Monthly Archives: April 2007

Happy geeky networking Easter

So while the rest of you were enjoying your family Easter dinners, Carol and I were observing the holiday in our usual fashion — each sitting in front of our laptops. I spent the evening reading up on the Semantic Web. I got particularly interested in a subset of Resource Description Framework, or RDF. RDF is a way of presenting information on the Web that is machine-readable, and therefore which will make it much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when you search the Web.

What I got interested in is a subset of RDF called FOAF, which stands for “Friend of a Friend.” Here’s what FOAF-Project, the creators of FOAF, claim:

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

For example, FOAF-Project is working on a FOAF browser, which would show you the links from one person’s Web site to their friends and family and co-workers. The current FOAF specifications also allow you to specify your workplace, interests, contact information, and even your Geek Code.

After spending some hours reading up on FOAF and related topics, I came to the conclusion that FOAF is a great idea — or at least it will be a great idea, if it is actually ever implemented in a user-friendly way.

As it turns out, there are other ways to accomplish similar kinds of things. There are the commercial social netowrking sites that allow their users to do this sort of thing. Anad as any blogger knows, your blogroll is actually a social networking tool:– it’s a list of other bloggers with whom you have some connection (however fleeting). However, a blogroll doesn’t give you much beyond a bare link.

But the blogging software I use actually implements a kind of social networking called XHTML Friends Network, or XFN. Embedded in my blogroll are markers that tell what kind of relationships I have with the bloggers I link to. If you go to RubHub, an XFN search engine, and enter the Web address of my blog, you’ll get a list of all the bloggers I link to, along with what I claim is their relationship to me. You can then in turn check out those bloggers, and see their relationships to still other bloggers. (Oops — although I’ve requested that they add my site, they haven’t added me yet….)

XFN is still pretty new, and still not widely used. But even so, it gives you a taste of what it could be like to embed machine-readable relationship information into your Web site. Someday, I’d like to see every Unitarian universalist blogger linked up through some such scheme — whether FOAF or XFN or what-have-you. It would make it far easier for readers and bloggers to explore the large Unitarian Universalist web on the Web.

And I got so involved in this fascinating topic that I forgot to call my dad, as I usually do on Sunday evenings. Sorry, Dad! I’ll call tomorrow.

Open source Bible

Some of my favorite online videos are how-to-do-it videos, like Make TV. So I figured I’d make a how-to-do-it video for post-Christians — a video on how to do open source Bible. (4:44)

(And yeah, I’ve listened to your criticisms, so now I’m scripting the videos. Past videos were way too non-linear.)

Quicktime video — Click link, and where it says “Select a format” choose “Source — Quicktime”. Wait until the file downloads to your computer, and then click play. This should work for dial-up connections, and offers higher-resolution for all connections.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Two more blogs…

OK, it’s turned into a night of serious blog surfing. Two more blogs worth reading — this time, they’re both Unitarian Universalist blogs…

Not Muslim Anymore is the religious journey of a former Muslim who has become a Unitarian Universalist. As someone who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, I love hearing how people who came from other faiths become Unitarian Universalists. And I’ve been particularly interested in the Muslim-to-Unitarian-Universalist path ever since I met a former Muslim in another UU congregation congregation I served. Fascinating blog. Serious snark.

Faith and the Web marks the return of Anna Belle Lieberson, who formerly blogged at Talking UU Technology. Started on April 1, Anna Belle promises “excellent websites for churches and other faith-based organizations.” In just five days, she’s posted lots of great ideas. Anna Belle is particularly good at combining PHP and CSS, so there is lots to look forward to with this blog.

Blogs to visit once

They’re not going on the blogroll at left (yet), but these three blogs are worth a visit:

(1) Father Matthew, a liberal Episcopalian video blogger. Only a little didactic. The one on the sermon is pretty funny.

(2) Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. Yt is a goode waye to practise yowr Middel Englysshe. But ich knowe not if yow wil lyke hys poetrye:

THYS IS JUST TO SAYE

We haue had y-slayn
the knightes
that were in
Newgate

And which
ye were probablie
wisshyng
vs to pardoun

Forgyveness
nevir!

The lawe of Engelonde is ower will and lieth in ower breest, knave.

(3) And yes, after vingtillions of years, Plush Cthulhu does have his/its/her own blog, Brain-operated God. Be a good minion, and go listen to Fluff slaver and gibber.

That’s enough for now. Good night.

Bad dessert

Waiter Rant had a great post on bad restaurant desserts. And I posted a comment there that I can’t resist reposting here, because those of you who live in New Bedford may well know the restaurant I’m talking about in the second paragraph….

Ah, the joys of restaurant desserts…. Once when my partner and I were driving across country, I tried apple pie at every restaurant we ate at. The diners with their allegedly “home-made pie” were the absolute worst:– crappy pie without much in the way of apples, soggy crust, badly microwaved, tasting worse than a McD’s apple-pie-in-a-box. So much for the much-ballyhooed diner food. The absolute best apple pie I ate on that trip was at a Bob Evans — probably my least favorite chain, but they probably turn over so much food that at least the pie was relatively fresh.

