Blogging can often seem like a one way “broadcast”. The blogger writes up what interests him or her, posts it, and waits to see what happens. There are many posts, essays, books and articles out there advising bloggers on how to cultivate more engagement with their audience. I have even written a few posts encouraging other Indie bloggers. Indeed I have on more than one occasion argued that we need to be engaging with one another more in the OC/IC community than we currently do (or seem to do). There is however, a notable entropy in blog audiences. A quick survey of the overwhelming number of crackpot and thoughtless comments on the more lively blog comment feeds is enough to encourage any blogger to turn commenting off completely, and thank God for some peace and quiet.

Every morning I trawl through my various feeds and sources to look for interesting items that might be relevant to Indie life, or a snippet of an essay that inspires me to write a post. I enjoy this, don’t get me wrong, but this is still a one sided process. I am choosing things that interest me. There is therefore a bit of a bias, and perhaps because of it I’m not writing posts that could really be interesting not only for me as a writer, but also for you as the audience. I need to find a way to break through the one sided-ness of blogging, to make this less of a broadcast of my ideas and reflections, and more of a conversation with readers, whoever you might be. The basic idea then is for readers – yes, you – to “suggest a post”. I don’t care if you are a regular lurker who silently enjoys poking around the site, or someone who is merely passing by and wants to “see what’s under this rock”, I am inviting you to ask a question or suggest a topic for a post. Who knows, it could be your suggested topic that really gets a conversation going, and I believe that that would be a good thing.

Because successful blogs have a niche that they stick to, and because there are plenty of crackpots out there who just like being cyber-wankers (can I use that term in polite company?) this little project needs some structure, a few parameters to maintain focus and cultivate conversation. So when you are formulating your suggested post, or question please do so with the following in the forefront of your thinking:

• Keep it relevant: your suggested post or question will only see the light of day if it is relevant to Christian theology or practice, and it can be addressed or explored from an OC/IC ISM perspective.
• The importance of being Pith: If I need twenty minutes to figure out that there might be a question or suggested topic tangled amongst the morass of words, then it is unlikely that your suggested post will come into being. Keep your suggestions to three (3) sentences or less. This should be fun, engaging, and not painful for everyone concerned.
• Rudeness will be rewarded: It goes without saying that all thoughtless, rude and spurious suggested posts will be deleted, and you will be banned from commenting in future. Yeah, its harsh, but the goal is thoughtful conversation and not eating our young, or complaining about other communities.

If your suggested post is selected I will drop you a note and let you know when to expect it. This by way of pointing out that no anonymous comments or suggestions are accepted. Occasionally a suggested topic might be best answered by someone else – or by more than one person. When that happens I will reach out to that person and ask them to contribute a guest post (no guarantee that they will agree to it, but I will ask all the same). Generally I try to keep my posts short – between 300 and 500 words. As this post is already pushing 1000 words you can tell that the “ideal” is not always practical. If the answer to your suggested post is substantial I will do what I can to break it up into easy to read chunks. While the long-read movement in social media is gaining ground, I appreciate that many people are overloaded with posts, articles, and videos and aim to make posts here as easy and informative to the reader as possible (barring of course the limitations of my own skill, or lack there of, in writing).

One of the stated aims of this blog is to get the audience talking, and to encourage Indie folk to think and create outside the usual limited set of topics. I don’t want this to be a mere broadcast of my ideas and interests. Your suggested topic or question might be the spark that starts a very productive exploration of an idea or issue Indie folk generally don’t see or touch upon. If this trial run works then I will create a permanent page where you can suggest a post at any time. For the moment – at least once every two weeks I’ll “re-post” this post or reference it. While I am hopeful, I doubt that I shall be inundated with suggested posts. I will be happy to get one a month, happier if it is more, and ecstatic if it means that the actual posts results in a real conversation. Now its up to you, what would you like to read in a post here?

Over the next two days we’ll be doing some behind the scenes maintenance. If you visit and something does not look right – that probably means I’ve done something wrong and am sitting in a dark corner, wimpering, sucking my thumb and imbibing some strong alcohol. Come back later and I’ll have had an epiphany and fixed the problem.

