Technology

I wrote this sermon in 2006 for the Progressive Faith Bloggers Conference. I was thinking of it recently, and it just seemed so appropos for where I am, and where things are, so I thought I'd repost it.

Finding and claiming our prophetic voice

The readings this morning from Amos have, I think, something to teach us. Amos was a reluctant prophet. He didn't start out being a prophet. He was, in his own words, “a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” He was just your ordinary guy, your average joe herdsman and farmer. He was a reluctant prophet. He lived in one of the most prosperous times in the kingdom of Israel's history, during the reign of Jeraboam II, nearly more than 2700 years ago. Amos' primary message was to the wealthy, to remember their responsibility to the poor, and to those who were in religious leadership, to return the people to true faith, instead of empty ritual. These are, I think, things we could imagine saying today. He felt that God called him out of that ordinary life, into the extraordinary life of calling Israel's people to measure themselves against God's “plumb line” of justice. In many ways, probably, Amos was a lot like you and me.

Unlike a lot of other prophets of his time, Amos didn't rely much on apocalyptic language, or esoteric symbols. He was frank and straightforward in relaying what he perceived to be God's message to Israel's people. He saw the injustices of his time, and felt called to speak out against them, to remind Israel of God's demand for justice for all of its people.

I was telling a friend that I wanted to preach about the prophetic voice of bloggers, and she looked at me kind of puzzled. As we talked more, it came to be clear that when she thought of prophets, she thought of that more traditional view of prophecy, more like “fortune telling,” or forecasting the future. I explained that mostly, people used the words of prophets in retrospect to prove a particular point that the original prophets probably didn't have in mind. Not there is no such thing as the kind of prophecy that might indicate aspects of the future. But to my mind, it's not the most important kind of prophecy.

What I want to talk about today, is Amos' kind of prophecy, the prophecy that most of you in this room are quite familiar with, and perhaps even do on a daily basis, like on the aptly named community blog “Street Prophets.” This kind of prophecy sees the injustices of our time, and speaks plainly and forthrightly about them. Sometimes, this kind of prophecy does include “what if?” And the “what if's” are important too. What if we don't pay attention to the injustices in front of our face? What if we don't pay attention to the dangers that are facing us as a nation, and as a world? What might happen to us? Amos asked these questions, too.

We live in interesting times, times that need plain, ordinary jane and joe prophets like Amos. We live in dangerous times, and we need prophets like those of you in this room. But we also live in complicated times. Unlike Amos, who was, for the most part, speaking to one people, with the same faith tradition, we need to speak to many peoples, with multiple faith traditions, or, in some cases, no faith tradition. How do we find, and use, our prophetic voice in the cacophany of many voices, many agendas, many points of view and perspectives? How do we stretch our voices outside our own small pockets of progressive people of faith? How do we preach to more than just the choir? And, for those of us who are Christians, how do we express the caring, open and accepting gospel we know?

There are four guidelines that I try to live by, in exercising my own prophetic voice. I sometimes fail, but these are the standards that I try to meet. These are ways that I think may help us to get our message heard further out than our crowd, and engage others in dialogue. These guidelines have been deeply informed by both my Buddhist practice and my Christian faith. And, to some extent, by experience. The first guideline is to be in touch with, and speak from, your heart.  Second, the means are the ends. Third, be willing to be wrong.  And fourth, always assume good will on the part of others.

So, first, be in touch with, and speak from, your heart. Speak from your knowledge and understanding of God, however you  define God. Or speak from some other perspective that comes from your heart. What does that mean, really? For one thing, for many of us, our faith and experience of the divine is a central part of our lives. If we can't speak from that place, if we feel the need to suppress, or to modify what we say, we compromise ourselves, and what we have to say. Also, it's usually not our rational minds that get us into trouble. We react and speak out of fear so often, sometimes we aren't even aware that we do it. Being in touch means being aware, and awake, to our attitudes, attachments and aversions, and learning to speak from that place of awareness. Being in touch with what's really important to us, being in touch with our hearts, with our experiences and knowledge of God, is important. And I think Amos would agree.

Second, the means are the ends. All three of you that read my blog know that's kind of a common topic for me. In fact, I think that if there was a broken record for me, it would play “means are the ends,” over and over again. I doubt that many people in this room, or in the progressive movement in general, would disagree with the quote by Ghandi “Be the change you want to see in the world.” But what does that really mean? It means that if we want to live in a world that is open, accepting, and peaceful, we have to be open, accepting and peaceful. Like that bumper sticker, there is no way to peace, peace is the way. Peaceful dialogue, peaceful language, that Buddhist concept of right speech, is the way. The energy I spend working for change using methods that are enemies to change ends up getting me nowhere. It's two steps forward, two steps backward. I'm still in the same exact place I was when I started.

One of the things I've learned from my years of Buddhist practice is that it is, really, all about me. That is, each of us has control over the decisions we make, and the ways we act, and react, the words we speak and write. If we really want to live in a different world, we have to live and act differently, be aware of what we do, and what we think about what we do, why we do it, and how we do it.

The third guideline I follow is: be willing to be wrong. Of course, I'm never wrong about anything. Actually, I'm probably wrong about almost everything, including a good bit of this sermon. One of the things that gets us into so much in trouble is our attachment to our own point of view. Do you know that there are two ways to hold a penny? You can hold it like this (show the downward fist) or like this (the upward palm). Sometimes, we hold so strongly onto our points of view because we are afraid we'll lose something. Holding our opinions like we hold the penny, in the open palm of our hand gives us opportunities to let other things influence us, it leaves us open to new ideas, and new ways of looking at things. And we still get to keep the penny.

