The Paris Project

A Tale of Two Posts

My recent post about Eckhart Tolle was reprinted at the Emergent Village blog. Here at the Paris Project it generated one neutral comment and then took its place in history. At Emergent Village it generated 19 comments that escalated in intensity until one stranger called my salvation into question.

What makes one virtual space so different from another? The Paris Project is affiliated with nothing but my own self. I have to be mindful of my work, church, and personal affiliations, but I don't officially represent any of them, and whoever wants to read or engage here does so personally and directly with me. Each post has a context and a backstory, and readers know quite a bit about my life (or can if they want to) and the reasons why I believe and speak as I do. At Emergent Village, commenters were only minimally concerned about me -- Tolle, emergent, and the masses of people who might be harmed by my bad ideas were greater concerns. By posting there, my name and ideas became associated with a movement -- so what began as a personal reflection about what I had learned from a nonChristian author shifted into a polemic about whether or not Emergent glorifies anti-Christian teachings and relativism. Interesting that no commenter responded to my context -- I wrote that Tolle was helpful to me during a time of grief. My life, my story, my pain even, became irrelevant in the defense of Christian ideology. I am not cool enough to quote Bono, but U2 has a good lyric about people who die in wars -- "Their lives are bigger than any big idea." In movements, ideology quickly becomes more important than individuals.

I heard Brian McLaren speak the other day - I had never seen in him in person. He just talked like an ordinary person about ideas important to him. He didn't mention emergent, or any movements, or any books, action figures, or lunchboxes he might be selling. He didn't try to ingratiate himself to the group with whom he was speaking, or antagonize them, or defend his differing ideas very vehemently. He was more like a prophet speaking his mind. The Q&A afterward, courteous as the emergent village discussion of my post (the salvation comment was an unfortuante exception to an otherwise decent exchange), turned to ideology, movement, and ideas. No one asked about McLaren's story -- how has Jesus changed his life, what spiritual practices keep him alive, what community grounds him. I wanted to, but wasn't sure if it would be invasive or inappropriate or unintelligent or make me look too feminine and touchy-feely (precisely the mechanisms of social control that privilege theology over spirituality). Dialogue was more about theological categories, movements of scholarship and literature that need to be sustained, and words that would or would not describe that which is beyond words.

I don't engage with emergent because it's a movement I want to help feed. To the extent that it is a movement, it becomes, by definition, concerned with power, positioning, prestige, and self-protection. I allowed Steve Knight to reprint my post there to be part of a conversation -- emergent is best as a conversation, with individuals speaking their minds grounded in their contexts and backstories... now that's an interesting thing. (And that is how that blog functions -- why would my ideas represent something larger than myself, and why would Steve be the official selecter of official representative voices? It's a voluntary conversation about things of common concern, not a defense of pre-established positions by official voices.) Conversation has real life so much more in each of our lives and local contexts, and so much less in disembodied settings like publications, conferences, and classrooms. Respectful conversation doesn't barge, shout, demean, or self-promote; it just emerges.