10.25.07

This Thing of Ours – It’s Yours Too

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:32 am by Thurman

Just short of two years ago, I emailed Rachel Barrenblat at Velveteen Rabbi and asked her to tell me if I was crazy or not. I don’t know exactly how I worded it, but I basically said, “I just got an email asking if I was going to Godblogcon and after looking over the speakers, I have to say I don’t feel like I’d be particularly welcomed. I’m hoping to put together something similar, but based on a much more inclusive faith identity. Do you think it is doable and will you help me?”

Fortunately for me, the answers were “yes” and “yes”. I am still awed by the way the Progressive Faith Bloggers Conference came together. I can honestly say that I was quite often “the least of these” when it came to putting things together. More often than not, my job was to listen in on the phone and say, “That sounds good to me.” Then they destroyed the motel where I was going to have everyone stay and I felt surely that the one little thing entrusted to me would fall through. Then Enterprise Rent-a-car refused to let me rent a van because I didn’t have an airplane ticket.

But it worked. Somehow, despite my absent-minded professor approach to life, enough good people came together to make something happen. And, if I do say so myself, that something was pretty damn wonderful. I still shiver to realize that Christian, Jew, and Muslim stood shoulder-to-shoulder in Montclair, NJ and joined in prayer on the very same day bombs began landing in Lebanon.

My will and best intentions were not enough to pull off a second blogcon this past summer – more indications that I had incredible help with the first one. But we are beginning to pull together the basic where and when details for next summer (in Amherst, alas, not Jerusalem – or even Texas!). To show everyone how much I’ve learned in the past two years, I’m not going to get involved in that (much). There are able people in charge of it, and I will leave it to them to do their job.

What I want to do is what I think I’m best at – stir up a hornet’s nest. Or something.

Whatever we call this “progressive faith” thing – a movement, a phenomenon, a community – it is fairly obvious that we are much different than when we first met. At that point, I was just happy to find that I wasn’t so much John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness, as I was maybe Jonah, waiting to be belched out of the fish belly. Whatever we call our conglomerated selves, I cannot say that I am alone or even that much a renegade (this is not to say that I fit in easily anywhere, though).

I don’t know that we have grown so much as we have awoken and discovered others who are so much like us and yet so unlike us. But we have formed organizations and set foundations and begun buildings. Like making sausage and democracy, progressive faith seems to work best when it is messy.

So with probably six months or so before we begin our face-to-face thing, I want to fling open the door and offer everyone a seat at the table. What are your concerns and/or questions? If you could gather a dozen progressive faith bloggers at a single table, what would you want to discuss? Who would they be? What is our role in the blogosphere/public sphere/local church/worldwide body of believers? Do we share goals, values, and/or favorite pizza toppings? Is a blogcon necessary or even desireable? What can we do together that we cannot alone?

Can I actually shut up long enough to let people try to answer these questions? (If yes, then that is proof that God is with us. But if no, then that is not proof that God is not with us – just that I enjoy the sound of my own voice a bit too much.)

This post is so open that the door hasn’t even been built nor the hinges wrought. Grab a cup of whatever thrills you and open your mind so that we might know each other better.

Update: Rachel emailed me to tell me it is in Newton, Ma – just outside of Boston. This is why they don’t let me arrange for travel.

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