Most Phenomenal Discovery of our Time

Bestriding the silver screen like midget Colossi, the Thrifty but Wily Neistat Brothers rise to the challenge, and re-make Jurassic Park for $3·50, saving a whopping $62,999,996 and 50 cents on the cost of the obsolete Spielberg product — at uninflated 1993 prices, remember... ...and you get a “making of” feature thrown in.

Most amazing of all, this implies that the most cheapskate outfit on the planet is not, in fact, an ecclesiastical body. Unless, that is, you know better...

Rise of the House of Stewart

No big deal — just (family record) a little Saturday item, involving Stewart (& others) and Lego:

Après-midi d’un(e) faune(tte)

Proud father of three daughters (like King Lear), I have to try and keep up with developments in Female Film, so I picked up Marie Antoinette off the post Christmas cheapie shelf. This could indeed have been the ultimate chick flick. Kirsten Dunst as an airhead Barbie princess should be a storming no-brainer, on a par with casting Skippy as a Kangaroo. Actually her performance is genuinely formidable, all the way from tearful teenager missing doggie to Ladette / Bo Peep young mum. Like Lady Di she’s a blonde bird in a gilded cage. Unlike Lady Di, she manages to keep her pecker up but flunks her charity work. It’s not her fault the movie fails. Design is wonderful. Sets, for once, are real and far better than CGI. Costumes are to die for. Soundtrack works brilliantly. The whole thing is seasoned by marvellous cameos, including Austrian Empress Marianne Faithfull (sans Mars Bar).

Unfortunately all this just isn’t enough. A lovingly accurate biopic about someone whose life was consumed tragically by Ennui can easily become rather boring. A great movie needs a great script, not just a collage of soundbites. There has to be conflict and/or tragedy. Actually this story contains plenty of both, but it’s so well hidden that few punters stuck around long enough to get enough of either — This movie was a box office bombe surprise.

Great movies also need strong enough characterisation for the audience to care what happens to the people on screen. Unfortunately, to cite one invidious comparison, there’s more hot human interest at teatime on a wet Thursday afternoon in your average Jane Austen Vicarage than the entire galactic court of Versailles seems to have been able to drum up in ten years. It’s a novel interpretation of the French Revolution, but perhaps the peasants just got desperate to make something interesting and different happen.

The decision to miss out any before and afters was a bad call. OK, you don't get anything about Marie Antoinette’s childhood because she was only a teenage bride, whose pedigree mattered more than her character. OK, Versailles was a bubble so she didn’t get to see any great events unfold in Paris — why should we? But just as one longs to see the whole thing unravel and a clotheshorse redeemed by mother courage, pride and resilience, the movie ends. Titanic would be less than half the movie it is, even with its sets and cinematography, if it ended with Rose saying to Jack over coffee and licquers “It'll be a bloody tragedy if this lot sinks tonight.” Without the ship actually going down, officers shooting toffs, decks flooding and lights fusing, there's something very fundamental missing from the whole experience.

Eat your heart out, Autrichienne. Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon remains the Guv’nor for Eighteenth Century Ennui fans. Although it unfolds at an obvious stately pace, there’s a story, and a variety of things happen to characters it’s possible to care about if you try hard enough. Best use for this one is wallpaper for a theme party. But perhaps that is the truth about Marie Antoinette.

Notes on a Phone

New horizons in technology, with notes on a mobile from Christmas Day at Aston Clinton on Jude Adam’s blog, Random acts of senseless beauty (and with the tags "Nonsense, General...") And if that isn’t all you need for your technological faith future, here, from the wonderful AV people at (Chicago) Community Christian Church, is a gadget you don’t know quite how much you need — the iBible:

Exclusively for Everyone (= Anyone?)

Having mentioned denominational ins and outs yesterday, I stumbled over a thought-provoking and perceptive post by marketing guru Seth Godin, about the power of exclusion to fuel sales:

When I was in college, the Dean tried to put together an advisory group of students. Nobody he invited joined--it wasn't worth the time. Then he named it, "The Group of 100" and in just a few days, it was filled. The easiest way to have insiders is to have outsiders.

