Planned Chaos

Several of us have been reading Peter Rollins (35 year old Irish postmodern scholar) and founder of the IKON community in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Josh was recently so impacted that he wants to make his way over to visit the IKON community. I second the desire and hope we at Open Hand can help launch Josh on an extended visit. Check out his book - How Not To Speak of God.

Apparently one of Peter's mentors was/is Merold Westphal (Overcoming Onto-Theology Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith) a Philosophy Professor at Fordham University. Good, challenging thinking written with his atheistic postmodern friends in mind and his friends with faith that are dead set against postmodernist notions in mind. (seeing it as warmed-over Nietzschean atheism)

Both these authors seem to be articulating ideas that many of us have felt deep in our bones, but didn't have much of a vocabulary for. Something along the lines of living / speaking about christian faith in the white hot center of the great emergence.... a place not yet populated by many people.

Ann started me on this journey a few years ago (emergent questioning / thinking) and I have been amazed at how much she can take in and absorb, while still deeply loving the inherited church - especially TAB. Ann and many women of Open Hand are a special breed of differentiated authenticity and well connected to the sacred feminine power - much like the first women at the tomb. I hope to do a better job of listening (and believing) when she and the other women of our tribe speak up. They usually have something very valuable for all of us.

Marshall is another person doing something very special - in Romania he is pioneering a new path (or rediscovering an ancient and forgotten one) that leads right into the emergent center of the global Kingdom of God. It continues to be a privilege to walk along beside him from time to time on the journey and see just how far he has progressed into territory that few other believers have the courage to even imagine.

This reminds me of the thoughts of Charles Fleetham in his book on unrational leadership - and his five principles of unrational leadership:
1. start all problem solving by taking personal responsibility
2. aim at increasing and releasing unconscious energy, not just external efficiency
3. confront and partner with the unconscious - rituals help us do this - prayer, meditation
4. creativity drives change - what we need more of is planned chaos
5. look two generations behind and two generations ahead (wrestling with past, present, future)

So let us at Open Hand enjoy more 'planned chaos' in 2011.
Amen,
O'