, it wasn’t too much of a shock due to the fact that he was close to 86 and did have some arrhythmic heart issues. I had last talked to him the week before when the Today Show aired the piece about our Soul Tech workshop. I think (in his funny way) he was proud about this (perhaps a little jealous or skeptic in that I don’t think he ever received the kind of accolade that he would have wanted, or that he deserved), but I’m not sure. He often shared that ‘true art/artist’ rarely, if ever, received a fair reward in the world.
Another reason I wasn’t devastated was that I received a wonderful gift the night before I found out the news. I woke in the morning with the memory of two dreams that felt so vivid and important I immediately went upstairs and wrote them down. I hadn’t written down dreams with this feeling of…hmmm…’importance’ in years. I don’t want to share the details publicly, but I’ll just say that upon reflection after the news, they were clearly gifts from my dad and/or God and/or ‘the universe’. A needed boost to my wavering faith (of late) that life truly ‘goes on’ after death…
My dad and I had an odd relationship –distant (geographically and due to being separated from him at 3) and yet very close (in that we could still connect intimately, and more so in later years as I learned to accept him for who he was.) There is so much more so to say, but its a little odd to share in this space. I will say though that I’ve recently learned much more about him, about his brilliant side as a teacher and mentor, through his students and through other friends and family that I’d never met.
Ironically (for those who know about my ’skep-tech’ side) this getting to know him has mostly happened through the social site I created on Ning. At ‘Room 23′ people have shared their personal stories, pictures, paintings and videos from my dad’s life and classes. Check out the site to learn more about this amazing, though at times mind-bogglingly frustrating, man. I love you dad and will miss hearing your voice and seeing your face, until we meet on the other side.
I just read an engadget article referring to some interesting research about American anxiety over being unplugged.
“The study used research collected on almost 5,000 people over two years, and found that feelings of “disconnect anxiety” affected people of all ages, triggering sentiments like “dazed,” “disoriented,” “tense,” “inadequate” and even “panic.” Interestingly, however, the reasons for disconnect anxiety changed as subjects got older — teens and young adults worried about social communications being cut off, while older adults mostly fretted over work and safety issues.”
The shift in reasons for unplugged-anxiety seems obvious: As we grow up, our insecurities shift from being socially based to being based on work and health/safety. As I’ve talked about taking a break from cell phones with clients wanting to be more productive with technology, and workshop participants who are older (which is most of them), I almost always hear the concern “What if there is some family emergency?” Or the other side of the coin, “What if I‘m in an emergency situation?” This concern I’d say is the #1 reason given by people who really don’t want to use/carry a cell phone, but who sometimes still decide to carry one in their car…”just in case”.
These are good, hard questions raised by the ‘blessing’ of these kinds of technologies. And yet, to confirm the research, I doubt its what a teen is going to site as to their reason for being constantly plugged in. But maybe, to them, its just as -important.
If you wrestle with this issue and are interested in some coaching that can help you use your ‘tech time’ more productively, or in our ’soul tech’ workshops, then visit the Spark Northwest site. You can also join the ‘52 Nights Unplugged‘ site for some fun support in taking some time in your life to unplug, relax, get creative and focus on the more ‘enlivening’ aspects of life.
One of my favorite outcomes from the Soul Tech workshop is that one of the participants, Ariel Meadows (a Tech Savvy Microsoft Employee, Author, and insightful blogger) decided to commit to one night a week of no ’screen technology’ (except snapping a few digital pictures to record her process.) She’s documenting her experiences on her blog under the tag (and registered domain name) “52NightsUnplugged“.
I’d mentioned in the workshop, during a point of practical steps one may choose to take, that my family has been trying to keep a ‘low tech sabbath’ on Sundays (off and on for about three years now) and I’d like to think that perhaps that was part of her inspiration. Regardless of the source of her inspiration, I think its very cool and courageous that she’s going for it! Even more inspirational is the fact that she’s been getting responses from her readers deciding that they too want to give it a go. In addition, the Today Show (who chose to profile Ariel during the workshop) is flying her out for the upcoming February 19th show to talk live about how ‘52 Nights’ has been going. Go Ariel, spread the gospel of ’soul tech’, of sustainable technological practices… or whatever one wants to call it.
It’s not about abandoning technology. It’s not about smashing the machines. It’s about dethroning technocentrism. It’s about not getting to the end of your life and thinking “Crap. I wish I hadn’t spent 25 of my years staring at screens.” (Take the natl avg of 4.5 hrs of TV a day, add movies, video games, cell phones, PDAs, etc and thats a low guestimate for a 75 year life…and who knows what new technology will be tempting us in the future. Beware the ring Frodo.)
Soul Tech, or Sustainable Tech, is about recognizing and acting on the fact that there are more wonder-full, mysterious, creative, real, adventurous, fulfilling ways to experience and express our humanity than just staring at screens and tapping mice. I want to live life deeply and I’m sure you do too.
The Seattle ‘Soul Tech’ workshop (”Living a passionately productive life amidst a tech-stressed world”) was a great success. You can see some of the pictures below, or here at the Humanity 2.0 site (a social site for those who have attended or who are interested in related topics.)
While it was a little strange to have the Today Show crew swinging camera’s around our faces, I am impressed that we (Jay, myself and all the participants) all seemed to eventually get used to it. Was it an appropriate use of technology…well, if it spreads the message, then I think yes.
So, I received an email from the producer yesterday that said our workshop would air on February 20th. How they will take what was probably 5-6 hours of footage and whittle it down to 2-3 minutes while maintaining the heart of things is a little beyond me. My hope though is that, besides a potential increase in business, it will also increase national awareness and dialogue about these increasingly important issues: How is technology effecting our daily lives for the better and for the worse? How can we become more intentional and conscious of our use in a way that maintains the best parts of being human?
I wish I had known about ImprovEverywhere earlier in my life, as I’ve been doing somewhat related ‘public spontaneous events’ by myself and with friends for over a decade now. Joining a broader community would have been supportive and fun (it can get a little scary or lonely at times)… but hey, no point whining about what can now change! I ’ve just found out that they’ve recently started a BOOMING Ning social site, which includes local groups getting organized for lively local chaos. To get a taste of ImprovEverywhere’s ‘art’, the below video is probably my favorite ‘mission’ by the NY group yet….over 200 ’secret agents’ spontaneiously freezing in the NY subway. Brilliant! It seems that most of their events are just for fun, though I’m not sure. Personally, I’d like to add some more ‘meaningful purpose’ to the events I’m a part of, but hey, maybe the deepest message one can say is “Have fun”. (Like the bumper sticker: “Maybe the Hokey-Pokey IS what its all about!”)Enjoy!
If you haven’t played the game (or had the experience) of “Passage” yet, download it now (Mac, PC or Linux) and see what you think. The game/experience takes 5 minutes and I thought it was a fascinating and artistic way to express much of what life’s ‘about’. I won’t say much more, but will let it be a surprise. Kudos to Buzz for telling me about this. After you’ve played it once, I’d suggest reading the creator’s statement and then playing it again.
“We need to restore mystery to education, to allow a creative and healthy balance between being ‘plugged’ where we explore the technology of knowledge as symbolized in our computers and machines with being ‘unplugged’ by exploring creativity in community where the tools are simple and embodied in our voices, our dancing, our acting and our play.”
In order to understand the relevance of Tolkien’s story to us today, and in order to better understand how technology has taken such a prominent place in our society, we will now need to examine another myth, a myth which wants us to take it a little more ‘literally’. I call it a myth because every worldview is part system and part story: They are systems because they try to show how the various dimensions of reality are related; they are stories because they try to make sense of human history using language that is inescapably associated with a socio-historical context, and because they make choices that can never be severed from subjective value judgments.
We have a choice of what myths, what visions we will use to help us understand the physical world. We do not have a choice of understanding it without using any myths or visions at all. Again, we have a real choice between becoming aware of these myths and ignoring them. If we ignore them, we travel blindly inside myths and visions which are largely provided by other people. This makes it much harder to know where we are going.
The myth we will now be examining is the worldview produced by unrestrained scientific inquiry and assertions –a way of defining the universe that, when taken in its extreme form, reduces the universe to merely quantifiable material substances. This worldview has taken on various nuances and labels, yet I will be using the term ‘scientific reductionism’ to describe it. Scientific reductionism is the belief that all that exists is ultimately reducible to rationally explicable, mathematically quantifiable materials and laws that can best be discovered and exploited through the scientific method of apprehending reality. While I will not recount here the history of how this worldview came to be so prevalent and so radically misappropriated, its primary point of origin was the Enlightenment’s placing of reason above all other sources of truth.
Wendell Berry, critiquing one of the most recent and comprehensive attempts to promote this radically materialist worldview, O.N. Wilson’s Consilience, notes in his poignantly titled book Life is a Miracle: An essay against modern superstitionthat
Our daily lives are a daily mockery of our scientific pretensions. We are learning to know precisely the location of our genes, but significant numbers of us don’t know the whereabouts of our children. Science does not seem to be lighting the way; we seem rather to be leapfrogging into the dark along a series of scientific solutions, which become problems, which call for further solutions, which science is always eager to supply, and which it sometimes cannot supply.
