Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

August 22, 2011

GothiCon cell group idea: Suggested geographical groups

Filed under: GothiCon etc., underground — philip @ 11:03 am

Although GothiCon attendees came from both coasts, the bulk obviously came from the states closest to Cincinnati, hence from the Midwest and to a lesser extent the South. Therefore the level of detail below isn’t meant to slight the coasts, the South, or Texas — it’s just some suggestions based on the geographical distribution i observed:

  • MN, ND, IA – suggested hub: Twin Cities – Des Moines and Fargo are both 3-4 hours away. Much of Wisconsin would be within 3 hours.
  • Chicagoland – enough population to be its own cell.
  • Central IL – hub: Peoria (?) – Decatur, Quad Cities, i’m not sure who else. Could also extend to Southern IL and even metro STL.
  • Greater Cincinnati, KY-IN-OH – Donna and her associates have done such a great job here that it probably stands alone as its own cell.
  • NW OH / MI – hub: Toledo – A half-dozen of us within an hour’s drive here; we could also join in with Cincinnati on occasion.
  • TN and other parts of the South – hub: Nashville. Also Florida could easily stand on its own, even tho i didn’t meet anyone from FL at GothiCon.
  • MO: I know there were some people from KC there, not sure about St Louis, but if so then this could be another logical grouping. The distance from KC to the Twin Cities is a bit farther than would be reasonable. Perhaps the central IL folks could meet up in STL.
  • East Coast – There’s obviously a ton of population here. I don’t have the feel for it that i did when i lived there, but at the very least one cell covering PA and western NY, and another covering say metro NYC up to New England, seem logical.
  • Texas – its own thing
  • CA – San Diego and the Bay Area are about 8 hours apart, so there’d logically be somewhere in the middle to meet. There might be other ways to organize this to include the desert SW (AZ, NV, etc.)
  • Pacific NW – plenty of people, i’m sure, but i don’t really know them.
  • And i don’t even know where to begin in talking about outside the US.

    • I propose that Grave Robbers (or Asylum or whomever) start to build these cell groups by creating a very simple communications infrastructure for each of the above. Email lists would be great. Facebook groups would be OK.

    I want to emphasize that these are just suggestions to get things rolling. If the individuals involved find that another organization works better, more power to them. Like any living organization, i hope that these groups will grow organically, divide, plant new ones, etc.

GothiCon follow-up: Regional cell groups

Filed under: Uncategorized, spirituality, underground — philip @ 9:04 am

GothiCon was really marvelous, of course. Thanks to Donna, as well as to the 86 Club, its volunteers, the bands and speakers, and all the attendees for making it a great weekend.

I mentioned to Donna and to the Asylum leaders (Ben, Bill, KJ, Liz) my perception that we need to follow up with some sort of more regionalized, more frequent group, which i’ll here call a “cell group”, evoking the idea of home groups that make up such an important part of many church congregations. Here’s a first pass at a proposal, which i’ll try to flesh out later.

Purpose: The purpose of these groups would be: To pray for each other, encourage each other, and brainstorm how to connect with the alienated in our local areas; to do all of this more frequently than is practical in existing formats (GothiCon, Cornerstone, Ichthus, etc.).

Autonomy: The groups would be mostly self-determining — in content, emphasis, geographical divisions, etc. The role of the central actor (be it the Grave Robbers, Asylum, me as an individual, whoever) would be mostly advisory, to get people in touch and get things started.

Geography: In general these groups will be arranged so as to be at most a 3- or 4-hour drive from participants. I have some ideas of natural groupings that might emerge in the Central US, because the location in Cincinnati meant that most of the GothiCon attendees the Midwest or South. The East and West Coasts, as well as locations outside the US, are less clear to me. Perhaps there are other events in those places (e.g., Unified Underground in Maryland) or organizations (e.g. Steiger in the countries where they have bases) that would be helpful in scouting the territory. For now i’m happy with building this idea out in the Central US and letting people in those other places figure out what they want to do.

(For detail see: Suggested geographical groups.)

Activities: I’ll put together a sample agenda, with the understanding that groups can adapt it as they’d like. I emphatically recommend a huge emphasis on prayer, and in particular on prayer preceding decisions about action. Action is important but our plans need to emerge from prayer rather than presenting God with an agenda and asking him to bless it.

Information required: Really just names and contact info of people who’d like to be involved — Donna indicated that it may not be as easy as i thought to get the list of conference attendees. We may have to piece together various sign-up sheets and mailing lists.

Subcultural scope: We’re probably best off recognizing our historical roots in goth but also being fairly open-minded about not attaching ourselves exclusively to our scene.