Credit card companies have made billions by selling a card that others can't get.

Politicians stand up and talk about their (exclusive) religion, or pit one special interest group against another.

And of course, the best nightclubs have the biggest velvet ropes and the pickiest doormen.

Limiting the supply of your service, or the quantity of your product, or being aggressive in who you sell to (and who you don't) are all time-tested ways to build a killer brand. Humans like being insiders, and will work hard to create their own imaginary demarcations to demonstrate that they've made it inside.

Populism is almost always a hard sell, it seems.

When Tiffany's lowered prices and quality and tried to reach out to the masses, they almost went bankrupt.

He goes on to talk about how this works on the net, and the exclusion models, conscious or not, of Wikipedia and others. He goes on to suggest, as a marketing guru,

The first thing I'd ask myself before launching a product, a service, or a candidate is, "who are we leaving out?" If the answer is no one, be prepared for uncharted waters. The future of marketing (at least the big successes) is going to be fueled by those with the guts to embrace the masses. The profits, at least in the short run, may well be found by those that embrace exclusion.

Groucho, famously, said he wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have him as a member, and this aspect of human nature applies to faith, too. The C of E, like it or lump it, with its all embracing medieval parish system, lack of ass-busting heresy trials, and legal niceties that give rights to anyone and everyone, flies straight in the face of conventional marketing. Formally, the doors are open to all — It’s informally that the social networks have subtle ways of excluding. Church is a worked example of both the joys and perils of open source thinking and living. The most exclusive and demanding churches grow fastest but seldom get any bigger. The least are always in decline, but seldom die out. Can marketing theory help explain these paradoxes?

1. “S/He who is not against me is for me” is there in the gospels, but balanced by “S/He who is not for me is against me.” With teaching on his second miles, giving away you shirt, and going anywhere to teach, Jesus challenged this aspect of human nature, as well as acknowledging it. Some people are attracted, and some repelled, by the concept of a really inclusive church. We need to understand why and how this happens, and look behind both kinds of slogan, asking what’s happening in us when we react to them, and why. Coincidentally, How gender specific is this response?
   
2. The Kingdom of peace and love only grows when people feel special and together, but at the same time empowered to embrace strangers. Expressions of Christianity have to hold in tension a coherence principle and an inclusion principle. They have to find ways not to play one off against another, but somehow feed one off the other. Are Liturgy, symbol and art, perhaps, ways of expressing the whole that square this circle?
3. If people are interested in Church growth and Evangelism they have to distinguish two different kinds of processes that can claim the name —
   
1. a marketing process driven by exclusivity, guilt or chauvinism that always ends up diminishing its objects, wittingly or not — church imperialism can be very powerful, but its fruits will turn out to be sick, like cancerous growth. Here, people have firmer in and out lines, and are harder on outsiders than themselves. Ideals never quite translate into action, and the ceiling to growth is that of the marketing paradox to which Seth refers.
   
2. organic growth, often more steady, where the stress is on discipleship leading to personal growth in community. Here, people are harder on themselves than outsiders, and its hallmark is powerful bonding (social capital) which is at the same time generous and outward looking — they'll know the Christians by their love and because those people, being unlearned, are turning the world upside down. Thus the exclusion paradox is transcended.

What, in Seth’s terms, is our experience of Church growth and evangelism? What does the fruit of our effort imply we are really doing? How much is our practice based on marketing logic, and how much on Jesus’ radical bucking of this aspect of human nature?