We have come to our opinions through our experiences, and not everyone has the same experiences in life, so, it makes sense that people have different opinions. And what appears one way from our perspective, is quite different from another perspective. Unlike in Amos' time, when everyone had the same paradigm in which they lived in the world, and Amos could draw on that paradigm to explain to Israel where they are going wrong, we live in a time of many, many paradigms. Things that are clearly wrong in one paradigm are just fine in a different one. So as prophets, we need to both speak from the heart, from our own knowledge, and also accept that there are many other ways to understand the world. And what we need more than anything is dialogue between people with different perspectives. Thich Naht Hanh once said of dialogue, you don't really have dialogue unless both parties are willing to change. In order to be willing to change, we have to be willing to be wrong.

The last guideline is to always assume good will on the part of others. This one is sort of a sub guideline to the “means are the ends” one. It can be a tough one. Because, in fact, not everyone is of good will, so it seems, well, absurd, polyannish, naïve, fill in the blank, to assume everyone is of good will. We are, as Christians, encouraged to “see the God” in everyone we meet. Jesus would have us love them as we would love ourselves. Most of us don't assume that we ourselves are of bad will, so, why would we assume that of others? And, it is surprising what assuming the good will of others can do. If you assume someone you disagree with is of good will, you actually find yourself willing to listen to what they have to say. Listen to their point of view, listen to their perspectives.

Everyone has something to teach us. Every person we meet can teach us something about ourselves, about them, about the way the world works. And assuming good will is a way to help us be open to learning from people, and share goodwill, to spread it around. There are times when the favor will not be returned. Either someone will assume we are of ill will, or the other person will, in fact, wish us ill. That is unfortunate. It's happened to me. But the times that happens are far outweighed by the positive effects of being open. And, I think, like non-violence, it is a way of being that, frankly, can embarrass those who don't act in the same way.

These four guidelines have been really helpful to me in both my on-line electronic life, as well as my real, in person life. And I've yet to regret adopting these guidelines. They aren't necessarily for everyone, but they work well for me, and I think can be a good set of guidelines that might help our prophetic voice go beyond our little pocket. After all, if we want things to really change in this country, our voices have to be heard far and wide.

I've had a blog for three and a half years. I started my blog when it was becoming clear that Bush was going to invade Iraq. I felt completely powerless to have any effect on what was happening. Since then, blogs have changed the landscape of public discourse in this country. Yearly Kos is a nationally covered event, bloggers are talked about on TV and in the newspaper, politicians feel the need to talk with bloggers. Further, right now, people have begun to notice that there is, in fact, a religious left. That, contrary to the rhetoric of the right, there are progressive people of faith, whose politics are deeply informed by their faith. This is the time for us, as ordinary jane and joe reluctant prophet-bloggers (or not so reluctant) to speak from our hearts, to speak of injustice when we see it, to be like Amos.

 Title: External, alienated, busy-busy

As you might know, almost a year ago, I made a big change in my use of social media - I segregated my social graph - work related stuff moved to LinkedIn and Twitter, and personal friends only on Facebook. Now, I have taken the next step, and made somewhat of a momentous decision. I'm not alone - Jon Stahl did this before me, and I know there are others. There are plenty of people who never entered these waters at all.

I have been fairly conflicted about this for a while. There are things I really like about Twitter, Identi.ca, Buzz, etc. I like being connected to the nptech community, and learning what's happening. I really like reaching out and getting questions answered. But, being on those networks has taken it's toll on me. It's time spent I need for other things. It's an influx of information in my brain that I really don't need. And I'm sure people really don't need to hear what I think or what I'm doing in 140 characters or less.

Some current events are making me think a lot about leadership. I've been (and am) a leader in a variety of contexts, and perhaps I haven't thought a lot about, or articulated, what I think leadership is, and means. But some recent events in a community I care deeply about have made me reflect on this, and be much more conscious about the ways I am a leader.

I don't know how many of you know about Digg. Digg is one of those Web 2.0 collaborative bookmarking systems - with a big twist - people vote on whether a story (mostly news-y kinds of things) deserves to be seen. The more “diggs” a story gets the more attention it gets.

There used to be this thing when a site got “slashdotted” (or the “slashdot effect” - that was when it got on the front page of slashdot.org.) Well, now, there is the “digg effect”

For some reason, the subject of women and technology seems to have come to the fore today. First, I got a comment on an entry in my other blog about women and technology, which gave me a heads up on some very good blogging going on about the topic. Ethan Zuckerman (I need to read that blog more) had a great post about gender and ICT.

So, Scott has some good answers to the question I posted last. He then goes on to ask what kinds of laptops could possibly be used. This is my answer: it depends. Does the minister just want a way to write sermons on the beach? Then, a simple laptop, with a single USB port for a thumb drive that can then be plugged into an office PC for printing would be all that you'd need. An old one would work fine.

Scott Wells and I are doing tag-team blogging this week, the topic: how well can a used laptop work to run an operating system like Ubuntu, or it's lighter cousin, XUbuntu. Scott's basic question (part 1) is posted on his blog today. Basically, the question is this - how do you provide a minister of a cash-strapped church (or, a seminarian) with a laptop that is affordable, and provides everything that's necessary?

I've already posted on Second Life, the newish virtual environment that allows you to walk around a virtual world, buy land, build, interact with people, etc. I registered my healthy skepticism already for SL as a tool for nonprofit organizations, and I decided that for me personally, although I might have been all over this 10 years ago, I think I'm getting to value my offline time way too much to decrease it for something like this.

I just wanted those of you that read this main blog know that on my other blog, Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology, I've been writing a series on Web 2.0 - that interesting group of new technologies and concepts that has made the web a different place than it was a couple of years ago. It might be worth reading. The first few articles are not overly technical (I'll be getting into some very heavy technical waters later.)