Words will fail to do any of this justice. If you were to imagine what the very best art space would be like, if you had no budget restraints and no experts to tell you what was or wasn’t allowed, this is it. The whole experience is a contradiction of itself, a paradox. The gallery is carved into the ground, three levels underground of vast sandstone walls and spaces. It’s at once immense and womb-like; hard and voluptuous. The space is lush, gorgeous, stark and elemental.

The Monanism exhibition is the first to be shown in the gallery. It’s an eclectic mix of all the big contemporary art names from Australia and across the world. These works are placed alongside antiquities… there’s a Damien Hirst piece next to a collection of molten chinese coins from a shipwreck, which in turn is just around the corner from an egyptian mummy… I don’t know how to isolate my favourite pieces. Sydney Nolan’s Snake stretching the length of a sandstone wall was hard to beat, just for amazingness; My Beautiful Chair by Greg Taylor and Philip Nitschke, where you sit on a sofa and press the computer screen, as it takes you through the questions you would have to answer if you were about to euthanase yourself is pretty confronting. There’s really lovely video art – including the obligatory Bill Viola [Reflecting Pool], and a number of Marina Abramovic’s pieces [David Walsh's curators notes on them are worthy of a whole post in themselves]. The line was too long for Serrano’s Morgue, but I’ll make the time when I next go. The water wall was lovely; the sewage installation wasn’t. It’s hard to know whether David Walsh [an art lover, not an art expert] has an obsession with sex, death and religion, or simply whether all art has an obsession with sex, death and religion, and the fact that the environment drips lushness makes it impossible to ignore. It’s complete sensory overload: marvellous, beautiful, moving, hilarious.

[Sean Fennessy has some photos here of the opening. The gallery let photos be taken, but ask people don't publish them on personal websites without permission]

It all felt very australian, but not in any parochial way. It was cheeky, irreverent and irreligious, honouring the best australian tradition of not taking itself seriously, but being completely remarkable anyway. There are no curator’s notes on the wall, but people are given ipods at the entry. As you move around, it locates the art work that’s closest to you, you click the piece you’re interested in and it offers interviews with the artist and occasionally music to accompany the piece. There are also links to curators notes for the piece – most of the works there are two interpretations – the ‘artwank’ and the ‘gonzo’ versions. The first has the serious notes, the second is almost stream of consciousness from the curators. When you enter your email address into the ipod, it sends you an email with a link to your personal tour online, so you can revisit things after [for a sneak peak of my tour, go here and type my email address into the box]. It’s all still a bit unfinished, a work in progress, and perhaps it always will be. How lovely if it is.

There’s lots to learn about why this could only happen in Hobart; about how space changes art, and art changes space… about who has the right to do stuff, and how entrepeneurial opportunities take hold. There’s lots to learn about subversion and counter-cultural movements… but i don’t want to learn anything yet, i just want to soak it up for a bit and say ‘wow’. You can’t do that and be intelligent at the same time.

Seriously, it really was that good.

I’m still reading the catalogue [all 400 pages of it, it's as lush and beautiful as the gallery itself]. I’m back in Hobart in a few weeks for meetings, and I’ll be adding a day at the end to go back to the gallery. I simply can’t wait.

I was in Adelaide on Tuesday, just for the day, doing some planning for the February event that Jonny Baker and I are curating. Craig Mitchell flashed a book in front of me, and the page I read included this quote that’s been reverberating in my thinking since:

‘Faith isn’t faith unless it involves a significant risk of failure…’

Which may mean that if we aren’t failing, we aren’t acting enough in faith… after all, success isn’t the primary result we look for; acting faithfully is.

And from Monday’s trip to Marysville and Kinglake, in the fog and hail:

Have I mentioned I love my job?

When i got home last night I read this book review on Jonny’s blog about Steve Bevans’ book, An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective. Yesterday we’d been talking about the belief that God’s spirit was present in the land before Christianity arrived with the white people, and about the complexity of communicating that with people who believe that salvation begins and ends with the revelation of Jesus. While I was listening to the conversation it occurred to me again how weird it is that we are guided in our theology by those with doctorates, rather than by those who rely on the theology for their survival. I was reminded of Sallie McFague’s idea of deviations from the norm [which i've talked about before]… and how at christmas we are reminded that God is born from the womb of an unmarried middle eastern girl, not from the head of a middle-class, educated western theologian. And I wonder why, at christmas, we don’t search out more unmarried pregnant middle eastern girls to hear what God is doing now…

I was reminded again of that in the prison last week – it’s the conversion i always have there. I could quite happily do without faith, myself. And I’d really rather not have it. But I’m convicted of its necessity by the people who rely on it simply to survive. And they are the ones who remind me what God can and can’t do. They disabuse me of my fantasies and clever thoughts. And the best i can hope i offer is that God is made real in the space between us when we do the things that faith does.