On the other hand, bad desserts can be really good under the right circumstances. Here at home, the fancy restaurant in the next block over from our apartment serves really bad apple crisp. I mean really really bad. They buy it from someone who uses those canned spiced apple slices covered with sweetened goo that isn’t even crispy, and then at the restaurant they barely heat it with a microwave so that some bits are cold and some bits are hot. We love it anyway — we order it at the bar because (sick but true) it tastes really good with a martini. Yeah, OK, you have to drink half a martini before it tastes good, but whatever.

I was over at the fancy restaurant down the street earlier this week, and I think they now have cut down on the microwave time for the apple crisp (maybe they’re trying to save power?), and this time only the corners were vaguely warm. I ate it anyway. Yum.

So what I really want to know is this — have you ever gotten good apple pie at a restaurant? In fact, have you ever had a good dessert at a restaurant?

Clear Blogging

A while back, I mentioned I had started reading the book Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them by Bob Walsh. Now that I’ve read most of the book, I want to say a little more about it.

This is quite simply the best book about blogging I have yet seen. We are ten years into the blogging phenomenon now. Technically, blogging has evolved from a few geeks hand-coding Web sites to carry entries in reverse chronological order, to wide availability of easy-to-use publishing platforms that require no technical knowledge. The result of this technical evolution is that millions of people are now writing and reading blogs, and blogging has really changed the way many people exchange information.

In Clear Blogging, Bob Walsh gives an excellent overview of the state of blogging today:– from the way blogs have changed the national political landscape to the way blogs have changed personal life. I’m going to focus on two chapters in his book, both of which apply directly to post-Christian congregational life. At the end of this post, I’ll give a broad overview of the book, and tell you why you should read it.

Congregational blogs?

While Walsh is really writing about the corporate for-profit world in the “Building Your Company Blog” chapter, much of what he has to say applies equally to congregational blogs. So when he makes his most important point — that a company blog can increase sales — that applies to congregational blogs as well. Blogs build Web site traffic; blogs give potential buyers (or potential new members) a personal sense of what you are all about; blogs are a very efficient and very directed form of marketing. All this means that congregations should be taking a serious look at incorporating blogs into their marketing mix.

However, in order for congregations to incorporate blogging into their marketing mix, it’s going to mean a change in the way most congregations perceive marketing. Walsh interviews Richard Edelman, a blogging CEO (my comments are in square brackets []):

Q. Corporations [and congregations!] tend to be known for their hierarchies more than anything else. How does the idea of people [e.g., ministers and staff] just saying what they want on the company’s dime at their blog go over when you talk to other CEOs? [or how about to congregational boards?]

A. I think there’s a real trade-off between control and credibility. If you are too much of command-and-control kind of person [or congregation], blogging is probably not for you, but you’re also probably not in tune with what it takes to be credible in this world….

I hope congregations — and the Unitarian Universalist Association — take note. Congregations should really start thinking about credibility…. (For the record, I do not blog on company time — I write this blog solely on my own time.)

Blogging professionals

Every minister who is blogging or who has ever considered blogging should read Walsh’s chapter “Professionally Blogging, Blogging Professionally.” While Walsh focusses on the traditional professions of law, medicine, and ministry, all other religious professionals — directors of religious education, congregational administrators, etc. — will find much that is useful and relevant.

Walsh covers the obvious ethical questions, and gives us enough specifics to really make us think. Doctors actually have a code of conduct covering what they post on the Web; that’s something we ministers should be thinking about.

For ministers and other professionals, Walsh also points out how blogging can build your career. Most obviously, if you’re looking for a job Walsh shows you how a blog can help your job prospects. Yet for those of us who aren’t looking for a new job, a blog is still a way to communicate with various constituencies, and let people know who we are and what we stand for. As a working minister who has been blogging for more than two years, I found this to be the single most useful chapter in the book.

The rest of the book

Anyone who blogs will find lots of useful tips and ideas in Clear Blogging. For example, even though I think I know something about blogging, I learned a lot about feeds and blog usability and search engine optimization — indeed, I’ve already implemented several of Walsh’s tips on this blog.

And anyone who just reads blogs will find lots of useful information, from very practical things like how to post good comments on blogs, to big-picture ideas like the way political blogging is changing democracy.

Definitely, a book worth reading — just make sure you read it soon, because blogging is changing so fast this book will be outdated in a year or so. (Let’s just hope Walsh updates the book to keep up with changes!)

Do I need to remind you that this blog is completely non-commercial and ad-free? I reviewed and recommended this book because I wanted to, not because anyone asked me to do so, or paid me to do so.