Post-Christmas Blair Which? project

Erstwhile Buckinghamshire weekender Tony Blair has joined his wife’s church. Why not? Two years’ sixth form journo harum-scarum on this topic was all bilge, and would have been even if TB were still PM. If Lloyd George, a Baptist, had decided to join the Methodist Church, it would not have mattered a spearmint puff. How much less this man, this century. Christians join other denominations every day. Advertising for a new archdeacon this year, a significant proportion of applicants were originally ordained in the RC Church. So what? Only denominations that take themselves way too seriously, or just don’t understand post-Christendom would be bovvered. So Tony Blair deserves better than crackpot right wing RC’s sounding off like the Judaean People’s Front about how unworthy he is to join them. They should read more Graham Greenes.

But what about Tony Blair the leader? In the season for annual reviews, what’s the historical score? How would a consumer mag rate our recent history? Here’s one Oxonian nerd hot tip — Historians’ verdicts on leaders are usually more positive than those of their detractors / persecutors immediately after they left office. It looked like decline and fall for this erstwhile Blair voter to count no fewer than six “Bliar” Tee shirts in one tube carriage last summer. Does this fate await all England managers and prime minsters? Build ’em up, knock ’em down — they were never as good or bad as the papers said. Paying tribute to Tony Blair’s idealism and charisma sounds almost Blairily insincere.

Historically speaking? Gladstone came from a conservative background but was willing (sometimes too willing?) to play a high radical hand. Gladstone was high minded and immensely hard working, with a knack for catching the moment rhetorically. Enemies accused Gladstone of ruthless demagoguery, of which he was himself utterly unaware. They called Gladstone insincere, when he was in fact only too sincere.

Incredibly, when you consider what both were up against, the Gladstone project in Ireland, like the Blair project there, almost made it home. Gladstone’s government ground into the dust, like Blair’s, amidst recriminations about an overseas fiasco involving Muslims — Sudan for Gladstone, Iraq for Blair.

Blair’s governments blew impressive economic bubbles, delivered a minimum wage, tackled the foothills of child poverty, inspired style iconry and mildly rebalanced a few UK priorities. None of these were quite all they were cracked up to be, but they were hard-earned and amount to considerably more than nothing. Did Blair renew the UK constitutional setup, or did he destroy it? We’ll see. Ditto Education.

Healthcare was a more precarious endeavour. Blair sincerely piled shedloads of cash in, but somehow the returns diminished and the more that went in, the less people appreciated it. Perhaps, and the only way to discover this was to try it, the UK simply maxed out the benefit any market model healthcare system could deliver without as much money leaking out the bottom as was going in the top. Contemplating Debt Mountain and aging assets, historians may wonder at the scale of PFI — a UK public works funding scheme rather like putting your mortgage on your credit card. Tony Blair’s most serious tactical political disaster, although it seemed like a good idea at the time, was announcing his departure in 2005. The UK media being the UK media, he never quite got out of the garage for his third term.

Tony Blair’s Mary Tudor “Calais” would have to be Iraq. This is a real shame, because his leadership over Kosovo and Sierra Leone was courageous, creative and effective. Surely Blair was right to cherish the US/UK relationship. It was just Blair’s bad luck that the US fell into the hands of a foreign policy ingenu and Neocon experimentalist, who mired his country recklessly in a Suez-style adventure that screwed up its prestige in the Middle East. Compare and contrast Annapolis with Camp David, and weep. Afghanistan was dumb. Iraq was dumber. In the story of the American Empire, the Iraq war will probably play a similar part to the Boer War in the tale of its British counterpart, militarily and otherwise.

Possibly Blair did all he could to temper the loonery, but in fact almost a million innocent civilians died, Iraq collapsed into major chaos and became a world terrorist centre, whilst Iran’s star began to rise. UK public trust crumbled after the dodgy dossier. The CIA used to say, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Or can you? It remains to be seen what’s next for Tony Blair. He’s certainly made a far more selfless, courageous and principled start to his next career than his predecessors did to theirs. It could even be redemptive. It’s all too easy to judge others who bear burdens we will never have to shoulder. Perhaps it’s time t0 cut him a bit of slack for now, and offer our sincere prayers and good wishes for the future.

