Disappointing Stories 2 (Campmeeting 2014)

Continuing our discussion of disappointment, this week we explore what happens after disappointment--the significance of the choices we make in response to overwhelming events, in response to the experience of being lost.  We talk about Rwanda, religious polarization in our society, music, heaven and what this has to do with God, faith and love.

Next week, we open the discussion further as we spend time discussing various stories that audience members share.

Enjoy!

Disappointing Stories 2

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

Daily Transformation Roundtable Discussion

This week we continue from last weeks discussion, exploring some of the practices and stories we use to negotiate life--to live by wayfaring, to keep growing and moving forward.  Over the past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a holistic (brain) health conference  in Vancouver which was quite interesting.  There were various speakers on addiction, brain health, yoga, breathing, etc.  One of the main presenters spent much time talking about how interconnected our bodies and minds are--if your brain is injured, it can have a profound influence on behaviour.  Conversely, healing your body can also heal your mind.  In our discussion, we range across the spectrum, from more physical practices to attitudes and perspectives that help us embrace change. 

Thanks again to our campmeeting guests.  This is the last of the campmeeting podcasts, so we won't have any more up until after the AF conference in the beginning of September.  We should be picking up our regular Monday release schedule by mid to late September.

Enjoy!

Daily Transformation Roundtable

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 1

Release fail.  I apologize.  I've been sick and largely incapable of useful thought for the past few days, so the release is late.  Sorry.

This week is the first part of a discussion Dale and I had about my MA thesis.  If you're interested in reading it, let me know, but I will warn you that it is a dense 100 pages of critical theory.  This is the much simpler version.

In my thesis, I explored three wilderness nonfiction books: Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, Peter Gzsowski's The Sacrament, and John and Jean Silverwood's Black Wave.  My question was "what is at stake in these stories that they each operate, at least partially, in an apologetic (explanatory) mode?"  My summary statement was that I was exploring "freedom as responsibility grounded in a recognition of mutual vulnerability and enacted as a contest for meaning."  The project allowed me to work through and articulate a number of ideas I've been wrestling with for the majority of my adult life, as such, it is probably my clearest articulation of the importance of story, the role it plays in our lives, and the importance and meaning of our engagement with it.  This ties back into much that we've discussed so far.

This first part ends with a question about why there must be a contest for meaning.  Part 2 answers next week.  Enjoy.

Freedom as Responsibility: David's Thesis Part 1

If anyone is interested in undertaking the reading of my most significant work thus far, it is available through the UVic Library website, here.

Part of the podcast is here.

Why this forum?

Over the past good while myself and a a friend have been in the process of writing a book - or to be more accurate co-writing.  To be more accurate still would be to say that we've spent several hours each weak discussing everything that we want to write about, but very rarely writing.  This blog will be a way of giving us a forum to write in, to post some of our discussions, and to give others a chance to tell us how ridiculous we are.

The subject matter will vary across a few disciplines, but will always be linked back to one question - why?  If that's too broad, I could narrow it to the domains of critical theory, religion, love, narrative, story, friendship, language, and hiking.  Even narrower, subject matter will almost always be relevant to our own lives, and the stories that we interact with regularly - urban vs rural, academia vs "normal", Adventism, the outdoors, television, gaming, and board games. If that's too broad, you'll have to either read later things that I've written, or listen to the podcasts that I think we'll be posting in the near future.

Finally - the title of this blog.  I originally wanted to go with -ee-apachitayaan ninagataweyihchigan, which translates as "as I am using my mind" and is in the Michif language, one of the unifying tropes I use across my blogs.  On second thought (after being reminded that it's not really that easy to remember [only 14 syllables!]) I went with Taanshi, meaning Hey! or How's it going?, also in Michif, but roughly twelve syllables shorter.

The main reason I chose it here is because it seems that most blogs dealing with this sort of subject matter go for Latin names referring to some sort of religious concept, and I think it's silly.  Unfortunately the convention is so well established that I can't really think of an English title that I could use! So my act of rebellion has been to reject Latin in favour of a language that is the beautiful bastard child of French and Nehiyawewin, preserving many of the strengths of both, and differing most significantly from Latin in that it is not friendly to metaphysics of any kind, as in its syntax, morphology and culture it tends to ground discussion in bodily action, and concrete implementation.  I'll probably talk about this at some point.

Finally, please interact! If you post interesting questions here, and we find them interesting, we'll probably try to find our own answers to them and post them either as posts or as podcasts.

update: we have a new title! "Storying Life" so although I still love "taanshi", it's going to be the url, not the title from here on in.