A glance at any newspaper (or out most windows) confirms this image of leapfrogging in the dark –drugs that turn out to have devastating side effects; factories that destroy the environment; machines that end up diminishing or creating barriers between relationships; social ‘programs’ that end up dehumanizing people; technologies that promise to bring happiness but only bring temporary entertainment –these and many other examples confirm Berry’s image. We are dramatically confronted by the many problems caused by our previous ‘solutions’, and yet oddly enough more and more scientific ‘miracles’ are advertised, believed in, sold, and all too thoughtlessly consumed. It’s as though we are addicted to technological ‘fixes’ and yet in denial of this addiction and its destructive consequences.
Yet without recognizing these consequences and without admitting the limits of this scientific myth, we have brought about serious problems; problems which may mean a temporary freedom for science, but which actually result in great loss of freedom for the world. Berry puts it so:
Our present idea of freedom in science is too often reducible to thoughtlessness of consequence…In both science and art there is a principled resistance to any suggestion that the specialist, within his or her work, might be subject or subordinate to anything. And so the freedom of the originators and exploiters has become, in effect, the abduction and imprisonment of all the rest of us. Adam was the first, but not the last, to choose for the whole human race.
Freedom was never meant be mean the ‘freedom’ to do whatever one desires; it comes when the boundaries and limits drawn by love are respected. Our choices have consequences, and as we have seen, many of the choices of the scientific-political-technological powers-that-be have resulted in a great loss of freedom for many.
A further problem with this myth is that by reducing the known universe to mere lawfully determined, quantifiable material, we abandon any meaningful belief in the wonderful realities that make life worth living –wonders like free-will, the human spirit, and love. Berry reminds us that, left to itself, this limited way of knowing “would impose the scientific methodology of reductionism upon cultural properties, such as religion and the arts, that are inherently alien to it, and that are often expressly resistant to reduction of any kind.”
Since reductionism believes that everything can ultimately be explained, these mysterious realities can only be perceived as puzzles yet to be solved, illusions and superstitions yet to be discredited, or territory waiting to be conquered, quantified, and used. Yet in believing this we deny the mysterious nature of the very realities that enable us to discover and proclaim that any ‘truth’ might exist in the first place. In his book “The Abolition of Man”, CS Lewis illustrates this point well,
But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.
It is worth noting that one interesting magical property of The Ring is that it makes its wearer invisible. At first, it seems as though these pictures clash –a ring that makes its wearer invisible and a worldview that makes everything else invisible –but in the end, they are the same. For when we attempt to have power over others, denying their ultimately mysterious nature, we begin the process of dehumanizing them, and we too begin to fade from all that makes us truly human.
Obviously we do not literally disappear (though with foolish creations like the nuclear bomb, the metaphor becomes frighteningly befitting) but that which makes us truly human does. Wendell Berry tells us that by accepting the reductionist worldview, we adopt the idea “that there is no difference between creature and artifice, birth and manufacture, thought and computation” In essence, this way of perceiving the world leads us to see the human as just one more machine –and not a very ‘efficient’ one at that (depending on one’s values). Berry notices that
This machine business may once have had meaning. It may have been a way of asserting a belief in the integrity of Creation and the physical coherence of creatures; it may have been a way of insisting on the indispensability of part to whole. The machine, in other words, had a certain usefulness as a metaphor. But the legitimacy of a metaphor depends upon our understanding of its limits.
Surely one of the ways of describing life is as an integrated system –there is nothing wrong with that –yet this metaphor has limits that urgently need to be recognized. Taken by itself, the scientific way of knowing is ironically more of a limited and limiting myth (for it reduces reality) than the more traditionally ‘mythic’ ways of knowing –like the artistic work of Tolkien or a more traditional religious worldview –the very spheres that many scientists so often try to discredit in our present age. We now turn to look at the link between scientific reductionism and the technologies that it produces.
We continue from the last entry exploring the nature of technology through Tolkien’s myth…
My Story
As early as about 1978, when personal computers were just beginning to make their way into many North American middle class homes, I was already spending a lot of time with them. Using a computer was one of the few things my step-father and I did together. In fact, I learned to type by playing computer adventure games: hunting and pecking for the right letters, I would give my computerized character commands like “g-o n-o-r-t-h” and “p-i-c-k u-p s-w-o-r-d” and “a-t-t-a-c-k t-r-o-l-l”. I was entertained and fascinated, enchanted, and soon became quite proficient with these magical boxes. But with time, as they and I each developed in complexity and power, previously unseen problems and concerns about their nature and my use of them began to arise. I was unsure how to begin trying to understand how technology was affecting me and the rest of the world. Thus the research for this paper has primarily been to help me wrestle through my very ambiguous feelings about technology. And, in my own unusual way, the writing of it is an attempt to increase awareness of what seems to be the crucial questions involved with technology and to offer any answers I have found along the way.
A week before writing this paper I decided to go for a long walk in the woods to think over what I’ve learned thus far and to put together some kind of outline in my head. However, before I left my house, I started gathering things for my backpack –a few snacks, a book or two, a journal and pen, and my new ‘Revo’ –a 1999 gadget that was basically like a laptop computer, except that it was only the size of a wallet. Pretty geeky stuff for the times. “I had better take this to capture my ideas” I thought to myself. However, in light of the topic at hand, I eventually reconsidered and left it in my office. Actually, I decided to leave the pen and paper there too –for, I wondered to myself, aren’t these types of technologies as well? In the end I left everything at home except a tuna-fish sandwich that I had made for lunch, which I put in my coat pocket before heading out the door. If you’re one of those who would consider my tuna sandwich a type of technology, well, I’ll have a word or two for you later. Anyway, I left the house feeling a little less burdened than my initial attempt.
The woods were quiet and refreshing. Eventually the trails of the UBC endowment lands take one away from the sounds of rushing cars and other city noises. Slowly, as my mind settled and I became immersed in the beauty of the woods, I began to mull over much of what I’d read related to the nature of technology. Soon afterwards, ‘brilliant earth-shattering revelations!’ (or so I felt) began to rain down upon me. “Oh, I hope <read: fear> I don’t forget these ideas” I thought to myself, “I wish I would have brought my Revo –or at least the pen and paper. Maybe I was being too legalistic. Should I go back and get it? I’d hate to forget all this.” This type of chatter and more of its kind looped through my mind for a few minutes before finally submitting to the silent whispers of the trees.
I wondered to myself later that day: was my Revo, like Tolkien’s One ring, calling out for me, it’s servant?
Tolkien’s Story
J.R.R. Tolkien created a massive work of the imagination, a fantastic meta-narrative some might say, that is working its literary ‘magic’ on millions of readers to this day. I was one of these enchanted readers early in my childhood, and made my way through his trilogy probably only a few years after my exposure to the magic of computers –which, for a 10 year old infrequent reader, was quite a feat (around a couple thousand pages if you include the Hobbit!) Tolkien’s primary works (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Sirmarillion) have sold well over 100,000,000 copies (as of 1999), have been translated into at least thirty languages, and are frequently at the top of various national ‘top ten book’ surveys. They have clearly been influential in the lives of many many people –and there is no sign that this trend will be ceasing any time soon. In his myth, the basic plot runs so:
An ancient and magic ring has been unexpectedly found by a member of a simple and somewhat humble race, a hobbit by the name of Bilbo Baggins. He knows not the ring’s true nature or powers, but there is a powerful enemy that does. In time, a wise old wizard named Gandalf and other wise men from various races –elves, dwarves and such –come to conclude that this ring is none other than the One Ring, from the sayings of Lore;
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord in his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to Bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
A High Council is called in which, after many disagreements and struggles, it is painfully admitted that there is only one thing that must be done with this powerful ring –it must be destroyed. The council realizes that even if one were to try and use the ring to war against the Dark Lord Sauron (for a great war is stirring at the time of this story, and many tragic victories have already been won by Sauron), it would eventually turn to ill, for its use would ultimately corrupt and enslave the wearer (The reason for this will be explored in more detail later, but for now recall Acton’s famous phrase “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”). Yet the matter of destroying this ring is not so simple: it must be taken by one willing to travel far into the lifeless land of Mordor, and cast into the same mount of fire in which it was forged.
By the time that this council takes place the ring has passed on to another hobbit, Frodo Baggins (Bilbo’s adopted cousin), who reluctantly accepts the heavy burden of bearing the ring to Mordor. The rest of the story, which is the majority of Tolkien’s trilogy, describes the journey Frodo takes with a fellowship of companions, and the adventures that they embark upon to try and destroy the One Ring.
“As the servants of the machines are becoming a privileged
class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful.
What’s their next move?”
–J.R.R. Tolkien (in a letter to his son, at the close of WWII)
Have you ever had the odd experience of re-reading a paper you’ve written, even just a few years back, and feeling like it must have been written by someone else far more knowledgeable or far more idiotic than yourself? I tend to feel one of those two extremes when I re-read my papers (which is probably why I do it so rarely). While a good portion of those papers now feel like they were a waste of time, a few of the ones I wrote in grad school still have tremendous importance and relevance to me and, I’ve been told, for society in general.
One of the two papers most requested from me I’ve decided to take material from and re-post in blog format, for a) I’ve recently received some national press about a workshop we’re doing related to this topic, b)I’ve always wanted to edit and update this paper, c) Excerpts from the paper are much easier to digest than a 50 page paper and, d) My paper was written from a particular ‘theological’ context that could distract some folks from the heart of the issue. If you want to read the full paper with all its foot notes (there are some good juicy ones), feel free to go ahead but, without further adieu: “The Ring, The Stone, & The Pool: Exploring the Nature of Technology through the Magic within Tolkien’s Myth, Part I, An Introduction”
“…Technology is playing more and more of a role in our daily lives and we are doing more and more of our playing through technology. However, the question that gets closer to the point of this paper is this: is technology actually playing more and more with us? Some of us are concerned that this might be the case; that as we increasingly use technologies, we are actually increasingly being used by them as well.
