A Great Good Place

Ray Oldenburg's book explores the various psycho-social reasons for the attraction people have for the "third place"; most often represented in the bars, coffeehouses, and other places of social gathering where people go to find comraderie.

Oldenburg's study is not a theological study, and so he does not question the idea that part of the attractiveness of the third place is it's "non-threatening" atmosphere, where certain uncomfortable subjects do not arise. While there is certainly much importance to the quality of a place which welcomes and makes one feel wanted, there are times in which we want to be challenged, and some instances where we want to experience some strtching of our boundaries, and some may even seek out such places.

The third place often suffers and gets phased out in the typical urban setting, edged out of existence by "safe" chain restaraunts and stores. The return of some "socializing" atmosphere has been brought in by the large bookstore chains planting "coffeehouses" in the store (Borders)

Intersting Quotes in A Great Good Place

"Where the interesting diversity of the neighborhood reduces one's reliance on television." (GGP, p.210)

Many homes have no sidewalks out front. People are expected to come and go in the privacy of automobiles. (p.210)

While the average American enjoys a better immeiate or individual environment than people in most other nations, our public environment is of "disturbingly low quality" (p.210)

Around the core word street --the most public of all places ---a disturbing vocabulary continues to grow (p.213) "keeping kids off the street", "stretwise, streetsmart, street price"

More money would be spent in a nation where every household tries to own what a community once provided for all (p.214)

• I observe this in the rise of "at home" oriented products such as "Home quarters" and "Builder's Square" for adding more area to the home, in adition to the rise of home-centered recreational products (pools, rec rooms, and hot tubs) and the "Home Entertainment Centers" where "Home Theater" has become a hot market item.

The bottled spirits of the remote lounge are more of an emblaming fluid than a lubricant to lively conversation (p.217)

• Oldenburg observations about how all bars are not "third places" by virtue of their beverages
  

The links in this post take you to the Web site, until I get them "blogged" onto this site.

Theology of the Web  My Story What is a Christian? My "Theology and the Net" research Bibliography (1-7-97) Dialogue/Reaction

The "Third Place"

Ray Oldenburg's "A Great Good Place" describes as "third places" those places which a person is drawn to as "refuge and relaxation", different from workplace or family. It is a good example of the almost mystical drawing power of the even the "possibility" for community. Here is a sociological study which has hit upon a piece of the puzzle which our electronic, consumer oriented society has pushed into the background of our consciousness. Even as we struggle to gain a sense of our own competence in terms of material status achieved , the call to community still attracts the soul, because there is an element of the stuff from which we arose; our human roots, which bear witness to us that we have ventured away from the things which nurture us. There is something about the chance to tell our own stories and to recognize some of that story in others that says to us "we are truly from the same family".

I immediately identify this "attraction" of which Oldenburg's study speaks as the key hint to what it is we are called as the church to do and be. We are a place where this yearning for relatedness and for mutual acknowledgment can be approached head-on. We are not to be in the business of disguising our efforts; we have a theological problem in the communication of our task. We have to name it, and we have to go further than hiding it behind the facade of more conventional or popular places.

We need to see what it is that gives popular places their appeal, and then figure out how to communicate the piece of the community to which we are called will address this appeal; how we can name the journey and provide a place to put our vision to the test.

But we must approach it directly, from the front. We must name it and set up structures which identify it and seek it directly. No more beating around the bush. It seems so ironic that in the church we so often "happen" upon times of discovery because it is brought close by the basic acknowledgment of a mystical presence; that we too are in the act of hanging on to structures and events which arouse in us the awrareness of something beyond our normalk mode of operation and relating, but leaves us short of stepping into it. So we end up no better off than the third places of which Oldenburg speaks. We come close but stop short. We derive every ounce of vicarious fulfillment from the glimpse, and then return to our everyday structures and relationships with a feeling of "someday", or maybe with a sense that we have reached the pinnacle and have to "come down off the mountain" and "return to real life". And so we look upon these experiences not as the signs of something greater, but as the thing itself.

Balcony People

The image of the balcony comes from the Biblical passage where we read of "being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses", and these are the people of the church, future,past, and present, from whom we have learned and experienced growth , and to whom we will leave a legacy and an impression.

Many of these I am actively seeking to contact in some way, directly or indirectly, online. Some of these I have already begun to incorporate and provide links which I am hoping will become an active arena in which people from each of these communities and concerns can call "home", or encourage them to create places of their own ("of their own" and yet still a part of the Web from which they branch out)

Mail me responses

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No special order to these; just a list of "influences" from modern theologians in their own right, of whom I have read or heard and find to be encouragement, challenge, and liberating.

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Tony Campolo

A Sociology of Faith and Church

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Keith Miller

The struggle of the faithful and the importance of authenticity

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Church of the Savior, Washington DC

Intentional community and mission

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Youth Specialties and The Door

The "Crap detectors"

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Sojourners Magazine

Faith , Politics, and Culture

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Ecunet

An Online Community

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United Theological Seminary

Communication in a technological age

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

the final years of academic freedom

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Frederick Buechner

Master of words concerning the human condition

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Creation Spirituality

Discovering our natural spirituality and what we may have been denied

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

Caring enough to confront and to demand

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Clarence Jordan

Challenging the staus quo

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Mahatma Gandhi

Non-violent spirituality

test

In a world where electronic communication has thus far aided to reduce the number of these "third places", we may see in online, Computer Mediated Communications a chance to pull the elements of community back together, and draw us closer together. Here we might re-learn the value and the wonder of the riches we have to offer one another, and provide a place where we can discover that there is indeed much to "encounter" in the space where two or more are gathered.

To be a community....

This is the predominant image in my theology of Church. It surely has many faces , but it begins with the journey to find out what it takes to live together and care for each other. When we are about this journey, we see the importance of communicating this perspective on life.

The emphasis on community is crucial, but it must also clearly define this community as something radically different than the rather loose, vague notion of it often applied to many differnet kinds of associations between people. It has become a buzz term for corporations and social groupings. It is not rare anymore to hear of this "community" or that.

I am building this Web site to explore the possibilities for the community to which the Church itself must be committed. This itself has proven to be a broad concept, with a variety of expressions, representations, and styles. But my vision involves very intentional movement toward participating in one another's personal and spiritual journeys in ways which our society has made it increasingly difficult.

To engage upon this journey into the depths of community, society and it's distractions and skewed values must be recognized and named, and we must allow our vision to confront what we find.

I have begun building this Web site to provide a place to explore what it means to be "Church" in this context. In this exploring of vision, community, and journey, Theological Education happens. There are resources in the official educational structures of the various theological groups, but there are also resources in the social sciences, in the psychological sciences and healing professions, and in the wisdom traditions of various cultures other than our own. There are also instances of dilution and compromise in all of these; values and approaches that serve status quo rather than the call to seek structures and relationships that represent the new community to which God is calling us.

This emphasis upon the Inward Journey is valuable in terms of its effects upon the Outward Journey; that our discoveries concerning the way human relationships ought to be will call upon us the processes which point us to creating structures which heal the broken, distorted structures in our world. The breadth of this concept should not discourage us from embarking upon the journey to begin forming the kind of community that will impact our lives and those around us with the good news that God intends for things to be different, and for healing to happen.

It is very apparent to me that my call for this time is to the online community. I am , in a sense, claiming quite a large "parish", but I also expect that as more of us with similar callings "meet" online, that this calling with take more specific forms and begin to blossom within a specifically focused community that will probably consist of people who are local to my geography and with whom I can covenant to meet on a regular basis, and also with people whom I meet and agree upon a similar covenant to be carried out in online meeting places.