Running on empties

The verdict on yesterday’s rolling Christmas dinner and floor show for 12 came from Anna, who pulled over Lucy's God-daughter Chlöe (aged 6) in the early evening and said to her conspiratorially, “You know adults these days — they laugh way too much.” Even the best parties bring challenges, though — like what to do with the empties. Here’s a solution to one post-Christmas conundrum:

Tamil Santa says...

Get your laughing gear round this — Tamil carol singers from Bangalore Cathedral, and, towards the end, Lucy & I pitching in with everyone else and making complete prats of oruselves.

As we lumber through the jollifications we all need to remember we can't actually make complete prats of ourselves with real friends, because they are our real friends. It also suggests what I've long suspected, that as we learn from submariners and children's entertainers, living is for people who are into joy and life, not amour-propre.

Well, we've got twelve in to share Christmas, and will aim for more unbridled joy than standard issue for the English home counties. We are delighted to share warm memories of friends in India, as we wish everyonem, wherever you are, however warm or wet, a truly joyful Christmas.

Stable cold and bare

Sunday evening with Anna at a Barn Nativity at Chicheley near Newport Pagnell. It was hosted by Home Farm, with refreshments afterwards in the Chester Arms. Huge turn-out, very cold and clear (as it's supposed to be), and a truly memorable retelling of the Christmas story with traditional carols.










I was reminded of Evelyn Underhill's words, which went on last year’s Christmas Card, and tie together life, discipleship, wrangles among Christians, and the mystery of the incarnation:

Human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and which I suppose most of us are feeding on the quiet. And it is there between them, pushing them out, that Christ must be born and in their very manger he must be laid

Congratulations to all involved, especially Pam Fielding (Licensed Lay Minister, soon starting ordination training), who organised and led the service, with help from friends in Chicheley, Sherington, Astwood, Hardmead & North Crawley.

Following that star... inside.

Christmas in prison is hard. For this year’s Christmas cards, I played around in Adobe Illustrator after the Carol Service at HMP Grendon at which I spoke.

There’s a great ecumenical chaplaincy team, superbly led by a deeply committed Methodist Chaplain, The Revd Keith Salter. The nativity play included three slightly unconventional Kings, equipped by Major Bert Roper of the Salvation Army with basic but effective devices to keep them locked onto their star:
Grendon was started in 1962 (stone laid by R. A. Butler) as a therapeutic prison, aimed at preventing reoffending by enabling prisoners to face up to the realities of what they have done. The official blurb says:

The Grendon regime is unique, as the therapeutic programme is the core work of the establishment. The therapeutic programme is based on therapeutic community principles, where a dedicated multidisciplinary team of staff work together with prisoners, in an atmosphere where attitudes and expressions, which would not normally be tolerated in prison, are accepted and used to give feedback to prisoners. This therapeutic dialogue leads to prisoner's greater understanding of their usual behaviour. Grendon aims to help prisoners develop more positive relationships, to change how they relate to others and to reduce their risk of re-offending.

There has been constant political pressure on such establishments from Fleet Street, which tends to see them as a soft touch. I don’t actually agree. Which is easier, to engage in painful self exploration in a rigorous “no excuses” environment, or (as the phrase goes) to get your head down and do your bird? It’s obvious which takes more courage. Of course the Grendon regime wouldn’t be right for everyone, but the facts speak for themselves. Two year Reoffending rates in standard UK prisons hover stubbornly around 70-80% — Grendon rates have been reported as low as 7%.

What about the victims? Well, I would say, one of the best things you can do for crime victims is to get crime down so that it doesn’t happen to them again. Sadly, right wing editors are often more interested in populist punitive posturing than serious crime reduction, and few if any of our leaders have the courage to stand up to their fantasies. And so the cycle of crime continues, blighting communities and wrecking people’s lives. Not a very Christmassy concept — but spare a seasonal thought for everyone inside, staff, prisoners, law enforcers, and all victims of crime.

h/t the Therapeutic Community Open Forum Wiki for the wonderful cartoon.