If the connections between an increase in technological dependency and many of the problems facing our modern society are not already obvious to the reader, I hope that by the end of this paper they will be. Yet not only do I hope to heighten your awareness of the seriousness of the situation at hand, I also aim to help you better understand the very nature of technology, and in time, to be more thoughtful about intentional about which technologies to embrace and in what manner their powers can best be used. Lastly, I will point towards another type of power, an alternative ‘magic’, that I believe can better meet many of the needs and desires which we have tried mostly in vain to meet through technological means.
In order to accomplish these goals we will need to traverse what may seem strange or unrelated territory; for what do technology, magic, myth, and art have to do with each other? By drawing upon the mythic literature of J.R.R. Tolkien, the relationship of these subjects will become clearer as we examine the nature of three magical artifacts found in Tolkien’s trilogy: the One Ring, the Palantiri stones, and Galadriel’s Pool.
After briefly telling a story about my relationship with technology, and after briefly summarizing the core plot of Tolkien’s trilogy, I will use each of these magical artifacts to provide the basic structure of this paper. In looking at ‘the One ring’, I will be critiquing various myths of modernity and exploring the nature of technology in general. Next, the Palantiri stones will provide for us a helpful analogy to our modern technologies, and so here I will also propose a more holistic approach to technological assessment. Finally, by looking into the pool of Galadriel, I will conclude by examining the nature of another kind of more creative magic that exists in both our own world and Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. But first I would like to share with the reader why this topic is so important to me…”
This story is amazing, hard for me to even imagine and believe. Have you ever fantasized about building a hobbit home in the earth or perhaps of discovering underground palaces like those described by Tolkien’s dwarves in the Lord of the Rings? A friend recently sent me this article about an Italian man who, inspired by spiritual visions, allowed his curiosity to explore the possibilities of building underground (Makes me wonder: Does my current real estate have a vertical dimension as well?) After 30 years, this underground temple is 300,000 square feet! (Big Ben, as the article mentions, is 15,000 square feet.) Wow! I would sincerely love to visit this wonder someday. I don’t know about the Damanhur community’s particular spiritual worldview (yet), but to be honest (at this point), I don’t really care. I am simply inspired by seeing what a community of people with vision can do. The creativity is astounding. As the founder says, who now calls himself Falco,
“They are to remind people that we are all capable of much more than we realize and that hidden treasures can be found within every one of us once you know how to access them.”
Too wired, techies regroup, reach out
Leif Hansen, shown at Gas Works Park in Seattle, coordinates workshops in which
self-described technophiles look for ways to relinquish high-tech and find a balance
between the virtual and real worlds. “I see people very overwhelmed,” he said.
“Calling their dependence on technology an addiction, some attend retreats near Seattle to take the first step and admit it.
Like many professionals, Mark Stiffler spent countless hours surfing the Internet, typing e-mails and talking on a cellphone. The “wired” life took a toll.
It made him edgy and disconnected. His dependence on high-technology began feeling much like addiction and, like many addictions, this one affected his personal relationships…” {More}
Well, thanks to the design eye of Kelli Lewis, Spark Northwest now has a new website. I’m still tweaking some of the content, but feel free to give any feedback about how it works for you. Thanks!
I’m not a fan of ‘cool’ -though I’m just as guilty as most people of using the word. Cool has become an increasingly ‘default’ adjective over the past few decades, and yet its net effect has been primarily to further segment and dumb down our culture. The statement “That concert was cool” not only has less value than “I really liked the lead singer’s harmonies”, it also seeks out an affirmation from the hearer that they too think it was ‘cool’. And what in the world does that use of the word cool mean anyway?
I like ‘cool’ attitudes even less. Coolness makes it really hard to get to know a person, to connect with them on an authentic, free level. When I’m in a compassionate space, I remember that behind the neutrality/indifference of ‘coolness’ is most likely various protective layers and fears stemming from a variety of relational hurts. You may think I’m over-analyzing this, but every time I’ve had the courage, patience and care to probe beyond somebody’s icy cool walls, they begin to melt down and I’m able to cross over and connect with them on a deeper level. Now that I’m writing about it, I’m realizing that wonderosity, -a vulnerable free-flowing following your curiosity to a child-like wonder and awe at Life, is on the opposite pole from icy coolness.
Anyway, in the hope that you might seek out a little wonderosity warmth if you need it, I offer these top ten signs (not in order) that you might just be getting a little too cool:
You rarely look at people’s eyes because, well, its just not cool
You either strive to wear what’s right, or to look like you don’t care what’s right to wear
Sarcasm or other humor/language that only a few people will get frequently pass through your lips
Your primary mood is ‘indifferent’
You find conversations whether there is personal disclosure uncomfortable or unpleasant
You frequently find yourself afraid, worried or insecure about what other people will think about you
You would prefer conversation with your gadget, than with the real person just a few feet away from you
You frequently use the word cool to describe things, people, music, experiences, events, whatever.
You avoid certain people (or categories of people) because, well, their just not cool
You are more afraid or distrustful of people than trusting
I’m sure the above list could be consolidated, re-ordered and added to, and maybe that’s just what I’ll do. Or is that not a cool way to blog?
I’ll end with some very uncool cliches: Be free! Be yourself! Have fun! Screw your fears! True friends will like you for who you are. Let your true colors shine, go for it!
You know how when going on a vacation it takes a few days to relax and get in the vacation mind?It is like that with our tech-intensive world.Technology can be fun and effective, and yet it can be addictive, stressful and soul-deadening as well.
During a recent Spark Northwest Humanity 2.0 workshop on balancing technology and need for human fulfillment, participants identified several major challenges, including:
How do we deepen awareness of when we are too consumed by technology?
When we become aware, how do we consciously choose new behavior that deepens our happiness and connection with others?
As we work to establish a balance between technical and soulful aspects of living, how do we stick with it?
The Soul Tech workshop will address these challenges.…{More Details}
Thanks to two friends, I found this excellent piece of audio journalism from American Public Media, “Speaking of Faith” about the science/nature/wonder of PLAY…I highly recommend it!
Wow! Have you ever wondered if you’d be able to grasp the basic of String Theory’s ten dimensions? Well, here is a really fun, trippy video that might just help you out. It helped me out…now I just want to find that portal, the tesseract, the portal, the ‘fold’, onto other dimensions. And I’m not kidding, I really think its possible…
Technorati Tags: tesseract, stringtheory, wonderosity, leifhansen
Since the “I like” game was one of the most popular at our last playformation workshop, and it is obviously a very simple exercise to incorporate into daily life, I thought I’d say a few words about it here:So, the skinny, with some tips:
1. Give yourself* a time limit (we gave ourselves 2 minutes, but you could do anything. I’d suggest 1-5 minutes to not burn out)
2. Try and find/feel that place in you that is ‘real’, where you really ‘are’ right now.
3. Start saying “I like” …whatever you honestly are liking, enjoying, diggin’, at this moment. It might be a certain color, a feeling, a memory, an excitement about something upcoming, a food, a friend, whatever is true.
4. Repeat “I like” for each one and don’t stop talking -even if you need to repeat the same thing over and over. Why not groove on the goodness of that particular thing?
5. Check in with yourself, how do you feel compared to before?
*Note: while you can surely do this by yourself, as a recent participant mentioned, there is something powerful about hearing the “I likes” of someone else as well as knowing that your “I likes” are being heard. Do you have a friend, family member, coach or counselor you can do this with when needed?
This game started years ago with a much more ‘exterior’ motivation (what ’should’ I like and ‘praise the lord’ for?), and sometimes led to the more authentic kind of ‘praise’ of God and life that my current practice does. Patricia Madsen’s ‘improv wisdom‘ has a chapter related to this entitled “Wake up to the gifts” and I’d highly recommend reading her book.
People often make the mistake in thinking that one FIRST finds happiness, then one is ‘feels’ thankful. Surprise surprise. It is often the other way around…find what you like, what is already there, ‘the good’ (from the simplest to the most sublime) and then you’ll likely feel happier.
Enjoy, maybe it will lead you closer to Pronoia (more on that later!)
Whew! I’m tired…though from some good fun work. Spark NW had a great playformation ‘teaser’ workshop last night that brought together about 22 different indie biznik folks from around the greater Seattle area. We had a great time and overall it was clearly a successful evening with lots of new connections between people, new creative breakthroughs sparked, and goofy playful fun. However, I stayed up way too late afterwards summarizing the 20 post-workshop surveys I received. Overall, the response was great. Here are some of the highlights:
95% of participants said that they enjoyed my facilitation process.
85% said it was a worthwhile event (the other three were ‘neutral’)
60% said they would like to come to a full day playformation workshop (7 neutral about it, 1 wouldn’t come due to his not being able to connect that evening.)
In addition, 12 out of 20 of the people were interested in talking more about either breakthrough coaching, team-building, or other Spark NW workshops. Excellent! I look forward following up with each of them (or you!)
The verbal feedback was also overall positive: many comments like “Very interactive, lots of movement and laughter. Total participation. Loved getting a chance to talk to so many of the people. Great Activities!”
We did too much, too fast…not enough depth to really get into activities
Related to that, not enough explanation about the purpose and ‘life-application’ of each activities.