Much more to follow….

June 7, 2010

Sock distribution in Birmingham

Filed under: acf — Tags: , , , , , — philip @ 9:15 am

Over our last couple of Alabama Christian Freaks get-togethers, we’d developed a consensus that we needed to move forward with a different kind of event — “we” meaning S, J and me, since the our last hanging-out occasion came during a violent storm so it was just their family and me.

This time, again, circumstances conspired to keep several key participants away, so I really wasn’t sure how things would turn out. But as it happened, S and J brought their family and a couple of friends, and we had a nice little rag-tag band to do outreach. We looked around some of the standard squatting places around Birmingham, all of them under overpasses. Maybe it’s just that my previous homeless outreach was in Boston and Cambridge with plenty of other nooks to hide in, but the Magic City sure seems to have a ton of overpasses. In the first place we looked, there were a ton of clothes spread all over the place, a couple of mattresses, and a Bible, but nobody was there! We left several pairs of socks anyway. At our second stop we met a nice gentleman with his tent set up next to a friend’s; apparently the friend had started living at the first of a new series of veterans’ shelters. At our third stop we met a couple who told us about their visit to church that morning — the woman seemed very self-conscious about the clothes she’d worn there. This kicked off a discussion about how God doesn’t care about our appearance when we come to worship him. Then one of our group realized that he’d grown up with the guy’s brother.

One cool aspect was that S and Js kids accompanied us when we got out of the car — first the older two hanging around the guy with the tent, then all three including the 2-year-old at the next stop. However, after that stop, the kids were understandably pretty worn out and hard to deal with, so we needed to wind down, and we still had some 20 to 30 pairs of socks. Fortunately we happened upon a church downtown (one that clearly bills itself as multiracial; I would recognize it if I saw the sign again) that had some sort of food and clothing distribution set up in front of their building. Yet despite all the clothes being handed out, everyone still rushed over to get a pair of socks!

So we were able to get rid of all but maybe a half-dozen of the 50 or so pairs we started with. It seems we met a very real need that was underserved by existing outreach efforts. Much credit to S for proposing this idea!

Busy Sunday: Sock distro in B’ham / ACF swan song / Oneonta wandering

Filed under: acf, meta, my psychology, underground — philip @ 8:44 am

Stay tuned for wonderfully insightful posts on each of these topics, which I’ll link above as I finish them.

January 18, 2010

A maelstrom, but not necessary a bad one

Filed under: my psychology, spirituality, underground — philip @ 5:22 pm

I feel like my life is traveling in circles. I feel like my brain is traveling in circles. It’s not an unpleasant journey, and in some very fundamental ways I’m blessed. But it sure is confusing. God has some purpose in all of it, but he hasn’t really shared it with me, and I’m sure that must be for the best.

Here are some things whirling around in my brain:

  • Almost finished with the Chap Clark / Steve Rabey book When Kids Hurt. It’s inspiring and overwhelming. I want so badly to be part of pushing forward their vision, but by the week I have less and less idea how. I’m in their conclusions chapter, and just read the item on youth ministry. They seem to think youth min. people need to overhaul the model. But my old plan of becoming a professor of youth ministry appears to be dead on arrival precisely because I don’t fit the old model (or at least, because my resume doesn’t scream success under the old model). So a professor of youth min. writes a book advocating change, but institutions are apparently resistant to change. Like any other field, I guess.
  • I’m looking forward to going to see a few bands I’ve never heard before play at a church in Madison on January 29. The only reason I even know about this show is because they were flyering for it at that benefit show I went to in Athens last Saturday. Still, fun and anticipation.
  • I just checked out a new coffee shop in NE Huntsville. Nice atmosphere (except for the smoke alarm that needed a battery), relatively inexpensive coffee, less crowded than Olde Towne. I’d go back, but I’d take headphones and my own mug.
  • Heard a patron there, apparently a veteran teacher, say something like, “People don’t realize that teaching is a calling.” Indeed.
  • On the way home, heard an NPR story about outrage over the money college presidents make. Maybe higher ed is a great field to be in after all. Michigan, here I come!
  • After that, heard an NPR story about a struggling school in Pasadena hoping for California to win some sort of “sweepstakes” grant. So maybe secondary education / guidance counseling isn’t a good field to be in.

Yeah, lots to think about.

January 16, 2010

Musing on creativity and the church

Filed under: underground — philip @ 10:45 pm

How is it that North Alabama can support 500 kids at a Christian hardcore/metal show in Athens, but apparently not half a dozen creative or subcultural-leaning Christian adults? Or do I just not know where to look? Seems to me the Christian church is more conventional and strait-laced here than the population of North Alabama as a whole!