Happy (watercolour) Christmas!

Among our Christmas cards came one from John Underwood, Head at Chalfont Saint Peter School, with an original Christmas watercolour.
‘Is there no end to this man’s talents?’ is the question they used to ask at the old Glasgow Empire!

Private on Parade

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Sean Dobuvic, a strip cub owner, went into the Mayo Clinic for gall bladder surgery. Whilst operating, the surgeon noticed the legend "hot rod" tattooed in a personal place, and snapped a pic on his mobile. Understandably enraged at this violation, Mr Dubovic is now suing the hospital. What began as a surgical team's sniggerfest is now giving the whole world Christmas Cheer. The only way to keep your privates private is to follow mummy’s advice, and leave it alone.

Angels with dirty faces?

Amongst various Christmas robins doing the rounds this year have been dire alerts about the march of secularism, as demonstrated by this year’s UK Christmas stamps. Here are the godless little blighters:
As you can see, Royal Mail is now riddled like a Swiss Cheese with militant secularists. Rumour has it, special instructions have been given to village postmasters not to issue the Madonnas. You can imagine the riot there'd be if one fell into the hands of a Ba’hai in Bradford (no you can’t - ed). The Madonnas are being reserved for highly Christian areas like East Belfast (shome mishtake?). OK, there are angels in the Bible (quite a lot, actually), but these ones are obviously fake. A Swiss Cheese Secularist front could never produce real angels.

To give Royal Mail a steer, and help the Faithful monitor this alarming trend towards secularist Christmas stamps, here are Christmas stamp designs from countries with Real Churches Militant like the USA, Spain & Italy:

Gadzooks!

I know, I know. You're desperately trying to find that special, personal present they won’t already have. And here it is, from the glorious Ship of Fools 12 Days of Kitchmas. For only $99 or $149 with detachable angel wings, you can have something that really will bear your griefs — a huggable cremated remains urn.
It’ll last for... er... ages, as long as you don’t go to bed with it. Let me rephrase that. It’ll probably see you out. But best give the gift of Love now, because if you wait until your relatives are on their last legs, they might think it tasteless. Which of course it isn’t.
Big h/t Canon John Rees.
PS This could be gilding the lily, but I wonder how much it would cost to embroider “Holds Grandma” on the other foot? Just a thought.

Epic Five Hours of Fun

I left a meeting at Nettlebed at 17:10 yeterday and set out for home 18 miles away. It took 5 hours! The first bit was fine, but it took over four hours on the M40 to get from Stokenchurch to Wycombe (4 miles). Over four hours! I could run it in half an hour! I know time flies when you're having fun, but five hours sitting in a car is five hours. Bishop Stephen says we should all do nothing to change our life. Being able to do nothing is half way there, I thought, so it’s time to change my life.

Hour 1: ripples of anger and frustration, giving way to almost Budddhist detachment. Take the inner road to calm. Radio increasingly boring, as news stories recycle times 3. Blow that for a game of soldiers. Subscription on satnav traffic expires. Doesn’t matter. I'm not going anywhere anyway! Phone the wife. Think of happy days on the beach. Guy in car to the left picking nose, and thinks I can't see him. Ha ha! That’s not very Buddhist.

Hour 2: Albeit at real snail’s pace, this car has achieved 10101 miles! Ta-Da! That’s a mathematical wotsit. Play with numbers for ten minutes to celebrate. Only 4.3 miles now to the turn off. It’s so good to know, even if you can't do anything about it. Check news. Nothing else happened in world. Time for slushy John Rutter carols CD. I only listen to it at this time of year, and it’s musical bubblegum really, but some of it’s very lovely, and it takes me back to happy days in the choir at Sandhurst. You can’t beat what church musicians call the Rutting season. One or two have left their vehicles and concerned little huddles are having case conferences all along the road. At this rate Ruddy Cliff Richard will come round the corner and lead some singing. No he won't. Only joking.