I just realised this morning that we’ve been working on this project, we call the “Theo-blog” for four years and . . .one month (well 4 years, 1 month, and 3 days) now. Happy birthday blog!

When I started this experiment back in April 2006 I never imagined that it would have the staying power that it has had. Why? Because blogging is fickle and most blogs are created, and abandoned within the first year or so (at least that’s what I’ve read) – and I did not expect that our effort here would be any different from “the norm” in this regard. Try it, see what happens, learn from it, maybe make some new connections with other interested folk and move on. That was the attitude I had coming into this.

So has it worked?

Well, yes, after a fashion. Through the connections we’ve made we’ve made new contacts in the Indie community. Through the process of writing, reflecting, and engaging with others doing the same thing about the same topics I’ve come to better understand the “why” and the “process” of some elements of theology and the history of the OC/IC movement. It has also occasionally made me think about things in entirely new ways, as well as changing my mind on long held assumptions.

So here’s to another four years, one month and three days . . .

I realised this afternoon that I’d not yet revisited the Indie Voices Archive page to re-organise it after the move from Blogger to WordPress. I thought – since we’re getting ready to do some more interviews – that it is well past time to get this part of the site underway. I give you the new revised Indie Voices Archive page - which will over the coming months develop to include a broader range of interviewees and interview topics. Suggestions are welcome on the topic front by the way.

You may have already noticed that we’ve made some changes to our Kiosk page. As part of our ongoing campaign to highlight creative indie folk we’ve added a few things – including two, yes 2 – lines of T-Shirt designers.

First our own. Occasionally we make a graphic for something and really like it (and hope you do to). We thought that it might be fun, that if people enjoyed that particular graphic – they ought to be able to enjoy it in a different context. Thus, we offer you our T-Shirt Factory (which also does bags and buttons). Thus far we’ve experimented with a few items – but we’ve got a few more planned. For American visitors we’re working to keep the prices down because we know that the Pound/Dollar exchnage rate is . . . well . . . a little high – sorry about that. We are looking into some other options for you.

One of those options however, is our friend Huw (another indie creative type) he’s got a neat kiosk of Eastern Rite designs called Doxos Swag (pretty cool name huh?) and we have included a link to his project on our kiosk page.

For the record – the goal of the exercise is not to make money but to highlight, and to encourage the wide spectrum of scholarship and creativity within the indie community. We’ve got the talent – we (all of us) ought to flaunt it (grin)!

Today is the 6 year anniversary of Siobhan’s ordination. Talk about an auspicious feast to be ordained on (Transfiguration).

Many Years!

We’ve been sitting on this for a few weeks now – whilst some loose ends were tidied. On 15 March Rev. Siobhan Houston joined the community. Siobhan was ordained by +Martha Schultz in 2003. She’s a Denver resident, and is working to build a community there.

Siobhan was one of the first interviewees for the Indie Voices Archive Project (yes – we’re still working on that, grin). You can see her interview by clicking here. Siobhan earned her masters in Theological Studies from Harvard, and has recently finished a doctoral program through the Graduate Theological Foundation. She’s an accomplished writer, having just finished a history of the emergence of indie Western Esoteric Christianity (soon to be released by Apocryphile Press).

Right so my French course has ended. I survived, and the next level is in October. All I have to do is refresh and use what I’ve learned occasionally between now and then. One reason I broke down and took the course is so that I could look at some of the source material for 19th century OC/IC historical research – not all of it is translated into English or German.

Last week – we set the time aside to knock off editing the last chapters of Das Elefant (a.k.a – the PhD thesis from hell). This was successful, but now I’m rather anxiously awaiting a response from my supervisor. Is there a light at the end of this tunnel? I bloody well hope so!

This by way of saying I’ve got a back-log of posts and post ideas to sift through and write up, some of them might seem a bit out of sync with your sense of the progression of time but I still think they’re worth a visit.

Normal service is resuming – thanks for your patience.

If you have not already visited Huw’s blog today – do so, do it NOW and read this post.

Sorry no posts thus far this week – I’ve been on an intensive (6 hours a day) French course. Now maybe I can read the letters of Abp. Varlet? . . . non.