Siobhan’s newest book, the product of her Phd work, is of interest to “Indie-philes” as it is a historical exploration of the links between Western esoteric Christianity and the Independent Catholic movement.

Priests, Gnostics & Magicians traces two particular streams of esoteric links in the indie movement, first the link with French Gnostic movements, Martinism in particular, and second, the link between Theosophy, and the emergence of the Liberal Catholic tradition.

It’s worth noting that “esoteric” ideas and movements are not particular to the indie community but pre-existed us in both the Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions. One of the earliest attempts at deciphering Heiroglyphs, for example, was heavily influenced by esoteric ideas. John Dee, Elizabeth I’s astrologer & diviner (curious at a time when religion, in particular the “Christian” religion was a political hot button issue in England and in Europe generally) as well as Newton were of a heavy esoteric bent.

You can grab a copy of Siobhan’s book at Amazon by clicking here. A link will also appear on our kiosk page very soon.

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).

On this day in 1994 – the Synod was founded. How cool is that! Come to think of it – it is rather amzaing that we’re still going! We’ve had the typical ups & downs of any community, and quite a few “pruning” exercises – but for an OC/IC community to last this long is really something to celebrate I think.

For God had to manifest himself in a new way – this is how one of the Fathers describes the incarnation. Theophany has come – the manifestation of the Trinity, and of Christ’s purpose in the World. God has come to us in a new way a physical way, one that demonstrates his inexorable solidarity with us, with creation.

This is the feast day on which we celebrate the annual blessing of water – an ancient symbol, with a rich repertoire of meaning. For the moment, however, I want to sit with the idea of the physical presence of water; for Just as God came to us in a new way, a very physical way, we employ this physical substance to restore and refresh the very places where we live, and work, and play. The blessed water brought to our homes, is a conscious bridge between the worship in the temple, and the mundane, and the extraordinary events of our lives; a reminder of how these things converge to shape who and what we are as disciples of Christ.

Finally, let us consider how the blessing of our homes sweeps away the worries and burdens, the anger and resentments, the sickness and despair of the past twelve months. We gather together in one another’s homes to celebrate the blessing of that home – usually with a party – looking forward to a fresh beginning, a clean slate for the coming year.

You may have noticed that the “About” page in the menu bar is, well, blank. In part this is due to my being occupied with other things of late, but it is also blank because I’m finding that it is a more challenging question to answer than I had expected.

What can be said about the expression of our OC/IC tradition as found in this small community? How do we see ourselves situation in relation to the wider movement? What, if any contribution to the development of our tradition are we striving to make?

You would think – having been around for almost 20 years that answering this seemingly simple question would be . . . well simple. Fifteen years ago I think, in hindsight, it would have been easy for me to produce a list, a page of bullet pointed talking points summarising what we are about. Today, however, I like to think that I’m a bit more thoughtful, and through the practice of, and adherence to our OC/IC tradition, I have come to appreciate the complexity of our sacramental Christianity. The faith we practice, in the tradition we adhere to, is not simple – it cannot be reduced to a black and white list of propositions and declarations; it demands a better answer, one that respects not only our contemporary expression of the OC/IC heritage, but which also respects the intelligence of the reader.

So, rather than attempt a one page summary, or a “Mission Statement” or some other redacted, over simplified bit of management-speak we’ll be developing a collection of essays dealing with subjects that we think, make us who we are as a community. They will not be produced in any particular order. Each one will be posted here – in the main blog – to encourage you, readers in the wider OC/IC community to share your own answer to that particular subject. Hopefully it will prove to be a means of cultivating conversations among those of us in the movement – as we share our own reflections and stories.

We’ve tidied up our LULU storefront, in preparation for some upcoming projects. In addition, a second edition, as it were, of the canons is now available. Three canons have been substantively altered (actually this was done at a synod meeting over a year ago – we’ve just been to busy to actually “publish” the changes); and a number of grammatical and formatting problems have been resolved. Additionally, this newest edition is available as a downloadable file.

More OC/IC writers are writing and publishing – via LULU and through Apocryphile Press I’ll highlight more of these projects soon.

After a few weeks of testing the new system on my personal blog and site; and spending some time thinking about the best method of consolidation and presentation, I’ve finally begun the process of moving the blog, the web pages, and the Indie Voices Archive to its new home. I’m hoping that I’ve given consideration to all the various pieces and parts and that you will see things appearing over the course of the next week or so.

I’ll set up the re-direct from the blogger account today. That appears to need a few days to kick in.

Thanks, everyone for your patience. I’m both excited about the move, and hopeful that it will make this project even more user friendly than before.

. . . Well almost. I’m a few day’s late I know, but the sentiment is there all the same. The liturgical new year began on Monday and, at the time, I did not have immediate access to the net.

New year, new ideas, new experiences . . . renewal generally. Hey, I like it. Regular visitors will know that over the past two weeks we’ve been moving to a new system in an effort to better integrate the various GC web projects including the Indie Voices Archive. Things are progressing nicely, and this might very well be the last post here in Blogger (we’re moving to WordPress). The other, non-blog related web projects will take a bit more time to finalise but there will be some temporary placeholders up shortly.

Switching gears just a bit – I recently revisited one of my favourite little books “Tales of the Magic Monastary”. In it, the monks recieve Bhudda has a guest and in the morning discover that he has unexpectedly left, and scrawled the word “TRIVIA” all over the walls of his cell. The monks are at first incensed at this act of vandalism and rudeness but then they calm down and begin to reflect. They realise that while unorthodox in his method, the Bhudda’s message was spot on – much of what we say and do, and invest with “importance” is trivia. Even more is “filler” – you know the stuff often used in food manufacture that on its own is useless, even tasteless or of little substance, but blend it in with other things and it makes a paltry product look great, taste appealing, and have the effect of filling you up. To use another example – one that in our contemporary age driven by a desire for information and instant access – consider a 24 hour news service like BBC24, or CNN – reflect on what happens during an incident that is in some way newsworthy. After the first 30 seconds when the incident is announced, they then spend a further 5 minutes in the studio struggling to fill in time, they display the film footage on a loop, and wait for a reporter to get on the scene, and repeat everything all over again – it becomes comedy really – two anchors, and a field reporter reflecting “filler” to one another for 5 or ten minutes when that time could have been used for something else – something truly useful, or informative.

Trivia. I’ve been reflecting alot lately on how various monastic communities strive to minimise trivia using various methods (a rule of silence, for example). Trivia interrupts, and distracts. Trivia gives a false sense of enrichment and satisfaction. Then I spent the other day – Monday in fact – thinking about the amount of trivia I generate in a day! It was . . . . embarrassing!

My new years resolution then is to be more conscious of trivia in my own life, and to explore new ways of reducing it, and to see what (if any) positive effects are generated by this experiment.

Since the evaporation of my web sites I’ve been “challenged” to look at other options. The option provided by my ISP is unsuitable – however, I’m now looking at an option which would allow me to combine blog and web site and streamline reader’s visits.

Thank you for your patience – while this process is happening – I believe that when its over and the dust is settled that the end result will be rather nice.