These issues are issues I’ve struggled with a lot –I want to do and share as much as possible (everything!) and that can be a little overwhelming for folks, understably. It didn’t help that I had advertised this event with fairly general, ‘catch-all’ terms so that people came with expectations and interests from ‘just having fun with other people’ to ‘learn creative exercises to enhance my business’. While I believe that one can do both, indeed that is the heart and soul of Spark NW (’breakthrough transformation that is also fun and enjoyable), the people with interests focused on either ends of the spectrum will probably go away feeling like there was ‘too much’ of the other.
How can I resolve this tension? Well, I think I can solve much of it by forcing myself to narrow down my focus both on WHO I’m doing workshops for and WHAT outcomes one can specifically expect from this. That’s why I’ve decided to make the full day workshop on the 13th of October very focused on indie business / entrepeneur types who want to find creative ways to Spark their business, while I’m making the Oct. 26th a more fun personal development day open to all. Hmmm, but even that second one is still too vague. Should it be about increasing personal confidence, having a more positive mooditude, increasing creative flow and innovation, better listening and people skills, centering/awareness/groundedness, opening up and receiving offers from the universe, or what? Maybe the trick is to narrow down the WHO first (but but but, I like the idea of it being totally open), and then find out what their needs are. Anyway, if you are one of the ‘them’, let me know what you YOU are looking for. More details coming on those two events by the end of this week. Check back here, or at the SparkNW.com site.
I’m always a little surprised at how seldomly people taking improv classes think about how their new skills can add to their life. I was therefore happy to find this brief blog entry by an improv student applying to her life what any improv actor quickly learns on the stage: JANE CHIN » Blog Archive » What Comedy Improv Taught Me About Life
What I learned in comedy improv has helped me live life the way I want to live life. Each opportunity to get up and perform is like applying life skills in a sliver of time. In addition to having an environment where I can exercise my extreme quirkiness, I’ve learned that…
I can spend a lot of time going over what I could have done or should have said to be “funnier”, but what truly counts is what I actually do and say in my turn.
A true skill of improv and in life is to be with the fear when fear comes, listen intensely to what I am given, and trust that something comes to me in the nanoseconds I have to respond in the scene.
Being a good audience member, clapping and cheering for my fellow improv’ers when they’re on stage is as important as being a good improv’er when I’m on stage. I enjoy being a good audience member as much as performing on stage.
When I bomb and fail miserably, I know that it will be all over in minutes. A classmate suggested that we can aim to fail on stage early on, and get over that part of our mindtrash so we can go on to enjoy ourselves.
Yes, and. Yes, and. Yes, and. The mantra for comedy improv is “yes, and.” Whatever I get, I say, “yes, and.” Whatever happens to me in life, I say, “yes, and.” I accept everything that comes by saying “yes”. I create my own experience from what I’m given by saying “…and…”
Well, I was planning on writing up a more detailed summary of our Orcas workshop, but to be honest I am POOPED with the process of creating the new H2.0 social site, so hopefully you’ll get a general sense of things by checking out the pictures, etc. Pictures are only from me so far (thus I’m not in them, nor the games and interactivies I facilitated), but they show the group’s process as well as pictures of all our poster-board notes filled with great ideas, burning questions, and helpful insights.
In short, it was a great time of meeting and experiencing wonderfully diverse people and perspectives, brainstorming, problem solving, and playing together. All what we hoped it would be.
Thanks to all who came and who helped promote it! We have decided to definitely do a Seattle version, most likely sometime the first half of October. So the bunches of you who wanted to come but found the time and distance (to Orcas) a little too much, you’ll get to come. Woohoo!
“Lapsarianism — the idea of a paradise lost, a fall from grace that makes each year worse than the last — is the predominant future feeling for many people. It’s easy to see why: an imperfectly remembered golden childhood gives way to the worries of adulthood and physical senescence. Surely the world is getting worse: nothing tastes as good as it did when we were six, everything hurts all the time, and our matured gonads drive us into frenzies of bizarre, self-destructive behavior.
Lapsarianism dominates the Abrahamic faiths. I have an Orthodox Jewish friend whose tradition holds that each generation of rabbis is necessarily less perfect than the rabbis that came before, since each generation is more removed from the perfection of the Garden. Therefore, no rabbi is allowed to overturn any of his forebears’ wisdom, since they are all, by definition, smarter than him.
The natural endpoint of Lapsarianism is apocalypse. If things get worse, and worse, and worse, eventually they’ll just run out of worseness. Eventually, they’ll bottom out, a kind of rotten death of the universe when Lapsarian entropy hits the nadir and takes us all with it.
Running counter to Lapsarianism is progressivism: the Enlightenment ideal of a world of great people standing on the shoulders of giants. Each of us contributes to improving the world’s storehouse of knowledge (and thus its capacity for bringing joy to all of us), and our descendants and proteges take our work and improve on it. The very idea of “progress” runs counter to the idea of Lapsarianism and the fall: it is the idea that we, as a species, are falling in reverse, combing back the wild tangle of entropy into a neat, tidy braid.
Of course, progress must also have a boundary condition — if only because we eventually run out of imaginary ways that the human condition can improve. And science fiction has a name for the upper bound of progress, a name for the progressive apocalypse:
We call it the Singularity.
Vernor Vinge’s Singularity takes place when our technology reaches a stage that allows us to “upload” our minds into software, run them at faster, hotter speeds than our neurological wetware substrate allows for, and create multiple, parallel instances of ourselves. After the Singularity, nothing is predictable because everything is possible. We will cease to be human and become (as the title of Rudy Rucker’s next novel would have it) Postsingular.
The Singularity is what happens when we have so much progress that we run out of progress. It’s the apocalypse that ends the human race in rapture and joy. Indeed, Ken MacLeod calls the Singularity “the rapture of the nerds,” an apt description for the mirror-world progressive version of the Lapsarian apocalypse.
At the end of the day, both progress and the fall from grace are illusions. The central thesis of Stumbling on Happiness is that human beings are remarkably bad at predicting what will make us happy. Our predictions are skewed by our imperfect memories and our capacity for filling the future with the present day.
The future is gnarlier than futurism. NCC-1701 probably wouldn’t send out transporter-equipped drones — instead, it would likely find itself on missions whose ethos, mores, and rationale are largely incomprehensible to us, and so obvious to its crew that they couldn’t hope to explain them.
Science fiction is the literature of the present, and the present is the only era that we can hope to understand, because it’s the only era that lets us check our observations and predictions against reality.”
Some exciting news! With the advent of my new business Spark Northwest, I have decided to relaunch The Quest Cast. I’m not entirely sure what shape it will take, nor whether I will keep this same site or start a new one. Whatever does happen I will be sure to announce it here and if the feed changes, I will make an announcement on the previous podcast feed. For those of you have visited from the Spark Northwest website and have NO CLUE what the Quest Cast even was (let alone what it will become), check out my first post at the bottom of this page to see my original goals. You can also listen to one of the shows to get a sense of how things worked.
Thanks for coming by and I look forward to sparking a quest for you soon! -Leif
In anticipation of our new business (Spark Northwest) publicly ‘coming out’ sometime in June, I’m excited to say that I’ll be attending Biznik’s first big event –BizJam. It looks likes its going to be a jam-packed day, so my only concern is figuring out what to choose and not being overwhelmed. If any of you are in the area and thinking of coming, let me know via email or a comment. If you don’t know about it or BizNik, then click the image and become enlightened.
For those of you who have been listening to my show since it was called the “Bleeding Purple Podcast”, check out this site. My friend Kat found it for me and I’m planning on ordering a bracelet. From the site:
“Not conversion, but conversation. Dialogue, not diatribe. Friendly, honest, and direct debate, rooted in respect and the ability to listen…simply for the possibility that understanding each other’s stories will help lead to a more civil, more sane way of working and living together.”
Hey you. Come sit down and join us for a nice organic conversation over at Breitenbush. This interview with Jeff and Nicole, two organic farmers with KingFisher Farms in Oregon, was a really helpful conversation for getting over some of my fears about slowing down and shifting into a more sustainable lifestyle. Whether you’re already far along the path of sustainability, or you, like me, find yourself stumbling along slower than you’d like -I think you’ll enjoy our honest dialogue as well.
We talk about questions like:
What is the organic / sustainable movement about?
How might we be motivated to change to a more sustainable lifestyle not out of fear and guilt, but genuine desire? (What are the bennys?)
What are CSAs and how do they work?
Does a full embracing of the sustainable lifestyle necessitate a shift away from all global systems? (boy, I wish I asked it that succinctly during the interview)
What would the ideal local / sustainable life look when it comes to global life?
Drop me a note here, at the People Portal, or leave a message at 360-566-2278. And if you’re in Oregon, by all means call them up and start getting their goodies.
Today’s show is an interview with Todd Fadel, who is hosting a creative collaborative experiment in Portland, Oregon on February 17th, 2007. We talk about the event, its origins, inclusivity and community building through creativity. Audio quality was semi-suck, sorry about that.
As promised, here are some links to sites related to this event, as well as Todd’s creative online happenings:
My first attempt at YouTube-exhibitionism. What do you think, should I do more in the future or no?
I don’t know why this isn’t embedding, but here is the revver video link or here is the YouTube link for now.
I blogged a little about this over at my Geeking Out Loud blog (from my recently attended IgniteSeattle event), but for you wonderosity listeners who really want to LIVE out your goals, challenges and dreams (or want to be inspired to do so by others’ dreams) --you have just GOT to go check out this v. cool new site Reality All Starz. That link will take you to my profile page, but please start an account and start having fun there!
