the other pressing decision is about greenbelt. the garden have very kindly invited us to do something in their venue (a meditative ambient art installation / performance space). they need to let greenbelt know what’s going on in their venue by the end of the month.
in our discussion last week we decided (?) that since lindsey and i were going to be there, time would be much better spent preparing for a 1 hr slot in the programme rather than creating games to be used (or not used) throughout the whole weekend. we seemed to agree that our theme should be thresholds.
there was justifiably some concern about being an authentic expression of threshold at greenbelt, and whether this was possible… we don’t want to betray our values by stressing to produce a performance. i’ve been thinking about this in the past week and i think we could achieve this by setting some quite strict boundaries on resources (such as only paper, pens, crisps and ale) so that we don’t get carried away by our ideas. the strength should be in the exploration of the ideas themselves, and to some extent we’ve done this work already. in fact i wondered whether the structure of the gb hour could be around our group’s journey exploring the concept of threshold (a great excuse to use activities from previous reflectives!)?
imagining this in gb wording the description of this concept would be something like:
“threshold
threshold is a post-something community from bristol exploring spirituality without Religion. their only concept of heresy is defining heresy. [is this us?!]
spaces in-between
experience the journey of standing still on the threshold. enjoy the place related to other place, with no place of its own. non-dogmatic uncertainty has never felt so fulfilling.”
i’m imagining activities to do with: entry/exit; changing state (threshold as melting point); sitting on the fence; being neither/nor and beyond (building on negative theology in terms of a/theism and other aspects of personal identity such as gender and sexuality); janus; twilight spirituality.
please comment as this is a starting point rather than a finishing point! what did you have in mind?
14 May, 2009 at 12:55 pm
i think it’s great we can do something at greenbelt, and i think we’ve found (or been invited to) the right space. am i right in thinking that we have agreed to go ahead and offer something, and that this discussion is about how and what we do? richard’s point about doing threshold authentically is important in this conversation, and a point i agree with. I think therefore we should only do something that we have done or could do at the pub, i.e. it requires little set-up and clear-up and uses simple portable resources.
in terms of description, not sure about post ’something’! don’t like the word ‘experience’ either, makes it sound like a performance or ride at alton towers! maybe ‘explore’ would be better. something like: explore the journey of standing still on the threshold… and add something about pub style reflectives. it is a good description, and i think it’s right to think about the words we use to describe ourselves, however we need to balance something that will hook people and something simple and authentically us.
23 May, 2009 at 5:55 pm
OK, what about:
“thresholdbristol
threshold is a post-certainty community from bristol exploring spirituality without Religion. their only concept of heresy is defining heresy.
spaces in-between (title for session?)
join thresholdbristol in their journey of standing still on the threshold. enjoy the place related to other place, with no place of its own. non-dogmatic uncertainty has never felt so fulfilling. expect something dis/similar to art therapy, discussion groups, alt_worship and a chat over a pint. ”
25 May, 2009 at 10:57 am
4) As I’m not able to contribute to the Greenbelt activity I won’t say much, but only that I think its important that those who do decide to participate stay true to the threshold principals of not putting in too much preparation time and it being OK to be unpolished and imperfect. I’d much rather see some existing reflectives repeated than see anything new being generated for this circumstance. It is however important that this activity be used as a signpost to us if it does happen, Perhaps we could have a special “leave your email address here if you live anywhere near Bristol” signup sheet?
5) Describing Ourselves. I don’t like the “their only concept of heresy is defining heresy” and would rather that was cut. “Threshold is a post-certainty community from Bristol exploring spirituality without religion.” is fine (though was capitalised oddly) I would suggest having “associated with the Spirited Exchanges network” in there.
“spaces in-between” is a fine title. other suggestion “exploring the borderline” but anything like this is also fine.
Session description is good but if alt_worship is mentioned it should be appended with “without the worship bit” or it will give the wrong impression.
25 May, 2009 at 11:40 am
OK what about:
“thresholdbristol
threshold is a post-certainty community from bristol exploring spirituality without Religion. they approach this through spiritual reflectives which don’t assume a shared concept of god.
spaces in-between (title for session?)
join thresholdbristol in their journey of standing still on the threshold. enjoy the place related to other place, with no place of its own. non-dogmatic uncertainty has never felt so fulfilling. expect something un/like art therapy, discussion groups, alt_worship (without Worship) and a chat over a pint. ”
Alistair should be phoning me today, and so the words are going to be decided very soon.