Great theology, but…

Theology and society

Somehow, I missed Diana Bass Butler’s book The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church when it first came out in 2004. Butler has excellent insight into the current state of congregations in North America, and I find myself returning to the book again and again First Unitarian in New Bedford and I navigate the changed religious landscape of the early 21st C.

One key insight that Butler offers is that when things go wrong in your congregation, maybe you shouldn’t try to point fingers at blame at anyone in particular:

In the midst of [congregational] conflict, people often fail to recognize the obvious. What if no one can be blamed? What if no one is at fault? Many changes, conflicts, and tensions do not arise from factors within religious communities themselves. Rather, these things are the result of institutions reacting and responding to larger cultural changes — trends, ideas, and practices outside the church building [emphasis in original]….

As I think back on some of the congregational conflicts I have witnessed over the years, that strikes me as a very useful insight. Even in conflicts that have arisen from identifiably egregious behavior — clergy sexual misconduct comes immediately to mind — I believe that in some cases the egregious behavior has been able to infect a congregation only because the congregation’s natural “immune system” has been seriously weakened because the congregation is no longer well-adapted to the world around it.

Butler points out that the past fifty years have seen major cultural shifts in the surrounding culture:

The congregational experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s was the result of cultural shifts that occurred in the two decades immediately following World War II: the rise of the middle-class meritocracy, suburbanization, the birth of the baby boom generation, expanded access to college and university education, the civil rights movement, feminism, Sunbelt immigration of whites and northern migration of blacks, and the turmoil over Vietnam. All these changes unhinged traditional American religious patterns and called for greater clarity about the Christian message and greater authenticity in Christian congregations.

Obviously, you could substitute “post-Christian” for “Christian” and come up with the same conclusion.

UU culture and theology

For most Unitarian Universalist congregations, these cultural shifts in the surrounding culture paralleled a theological shift within many or most of our congregations — the shift from liberal Christian to post-Christian positions. (Not coincidentally, 1971 is the first time I am aware of a Unitarian Universalist leader referring to our movement as post-Christian.) But what I see is that our social patterns didn’t get updated to match our theological changes.

Butler continues:

Some churches rose to the challenge, but many did not. In a wave of social change (and often unreflective resistance to it), many congregations lost their ability to retain younger members or attract new ones. Congregations often suffered because of the gap that developed between their internal inherited practices and external cultural realities.

This was certainly true of Unitarian Universalism during the 1960s and 1970s — those were the decades when we saw a precipitous drop in membership, and when young people stopped being a part of our congregations. In the next passage from Butler’s book, but I’m going to substitute “Unitarian Universalist” for Christian, and change a few other phrases, so that it sounds as if she’s talking directly to us:

…Congregations often suffered because of the gap that developed between their internal inherited practices and external cultural realities. And, more than occasionally, they suffered because their particular pattern of congregational life was considered coterminous with “Unitarian Universalism” or “liberal religious theology,” hence confusing a historical moment in American culture with theological vitality and eternal truths. In short, many mid-twentieth-century Unitarian Universalists enshrined the social pattern of their congregations as something akin to eternal truth!

And that’s just what happened in the the 1960s and 1970s.

Then in the 1980s and the 1990s, social change continued and even accelerated, through the twin processes of detraditionalization, and the disestablishment of the 1950s civic religion. The end result? Many or most Unitarian Universalist congregations today follow social patterns straight out of the 1950s. Our post-Christian theology is increasingly relevant to the world around us — but that theology is trapped in outdated congregations.

I hope I have piqued your curiosity enough that you will now go read the rest of Diana Butler Bass’s book, and find out how to update your congregation to match the changed society around you. It’s available from the Alban Institute.

Just a reminder — this blog is completely non-commercial and ad-free? I discussed this book because it interested me, not because anyone asked me to, or paid me to do so.

Spring?

I was going to be a good doobie, and write some more about the concept of “post-Christendom.” But it’s a rainy, nasty, raw, miserable night out, and I just don’t have the energy to do much of anything except sit and stare at the computer screen and not write.

Our regular letter carrier came into the church office this morning and said, “Looks like we’re getting our winter this spring.” So far, April has been colder, wetter, and nastier than January was around these parts. And snow has been forecast for tomorrow morning.

Someone remind me why we thought it would be a good idea to move back to New England.

Oblivious

Carol and I were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. She was working on her book and listening to National Public Radio. I was reading the New York Times Book Review.

Carol laughed and said something.

“What?” I said distractedly, and kept on reading.

She repeated what she had said. It still didn’t register with me. I think it had to do with something she had heard on the radio.

Finally I looked up. “Uhn,” I said.

It’s not that I was intentionally ignoring Carol, it’s just that when I am reading I practically go into a trance state, and I am not particularly aware of the world around me.

Carol knows this, and politely ignored the fact that I had ignored her. She settled back into her writing, and I settled back into my reading.

Sometimes I become so oblivious of the world around me that I amaze myself. What I lack in mindfulness, I make up for in power of concentration.