Below (from the site)
Challenge yourself and your friends to do interesting and unusual things.
It works like this: You peruse the Reality All Starz library of challenges — or you can write challenges of your own design. A challenge can be something simple like: ask out that girl you’ve avoided your entire life or something more difficult like get a town named after you. You rate the challenges, from 1 point for super easy to 100 points for damn near impossible.
You can then attempt any challenge you like. You upload video or photographic evidence that you’ve completed a challenge. Your friends can review this evidence and rate how well you’ve done. The more style or uniqueness you bring to solving each challenge, the more points you’ll get. Do more challenges, get more points.
We keep track of who are the top Reality All Starz. Are you?
Who made this?
RealityAllStarz was conceived and created by me, Peter T. Brown, and with ridiculous amounts of help from Dr. Shelly Farnham (she’s a world renowned expert in social technology). The stellar brand was developed by Jason Levine and his 3 year-old over at Perfect Pixels Design.
Well, for a first experiment with Talkshoe, this turned out pretty good. Unfortunately, the combination of one caller’s background noise plus Kris Gauci’s somewhat soft voice made the first 5 minutes a bit tricky to hear. Also, while four other people connected to the show, only one had the capacity to talk and I had to mute his voice because of the aforementioned background noise. Oh well, next time will bet better (: As for the content though, Kris was a delight to talk with and the 30 minutes sped by all too quickly. We primarily talked about:
Kris Gauci’s brief spiritual background -more about Kris and his teaching can be found here.
Is God personal or impersonal?
Honesty/Authenticity & Spirituality
The paradox and need of both trust/hope and doubt/etc.
Let me know what you think about the concept of a live show like this, how the time slot was, etc. Tomorrow I have an interview with the director of the National UFO Reporting Center, currently based in Seattle, that should be interesting…hope to have the results of that out next week. Receive care, -Leif
A BP/Wonderosity listener and kindrid spirit sent me an email a few days ago that contains a conversation with her two children that I just had to share with you as well.
On another note, get this: The kids and I were driving one afternoon and en route passed a new Christian high school. Here’s the exchange. Now mind you, DD is 7 and DS is 5. This blew my mind!
DD: Mom, is that a church? Or a school?
Me: It’s a school, but people who go to a religious high school also worship there. So in a sense, it is both.
DD: What is that sign on it?
Me: A cross. It is a symbol of Christians.
DD: What is a Christian.
Me: A Christian is a person who believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God.
DD: Who is Jesus Christ? (read this with the sassiest, most incredulous, 7 year old girl tone imaginable)
Me: A man who lived a long, long time ago who some people think is the son of God.
DD: <<silence>>
Me: Do you believe in God, Rachel?
DD: No, I don’t believe in God.
Me: Do you believe in God, Priam? (Priam is my son)
DS: Yes mom, I believe in God.
All: <<silence>>
DD: Do you believe in God, mom?
Me: Yes sweetheart, I believe in God. But I respect that you do not believe in God.
DD: And I respect that you do believe in God, mom.
Me: Thanks. You know, many of the world’s problems are created by people who refuse to respect the beliefs of others
Hope I can handle any similar future situation with my daughter as well as she did…
In this second part of my interview with Jim Palmer we continue discussing the nagging question of “Why is there resistance within me to enter into what I know will be truly good and satisfying? Why do I so badly want to be a ‘Divine Somebody’ and to get my esteem by assoicating with ‘Somebodies’?”. We also talk about things like:
Is Jim wanting to be a somebody by writing Divine Nobodies, or is something else going on?
How connected are we with each other, with God…is Jim God? Are you? (:
How can we come to a place of peace where we feel fulfilled and content?
How central does Jim think Jesus and Christian faith is do the kind of spirituality he is promoting, to knowing God?
I hope you enjoy this one as well, and don’t forget to join the growing fun and community of sharing over at the Wonderosity People Portal!
I’m not sure how legal or net-friendly it is to do this, but I’ve just got to direct some of you over to this incredible wisconsin public radio series on science and faith. It’s called “Electrons to Enlightenment” and its part of their “To the Best of Our Knowledge Series”. This first one has Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, Ken Wilber and more. Wow, now this is the kind of show I would like to one day be producing. I am going to link to their first show, and then hope you listen to the rest here. The 2nd part of the Jim Palmer interview should be available Monday, sorry but the holidays got in the way (: Also, I’ve redirected you bleeding purple feeders over to this site -so if you are now subscribed to both, make sure you delete you BP feed and keep this new one (see sidebar). See you at the People Portal!
For our first show, after a brief introduction to Wonderosity, I interview Jim Palmer, author of “Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God, and the unlikely people who help you.” Jim is a man with a huge heart and some powerful, simple ideas for those who are wanting to deepen spiritually. In this first of a three part interview, we explore questions like:
What ‘Divine Nobodies’ is basically about, and how Jim came to write it.
Why are bare-ass honest books like this, books admitting personal faith-struggles as well as churchianity’s shortcomings, just now starting to come out and be devoured by the public?
Where the heck is God? Is God “out there” or “in here” or what?
Why do I (and I’m sure others) seem to be in a place where I seem to be resistant to growing spiritually, slowing down, etc?
I hope you enjoy this first episode and I’d love any feedback you have to give. Please email wonderosity@gmail.com with any comments or questions! -Leif
He was a teacher of mine at Regent College, and is one of the most purple people I know. Unlike me, he is actually living it out -I’m still a chicken shit. I’ve sent him an email seeing if we can do an interview sometime soon…so pray it can happen.
Here is a link to a real-audio formatted interview played on KUOW
Here is a purple taste from his People’s Seminary website:
“At Tierra Nueva, two once-divided worlds are coming together -the Holy Spirit’s empowering for ministry and advocacy to the most marginalized. God is doing something very creative and new in our ministry, bringing the evangelical, social prophetic, academic, contemplative and the charismatic together in a dynamic mix.
I believe that God has positioned Tierra Nueva as a bridge between the lower margins and upper margins, the social prophetic, liberal mainline church people and the new wave charismatic missionaries and evangelists. I am convinced that the whole body of Christ is needed in order for us to see the Kingdom of God advance in the dark places of our world. We are entering a time a fruitfulness that will lead to successes we could never have imagined.
–Bob Ekblad, Executive Director ”
In this show you’ll hear back from last week’s guests Kat, Neil & Steve. I’m sorry for the delay…I explain some of the reasons why in the show. Enjoy!
Sadly, as you’ll also find out at the end of this podcast, I am putting The QuestCast on ‘pause’ until I have more free time and/or until one of YOU decides to take the show over for me. Email thequestcast@gmail.com if you are interested, and I’ll be happy to get you started. Lets not let it fade…(yeah, I know it was still in beta-quest mode, but I was really hoping to launch this.)
This was a somewhat spontaneous interview with two worship leaders from a recent youth retreat from my place of work (YMCA Camp Seymour). I think you’ll enjoy their music as well as our dialogue about what authentic, ‘purple’ worship (vs. cheesy, uni-emotional, or canned worship) might look like. Remember to leave comments now at the new Bleeding Purple Forum.
This is Part II of the intercast dialogue between myself and Jeff Harris from the ATC Pagan Information Network. We dwell primarily on the issue of God/divinity and the nature of ultimate reality. Afterwards I share my thoughts on the dialogue –specifically dwelling on that final question of the nature of God.
For those who like to read, and since it gets kind of deep, here are my notes (I pretty much read word for word) from my closing comments:
Let me know what you think!
-Leif
———Post intercast thoughts ————-
I think what is standing out most of all to me about our conversation is the topic we came to towards the end –questions about the ontology of God, divinity and ultimate reality. Let me try and explain what I mean and then I’ll pop back to its relevance to this conversation.
In my early Christian years it seems I developed a habit of interrogating people with a series of binary questions that were designed to lead them to the truth –that is, the beliefs I held at that time. Everything was an ‘either/or”. At the top of the question-tree was the question “Does this person believe in a spiritual/transcendent realm, or are they an atheist?” “If they did believe in a transcendent realm, then did they believe in a personal God or an impersonal force” “Did they believe in one God or many, and what was that God’s nature” and then I’d keep moving down the tree to find out if they believed that God was actually a person, Jesus Christ, and then down to various denominational differences like being baptized in the spirit, etc.
About 5 years ago, as I was exploring some of the foundations of my beliefs through graduate theological work, some of those binary/black and white distinctions started to become grey. For example, was God separate from us or inside us, is God personal or impersonal?
Ironically I think it was the bible itself that started the liberalizing process on these issues: Man and woman was made in God’s image, so that meant God must be beyond our gender-biased language (most Christians almost exclusively use He as you probably know) .And weren’t their many times where the Spirit of God was referred to using impersonal language –“it hovered over the earth” “it blows where it wills” etc. One day I was thinking how I was made in the image of God and how sometimes I referred to myself as “I” and sometimes I referred to my body as an ‘it’, as in “My hand – it is healing.” I noticed that there are dimensions to myself, perhaps a majority of myself, that are totally outside of my control –operating and being influenced by various laws of nature. Do I will my heart to beat? Do I command the trillions of cells within my body to regenerate and carry out their functions? Hardly. “IT or they operated by themselves”.
