There is this singer song writer comedian traveling bagman with a world view askew whom we fell in love with in our time in Indy. Recently a friend sent us this link.
you'll either love it or be sure we're going to hell.
Chorus: Everybody’s wondering what and where they all came from Everybody’s worrying bout where they’re gonna go When the whole things done Nobody knows for certain, And so it’s all the same to me I think I’ll just let the mystery be
Some say once gone, you’re gone forever Some say you’re gonna come back Some say you rest in the arms of the savior If in sinful ways you lack Some say that they’re comin back in a garden Bunch of carrots and little sweet peas I think I’ll just let the mystery be
Some say they’re going to place called glory And I aint sayin it aint a fact But I’ve heard that I’m on the road to purgatory And I don’t like the sound of that I believe in love and I live my life accordingly But I choose to let the mystery be
Here are some excerpts from a Christian Century interview with Ikon’s Peter Rollins. (Peter Rollins is a prominent figure in the emergent church movement in the UK.)
I found both the similarities to and differences from IT to be quite interesting. Seeds of Doubt
What does Ikon do beyond the performances at the pub? We try to disrupt people’s understanding of Christianity and get them to think differently. For example, we take on atheism for Lent. We read all the great atheistic critiques of religion, such as those by Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud. There’s a big thing in the UK called the Alpha Course – it’s a 12-week introduction to Christianity. Ikon offers the Omega Course – it’s about how to leave Christianity in 12 weeks. We have a group called the Evangelism Project that goes out to be evangelized. We visit other religious traditions, both within Christianity and outside Christianity – Buddhism, humanism, Jewish traditions, Scientology. We go to listen and learn and to be transformed. We also have a group called the Last Supper. Twelve of us meet in a supper room in a bar, and we invite public figures to come and talk to us about what they believe and why they believe it. If we don’t like what they say, it’s their last supper with us.
It appears that in some ways you are interested in sowing seeds of doubt. When we come to doubt the interventionist God, as we all do when we encounter suffering and death, we generally go one of two ways. One way is to say, “I’m not sure there is a God, because of all of this suffering.” Or we say, “ I believe there is a God who got all of this started, the God of the philosophers, but I don’t think God intervenes.” There’s a third way: to maintain one’s doubt about God, but also to believe in God’s intervention. That is, once can say, “ I don’t know who or what or if God is, but something happened in my life. I was reconfigured. I was rebooted. Something happened to transform me, and I want to live in fidelity to that.”
What kind of people make up Ikon? Atheists and theists, liberals, and conservatives, Protestants and Catholics, gays and straights – the whole works.
Who are its leaders? I like to think of Ikon as a donut with a hole in the middle. Usually a church is more like a Danish pasty: you’ve got the jammy center, which is your leadership. We try to have a hole in the center so that we are all on the edges. …Some people think that Ikon is crypto-evangelistic or neo-evangelical. Other people think it is crypto-atheistic, trying to keep young people out of the church. Think of two people sitting over a beer and one of them is saying, “I’m going to convert you to Christianity,” and the other one is saying, “I’m going to get you out of Christianity.” I love that as long as neither one is colonizing the space.
Would you call Ikon a community? No, because as soon as you say that word all of the people who need community come out – the group turns incredibly needy, and suddenly the whole thing is on its way to vanishing. The best way to forge community is not to call it a community. We call Ikon a collective, a gathering or a crowd. People naturally make connections, and community happens. ….The most important part of our gatherings are pre-Ikon and post-Ikon, but you can't have either of those without Ikon itself. We have about 45 minutes before an Ikon meeting starts where people just have a drink and chat, and the same for a couple of hours afterward. Paradoxically, I say, "Ikon doesn't care about you. Ikon doesn't give a crap if you are going through a divorce. The only person who cares is the person sitting beside you, and if that person doesn't care, you're stuffed." People will say, "I left the church because they didn't phone me when my dad died, and that was really hurtful." But the problem is not that the church didn't phone but that it promised to phone. I say, "Ikon ain't ever gonna phone ya." Pete Rollins might. But if he does, it will be as Pete Rollins and not as a representative of Ikon. Ikon will never notice if you don't come. But if you've made a connection with the person sitting next to you, that person might.
What is Ikon’s relationship to the church? Ikon is like the warning on the side of a package of medicine tablets. Yu can’t have the tablets without the warning, but the warning without the tablets is nonsense. Often I say the Ikon works only if you are rooted in a religious tradition. Ikon doesn’t make sense if you are not located somewhere, because it is fundamentally a rupture and a provocation. We have to have something to deconstruct. Ikon has led some people to church, and it had led some people out of church.
And there were reindeer herders in the hills, And low pixies in the sky dropped magic corn kernels which the reindeer ate because face it they were in the desert a kernel of corn was much better than manna, suddenly reindeer were able to fly. Now the herders had been drinking pretty heavily so at first they thought they had just gotten another bad batch of Joshiah's infamous clay vessel Gin and were seeing things, but then the reindeer landed and the pixies told the herders to climb aboard and ride them down to the village to visit the local free stalls. The ride, flight, caused enough vertigo and nausea that by the time they landed the herders were almost sober. So they cleaned up and visited the stalls, found Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. Most of the rest of story you know from here. The three wise men from the east, Abominable, Santa and Frosty. The three of them and most of the herders hit it off quite well and hung out for quite a while getting to know the whole holy family. Then Jack "the scrooge" Frost-Herod, got jealous and you know the things he did, just a horrible man, but the whole party flew the reindeer down to Egypt to save baby Jesus and his parents. That kind of sobered up the party and thinking it was best they split up for all of their safety. Some went north, some went east, a lot of them went west, in fact those who were the most vocal story tellers and marketing geniuses are the ones that went west. So you see, that's why the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is a religious story. Its a story of redemption of the misfits and the learning of Grace for the occupants of Santa's villiage. Forgiveness of the bumble (they called him Abominable because the original Abo was a big guy with lots of hair), and of course they learned that if you are good enough, and have a bright enough nose you can get through any storm. er...... Goes to show....
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