Categories: uncategorized
Date: 03 July 2007 08:57:23
Gordon Lynch is a sweetie - and reminds me of my friend Liam. His work is obviously soundly researched, and he's a pretty good public speaker (aside from an annoying tendency to cover his mouth with his hand at times - frustrating if you lipread for any significant part of your understanding, as I do).
But what was BEST about the weekend were the huge swathes of conversation outside of the sessions - people were, from meeting together on the Friday, communicating with each other NON-STOP all weekend. It was lovely (and I got to have some good long-winded debates, which is always nice). If the whole progressive wing of the church could communicate that easily (I'm not saying everyone always agreed, but they KEPT TALKING, which is the important bit, in my view) life on the margins of mainstream spirtituality would suddenly look a lot more hopeful....
I hope the current trends in online social networking, blogging and message boards can sustain this sort of thing over wider communities - although I don't believe they'll ever replace meeting up at least from time to time. We are after all still physical beings, and face-to-face communication has irreplacable nuances *
Keep communicating, people!
* about to devolve into further consideration of one of the themes brought up by the weekend about embodying spirituality, but decided I'd better do some work instead...