I was about to buy Steve Bevans’ book when i realised the irony of that. So instead I’ve ordered some more indigenous theology, to broaden what i’ve already read… so i start listening again to the voices i find hardest to hear, in order to have even the smallest confidence that what i say and write has any credibility at all.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about moments of transformation – we can’t create them, but we can make space where they might be possible… In the first chapter of Armstrong’s book, she walks us through a history of religion and ritual since humankind first existed, beginning with the rituals that shape pre-historic life. For the pre-modern person, myth only makes sense in the context of the ritual which brings it to life. It isn’t the myth that’s important, or even the truth behind it; instead what matters is the transformation caused by the ritual. It’s pointless knowing that death is intimately entangled with life if you don’t live as though that’s true. So, 30 000 years ago, a boy would crawl through a mile of underground labyrinthine passages – with no light, and to the terrifying sound effects of screaming and thumping – to find himself in a cave covered with paintings, where he would be introduced to the tribal rituals surrounding hunting, victory, death and birth… and there in the cave he wouldn’t just hear the stories; he would know them through a new lens of courage, because he’d had to find that courage simply to make it to the cave. And, when he left the cave and faced the inevitable terrors of the adult world, he would know where to find courage to live…

‘Like any work of art’ Armstrong says, ‘a myth will make no sense unless we open ourselves to it wholeheartedly and allow it to change us. If we hold ourselves aloof, it will remain opaque, incomprehensible and even ridiculous.’

Which is the luxury and the peril of our time – that we can hold ourselves aloof from the myths of life and death…

So how do we create the places where we can come face to face with fear and desolation… and where we practise courage for the moment we need it? It’s going to be fun trying… Perhaps the turbine hall at the Tate Modern is an example… the last two paragraphs of the Guardian’s review make me want to get back on a plane and go visit…

I went to church on Sunday for a baptism. It seems to be baptisms that get me back to church at the moment, and I can’t think of a better reason. I’m a big fan of baptism, especially infant baptism.

I love that water has been around forever… that the water that baptised Lucy on Sunday has washed over every generation before her. And before there were people on earth, this same water carved valleys and coastlines… Water has shaped our landscape, and it shapes our lives.

I tried to block my ears to the words of the service on Sunday – only because the words always seem to try too hard to describe that which can’t be said. Instead I just looked at Lucy, this gorgeous little bundle of life, being washed in this water that has both been around forever, and keeps her alive right now… I thought about how even though she has no concept of that, her parents who loved her into being were giving her over to that truth… That all the people in that community of friends and family, who love her and make sure she has water to drink and wash her clean, also know that there are things to this life that are beyond them – and for that reason we wash her in this water that holds the memory of the tears and dirt and thirst of all life before and beyond her. That’s why I love baptism.

If I were called in to construct a religion, I should make use of water…

That said, I’m not a fan of water at the moment. I remember saying to someone a few weeks ago that if i had to pick one element to work with and explore for the rest of my time, I’d pick water. But then my apartment was flooded, which has been horrendous, and a million times worse than that [so much worse that i'm embarrassed to write it in the same sentence], there was a tsunami in samoa and tonga… and now when i picture water it’s laden with debris, and tainted with the smell of decay and mould and the ruin of lives. Maybe that’s not a bad image though: the story isn’t always clean; the ritual has to be held hand in hand with reality.

But I read Mark Vernon’s article yesterday, and heard the call again – that since i love ritual and celebration, and know how much i need them, that my challenge is to offer places and moments for people who can’t block their ears to the words, but know they need to wash themselves in water that connects them to a story of life that’s bigger than us…

We are beginning to plan for Advent. I’m traveling to Marysville and Kinglake on Thursday to start the planning for that with Mike and David. We’re going to have a go at creating public waiting spaces that offer moments of transformation and ritual… where people will know themselves as part of a larger story, and be made different through the knowing. I know it’s going to be harder than we think it will be to make that happen. More after we’ve met…

I’ll let the article stand on its own before i editorialise – except to say that i did go back to church yesterday, for a baptism… it was really lovely to be there, and it confirmed i don’t want to go again…

