MacBook Touch

I’ve had my MacBook for just under two weeks now and have finally made peace with it. The OS and dyslexia of the CTRL, CMD and ALT keys are still frustrating but the aluminium chassis and battery life rocks. Drawing inspiration from the iPhone and iPod Touch I’ve come up with a Tablet design and loosely called it t he MacBook Touch or Itablet.

Celebration of Discipline

I’m busy preparing my next series, which will run in about a month. It’s based on Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, arguably one of the best books I’ve ever re-read. I say “best books I’ve ever re-read” cause I read it in my early 20’s and it’s improved considerably since then!

I know you’ll understand that I’m making a tongue in cheek statement there. Foster’s book has stayed the same, but my point of view has shifted as I’ve matured. Foster’s book is rich in content and advice on the practice of spirituality. It’s over 25 years since it was written and I’m glad to be rediscovering it thirteen years after first reading it. This is also one of the series I’ve had in mind for a while now and can honestly say I feel very excited about running it.

Bring on the MacBook

I’ve always sworn off Mac. To me those who own and love their Macs are like snobby people in clubs, not unlike those who surf. There’s an attitude an image that goes along with the hardware, a snobbery of ‘lesser people’. Sure the design looks cool and the build quality is fantastic but the MacVangelists are a little too much – especially as I’ve gotten half the processing power, memory and hard drive space of a competitively priced high end machine.

The reign of Godde

On the whole subject of post-modernity and Christianity in all its post-forms I can’t think of two quotes that better summarise my feeling on the whole situation than those by Mike Breen and Eddie Gibbs in the following video:

For those who don’t YouTube I’ll loosely quote:

Lance Ford poses the following question to Mike Breen and Eddie Gibbs, “Christendom is over. Is the death of Christendom a good or bad thing?”

Breen says the following:

Lance Ford poses the following question to Mike Breen and Eddie Gibbs, “Christendom is over. Is the death of Christendom a good or bad thing?”

Religious Faith and Spiritual Experience

The book Mysticism and Sacred Scripture is summarised on infinibeam as follows:

This is the fourth volume in an influential series that presents a basic revaluation of the nature of mysticism. Each provides a collection of solicited papers by noted experts in the study of religion. This new volume will explore how the great mystics and mystical traditions use, interpret, and reconstruct the sacred scriptures of their traditions.

It is also the book that’s arriving next week from Amazon. I was lucky enough to have had Mysticism and Language prescribed for me to read last year. I found Katz’s work so inspiring I went on to purchase the rest of the series – Mysticism and Religious Tradition and Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. A few weeks ago I found a second hand copy of the fourth book and promptly ordered it.

It may be one hell of an ugly book cover but I really can’t wait to get into it!

BaT Design

I really love the creative process – from concept to frustration to fruition. Here’s the logo for my design company. Both Bev and I have been thinking for a long, long time about doing more design work. We’re finally stepping up to the task!

Associate Editor on the DFV

I’ve told a number of my friends and associates about a project I’m working on – the DFV (Divine Feminine Version – a version of the NT that is gender-inclusive in reference to humanity and feminine in reference to Godde). A large group of individuals have been contributing for several months now and a core team has emerged. I’ll be continuing as part of that team as an Associate Editor. We’ve recently set up a WordPress blog for The Christian Godde Project.

Now I know from face-to-face conversations with a lot of my friends and associates that a lot of people are unhappy with me for two reasons: 1) adopting the word “Godde” in place of “God” and 2) participating in a version of the NT that is opting to render references to Godde in the feminine.

I’ve been quiet

There are definately times in life when real world conversation takes precedence over online conversation and this has been one of those seasons for me. This post is personal rather than abstract and I’m guessing that this year many of my posts will also be personal rather than theoretical.

I’ve finally settled on a Masters in Theology, or rather the sub-discipline focusing on Christian Spirituality. I’m going to be doing some grounded research into people’s actual experience of Godde today – not what the Bible says or the theory that we talk about but the actual in’s and out’s of what people’s relationship with Godde looks like in practice. The goal is to understand how better to enable small and medium sized gatherings of people to pursue intimacy with Godde together.

So this year I’ll be doing all the background reading I need to, designing and testing the interviews, and then doing interviews with a small group of people. Next year I’ll be submitting all of that as my ‘research proposal’ (Which is the bulk of the work) and producing my thesis.

A couple of us have also been talking through the Divine Feminine Version of the NT, or DFV. You can read up a bit about at the website. At this stage we’re working toward a version of the Gospel of Matthew. The goal is to gather support and criticism for the project to shape it to be the best it can be. I’m looking forward to us ‘getting there’ so that we can go further with it.

Research Paper: Our Experience of Godde

I am planning a research paper on our experience of Godde. A core part of the Christian faith is our relationships with Godde and I am keen to delve into the depths of our unique experiences. I’m interested in looking into what this relationships actually looks like in our lives. There are a number of things we believe, things we should say, things we ought to experience – but what are our actual experiences? what does the actual relationship, our own unique one, actually feel like? what does it mean to us? what does it look like?

Understandably information at the moment is a little sketchy as it is still work-in-progress.

Though quantitative data will play a supportive and balancing role, this will essentially be a qualitative research paper into our experience of the trinity. Anyone interested in participating may contact me. I will spend the next month (i.e. mid-March to mid-May) preparing the actual questions and would look to do the bulk of the research over June and July

You may participate through two avenues:

1. On the internet via a form (possibly PDF, possibly a Website Form)
2. Through a one-on-one in-depth interview

I look forward to hearing from you

Our Father Who Art in Heaven

Last week our home group session focused on The Lord’s Prayer. We printed out a few different translations of the Matthew 6:9-13. Then we chopped them up and made sure that each verse was together in all the different versions. We shared out the verses among us, with each person or couple reading the verse they held in the different translations. Then we each had to personalise that particular verse, i.e. we had to use our own words and not quote a translation.