Foundational Stories 3 (Campmeeting 2014)

This is the final piece of the discussion.  We finally got an audience mic, so this discussion features a number of voices other than our own.  They make some great contributions.  Among other things, we explore the difference between the Greek "Being" and the Hebrew "walking"--in terms of how God relates to humanity; the need for personal involvement; and the relationship between our evangelism and our picture of God.  Thanks to everyone who participated.  We're planning to present a new series at Campmeeting 2016, featuring more great discussion and shared exploration.  In the meantime, enjoy!

Foundational Stories 3

PS: There won't be a podcast next week because it will be Christmas.  In the new year, we'll continue with the next presentation.

Getting Lost In Our Stories (Campmeeting 2014)

In today's podcast, we explore some different ways we can relate to our stories and how that impacts on our lives.  Although we've covered these ideas in previous podcasts, this presentation allowed us to put a number of ideas together in an interactive venue.  We wonder through Gonzales, Alford and the Great Controversy asking questions like:

Why do we get lost?
What happens when we get lost?
How can we get lost in our everyday life?
How can we get lost in our stories?
What does it mean to live in a "found" way?

We're looking for our other set of recordings which hopefully have the various audience questions, but in the meantime, I cleaned up the audio as best I could.  Thanks again for listening and enjoy!  Part 2, the audience participation portion, should be available next week.

Getting Lost in Our Stories

Missing Paul Walker

Dale here. In the same week that we are marking the death of Nelson Mandela, David and I instead did a podcast trying to make sense of the impact of the death of Paul Walker.  The first reason for this would be that, well, Mandela died the day after we recorded.  The second reason is that the reaction to the death of Paul Walker is harder to explain, at least for me.

For the first time in a while the death of a celebrity impacted me.  I saw a post come up on Facebook, and immediately I thought "oh please let this be a hoax", but it wasn't, and it hit me.  At the same time, it wasn't supposed to - he's a celebrity, not part of my life, not the most amazing actor, and I'm supposed to be above this.  But I'm not.

In this podcast David and I try to get to the bottom of why the death of Paul Walker seems to have resonated with so many people, including myself, and what the implications of this situation are.

     Listen here: Missing Paul Walker

And for those who are just missing Paul Walker, here's a youtube memorial video for him, that incorporates some of the reasons why I think people miss him:

Thinking about Community: Applying Lessons from Language Revitalization to Faith Communities

I (Dale) spent the last two weeks recording Nuxalk in Bella Coola, while also working with language teachers towards understanding the steps to making the language a part of everyday life - making a community around the language.  The process brought to my mind many questions about community building in general.

Some communities are incredibly resilient in the face of outside pressure, while others melt away. Yes, you can blame the pressure, but when you look at a range of situations, the key factor seems to be not the amount of pressure on the community, but the stories that the community uses to hold itself together.  Kill the stories, and you destroy the ability to resist.  Take away the language, take away a voice, then teach a new language and a new voice--new stories--and recovery becomes very challenging.

This means that the strength of a community is in its mechanisms for passing on stories, for using them, for speaking--the strength lies in the community's ability to make those stories central to life.

In this podcast, we look at the idea of "church"--asking why and if church is working, assuming that the role of church is to build and strengthen a different kind of community rather than just be a window dressing for an already-existent community. I bring my experience working with language revitalization to bear on the question of the purpose of education, community, and what a recognition of this purpose means for how we regard gathering together.

   Listen to "Thinking about Community"

A question to get us started - what is the "work" that we do at church? what is it we accomplish, what are we trying to accomplish, how might we better pursue those goals?

Language Problems

Sometimes language just doesn't cut it, no matter how hard you try.  A few weeks ago David and I decided to talk about our experiences travelling, but what was supposed to be a series of observations on a really interesting part of the world very quickly broke down into something quite different.  It turned out that David didn't understand why I did what I did, and I didn't understand why he didn't understand, and language didn't seem up to the task of bridging the divide.

In this podcast we explore the gap between us and the limitations of language in the face of very different life experiences.

Here is the podcast: Language Problems

How about you guys, do you have any similar stories in your own life where language just wasn't up to the task?  What did you do?