Hour 3: Slight change of mood with evening office, that the evening may be holy, good and peaceful. Psalms all about God saving the helpless guy who waits. “Behold I am coming soon says the Lord.” Good idea. Still nothing else happened in the world, but the standup comedy show after the news is fun. Go for a walk, avoiding posh fat man complaining loudly. Now -2 degrees outside. Bishop Dominic says you should always keep a banana in the car. I haven't even got a banana skin, just sweet wrappers. Drat!

Hour 3·5/ Mile 3·5: Signor Nosepick losing patience. Not a happy bunny. On verge of civil disorder as the famed queueing instinct of the British begins to break down all around and one or two desperadoes wiggle onto the hard shoulder. Mr Nosepick loses it. Leaves car and urinates on stalk of nearest emergency phone. I wonder whether that’s a good idea, electrically speaking. What a way to die! No hang on, It must be OK because emergency phones don't explode when it rains. On the other hand Signor Nosepick’s pee is warm and has velocity. Curious inner monologue on subject best avoided.

Hour 4/Mile 4: 100 yard dash at 4 miles an hour! At this rate I'll be home... er... Friday. Have I made a will? Interesting discussion about youth justice on Radio 4. You can survive anything with radio 4. Time for Nice CD of Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625). Time to learn the higher tenor part of the Second service, which I never quite mastered at college. Five or six goes through and, by George I've got it. Must join a choir again some time. Lucy phones. Only a mile to go. Turn off engine, pull out computer and snicker in blog piece, hoping don't get caught by fuzz. Hang on, who's going to catch me? If Mr Nosepick nabs me for playing with computer in a car I'll do him for, er, peeing on an emergency phone.

Hour 5/ Mile 5: Rain starts. Rain stops. Almost hallucinatin’ after all this meditation and lack of food. Turn engine off and go for another little walk. What if I need the toilet? Do they do duty frees on this ferry? Pass broken down car and abandoned lorry then... 2 mph. 4 mph. Hang onto your hat. 6 mph, and 200 yards. Then like morning mist melting away, all is clear. How do they do that?

Have I changed my life? I've certainly slowed down. I bet Mr Miaggi from the Karate Kid would say I did better at the Buddhist thing than Sensai Nosepick. Time to sell the car and buy a skateboard?

Cake or Death?

Right wing newspapers often poke fun at the Church of England for not being absolutist. Would Church be more fun if it was? Eddie Izzard asks — “What would a Church of England auto da fé be like?”

Grace in Action

I celebrated at Burnham Abbey yesterday. The Gospel was the first 17 verses of Matthew’s gospel — a genealogy, locating Jesus in the real world. This catalogue of great and good men contains four women — all dodgy. The men carry the name, the women bear grace. God uses even their immoral acts to move the story on. Michael Goulder wrote a poem describing this phenomenon, to help us think it through. What God really did in Christ is far more than what moralstic Pelagians may think he should have done!

Exceedingly odd is the means by which God
Has provided our path to the heavenly shore-
Of the girls from whose line the true light was to shine
There was one an adulteress and one was a whore:
There was Tamar who bore-what we all should deplore
A fine pair of twins to her father-in-law,
And Rahab the harlot, her sins were as scarlet,
As red as the thread that she hung from the door;
Yet alone of her nation she came to salvation
And lived to be mother of Boaz of yore-
And he married Ruth, a Gentile uncouth,
In a manner quite counter to biblical lore.
And of her did spring blessed David the King,
Who walked on his palace one evening and saw
The wife of Uriah, from whom he did sire
A baby that died-oh, and princes a score:
And a mother unmarried it was too that carried
God's Son, and him laid in a manger of straw,
That the moral might wait at the heavenly gate
While the sinners and publicans go in before,
Who have not earned their place, but received it by grace,
And have found them a righteousness not of the law.

