Some people dream of going to baseball fantasy camp – for only $5000 you and your spouse can go suffer alongside the Tigers! Me, I’ve always dreamed of going to South by Southwest (SXSW), which is basically a music, film and tech nerd’s dream.
In honor of my unfulfilled SXSW dreams, here is a free sampler from NPR featuring some great talent performing at this year’s SXSW festival.
I’ve been having a hard time writing down some coherent thoughts about The Idea Camp because it was such an incredible experience for me. I’m still trying to wrap my head and heart around it all. It’s a bit like herding cats.
In any case, before too much time passed, I wanted to at least begin recording some of my thoughts and impressions. I’m going to borrow newly-hairstyled Dave Ingland‘s format and break my reflections down into separate posts.
So, here’s the first round of my post-Idea Camp rodeo (each post will be titled in the both/and spirit of The Idea Camp)…
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I loved the ethos of open-source collaboration + participation.
I didn’t initially plan on making this into a series, but I just came across a great passage on third way thinking as I’ve been reading through Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith, by Robert Gelinas.
Robert’s jazz-shaped faith is composed of three foundations, or keynotes:
These keynotes have implications both for “our walk with God (spirituality) and our joining in to help others walk with God (evangelism).”
One of my favorite explorations of these keynotes comes in chapter four, “Creative Tension.” Robert points out that in our desire to resolve conflict, tension and perceived contradictions in the Bible and in our faith, perhaps we have lost touch with the very thing that can lead to creativity and life.
Jesus knows what to do with tension…
These two opposing truths provided a whole new option for those present that day — a third way (in Latin, tertium quid), a new, creative way. This happens when we move beyod either/or to both/and. This is the gateway to improvisation. Jazz is the willingness to live between freedom and unfreedom and see where it leads.
I love how Robert challenges us even to rethink, or reframe, our understanding of what it means to be in a rut. So much of life is lived somewhere in-between, in the ordinary and everyday. And yet, as we embrace this third way thinking:
When we are in a rut with God, we can stop and realize that a rut only exists becaus there are two opposing, competing, and equally strong forces that create sides. Those sides create a groove. Creative tension helps us find that groove.
May the paradox of loving and following Jesus lead us into the endless groove of wonder, possibility and love!
Increasingly, I am coming across thinkers, theologians and practitioners who are advocating approaches that can be characterized as third way.
Whether we’re talking about politics, power, theology or praxis, it seems as if our world is becoming increasingly polarized into diametrically opposed camps, whose main form of communication is to lob an occasional grenade in the general direction of the other. It’s been good for my soul to hear that many others are who are in the same boat — convinced there must be a a way out of these false binaries, a higher and better way, especially as followers of Jesus.
How’s that for a “Best of” list title? Whether released this year or not, here is some of the music I enjoyed throughout 2008, alphabetically for your perusal:
The Bake Sale, by The Cool Kids
Let’s Stay Friends, 3/5 and Inches, by Les Savy Fav
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, by Pavement
Rusty, by Rodan
Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, by Sigur Ros
Dear Science, by TV on the Radio
It’s Getting Tougher to Say the Right Things, by Unbroken
At Mount Zoomer, by Wolf Parade
Throw in there various tracks by Annuals, Cloud Cult, Department of Eagles, +/-, Kanye West (yes, even some of the auto-tuned madness), Los Campesinos!, and Jay Reatard, just for good measure.
And, below, a video that cannot be contained within the confines of one calendar year:
headsparks* 