Anyway, you get the point –this made me realize that old distinctions of male/female and personal/impersonal were simply human constructs –they were both true to a degree, and they were neither true if said alone. God’s nature is an unfolding. I even came up with a theory, one that I am still exploring to this day: perhaps you could say that the ‘western/theist” religions learned about and emphasize the personal/transcendent (separate/outside) side of God/ultimate reality while the eastern religions learned about and emphasized the impersonal/immanent/force (connected/inside)-like side of God/ultimate reality. I’m curious if others have made this kind of analogy. (As a relevant side note –even the idea of eastern/western religions breaks down when you realize that all religions had their origins in their east. Viewed this way, we both have much to reveal to each other and correct in each other. I think there are even correlations to how those cultures with their religions end up viewing human relationships and society –one emphasizing independence and the other dependence. But that’s a much bigger topic.)
Around the same time, other questions relating to the nature of God kept cropping up. (These weren’t all abstract and theoretical by the way, they would come up again and again in conversations with others and as I wrestled to relate and communicate with a God who I was told was personal and loving and communicative).
For too many reasons to go into here and now, I also wrestled with the concept of the trinity. It just seemed too human and systematic of a concept. Besides, I used to say, its not even in the bible. Sure there are scriptures that talk about God as a father, Jesus as God’s son, and that talk about the holy Spirit –but if it was meant to be systemized in that way, why wasn’t there a ‘holy binity’ in the OT before Jesus came (I teased my Christian friends?) Elohim, a Hebrew word for God, is plural and we have language like “Let US make humans in OUR image” –there are various theories about this.Besides, what if God incarnated on other planets, and on and on….
Eventually I came to the opinion that I hold now: The trinity is an excellent metaphor for the truth that God is both a unity (the ‘oneness’) and a plurality –together they demonstrate comm-unity. But taken literally, it is too tidy and closed and the systemitizers become too self-righteous in their ‘figuring God out’. If you only emphasize the oneness, reality turns into a grey goo without differentiating, and there is no room for love –because love takes more than one lover. If you emphasize only the plurality –there is no unifying center that originated all things, that holds all things together and that can restore all the conflict that has arisen out of our plurality/diversity.
But then comes the question of humanity’s relationship to God and ultimate reality. In the past it was easy –God was the biggest piece of the picture, the external king, the life-giving father, the creator of all things and the one who held it all together. But then the bible had to go and mess that all up to –consider the following scriptures and ideas:
God’s omnipresence -what does it mean that God is literally everywhere. (Wouldn’t this seem to support the pantheist who believe that God is also everyTHING?)
“In him we live and move and have our being”
“May they be one as we are one”
“We are his body” “I am the vine, you are the branches”
“when you feed the poor, you are feeding me”
“God’s breath originating us”
“the kingdom of God is within you”
-all these images, at the least, point to a kind of dependence or interdependence of all creation on God that should at least make us comfortable with saying something like “I am part of God.” Yet the majority of Christians, if they heard this, would shudder like the Pharisees shuddered when Jesus described his relationship to God as son, or according to John, when he made illusions to the divine name of Yahweh saying “Behold, before Abraham was “I AM”
I am now getting beyond myself, as this is bringing up the very questions that I am wrestling with these days. Questions like, who was Jesus, how was he different than us, how am I separate and connected to God and what is the nature of this God I speak of as separate than myself?
Bringing it back to the interview with Jeff Harris from ATC…hopefully you, like me, see that there is perhaps much more common ground between open-minded Christians and open-minded pagans –they tend to emphasize the impersonal and plural aspects of ‘divinity’ revealed through nature, allowing IT to wear a personal mask only as it helps them in various ways, while Christians emphasize the personal dimension of God, revealed divinely through various modes of communication and experience.
I’m thinking now of various things that are hinting to me how some of these questions and issues might be resolved:
-star-trek type images of talking cosmic clouds, or
-quantum level physics where paradoxes breathe, or
-an internet friend who talked with me about the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person relationship with God
-Another internet friend and listener who is emphasizing God’s presence within us, and the need to move beyond our heart and down to a feeling/sensing/following the spirit level. His total trust and confidence in God and in me that all shall be well and that big changes are coming soon.
The truth that I am totally convinced of is that these truths will become much more clear, more known, more experienced and understood as I starting LIVING out simple truths about love - like caring for those in need, standing up for justice, and more.
The recurring lesson in my life about the importance of accepting reality as it is, about being present in the moment, about letting go of my fears and agenda and impatience…
These things and more give me hope, though I am often full of doubt and impatient despair, that I will soon be experiencing more of God’s loving magic, and that it/she/he is here now just as much as God will be there then.
A number of you have written asking where to find papers I have written (usually my paper examing four different views of the afterlife or my paper exploring the relationship between magic and technology using Tolkien’s trilogy) –they can both be found on an old webpage here. Thanks for your interest, and let me know what you think!
——————also——————
Some recent thoughts on my current spiritual (from my journal):
I had a fairly sobering realization this morning that has left me puzzling what exactly to do about it: While I believe that love is the way, it is clearly not my priority way –what I want more than love is adventure, excitement, stimulation, knowledge, fame, consumption, and so many other things.
Now, I realize that I’m not the only one who has this struggle, that this internal battle is one that everybody has and is one of the most talked about things in my Christ-following tradition –however, I think I’m confessing something different. I’m not saying “I really want to follow the way of love, but these other things keep tempting me and I walk off the path oh so often.” No, I’m saying “I spend the majority of my time thinking about and pursuing these other things and only by luck, grace, and perhaps a little bit of character/virtue (primarily because of commitments I’ve made to love my family) do I choose the way of love over various forms of self-gratification.” And for some reason I don’t really feel that bad about –you know, guilty or ashamed or like I want to change this fact. I can see/feel/sense two motives in me that want to want love more: 1)Because I have a hunch that I will actually be happier, more fulfilled and experience more ‘adventure’ or ‘real life’ if I truly start walking in love. 2)Because somewhere in me I just think it is good and right, and I would like to make God, Anna, Zinnia and others happier. Even as I right those two motives, they become a little more alive in me and I think to myself, “Yes, I do want to walk in love” –but then as soon as I start imagining actual actions, those desires start to whither (Perhaps its like the parable of the seed on shallow soil?)
So then I ask myself, what do I do about this somewhat unsettling realization? When I thought about it while lying on my couch this morning, I did pray something like “God, some part of me really does want these priorities to shift –what do I do? Please help me out here.” But then I wondered, is it just something that I have to decide I really want and then will to change? Is it something that grows and changes with a spiritual community, of which I am currently lacking? Is it due to the fact that I’ve got some sort of exaggerated/twisted picture of what love looks like –overly self-sacrificial and self-abnegating and therefore some part of me that also wants to be loved and experience life is rightly rejecting that exaggerated picture? Do I need to have some major tragedy happen in my life, something that breaks my ego or that reminds me of the priority of love and the transitory nature of much of what I desire? Do I need some kind of divine revelation or experience that shakes me to my roots or creates a longing in me for the real? I don’t know what needs to happen next. I guess I just need to trust that Love will find a way to reform my priorities, my heart, my will, or something.
I’m noticing that my spiritual dilemmas lately are more about how to actually live rather than the more abstract spiritual questions. Those questions and struggles are still there –but they don’t have as much weight…I think I’m starting to let go of the belief that I will ever have the kind of certain knowledge about some of those more abstract questions. Perhaps they are just becoming a little less important to me as well. I think it also has to do with realizing that these ultimate questions (i.e. what is the ontological nature of ultimate reality) will always be more complex, wonderful, rich, and mind-boggling that the answers I can come up with. I don’t know.
Speaking of abstract questions –I recently talked with a friend of mine about “what does it really mean to follow Jesus, how do you follow a guy you can’t see it” The conclusion for me was that I’ve not been relating to that kind of language lately –something doesn’t feel true about it. Partly, it doesn’t ring true because, as I’ve just confessed about, I don’t think I am following that same path of love that Jesus followed. The other part is that –because I can’t see him or talk to him, language like “Following the spirit, following God, maybe even following the spirit of Christ” rings more true to me. I could say I am wrestling with and trying to following his teachings and learn from his life and stories –but following ‘him’, just doesn’t ring true to me. I imagine if I had some more dramatic encounter with Jesus –and I mean specifically Jesus –like I had a vision of him, or he appeared to me bodily (I’ve talked with a fairly well known author who has had this happen), or like I heard a voice that I really associated with Jesus –I would probably feel more close to him, more commited to him, like he was a bigger part of my relationship with God (or that he even was God) and that I was thus ‘following him’ –but I don’t think I have. And yet I’m sorry Jesus if that is not true, and that I am forgetting (typical of me) some wonderful gift that you’ve given in the past. I’m not saying that I haven’t had spiritual experiences, some fairly dramatic ones, but I don’t remember any that were particularly tired to Jesus the person. Does this make sense? So, until something changes in this realm –I’m thinking I might start changing my language in more honest ways.
This is Part I of an ‘intercast’ (dialogue/interview of two podcasters) between Jeff Harris (a 3rd order pagan priest) from the Aquarian Tabernacle Church Information Network Podcast and myself (a confused and still somewhat bleeding purple follower of Jesus’ way.)
I apologize for the abrupt ending, but I decided last minute to cut the show in half so it wasn’t such a huge file…the next part will be up later tonight or in the next 1-2 days.
Well, thanks to a few brave souls (Queltica, Steve & Neil), The QuestCast now has its first show! Keep in mind that this is a beta cast, and that that means I would greatly appreciate any feedback on the structure, audio quality, or any other ideas you might have to offer.
Upcoming:
Stay tuned and subscribed to find out how their quests unfold and to hear the upcoming planned “podcast personalities” show –with quests given to some of your favorite podcasters.
