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.

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).

Throughout my 20 years of active OC/IC life I’ve encountered dozens of attempts by individuals and groups to forge a unified OC/IC (now ISM) “body”; particularly in the US. Every one of them fails miserably, and – at least in those cases I’ve closely observed – creates more division, and at least three more “synods” in the process. Getting indie folk to come together under one roof is an exercise in herding cats . . . . angry cats! We get that now.

But . . . .

What is also interesting to me is the amount of cooperation and friendship that flourishes in our motley movement; friendships, which emerge in the strangest ways, and under the most curious circumstances. This . . . working method . . . shall we say, is I think stronger than any “institution” we might craft, and has the tendency to transcend the silliness of “jurisdiction”, praxis, and the variety of theologies we see waxing and waning across the indie spectrum throughout the years. In his interview for the Indie Voices Archive John Plummer notes – “we all need friends” and indeed we do, and friendship – I think is stronger than a formal association for one simple reason – friendship is sacramental; and we are a sacramental people.

Over the past couple of years – ever since I discovered the glories of SKYPE I’ve been interested in how OC/IC communities, and projects (like our own Indie Voices Archive) can use various new media to reach out beyond the small groups we work within. I’ve done a bit of blogging on it in the past – which you can view here.

I’ve been concentrating on video – using my camcorder, webcam, and camera, to create and edit videos then upload them to ourmedia, the Internet Archive, and Blip.TV (I prefer Blip.TV to YouTube – its . . . classier). The upside of this method is that we can place various projects (interviews, documentaries, reflections, theology, teaching, etc.) before a wider audience. But they also have their limitations (beyond the technical and mechanical) for example they are not live feeds, responses can be days, even months after the original project is finished, which means that the experience, the inspriation for that particular video is no longer fresh in your mind – possibly inhibiting your ability to engage as thoughtfully as you might have liked, since your community have “moved on” to more developed projects.

It is possible via SKYPE for example to do live, real time conversations in large groups, as well as live video (face to face) converstaions with another person. Two years ago, we experimented with a weekly Evening Prayer via SKYPE which allowed a rotation of “leader” and community time afterward. Now I’ve seen a “new” (to me) project called UStream.TV which enables a live feed and . . . it would appear (I’ve not finshed exploring this yet) a capability for real-time reactions (via a chat feed) from the audience.

Recently I’ve discovered a nifty “thing” I’ve know idea how to classify it yet other than to describe it as “video email plus” called seesmic – with nothing more than a webcam it allows you to record messages, and participate in conversations. There is also a plugin (for wordpress users) to enable you to generate both quick video posts, and video comments. I’ve been experimenting with this for the past two weeks, and its been fun. Also I’m currently using it in an “audiance participation” experiment on my other site – you can see that post by clicking here. I’m about to activate that plugin here too.

Used in combination with image and textual resources – PDF’s, dynamic web pages, and even self published material such as from LULU – there is nothing hindering our various communities and projects expanding their ability to become a spiritual resource for others, and to come out from underneath the shadow of other, larger, “better resourced” traditions.

I’ve got an idea list as long as my arm for various projects – right now I’m focussing on mastering the technical and mechanical (see my “other” site for examples). And there is the small matter of finishing the Thesis from Hell (sigh). But I’m interested to know about what projects your community is developing using new media forms, what have you already done, and what was the response? What would (will) you do differently in the future?

Moreover, I would really like to make some space here to highlight those projects, and would appreciate your sharing the links to them.

I’m a big fan of the Internet Archive – it’s where we store the interviews for the Indie Voices Archive, it is also where I store my other vids too. The Internet Archive is great for another reason – there are loads of 19th and early 20th century theology resources there, available free to all.

Recently, one of the contributing Canadian libraries, has been posting Migne’s Patrilogia Grecae (there are some from the Latin series too). Google made some of these available earlier in the year, but the files were often corrupt, empty, or incomplete – not much use when you’re looking for a text.

For those unfamiliar with PG – and its author; Migne was a french priest known as “God’s Publisher” he collected Greek and Latin texts, organised them and published them. The man was a bit of a phenomenon. There was a rather interesting bio of him published a few years ago, sadly I can’t find it any longer. All the texts are printed int two column format in Greek and Latin, with notes. I believe there were 160 some odd volumes in total. Sadly this fantastic patristic and early medieval resource has not been re-produced in a convenient format for modern users.

The 13 volumes currently available on the Internet Archive are scans – you can download the complete PDF or view it online with an easy to use inline reader.

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.

Ok, so – not only have my web pages evaporated into thin ether – but now . . . the banners and some pics you “normally” see here – have too!

I’m hoping to have at least this much fixed in the next 24-48 hours. And appreciate your patience. Our battle with Orange – our “glorious” ISP is not quite over yet.

Anyone wishing to visit the Indie Voices Archive Project (which has also gone *poof* you can listen to some of the existing interviews by clicking here). As an aside – I apologise we’ve not posted a new interview in a few months – that is because I’ve been focussing on finishing my thesis. There are 6 or 10 interviews patiently sitting on the hard drive waiting to be edited and posted. This by way of saying that the project is still alive in kicking.

No, I’ve not abandoned you!

A belated Nativity post will appear soon; a timely Theophany post is also coming. Also my community is participating in this year’s Clergy Letter Project by producing a video exploring issues of science and religion (that won’t appear until the second week of February).

So, “What did baby Jesus bring you?”

One of my presents is a new computer bible program – it’s FAB! We got it from Die Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft – the publishers of such useful tools as the Nestle-Aland Greek NT and Rahlfs Septuagint (by the way if you are wanting to purchase these don’t buy them in a bookshop either in the US or here in the UK – save money, buy it directly from Die Biblegesellshcaft, American customers will save close to 2/3 and UK buyers will save up to half).

You can also order it directly from Accordance – but the combination of modules is very different, so you might save money by looking at both sites. The Accordance site includes a module for the NAB (catholic Bible) whereas the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft no longer offers it.

It’s one of the more flexible and sensibly designed bible programs I’ve encountered. Mind you, I am using a Mac so I think that also helps. You can have multiple and parallel windows open at the same time, you can save your searches, and export your results to Word. It has all of the notes, and apparatus of the printed versions, as well as dictionaries and grammatical break-downs. I love it!

An overhaul of the Indie Voices Archive site is in production and ought to be available sometime next week. I had hoped to have edited all of the back-log of interviews (now 5) but that may not happen. There are also four interviews scheduled for the rest of January and at least one in negotiation.

I hope your festal celebrations were enjoyable, and look forward to the many conversations we’ll enjoy together this coming year.

So, what’s happening over at the archive?

Well, we’ve got one interview that is in the works, and about three that are being arranged. We have two interviews that need to be edited (still!), and we have started approaching possible interviewees for the next round.

We’ll be arranging and conducting interviews up to the Feast of St. Nicholas (6 Dec) and resume after Theophany (7 Dec). We’re going to use the time in between to finish those outstanding edits, and finish the site re-design.

If you or anyone you know is an OC/IC believer and would like to participate by being interviewed – please do not hesistate to get in touch (use the SKYPE link in the sidebar, or visit the Archive to use other methods of contact).