The Cultural Way of Being – Ennui, exhaustion and consumption
by Geoff Hall on 24 February 2013 with
Ennui, exhaustion and consumption
Here’s a quote from ‘The Cultural Way of Being’.
The Cultural Way of Being – Published by Upptacka Press
“From the hearts of people, this resonant art of the shared life will exorcise the despair of Postmodern distractions—the playing of meaningless games to quell the boredom of a purposeless life. It will gradually fuel the longing to escape the exhaustion of forever consuming, perpetually updating and downloading the next digital fix, injecting into the mainline of your digital self. This art will answer the burgeoning boredom of life and its dissipation through consuming each other or anything else that catches the eye. It will create the hope of anticipation and the longing for redemption, for cultural renewal. It may even point the way. For when artists gather together in a creative community which shares freely with one another, when they are assisted by publishers and gallery owners, patrons and soul-mates, then art can move from the personally expressive to the culturally formative and historically potent.”
Citation from: Hall, Geoffrey; Lorensson, Chris; Hall, Mark (2011-07-11). The Cultural Way of Being (Spiritual Direction in a Postmodern Landscape) (Kindle Locations 114-122). Upptäcka Press. Kindle Edition.
Sunday Night ennui and the Mid-Life Crisis
by Geoff Hall on 4 February 2013 with
So, I’m sat here looking for a film to watch and all I can find is “Source Code” with Jake Gyllenhall. Well, not bad you may think. Mmm, I agree, it’s clever, but does it really change anything. If you want to find film-makers who give a damn and want to play a part in changing the status quo, where do you find them? So, what do dissatisfied men in my position do? Well apparently we turn to porn or horror films! But that isn’t an option for me.
Tree House Quotes
by Geoff Hall on 10 January 2013 with
Hi,
Thanks for coming along to the Tree House last night. I thought I’d add the quotes from the Intro to our evening, so here goes. They encapsulate the challenges I’m making of my own work in 2013. What challenges do you face?
Gaston Bachelard – “…touch the depths before it stirs the surface…” Who was he? A French philosopher who influenced the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and wrote on the ‘Poetics of Space’ and the ‘Poetics of the Imagination’. A must read for Geoff in 2013! This is a call away from the obvious to the suggestive, to alluding to and moving away from describing reality in the hope of achieving some kind of objective truth, (as with social realism).
A few questions about disarming power and authority
by Geoff Hall on 16 October 2012 with
“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15 NIVUK)
Copyright, 2008. Geoff Hall.
I woke up this morning at 7am and felt that urge to write about what has been troubling my mind for quite sometime now. This piece is full of questions, not answers!
If this disarming is just a heavenly reality shift, then what does it mean for us today? Has God forsaken us (Psalm 22), has the disarming only happened in an invisible, spiritual realm as opposed to the incarnational spiritual domain here on Earth? If so, then why did Christ arrive here in the flesh? Jesus shared in our humanity, a humanity without the ability to sustain goodness itself, deplete of the power to heal, to redeem. He was not the first to be crucified, but bled as we bled, shared in our limitations, our grief, our fragility. Why the incarnation if it was to be forgotten so quickly, or limited to a heavenly realm?
Or should we include earthly power and authority together in this disarming thought from Paul? Yes, I think we should.
The personal cave of chaos
by Chris Lorensson on 13 July 2012 with
I’m down at Lee Abbey for the Wayfarer Arts Conference this week. We’re talking about the stories in the bible where water represents chaos. This led us to ask about the idea of chaos itself. What role does it play in the artist’s journey? What is chaos, really?
Shortly into my career as a ‘maker’, I swallowed the red pill, embarking on the dangerous journey into ‘self’, in search of meaning among the caverns of my personal, internal chaos. I traveled the labyrinth of rock tunnels blasted by each pain and regret, never knowing how remote was the chance of emerging in one piece. I explored the caverns of self-doubt, meeting to battle subconscious monsters. Some battles won, but most lost, each leaving a scarring wound. That’s one thing I’ve learned for certain – we cannot make this journey unscathed. Read the rest of this entry »
Human-ness vs. Holiness
by Chris Lorensson on 17 June 2012 with
During my ‘honeymoon’ with God (about 16-19yrs.), I eagerly sought after holiness. It felt right. It felt as if it was the natural direction I should travel in light of my fervent relationship with God. I was doing well – I was becomeing ‘set apart’, and the change didn’t bother me because I was becoming ‘different’ from everyone else, which is exactly what I wanted at that age.
As I grew older, I met a friend who challenged my pursuit of holiness by the way he lived his life. He knew God deeply, but it was as if he didn’t ‘pretend’ to be Godly – he openly embraced his humanity in the way he lived. He wasn’t afraid or ashamed of cursing, being angry with people, or even expressing that anger. This fascinated me – it presented me with a moral challenge: Was it okay to be both ‘human’ and pursuing holiness at the same time? Read the rest of this entry »
Passive assent or non-cooperation with evil?
by Geoff Hall on 18 April 2012 with
"Memory of the Berlin Wall" Copyright, 2012. Geoff Hall
What happens if governments around the world don’t receive a mandate from their people? What if a majority of registered voters choose not to vote? If only 25% of voters choose to vote, whose interests is the government representing? The bigger question of course is how do the 75% majority of the population respond?
Considering the chaos and destruction caused by the grasping of power, why do we vote for our political parties and their sales representatives? Democracy is like any other product, it has currency in an internal market, but recently it has expanded to the export market.
The Church is a Box
by Geoff Hall on 20 March 2012 with
The Church is a Box, the denomination is the label. Inside the box is God, or at least the simulation of God. I say simulation not because I don’t believe God exists, but because this God inside of the box is controllable and the One I’ve read about cannot be adjusted to align with our point-of-view, or our socio-economic needs. Inside the box, spirituality is guarded by a Bureaucracy, a hierarchy of qualified practitioners and the worst of this Administration is the Censorship Department, closely followed by the Propaganda Department. Censorship is a worrying contradiction when our spirituality is defined by Paul’s thought that “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” We do so love to hedge freedom in with allowable tolerances and justifiable limits, for ‘good conscience’ sake.
Coffee and the basement
by Chris Lorensson on 29 January 2012 with
Stirring sugar into coffee is an interesting thing. We are aware that it will dissolve, but we are unaware of the pace at which it will happen. We make educated guesses based on the amount of steam coming off the liquid as to its heat, on the efficacy of the instrument used to stir, on the pace of stirring itself, and on the volume of liquid and amount of sugar to assimilate.
And yet through all these educated guesses, we know that we cannot make these calculations without proper instrumentation, and that the instrument of our brains has been long incapable of this without external tools. Complex mathematical equations confuse us. We are aware of their necessity and existence, but even more aware of our inability to apply them. For many of us, we know we would be unable to calculate these equations even with the use of the proper external tools, and yet we continue to stir and stir based on our educated guesses.
Read the rest of this entry »