Excellence with Elephants

Chalfont Saint Peter School, where the French Revolution has been in full swing with a mostly home grown production of Heads you Lose, a musical based on A Tale of Two Cities. They sang me the finale in assembly and it was tremendously vibrant, rollicking and powerful.
Lots of things in this school are vibrant, rollicking and powerful — the place is humming. They do whole school exploration projects about other parts of the world, most recently Japan and India, that really draw children into music and art as well as geography and culture. They engage intelligently with global social responsibility concerns that some schools chicken out of. Various learning areas sported Indian elephants, but this African one caught my eye.

Languages are alive and well, including Spanish as well as French. Readers were excellent on every level, including world classics as well as more standard primary school fare. Sport of all kinds is thriving, and this school seems to have made a bit of a habit of winning national gymnastics championships. Naturally, most work is done in classic form groups (20-30), but I saw really focussed learning going on in groups of various sizes between 2 and 90! The school’s relationship with the parish, including its inspirational Vicar, Charles Overton, is warm and fruitful.

The use of the building is really enterprising. Victorian school room roof space, usually left for dead in schools, has been turned into an excellent computer learning zone — the picture shows only the smaller of two fully networked suites.

Great school — great head. It’s not rocket science. John Underwood has been there 16 years, is really committed, and although he shuns Dilbert slogans about “teamwork” he does have a way of getting colleagues to work together so as to bring the best out of everybody. Talking through how staff plan whole school work together, and seeing how they share material using laptops and interactive whiteboards, I began to understand how the school achieves its very high all round standards. The buzz that produces it comes from maximising every individual’s potential and valuing their contribution, staff or student. Lots of people talk dirty about this sort of thing — CSP has raised it to an art form!

Don’t make a Drama out of a Crisis

People have been asking me all about last Friday, the first of my 3 days as a guinea pig on a research project about Integrative Complexity. It’s resourced by theologically literate Cambridge research psychologists. What did I learn, and what is Integrative Complexity anyway?

1. You measure IC by language — not what’s said, but how it’s said. It’s a psychological discipline, grounded in our understanding of the functions of different brain parts, and with a big experimental base. People studying Osama’s IC level (as you do) noticed it hit the floor just before 9/11.
   
2. People Integrate Complexity, when they hold the whole picture = all the particular information in a diverse field simultaneously. Telescoping things into simple yes/no’s, Not relating them, or eliminating them are strategies for avoiding rather than integrating complexity. If you can hold things in view for what they actually are in their own terms, you achieve higher integration. The higher your integrated complexity level, the higher your capacity to understand, and the less likely you are to end up punching people's lights out.
3. OK, Wittgenstein fans! Remember those Duck/rabbits? being realistic about what you see and not telescoping one into the other whilst remaining aware of both possibilities, demands a higher level of IC than the ‘be right and persist’ approach.
4. Hi-IC isn’t always the best way. Some situations call for it and others don’t. Before World War 2, for example Hitler’s low IC posturing required Churchill’s low IC, not Neville Chamberlain’s high IC response. We studied a five-phase model of how people evolve tension into full scale wars, along with tell-tale signs of transition between stages. We also worked through other case studies, using an IC toolbox.
   

Violence flares from low to obscenely high in ways that can be described in almost any context. This study is all about how religious leaders use and could use IC awareness in leadership. Different approaches to faith and leadership profile differently in IC terms. This study is finding out how.

Why bother? Scripture tells Christian leaders to accept the prospect of conflict, but to aim for peace and steer away strenuously from fruitless punch-ups. I want to learn how. I am particularly interested, having written a thesis on religious conflict in the Church of England between 1880-1914. I’m furiously scribbling questionaires, writing up notes, and looking forward to stage 2 next year. Watch this space...

Going bananas round London

At lunch Anna tells us with great conviction that Nick “is 75% made of Bananas” This surprising assertion is probably something to do with the amount of genetic material Nicholas and a banana have in common — a slightly different proposition. meanwhile...

Stephanie’s back from Uni, with an illustration project she did with her left hand (to see what happened) based on family days out in London. Resolve to be amazed by yet another distinctive Stephanie illustration style: