Disappointing Stories 3 (Campmeeting 2014)

This week is the discussion portion of our Disappointing Stories presentation.  Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to this discussion.  As much as you may be here to listen to Dale and I, hearing other voices is equally important.  As we say, the point is not for us to talk a lot, but for everyone to start talking and sharing.  That's how we live together. 

Next week we begin the last day of our Campmeeting 2014 presentations.

Enjoy!

Disappointing Stories 3 (Discussion)

Disappointing Stories 1 (Campmeeting 2014)

Hello again.  This week we begin Thursday's discussion, picking up some questions from our discussion of the Great Controversy and exploring history.  Our main question is: how do we live after disappointment?  After loss?  After evil?  How we answer this question matter immensely.

This week we talk about the Israelites, Jesus, 1844 and Louis Riel as well as the relationship between our stories and the story God is telling.  Thanks again for listening.

Please send us your questions and comments.  We love expanding the conversation.

Enjoy!

Disappointing Stories 1

The Great Controversy Story 3 (Campmeeting 2014)

Well, it's not the end of our campmeeting presentations yet, but it is the final part of my favourite discussion.  Thanks to everyone who participated.

This week, I share my understanding of the Great Controversy and what difference that makes to our understanding of God, life and the world.  My discussion begins with the question someone asked about our freedom to choose and how that relates to God's power.  For me, the center of all of this is "God with us"--where relationships matter more than power and/or "authority."  Power can never fix a broken relationship.  Thus God has to employ other methods to reconnect with humanity.

Next week we start exploring Adventist history and how the stories we tell about our past matter to our present.

Enjoy!


The Great Controversy Story 3

Community Questions (Campmeeting 2015)

It's been a long time since Dale and I have recorded together, but we finally sat down at Hope Campmeeting this year to explore some ideas we both been thinking about.  Our central focus is community--what is it?  how do we build it?  what are barriers to community (particularly within Adventism)?  More specifically, we focused on the connections between boundaries, identity and stories and how our conception of those can help or hinder deep and meaningful relationships.

For each of us, this discussion sprang out of significant personal experiences in the past year or so.  We start by talking about those experiences and the questions raised.  That discussion leads into a rather wide-ranging consideration of various themes and struggles in living together and relating to those with different stories.

As the week went on, we dove directly into specific questions raised in this opening discussion and got to share the experience with some friends who came along for the ride.  I will be posting those as I get time, over the next few weeks.  Thanks for listening and enjoy.

Community Questions (CM2015)

The Great Controversy: Biblical Basis

Aaand we're back.  Thanks for sticking around as we're transitioning.  Dale's moved away, so we're figuring out the logistics and technical details of recording in two places at once.  In the meantime, I will be trying to write more here.  But this week, enjoy a new podcast.

After our last podcast I was talking with a friend and listener about the value of the Great Controversy as a narrative framework for understanding God, the Bible and life.  She asked about the Biblical basis for the narrative--a good question.  Admittedly, for Dale and I, this story is so much a part of our thought and life (and has been for so long) that it's difficult to try to go back to the beginning, to figure out how one might put this all together from just the Bible.  So, this isn't a comprehensive Bible study, but more a general discussion of some key points and ideas and relevant Bible passages and ideas.  We'd love to hear if you have any insights to add to the discussion.

Enjoy.

The Great Controversy: Biblical Basis

Hopefully we'll be back with another podcast next week.

The Great Controversy: The Narrative - Part 2

This week we finish telling how we understand the Great Controversy.  What has happened in the past matters, but so does the ending.  Thus we continue on, talking about the various parties involved and tracing how the story has developed since Christ.  How does a story end when the point isn't power and control?  When domination can't be the means of resolution?

This podcast is a little shorter than usual, but some of you will appreciate that.

The Great Controversy Narrative 2

The Great Controversy: The Narrative - Part 1

This week, we're continuing our series on the Great Controversy.  We figured that before we dove into the implications of this narrative way of understanding the Bible, we should outline the basics of the narrative itself.  After that, we'll see what happens.  This podcast turned out a little bit long, so it's split into two parts.  Next week will be part two.

If you've ever wondered why the Biblical stories of God are so difficult to understand, hopefully this will help.  It has helped us make sense of a great many things related to the Bible, God, life, the universe, and everything.  Actually, it ran about 42 minutes... but anywayz.  Enjoy.

The Great Controversy Narrative 1

The Great Controversy: Lost in the Middle

Welcome back!  Hopefully your holidays were enjoyable and you were able to spend time with family and catching up on any podcasts you missed.  Dale has been busy tweaking links and file management on the website so the links are now standardized.  Eventually I intend to do some work as well, but I've been busy with PhD applications.

Anywayz, to kick off the new year, we have a multi-part series exploring a narrative (idea) that is central to our understanding of life, faith and history: The Great Controversy.  However, before we deal with details, we wanted to talk a little more about story.

This week, we explore the dilemma of interpretation in a different way.  How do you make narrative sense of anything when you arrive in the middle of the story?  What elements do you focus on and what difference does that make?  It all begins on a bus in a Mexican desert in 1996...


The Great Controversy - Part 1

If Nothing We Do Matters, All That Matters Is What We Do

We're back.  This should be the beginning of another run of regular weekly podcasts, just in time for school.  Of course, few of you are students anymore, but whatever.  You may notice we've updated the website.  Please bear with us as we're still working out some kinks.  For those who are interested, email subscription is now up and running.  You'll find the form in the right-hand column.  There are also a few more things we'd like to get done if we can find time.


This latest podcast is one we've been working towards for a while.  It explains one of the central ideas we often return to: "if nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do."  This statement summarizes a great many different aspects of our thinking.  I apologize in advance for the length.  We still have material left to cover, but hopefully this at least clarifies the idea.  The statement comes from an episode of "Angel" which was a spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by one of our favourite storytellers, Joss Whedon.  The story may seem a little odd to some of you, but bear with us.  The idea is profound.  Interestingly enough, Joss Whedon once referred to this particular quote to summarize his own beliefs.  (Maybe someday we'll actually get to have this conversation with him.)

Anywayz, this should hopefully be the last podcast laying out the ideas and language we regularly return to.  Next week we're hoping to begin a series exploring the ideas presented at the "A Third Way" conference we recently returned from.  Until then, enjoy.

If Nothing We Do Matters, All That Matters Is What We Do

Open Theism with Steve Mirkovich

We're finally back with a new podcast.  It was great seeing many of you at BC Campmeeting and recording a few podcasts while we were at it.  We look forward to meeting more of you at the Adventist Forum Conference coming up in September.

This week we're happy to feature a guest: Pastor Stevan Mirkovich from Vancouver.  I've known Steve since we were in junior high together.  He has wrestled long and hard with his faith and grown much in the journey--which is certainly not over.  He is recently returned from the first Open Theism conference, so we asked him to share what "open theism" means and why it is important to him.

Steve, thanks for sharing with us.  And thank you to the staff of the Lodge at Camp Hope for graciously opening a space for us to record.

Open Theism with Steve Mirkovich

We'll be back next week with another podcast.

Reading the Bible as (Non)Fiction 2: A Brief How-to

Hey everybody.  Here's hoping we'll see you at campmeeting and can continue the discussion in person.  But for now, a new podcast, as promised (sorry about the delay, yesterday was a little crazy).

This week we take up with our previous discussion about Reading the Bible as (Non)Fiction.  We thought the last discussion might have remained a little in the abstract, so in this podcast, we try to outline some basic strategies for reading the Bible as nonfiction.  We focused on two particular techniques: close reading and contextualization.  Of course, the discussion ranges from that point.  Enjoy.  We'll be back in a few weeks with some more podcasts!  Yay!

Reading the Bible as (Non)Fiction 2: A Brief How-to

God as Other: Why so Complicated?

Well, in Dale's absence, I've managed to find a podcast we recorded a while back but haven't released yet.  I think this is a good time for it.  Our discussion starts with a question: "If God is real, why doesn't He make himself known in a way that is obvious and unmistakable?"  This ties back into our discussion about reading the Bible as non-fiction, "Made for the Story", and my thesis.  This is a common question grounded in some assumptions about God and language and faith that don't make a lot of sense.  God wants a relationship--as such, he approaches us in ways that allow us to ignore or reject him.  He does not force himself upon us, and he speaks and appears in ways that require a response, without dictating a particular response.  That responsibility is vital to faith and life.  Ultimately, God appears as the "Great Other" who challenges our self-conceptions and doesn't always act in ways that are either comprehensible or desirable from our perspective.  But that is the great difficulty of loving another rather than yourself--different choices, different actions, different words.

Enjoy.

God as Other: Why so Complicated?

Hopefully, next week we will continue our discussion of the Bible as Nonfiction with an exploration of practices of good interpretation.

Freedom as Responsibility: David's Thesis Part 2

Well, the week has flown by.  Here's the second part of our discussion of my thesis, picking up with "the contest for meaning."  Our central question this week is how do we speak our stories and listen to others without simply looking to win?  This is a huge driving question for me.  Our discussion drifts through Idle No More, Butler and Spivak's "Who Speaks the Nation-State?", and the relationships between language, identity, culture and nationhood.  Enjoy.  And please comment!

Freedom as Responsibility Part 2

The Truth About Stories, Part 2

Three weeks ago we started a discussion of how stories impact and interact with our lives, looking particularly at Tom King's book The Truth about Stories. Here is a continuation of this talk, looking at the same situation from a different perspective.  We talk about the power of stories to grab us, to promise us a future, and to disappoint us horribly.  Specifically I talk about the story of the triumphal entry, and the story of the Romanian revolution of 1989. We then ask ourselves what is the story of Christianity, and begin a much larger discussion of God's relationship with stories.

The Truth About Stories, Part 2

And on Spreaker