Fire and Brimstone in a Hollow Formed by Hand, at the Tate St Ives

I’ve been dipping in and out of the book today [penance for avoiding using my imagination by writing reports all day yesterday]. It’s a collection of essays about Weiner’s work, along with photographs and descriptions. As one essayist describes it, his life’s work is ‘the introduction of language as a sculptural material’. As he says himself:

Sculpture by virtue of its state
presents a material reality that by its presence
changes the inherent meaning of whatsoever place
it finds itself
bringing about a change in the relationship of
human beings & objects & producing a change in
the ambience
Caveat Emptor: It can at times block the way

[Weiner, 2006]

I’m thinking today about the myriad of possibilities that the basement space offers [while simultaneously contemplating how easily a myriad turns into a mire...]. I get the feeling we should be trying something new there; that we’re ready for a jump into a different kind of thing. I think the thing that holds us in common, as a group, is that we’re searching for a different way of being human, and a different way of being in relationship with the world and each other… [though i need to test that with the group], but we’ve been limiting ourselves a bit by seeing the possibilities through a singular lens. Maybe it’s time to add in a few other lenses. I don’t know what they are yet.

I just read this paragraph in Weiner’s book [it's a retrospective of his work, and includes a collection of essays]. The last sentences are just brilliant:

During the 1950s and 60s, Weiner grappled with an existential crisis in the aftermath of the war by investigating more conceptual challenges to authority and prevailing hierarchies. Today, his approach – language as the material of sculpture – seems ever more relevant when considered within the context of a culture struggling with information overload and a lack of fixity. His work is generative and generous, capable of embedding itself just about anywhere and empirical enough to engage all of our senses. To experience Weiner’s work is to accept its logic and its material reality, as well as to be seduced by the beauty of its chain of associations and offers of discovery. Entering into it is to risk a state of bewilderment, like stepping into a fog without discernable boundaries, to risk being “perplexed in public.” In that moment, one locates oneself in relationship to the work; afterward, some part of what has been encountered, what’s proposed, stays.

Donna De Salvo, in As far as the eye can see

In the panel on curation that Jonny Baker led at Greenbelt, Martin Poole said that he hoped the spaces created by Beyond in Brighton offer a moment of epiphany. I said that I hoped the basement spaces here offer a moment of grace. I think I still think that… but i wonder whether we also want to offer a moment of incongruence; a moment of bewilderment that once encountered you can’t quite shake. I’ve been wondering if that’s a way that transformation happens – how people make the irrational, incongruous leap into being different, not just thinking differently. Bewilderment’s not quite the right word: I think I imagine something like what happens when you are told a parable, and the world reorients itself, just for a moment… and even though you recover your balance, quick as a flash, you’re never quite be able to shake the knowledge that the axis you think the world rotates on, is not the only one at all.

For those of you [like me] who are out of this particular loop, the following information might entice you [like me] to put it in your diary…

Dr Campbell is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University and one of the world’s leading scholars in religion and online media. Her research has taken her from inner urban life in Glasgow through mainstream churches in Auckland to where religion, history and politics collide in Israel.

Heidi’s teaching and research centres on the social shaping of technology, rhetoric of new media, and themes related to the intersection of media religion and culture, with a special interest in the internet and mobile phones. She has written a book, Exploring Religious Community Online: We are one in the network, looking at how members of online religious communities connect their online and offline social-religious networks. Her current research is an investigation of Jewish, Muslim & Christian communities’ historic perceptions and contemporary use of media technologies, forthcoming as a text, When Religion Meets New Media.

For those who have any interest in how online technology is shaping how people are seeing and interacting with the world, or want to know how creative uses of new technologies are making new opportunities for people to connect, grow and learn, this is a chance to have questions explored.

Heidi is also keen to hear stories of Australians who have tried out religion on the Internet, whether the experience is good or bad or somewhere in between. Come along and share with her what the 21st century Australian spirit sounds and smells like.

Date: Monday 12 October 2009. 7pm.
Venue: Pireaus Blues Restaurant, 310 Brunswick St Fitzroy (Melbourne).
Sit-down dinner, a la carte (Main prices from $15 to $30).
RSVP: Friday 9 October to paul@teusner.org

So I’m back at work today, trying to get my head back into the space it was in on the way home, where i wrote notes to myself about writing poetry on the walls of the city, literally and metaphorically… where my head was filled with imagining different realities and futures into being… where the 24 hours in transit literally flew by with dreaming about parables and glimpses of promise. I’d remembered again why I do this, and why it matters.