January 10, 2010

Revelations

Filed under: my psychology, spirituality, underground — philip @ 9:46 pm

January must be the fourth or fifth month straight that I’ve had a few days of a cold that’s just making me feel lousy. It worries me a bit, although I think it’s partially that my worries are impeding my defenses and partially that the lack of a conventional work schedule is giving me an excuse to sleep 12 hours a day and sleepwalk the other 12.

But I’m trying to use my down-time wisely, and I think God has a way of forcing me to slow down “doing” so that I can focus on growing spiritually. I wouldn’t want to claim that any of the following is special revelation that others should take as a word from the Lord, and certainly none of the following insights supersede Scripture or anything else one might hear from wise teachers. But I do think the following is some insight that I’ve distilled from various passages, sermons, etc. lately.

  1. For me dying to self means setting aside my need for accomplishments. I won’t lie. I crave plaudits from others. I don’t spend my life running around after wealth or material toys (as seemed to be a big theme in today’s sermon at Southwood). I run around worrying that everyone considers me a terrible failure and a bum. I blogged about this form of idolatry a couple of months ago, but it’s going to take a long time for me to get away from it.
  2. I can’t compare God’s work in my life to God’s work in others. This is a huge problem for me. I have sort of a recurring theme in my conversations with my mom. She’ll say something like, “God’s just got to bring you to the point of total surrender,” and then I’ll flip out in frustration. But it occurs to me, my frustration isn’t because I really think I’ve reached the point of total surrender. My frustration is because I don’t think anyone has reached the point of total surrender, but other people don’t seem to require this same “education.” I resent that they’re allowed to crave approval as much as I do, but still have productive, ego-stroking careers. Actually I just put together that this is the reason for my resentment, as I was typing #1. Well, my subconscious knew why I was resentful, but I just now reached enough awareness to type it up as a list item here.

    I don’t get upset that Mom thinks I’m not at the point of total surrender. I get upset that Mom thinks that God needs to teach me this lesson more than he needs to teach other people. But what occurs to me now — God forbid, maybe it’s my ego speaking, but I think there’s some truth here — is that the mission for my life somehow requires me to internalize this truth more deeply than most people have. At least that’s what I’m going to believe to stay sane.

  3. Tremendous freedom comes when we don’t think anyone’s judging us for our accomplishments. I know that, “God helps those who helps themselves,” isn’t in the Bible, but the associated mindset has always been in the back of my mind as I thought about the topic of life-goals and accomplishments. Today I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like to live an entire life literally not caring about measuring up or not measuring up. It’s really amazing. I think in the back of my mind, I’d always feared that I’d use true freedom as an excuse to just lie in bed all day, maybe getting up to check sports scores or engage in some stupid battle on Wikipedia or something. But I don’t really want to do that. I still want to do something significant to help people, even without the negative reinforcement of imagining God shaking his head saying, “What a disappointment!” to motivate me. Since that negative reinforcement is neither necessary nor helpful to motivate me, I should discard it.
  4. Boasting in Christ is healthy, and isn’t the same thing as boasting about following Christ. I think I’ve mentioned how disgusting I find it when Christians make faith into a work and start to act superior just by the basis of their faith in Christ. Perhaps this revulsion has blinded me to just what Paul is saying in 2 Cor. 10 when he talks of “boast[ing] in the Lord.” Honestly, I’ve always thought this passage was a borderline ego trip. Maybe so, but I’m coming to see that boasting in the Lord means filling that craving for accomplishment with wonder about how God is working worldwide. If I’m really taking pride in God, so to speak, then it really doesn’t matter whether my role in that work is large or indetectable. I can die tonight and still feel proud to be a part of redemptive history, because God is still doing huge works.
  5. I need to get back to where I was in 2000-01, praying for Harvard Square. Sometimes ignorance forces you to rely on God. Before I had any experience hanging out in the Pit, back when I thought that I was in constant danger of gutter punks beating me down for saying the wrong thing, I spent about six months praying. I thought my prayer was so outlandish that I couldn’t imagine how God could possibly want me to reach out in that context. I certainly had no clue that a few faithful brothers and sisters from another Cambridge church already had a method to reach out, or that I’d be joining with them in a few months, let alone co-leading the effort within a couple of years Reading Clark and Rabey makes the need of youth today seem overwhelming. All I know to do is pray. I need to get back to where I was in 2000 and 2001.
  6. God can be trusted in the afterlife. I’m not going to develop this right now, but it’s something I’ve struggled with, and I received an insight today that made me feel a lot better. If this bothers you too, I hope you’ll get a similar insight.
  7. Bitterness and other emotional pain is analogous to physical pain. This could be number 2A, because my friend Laura suggested it in an IM conversation after I shared item 2. I certainly don’t want to justify my own bitterness and other unholy attitudes, but they do serve a purpose. They make me aware something’s wrong, and given my tendency toward pensive reflection, it seems likely I won’t really rest until I’ve worked the proximate cause up to consciousness, like a splinter. Anyway, that helped me a lot with item 2 above, and it helps to think that these triggers are triggers for a reason, to make me aware of the underlying issue.