Get involved!
Check out the ABCs in the sidebar to find out how you can easily get on an upcoming show!
Shownotes:
Thanks to Acquisotic for their podsafe and fitting song “Thats how dreams go“.
I’ve decided to give libysn a spin, I’m excited to see how that goes.
I apologize for the annoyingly high s and sh sounds, that will be elimated when I can afford a new microphone –which should be by the next show (feeling generous?)
I’ve received 3 quests already and am expecting some more soon from some fun podcaster personalities. I’ve added a new K7 voice message line (206) 350-QUEST to the ABCs list in the sidebar, and also thought it might be interesting to offer some example quests:
Example Quests
Personal/Social
Sue takes herself too seriously and wants to loosen up. She wants a challenge level 3 and being a little nervous, asks to confirm first.
Sue, we suggest you dress up in some outrageous costume with a friend and go to a super-market where you don’t usually go and sing a song in the middle of the store.
She decides to record a snippet of the experience, sends an email back describing it with the snippet attached.
Spiritual
Martin realizes that his whole life has been lived way too superficially. He wants to start exploring spiritual things, but doesn’t know where to start. He’d like a level 2 Quest.
Martin, your quest is to ask 2 of the people you most admire as being what you’d call ’spiritual people’ to share with you about their worldview, how they came to believe what they do, and how it affects their daily live.
Martin emails us highlights from the experience and about how these dialogues helped him to begin his spiritual journey.
Vocational
Chris is totally bored with his job, but has been afraid to leave it because it pays him fat cash. He is sick of being motivated by both the fear and the cash and knows that its time for a change. His goal is do something soon. He asks for a 5.
Chris, your quest is to go on an overnight retreat either by yourself or with someone you really trust, and to do some serious thinking about what your deepest passions are. Perhaps, if you can’t figure out how to take the time off, or in addition to your retreat –plop some of your fat cash down with a vocational counselor or life-coach.
Chris takes his iriver on the retreat, records some of his thoughts at the end of the retreat, and sends those back to The QuestCast. He has decided to become a circus clown.
Physical/Health
Lonnie feels like she is at the age where she needs to start getting some physical exercise, or there are going to be some serious consequences. She wants a level 2 challenge.
Your quest Lonnie is to decide on some physical exercise that you enjoy (team or solo) and go do it three times this week for at least an hour. Make it fun, listen to The QuestCast while you play!
Lonnie joins a community ultimate-frisbee team, meets some friends, and reports back on her super-fun time.
I’ll add some more to this and create an ‘examples’ link later on….
Use Gtalk to see if wonderosity@gmail.com is online
C. Wait for a confirmation email I look forward to hearing from you and giving you a quest!
(Confession: I am posting this as a post, even though its on the sidebar, because Blogger was not showing my whole sidebar unless I had enough posts to push it all down. Plus, those who only receive the RSS feed would never see the sidebar)
I’m looking for beta-Questers before I go live with my first show. While I’m too dirt-poor to offer a prize at this point, the first 10 Questers will be entered in a Beta-Questers Hall of Fame and when I get some cool merchandizing (probably a T-shirt, Mug or Bananna) you’ll get one mailed to you!
See the right sidebar (ABCs) for how to get involed. Or, hop right in with this zoomerang survey.
And, for the record, I’m also looking for some help with logos and any other way you’d like to help contribute to this very exciting project.
Interesting how its hard to find Liberal charismatics or charismatic liberals. Liberal-minded folks tend to give so much credence to modernity that they poo-poo the supernatural realm. Charismatics tend to give so much credence to their experiences (as justified from certain ‘proof texts’ in the bible) that they poo-poo critical thinking and social justice, kingdom on earth, issues. I’ve gotta believe that these two dimensions can come together. (I know these are just words, and labels, but I think a good % of you know what I’m talking about.)I need, want, and fight to believe they can coexist. The best of blue and red, yeah? Can I hear an Amen?
“Is it possible that the message of Jesus was less like an advertising slogan –obvious and loud –and more like a poem whose meaning only comes subtly and quietly to to those who read slowly, think long and deeply, and refuse to give up? I wondered. And I still wonder.” -from Chapter 4
Not what I originally planned, but an appropriate review for a podcast, this show is my raw reflection from Seattle’s Pyramid Alehouse on Brian Mclaren’s latest book: The Secret Message of Jesus. Overall this is an excellent book, and if readers (of all colors) focus on living out Jesus’ secret message more than dissecting and debating it –we’re in for some exciting and transformative changes in this world. I will be posting more of my favorite quotes from this book in my next post…so stay tuned…
“A shared reappraisal of Jesus’s message could provide a unique space or common ground for urgently needed religious dialogue –and it doesn’t seem an exaggeration to say that the future of our planet may depend on such dialogue” -from Chapter 1
Shownotes:
-Intro
-Congratulations to John & Kea Louviere!!!
-Book Review: The Secret Message of Jesus.
-Listener Emails (Sable Chicken, Brian Sage, Jon Hudson & David Williamson)
-Various Announcements, inlcuding:
New personal (friends & family related) podcast/blog: zinniazoo
New personal (audio experiments, musical, freedom to whatever the #@! I want) blog/podcast : leifomatic
-Shoutout to lifeonfire podcast: Thanks for playing my promo, stay open and keep seeking!
“If you are part of this kingdom, you won’t slit Roman throats like the Zealots. Instead, if a Roman soldier backhands you with a blow to the right cheek, you’ll turn the other in a kind of nonviolent resistance and transcendence. if a soldier forces you to carry his pack for one mile, you’ll carry it a second mile as an expression of your own transcendent free will; you choose a higher option, one above either passive submission or active retaliation. If you are part of this kingdom, you won’t curse and damn the notorious sinners and scoundrels to hell; instead, you’ll interact with them gently and kindly, refusing to judge, even inviting them to your parties and treating them as neighbors –being less afraid of their polluting influence on you than you are hopeful about your possible healing and ennobling influence on them….” -from Chapter 2
Something about these words from David Williamson’s comments on an interesting post at mootblog really stood out to me. Its good to remember that good news is happening in the midst of all the muck.
“When I say these are exciting times I mean it. Ecumenical phenomena such as Taize and St Egidio are bringing the church together to proclaim peace.
Initiatives such as Jubilee 2000, and groups including Speak and Sojourners are communicating a message of justice which beats to the pulse of the gospel.
At the same time, writers as eclectic as Rowan Williams, Phillip Yancey and Bono have drawn our attention to the phenomenon of grace. Its beauty and complexity shines out in such a way that it’s baffling as to why the church responded by splitting into such crude divisions as Calvinism and Arminianism.
Blogging has also created a brilliant worldwide conversation and contemplation which is blessing hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Christians and helping us to share in each others joys and sorrows.
The testimony of Martin Luther King is still sending waves through the church which are strengthening with time. The experiment with party political alliances has left a bad taste in the mouth of millions, and there is a hunger for a return to the wilderness if needs be to give a prophetic voice.
The church’s centre of gravity has shifted to the Global South, where a faith that is dependent on God is blazing across continents.” (more)
Today’s show is an unedited story of my strange night and supernatural encounter with the Northern Lights. I also read a few listener emails and share some announcements.
Starting next week it looks like I’ll have some more free time and thus finally be able to put more time into better quality production.
Hope you enjoy the show, and don’t forget to pass on some of your extraordinary experiences as well.
In this episode, I talk about what I see as the three most likely scenarious for human society in the near future. You could call it a choose your own adventure kind of podcast. You choose:
Tragedy (environmental, war, science gone bad)
Technocracy (control at the cost of human freedom)
Transformation (listen to find out!)
Though I like how this show ended up sounding overall, I didn’t have time time to really prepare what I wanted to say on these topics as clearly as I would have liked. Well, I think you’ll still enjoy the show and get the general idea of why I think one of these three future scenarios is so likely.
Thanks to my old friend Chris Behre for his song and vision of transformation. If you ever find this link Chris, let me know how you’re doing! Thanks also to Mortal for the intro and transitions (from Lusis).
Note the new Audio Searcher Podzinger, at the bottom of the sidebar. Try it by typing a word in the text box, then playing that audio clip on the next page.
I recently received an email from a BP listener (sort of) of a more red persuation. She’s been a little concered about my beliefs and salvation, especially after hearing the Brian Mclaren interview, and we’ve exchanged a few emails discussing various topics. Anyway, I was thinking that her last email, and my reply to it, might be of interest to some of you.
K:
“You know I got to thinking about some things regarding our past dialogue, and I have a question for you. Your spiritual autobiography chronicled your experiences with various denominations, but really didn’t explain your concluding that the Gospel of Jesus wasn’t the only way to the Living God. Actually, I really never heard you pin point why you are in opposition to authentic salvation (or the exclusivist’s position as you say.) And, I already know that you think it’s really anti-intellectual to be so narrow and all, but what I’m interested in is you identifying what the root issue is, kwim? I’ve just sensed we haven’t honestly touched on it. Please receive me in kindness. I often find it difficult to “talk softly” through email. Have a great day. -K”
My response:
“Hi K
First of all, no, I am totally for ‘authentic salvation’ -is there any other salvation/ healing/ liberation than real/ authentic salvation? My concern, in fact, is that much of what I’ve seen in modern western churchianity is inauthentic –fear based, self-centered, arrogant, self-righteous, you name it. Yet, the good, real and authentic is there too, no doubt.