BTW you can communicate subtle differences through the use of capitals, which is why our website avoids them (capitals communicate a more specific and limited use of a word and also a sense of hierarchy). Or in jest:
“As a member of the Ironic Postmodern Generation,
I have a tendency to capitalize Grand Concepts,
which usually translates to Concepts That Aren’t Really
Grand but Pretend to Be. This habit, annoying as it
may be, has Nothing to Do with arbitrary capitalization.”
– Bill Walsh, copy chief, The Washington Post
so more seriously, Religion is very different from religion (and we could possibly be religious), God is different from god and Worship is different from worship (we could also been seen to worship in a very loose definition of the term). the type of thing we’re doing could be what is known as religion without Religion but I thought it was clearer to say spirituality without Religion, if people don’t know this reference. Do you agree?
25 May, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I hope to be at Greenbelt for a day or two and will try to be there for the threshold meeting. As I said in the meeting, it feels important that the session is “authentic” in the sense that it not only resembles but actually is a regular threshold meeting in which others are invited to participate. I don’t want it to be a demonstration of threshold-like stuff or a performance. So, low-key preparation is important, though we obviously need to think through what happens if, say, more than ten people turn up.
Partly because of this perspective, I have been a little uneasy with the advertising taglines. Trying to pin down why, I think that is because they seemed a little too certain, a little too finished. I’m sure that I have orthodoxies and heresies, for example, even if they are different ones. One of the things that I value about threshold is its uncertainty, its tentativeness. I’m not sure that we should make too many claims.
So, I would be happy with just the first part of the description of threshold:
“threshold is a post-certainty community from Bristol exploring spirituality without Religion.”
without any qualifiers. The title for the session (“spaces in-between”) is good though I would prefer something lower-key in the second half of the description, like
“join thresholdbristol in their journey of standing still on the threshold. enjoy the place related to other place, with no place of its own. spend an hour with a group of friends trying to make sense of the idea of God through conversation and reflection”
25 May, 2009 at 1:08 pm
on cApItAlIzAtIoN, all such choices express a sub-text. by not capitalizing the first word of this sentence, I (i) make some point. By choosing capitals this time, I make some other point. so there is no way to be neutral. Avoiding capitals is taking as much of a stance as using conventional capitalization. distinguishing “God” from “god”, or “religion” from “Religion” (or “RELIGION”) can sometimes be important, so we do not want to lose the option. As a matter of personal taste, I am beginning to think that non-capitalized text has a little of the air of a fading fashion.
25 May, 2009 at 1:35 pm
OK what about:
“thresholdbristol
threshold is a post-certainty community from bristol exploring religion without Religion. they approach this through reflectives which don’t assume a shared concept of god. [L&J think this 2nd sentence is important and R&B seem to express a preference rather than strong opinion to delete this. we also changed spirituality to religion]
spaces in-between
join thresholdbristol in their journey of standing still on the threshold. enjoy the place related to other places, with no place of its own. non-dogmatic uncertainty has never felt so fulfilling. expect a low-key, non-slick, reflective that you would be happy to do with friends in a pub.” [last sentence seemed problematic so we tried to just tell it as it is!]
L&J
25 May, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I like this formulation. It’s good to tell it how it is.
25 May, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I like these revised versions.
25 May, 2009 at 9:07 pm
in the end we had to change it a bit to fit with the GB form and tight word counts etc. This is what we’ve submitted:
[group description]
“thresholdbristol – a post-certainty community from bristol exploring religion without Religion. non-dogmatic uncertainty has never felt so fulfilling.
[event description]
Spaces inbetween
join thresholdbristol as they inhabit a place related to other places, with no place of its own. expect a low-key, non-slick reflective that you’d cheerfully do in a pub.”
hopefully you’ll agree that this is the same just in a different order (there are more words available for the top bit!).
26 May, 2009 at 4:35 pm
and the suggested time is 3pm on the Saturday.