I got home, opened my front door and found other things do matter – and while I’d rather the shit didn’t happen, it does [too literally, at times]. Perhaps the best I can hope is that poetry looks better when it’s written on dirty walls, not clean white ones.

[please let that be so]

But my head was spinning last night. I was thinking about coming back to work; the daunting impossibility of that, and how very sad I was that I had lost vision I had last week. And I remembered how on tuesday of last week, jetlagged and exhausted, I stood at the door of my apartment looking at the wreckage that had to be cleared up – and even though the insurance company sent restoration contractors within an hour, I didn’t know where to begin, or what to do, or what to feel, or how to survive the day. The only thing I could think of was to copy what my friends would do: Sue would say ‘just do one thing to begin…’ so we picked up a rug and threw it out. Jane would say, ‘we all need something to remind us of beauty’, so I went down the street and bought flowers to put in the kitchen. Maryanne would say, ‘coffee?’, so we stopped, often, and made some. Nadia would swear and say ‘pray’. I swore a lot, but couldn’t pray, so I emailed her and told her to for me. Jonny would take photos, so I did as well.

[i won't show you those, though - instead, these photos were taken from the balcony of my temporary apartment after I moved in on Friday...]

I was thinking about that again last night – that sometimes we need to pretend we are someone else, to practice life as they would, in order to become who we are. That sometimes there are moments when who we are is lost, and all that is left is to act our way into being.

So this afternoon as I sit here at work, wondering where the hell to begin, I’m remembering the people who have inspired me over the last few weeks and months. I’m using their courage and imagination as my own… and I’m holding faith that i’ll act my way into being me again.

So this is for everyone else who is today wondering how to survive. If it helps, i have faith that you will.

take a moment
in honour of who you are not
in honour of the courage and grace borrowed from another source:
may it be made your own
in the act of trying

and may you be made your own
again.

I have drunk tea with… an installation at the Eden Project

This next blog post was going to be an exploration of what we’re doing next year, but i realise that my last post could easily have given the impression that i had some great truth to unfold, and that this might now simply be a massive disappointment. Alas, we will live with that.

There have been a number of lines from conversations over the last few weeks that have been rolling around my head: Nadia Bolz Weber’s line, ‘the stranger will always make things messy’; Padraig O’Tuoma’s line [and i paraphrase and destroy it here], ‘be the miracle you do not yet believe in’… and a throwaway line from Alistair Duncan in Brighton: it was the same search for the more that led him into Christianity, which is what now leads him out…

I’ve probably already said that what i loved about the Garden wasn’t that it was trying to redefine or reconstruct christianity; that their search for the more doesn’t come from angst or despair or disillusionment with the church. I liked that because, truthfully, the church was bloody good to and for me for a very long time. And it still is. Its beliefs may no longer be where I am at, but it represents a search and a longing that I respect, remember and still resonate with. And while my search has taken a different turn, I couldn’t be here without having been there. I am still profoundly grateful for the transformation that I was offered through that story. It saved me, literally, even though it’s no longer me. [I know that sounds like I think I’m somewhere better; I don’t. I just can’t find a different way of saying it.]

Oddly, this helps me make sense of why I can write liturgy using words and imagery that are formed from a belief that’s no longer my own. After all, when it comes down to it, Christianity has all the best words. I don’t think it created them, though – it just appropriated them. I’m loathe to give them up. And while I use the same language to mean something different, perhaps that doesn’t matter [read: I need to let it not matter!]. Perhaps words, in themselves, whatever they mean, can be transformative. They’re kind of like a parable in that sense. They carry a transformative power in their saying that is much more than their meaning. [Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I love Sigur Ros. They didn’t have the words to make sense of stuff, so they made up their own language.]

So that’s been floating around my head as I’ve walked through Manchester over the last couple of days, thinking about next year’s trip… And the question that keeps coming to mind as I’m trying to work out how the trip will work is where are the places in the city [/the corner of the world i inhabit] where people can be human… and how can we manufacture them, if they aren’t there? I said in the previous post that the invitation to human-ness is at the heart of everything i do at the moment – and if I think about it, it was always the part of Christianity that I found most compelling and transformative. And what I’m really coming to love is that the longing and prayer for that is what I still hold in common with those who still hold the faith…

More to come, when I’ve worked it out.

You’ll never walk alone, the Fab Collective exhibition inside the St Luke’s bombed out church, Liverpool.