Secondly, no, I don’t think that excluvism is always anti-intellectual. There are some pluralists who are very un-intellectual and even ‘exclusivistic’ about their beliefs. And there are some people who have v. exclusivistic beliefs about faith in Christ who are quite intellectual.
If your core question to me is:
“Have you concluded that verbally confessing and believing in your heart (before one dies) that Jesus Christ is Lord God, third person of the trinity, whose substitutionary sacrifice to God on the cross is not the only way to attain acceptance from God and everlasting life after death(salvation)?”
Then yes, I don’t currently believe that is true.
To what degree Jesus is literally “Lord over all,” or is ontologically God, or is central to the whole process of salvation –I don’t know. I am agnostic as of now and not concerned about that too much, Jesus seemed to want us to focus on God (i.e when he tells his discples they can now go to God directly, etc)
I can tell you that he is the one whose life, teaching, and example I have chosen to follow as most central to my life. I know that he is the one who has most fully and clearly demonstrated God’s core nature –”God is love” –the self-sacrificial love that forgives 7*70, that loves enemies, that turns the other cheek, and that is compassionately selfless. ANd perhaps he is the who patiently, lovingly, humbly bears with all my struggles and weaknesses and questions –perhaps he is the most ‘human’ face of God, and that one day I’ll see that face and see it as the same as God’s.
Otherwise, I believe that whenever anyone is following God’s Spirit, hearing the truth, loving others –they are walking in Christ’s way, acting in his name. Sometimes, perhaps most times (do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing) they don’t even realize they are doing it to/for God (think of the parable of sheep/goats). Jesus seemed to be primarily concerned about right action and loving (Whoever is not against me is for me. Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me. Whoever loves is a child of God., etc). Rarely, if ever, did he get upset about right belief, calling people heretics. His anger, when it came out, was against those who were self-righteous and hypocritical and who used their religious power in the wrong ways. Thats why I’m concerned about the modern church.
A reminder for the upcoming listener-based podcast (see below in showercast notes)
I share about what feels like a possible spiritual breakthrough, and some of the factors that may have played a part in this. Thanks to all of you ‘factors’ out there (;
World’s first showercast? Perhaps you were hoping it was Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, but its not that kind of showercast. No, this isn’t podporn (though I hear that that new wave of slavery is marching in quick), but come on in…
In this show:
Wade in the water baby!
You create the next show! Answer the question “What spiritual habits help you to center, to connect to God, to feel truly alive and present during your day? And how do these habits of mind, of being, of living, etc. actually effect your day?”
Answer the question by calling the toll free super-duper easy number on the top of the page; by leaving a message with BleedingPurple using Skype or Gizmo Project; or good old emailing me (and I’ll read your answer) –answers will be on the next show. Please keep answers under 5 minutes.
The red crowds cry ‘heresy’ on a few sites. (Um, doesn’t the bible say something about humility, not judging people while calling yourself righteous, and about perfect love casting out fear? )
New rotating poll to your right –give a quick vote to improve the show and site!
Help promote the Bleeding Purple Podcast by educating your friends about Podcasting, by telling/emailing three friends about the BleedingPurple Podcast, by putting a link to BP on your blog or website, and by –I’m going back on my word, sorry –voting on Podcast alley or your other favorite directory. Just a few minutes of your wuv can make a big difference. Thanks sistas and brothas!
Ohwha tagoo F’iam. It just gets stranger and stranger, you never know what you’ll get on this show.
In this minicast I comment on the thoughts & images lingering in my mind after the interview; I play and read some comments and emails from listeners; and I share a few other random announcements.
Stay tuned for some exciting new interviews, musings, and audio experimentation (ever heard of a showercast?)
From this point on, I plan to only include music on the show from people I know or have met at some point.
Part II
Note (Edit, 3/18/2006): I just noticed from a spike in my web stats today that a mass mailing went out to what looks like a group called “light house trails”. I feel sad and somewhat frustrated that the ‘marketing’ of that post seems to dramatize and (intentionally?) misrepresent the issue, but I know I have fallen to the same temptation myself, so I can’t get too upset. However, to those of you visiting this site and listening to the interview with ‘heresy hunting’ pre-motives, I ask that you please:
Start with an open and thoughtful mind, as well as a humble and loving spirit. As mentioned in the interview, their are ~35,000 christian denominations –its really time to start humbly listening and learning from each other.
Try to let God’s “perfect love” cast out all fear, for fear is the root that gets us all divided and judging each other. A deep trust in God’s perfect and unconditional love is the only way out.
Check out a conversation like this one, in which both christians with more conservative and liberal views have been talking about the same “false advertising” quote and having a mostly respectful dialogue.
Despite what I said in the blog of the first interview, I’d encourage you to start from the beginning.
In Christ’s peace, Leif
———————————————————————–
Here’s the second half of the interview with Brian. This half we continue the hell-busting, as well as consider question like:
Does an after-life focused theology contribute to earthly injustice?
How can someone like myself start to trust/believe things about God again when so many beliefs seems to continue changing?
Do our human concepts of God innately become idols?
How many people really feel God’s presence daily? What to do if its a “dark night of the soul”
Be ‘the first’ listener to leave audio feedback
Call toll free, 1-888-654-2278 (65-gcast). Then enter the number 321-321-4321 (pause for code)-4321. Leave your message and then in about 5 minutes it will be live –check the Gcast widget to your right for other comments from me and other listeners.
Overall, a great interview! Thank you Brian. I hope the rest of you enjoy the show and leave some feedback here or call in using the toll free Gcast number below.
Edit: I suggest that those of you who are limited on time, or who want to jump into the best of the interview –skip this first one and listen to #2.
In this show we talk about:
Criticism Brian has received since writing A Generous Orthodoxy and The Last Word… and how to respond ‘in purple’ fashion.
What to make of the violent imagery Jesus occasionally makes use of in the NT (ie Mt 24:51)
The importance of having an hermeneutic of love
Fear and the toxic doctrine of hell
If hell is true, is the meaning of the cross false advertising?
On your right is the new listener feedback player, and the RSS feed as well.
Some of you may also be interested in the paper I wrote and shared with Brian. Its written as a dialogue between four different positions on topics ranging from divine justice, the nature of scripture, and the meaning of hell. As many of you know, this project was foundational to my coming to the conclusion of truly good news, of the hope of the universal reconciliation of all to God.
Possibly the first ever podcasted Lectio Divina –a devotional style meditative reading of Psalm 76. Thanks to my wife, Anna Hansen, for doing the reading so heartfully. In this podcast, Anna reads once through, then I respond to each phrase with a spontaneious prayer, and then she reads a final time. Hope you like it, let me know what you think!
Reading comes from the contemporary, and highly suggested, Psalms for Praying, by Nan C. Merill. This text is not meant to be a literal translation, rather a contemplative and personalized translation. Occasionally it gets a little too psychologized for me, but I do really like it.
(This image is from an excellent dialogue book between conservative and liberal scholars and friends, Marcus Borg and NT Wright, titled “The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions“)
![[Thiagi's photo]](http://thiagi.com/thiagi.jpg)
Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi”Thiagarajan is the Resident Mad Scientist at The ThiagiGroup, an organization with the mission of helping people improvetheir performance effectively and enjoyably.Thiagi’s long-term clients include AT&T, Arthur Andersen,Bank of Montreal, Cadence Design Systems, Chevron, IBM, Intel,Intelsat, United Airlines, and Liberty Mutual. On a short-termbasis, Thiagi has worked with more than 50 differentorganizations in high-tech, financial services, and managementconsulting areas. For these clients, Thiagi has consulted andconducted training in such areas as rightsizing, diversity,creativity, teamwork, customer satisfaction, human performancetechnology, and organizational learning.Thiagi has published 40 books, 120 games and simulations, andmore than 200 articles. He wrote the definitive chapters onsimulations and games for ISPI’s Handbook of HumanPerformance Technology, ASTD’s Training &Development Handbook, and the American ManagementAssociation’s Human Resources Management and DevelopmentHandbook.Thiagi currently writes a monthly online newsletter,Thiagi GameLetter. This newsletter, now in itsfifth year, features Thiagi’s training games and other creativeinterventions that deliver results quickly and effectively. Heserved as the editor of NSPI Journal andPerformance & Improvement for more than 10years. He currently edits the simulation/game section in SagePublication’s journal, Simulation & Gaming. Heis also a contributing editor of the monthly journal,Educational Technology.Thiagi has made hundreds of presentations and keynote speechesat professional conferences. At ISPI, Thiagi holds the “records”for making the most presentations, conducting the mostpreconference workshops, and being invited to make the mostEncore presentations. Thiagi is also a regular presenter atLakewood’s TRAINING Conferences and the annualconferences of American Society for Training and Development(ASTD) and North American Simulation and Gaming Association(NASAGA).Thiagi has been the president of the North American Simulationand Gaming Associating (NASAGA), International Society forPerformance Improvement (ISPI), and Association for SpecialEducation Technology (ASET). He has received 17 different awardsand Presidential Citations from ISPI, including the society’shighest award, Honorary Life Member. He alsoreceived an Honorary Life Member award fromNASAGA as well as its highest award, Ifill-RaynoldsAward.Internationally recognized as an expert in multinationalcollaboration and active learning in organizations, Thiagi haslived in three different countries and has consulted in 21others.
Charna Halpern was born and raised on the North Side of 
Today’s Real-Life Hack:
About three weeks ago (February 24th, 2008) my father, Jorgen Hansen, passed away (
One of my favorite outcomes from the 
“As the servants of the machines are becoming a privileged
This story is amazing
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