also in pdf format. Details for the events are available here… maybe see you there..

[Update] i’ve posted a few notes from the glasgow discussion here

that week someone who i didn’t really know very well asked to meet me for coffee to chat. they knew nothing of the experience i was having. but one of the things they said has stuck with me since -

you don’t fit and that’s your gift

it reminds me of a marshall macluhan quote – the role of the artist is to create an anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment.

(from the gift of not fitting in by jonny baker, italics mine)

my favourite propaganda so far… (ht)

A little bit of an unusual gig last night.. Beth Rowley headlining in Oran Mor, supported earlier in the evening by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Both were exceptional.. two amazing voices!

some little scribbles from my notepad:

different questions | having the same “grammar” but different content/meaning, it’s at that point that the christian and muslim paths diverge

some tentativel thinking about kenotic (emptying) love as something that differs between christian and muslim understandings of love

misunderstandings of “law” – loads of christians still think have the impression that jewish law is the big oppressor (i.e. keeping in the vein faith in NT vs works in OT) and not “law as the heartbeat of the universe

+++rowan using “imagination” as a core christian role/value.. liked that

+++rowan clarifying some remarks he made about marx – he liked marx’s critique of humans giving life to systems, so much so that they seem like autonomous beings or insurmountable. They should be reclaimed.. brought back to human transactions and relationships – getting out of the market mythology

repeated use of “the market mythology” – not that fact that it’s pretend (that’s be the market myth maybe?) but that the market is a whole enveloping market story (or metanarrative if you like that kinda word..)

when talking about the recent atheist bus adverts in London he comments that God isn’t really needing marketing that much.. (in the sense that God is a product that needs a good bit of selling.) perhaps another little invasion of that market idea

I’ll try and add some correct quotations when/if the transcript appears here. (Some more coherent thoughts appearing from David and probably from Brodie)

we’ve only just moved in and then this happens…

No one remembers, word for word, all that was said in any lecture, or playing in amy piece. But if you understood it once, you now own new networks of knowledge, about each theme, and how it changes and relates to others. Thus, no one could remember Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony entire, from a single hearing. But neither could one ever hear again those first four notes as just four notes! Once but a tiny scrap of sound, it is now a Known Thing- a locus in the web of all other things we know whose meanings and significances depend on each other.

(Marvin Minksy. Music, mind and meaning. In Music, Mind and Brain, as quoted by Oliver Sacks in Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain. Emphasis mine)

“A giant inflatable dog turd brought down a power line after being blown away from a Swiss museum.”
(BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Inflatable faeces raises a stink )

Didn’t have any plans for this afternoon.. untill now..! Exhibited at the Zentrum Paul Klee till October…

UPDATE: In a stunning piece of undercover citizen journalism, and contrary to updates in foreign media updates, it was today uncovered that the large American doo-doo at the heart of switzerland is still looking rather deflated. The slightly swiss medicine student disguised as a foreign tourist managed to gain access to just behind the bicycle shed, a common site for dog excrement, and managed to get this exclusive snap of the beleaguered popped poop.

Just a regular night after church in the pub.. about two years ago?
Act of random connection:
Uisge Beatha (the pub’s name, the gaelic for whisky) = Water of life = John 7:37 – adds just another little layer of pentecost meaning.. (More out of a sense of coincidence than something to infer something out of!)

Theology is always a network; more precisely it is a network of many theological concepts. In this manner, a particular theology is seen as a name given to a particular configuration of these concepts. However, this network is in motion; the network always changes. Even the most systematic theology changes over time. This phenomenon is common in computer networks: Systems dislocate and reorganize: link. This is the same effect in the theological network where concepts move to have the optimal connection. For instance, Luther’s reformation reconfigured theology so that the concept of salvation was detached from any kind of deed—sola fide!

[From the church and postmodern culture: conversation: Theological Networks]

One thing i find fascinating about living in another country is finding out more and more that the little stars in the swiss cultural sky join up into slightly different constellations than they do back in NI / Glasgow.. There’s crazy little societal connections between things (patriotism and the economy, church and state, alp horns and cheese.. ) on so many levels, and just as you think you’ve got your head around the general swing of things here, then another wee factor appears that modifies your oh-so-perfect conceptualisation of how you think the inner workings of the great big cuckoo clock of Switzerland ticks..

which is actually more an Austrian thing..

Having philosophical/theological education that was formed mostly in institutions like Cottiers and Uisge Beathe, I don’t think I’m anywhere grasping his whole concept.. but there’s certainly enough soundbites in this film to provoke a bit of thinking… well worth 70 minutes. Sometime soon i’ll watch it with a notebook and try and blog it a little bit more thoroughly..