That’s all I got for now. Hope this is helpful to posterity.

November 29, 2009

Reformulating it as a mission statement

Filed under: career, latest, underground — philip @ 8:56 pm

My career goal* is to research and teach about youth culture, emphasizing youth subcultures, with the goal of informing the church to help it communicate the Gospel.

This is just a slight rewording of what I’ve been pondering lately, but this isn’t Jeopardy so it probably makes sense to change it from a question to a statement.



*Tentatively.

July 24, 2009

Iconic projects

Filed under: my psychology, spirituality, underground — Tags: , , , — philip @ 12:46 am

I’m always looking for thought-provoking mp3s to listen to while I walk for exercise. Lately I’ve been listening to Smart City by Carol Coletta, which i gather is an NPR program about issues of urban development. This particular episode happens to feature Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company.

Webber says a lot of stuff worth listening to. One point that’s really grabbed my attention is the importance of iconic projects in moving from a plan to implementation. Since I’m someone who’s much better at devising plans than implementing them, this should be a topic tailor-made for my needs.

Around 20:00 Webber describes an experience working for the mayor of Portland, OR, in the 1970s. As he describes it, PDX back then was nothing like the annoyingly hip place it is now. A key step in its development of a pedestrian friendly, transit-compatible downtown was their success in luring the Seattle department store Nordstrom, which apparently even then had enough cachet to lead the revitalization of downtown.

The point is that one such “iconic project” can be critical to promoting a broader change effort. It’s really something I need to hear. Mind you, on a visceral level I think I’ve realized this before — for example, back in Massachusetts when we talked about getting a place for the Pit kids to hang out, this had the potential to be an iconic project. In more mundane aspects of my daily life, something like getting to where I can beat a live poker game soundly enough to make a modest living at it before I start investing effort to learn how to beat more advanced but potentially more profitable online games would be an example.

I will try to think a bit more about other places I can apply this lesson in my life. Back to the whole underground outreach topic, I think that’s one area where I can apply this principle. I just need to get involved in something local and helping bring it to some modest plateau perceived as “success” (which of course only really comes by the Holy Spirit).

July 19, 2009

Cornerstone reflections #5: Visual art

Filed under: Cstone — Tags: , , , , — philip @ 11:49 pm

This will be a quick one.

I noticed that they handled visual art much differently at Cornerstone than in 2004. As I recall back then it was just some gallery in a tent somewhere. I didn’t go there, despite what I’d imagine is a strong interest in vis. art relative to the population of Cornerstone attendees, and despite the fact that I thought it was really cool that they had visual art. So i can imagine that whatever it was, it was probably underutilized by the attendees.

In 2009 the visual art was set up as a public art display, not unlike art one might see in a subway station or similar in an urban context. It was set up in the approach to “the bridge,” so i passed through there a fair bit going from the Asylum to the Midway area. Apparently the theme was the parables of Jesus. It wasn’t clear to me whether all the artists were JPUSAns or not. Unfortunately i didn’t catch either of the guided tours at 10 am Thursday and Friday — they conflicted with seminars I wanted to catch. But at least I got to look at the art for a couple of minutes on my way down the walkway.

In general I think this sort of public art display is a very positive development, and I wonder how many years they’ve been doing this. (Perhaps I’m just not remembering something like this in 2004, but I don’t think so — a couple of people agreed that visual art didn’t use to be displayed this way at C’stone.) My only suggestion for perhaps broadening the visual art offerings would be to have another public space for works not directly related to the theme. For example, the woman at JPUSA named Doria (?) who’s done some really great paintings featured on the Asylum shirts probably wouldn’t get her work in something like this, unless she happened to do work on the theme of the year. I really like her work and would like to see it get attention outside the Asylum, so I’d like to see some display of non-thematic works.

That’s sort of a quibble, though, that shouldn’t detract from the bigger point: JPUSA has done a good job of getting visual art out there where the Cornerstone masses can see and interact with it.

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