zoecarnate

I’m pleased to be one of the judges in a literary competition this Pentecost season.

“We want your words. Jesus Manifesto is inviting you to submit an original article exploring the theme of Pentecost. In particular we want you to explore the theme of Pentecost in light of the world’s struggles. In the so-called “first” world, Christendom is fading into memory. In the so-called “third” world, new religious realities are emerging as Pentecostalism, Catholicism, and Islam compete for souls. Meanwhile, our world is growing increasingly diverse as immigration patterns and globalization intensify both the interconnectedness and the fractured-ness of our world. Ours is a world where urban poor in US cities carry cell phones while urban poor in other cities live amidst disease and intractability.

How can Pentecost provoke our imagination for the 21st Century? In 1000 words or less, we want you to stoke the embers of our imagination into flame.

PRIZES: We’re awarding one $50 prize for each of our categories (doxis, praxis, culture, aesthetics, and satire) with a $150 grand prize for the overall best general submission. That’s $400 total in prizes.”

For more, check it out.

The Ooze, the Web’s most prolific ‘emerging church & friends’ website, is looking for 50 participants in a unique partnership with quality publishers. You will be mailed books for blog review on an every-other-month to quarterly basis, free of charge. These are books on culture, theology, church history, justice, faith & science, global issues, spirituality, novels–you name it. The Ooze pre-screens each title brought up for our consideration to ensure you that it is a book of singular distinction.

Interested? Well, if you’re an off-the-beaten-path, thoughtful blogger (you don’t have to identify yourself with ‘emerging church’ conversation per se, though it’s certainly fine if you do) who enjoys blogging about the above-mentioned topics, and you have a Technorati authority of 50 or higher, you’re an ideal candidate. Just send me your name, blog URL, authority ranking, and snail-mail address by March 25 to zoecarnate [at] theooze.com. (Please do not leave this info in the Comments section of this post.) Then I’ll send you a more detailed email as to what this entails and we can go from there. Feel free to post this invitation on your own blog as well.Thanks for your interest!

Mike Morrell

PS: This TheOoze blogger partnership is primarily intended for bloggers in the US and Canada–alas. But if you’re elsewhere and you have a readership that will make me just pass out upon witnessing it, let me know and we will consider you…just ask Andrew Jones.

Pete Rollins has a new website up and running, courtesy the way-cool-I-hope-to-work-with-them-sometime folks at Paraclete Press.

(HT: TJ)

I’m looking forward to The Fidelity of Betrayal, Pete!

Gareth, when are you gonna get a redesigned site?

Update: Brother Maynard at Subversive Influence has completed a good three-part interview with Frank; check it out here, here and here.

Also: P.C. has been breaking into Amazon best-seller territory.

Because I suck at time management. It’s tough being a new daddy, husband, have 2.5 businesses, and take graduate-level courses. I’m seeing a life coach friend. I’m getting better–slowly but surely. So here’s my belated entry into the fray.

I feel deeply ambivalent about the talk going ’round, like the kid with a lot of friends whose friends are really really different from each other. One day the kid has a birthday party, and the friends are all under the same roof for the first time…and they ain’t getting along so well. My journey of knowing Jesus led me into house church waters in 1998, and into the pre-emergent discussion in 2001 (back when it was just PoMo Christianity, baby! Who remembers Stranger Things?). I have since felt like the bastard child of both, a hopeful amphibian breathing the air and water of two similar yet distinct movements/phenomena. Of course emerging saints are waaaay more media saavy (new media, old media, all of it) and so have made far more headway into the popular religious imagination and discourse. But now that me pal Frank has graduated from guerilla publishing to real, live publishers, our subterranean wares are being offered in the marketplace of ideas for the first time and eeesh! We’re like that odd gypsy family offering homemade trinkets to snobby European connoisseurs. What to do?

Continue reading ‘Coming Out of the “Pagan Christianity” Closet’

My vocation now is that of communicator, disseminator, and connector. At the moment this manifests as a freelance career in publishing, marketing, and journalism. I see each of these as remaining key as my vocation in foresight practice develops. I see it attenuating more toward sustainable living. To me, sustainability is the future. Our greatest challenge as a species is to live in sync with our surroundings, to steward creation and innovation to serve the Whole rather than be self-seeking (and self-sabotaging) parts.

How do you see your vocation in the future?

After running my APB for some comic artists for my upcoming publishing project, my buddy Andrew Tatum alerted me that Greg Boyd was working on his own graphic novel project–a cosmological tour-de-force that’s technically fumetti. Behold–The Cosmic Dance!

Now Boyd’s theology and political outlook are uber-controversial among many. I, personally, love one of his areas of emphasis and have serious questions about the other (and I’m not tellin’ which is which, so there!) But anyone working on such an innovative project deserves major kudos and attention from this comics afficiando.

We can look for The Cosmic Dance this summer. Greg, let me know if you need a publisher!

Update: This Artist has now been found. Thank you for your interest!

…or it could be one, I suppose, really diverse artist. I’ll probably need a letterer too. Here’s what’s for: A book I’m wrapping up, a Christian spirituality book, a kind’ve memoir-ish title with some far-out ideas. I’ve decided that I want three comic-book interludes, in three distinct styles. They’d be 4-6 pages each in length. I’m not rolling in dough or anything but I’m willing to pay (flat fee) a competitive rate. We can negotiate whether you’d keep the originals; I’d probably want to hold onto at least a page of each, with “first buyers’ rights” on the rest.

Okay, here are the three styles I’m looking for:

Style One: An indie comix Daniel Clowes style.

Or Evan Dorkin:

Or maybe even Paul Pope:

…anyone who can carry and make interesting ordinary conversation with splashes of magic realism, in black & white.

Style Two: Manga!

I want to do something fun and flashy for this one interlude. You don’t have to be Tintin Pantoja…

…and it won’t be as in-your-face as this:

…Jesus will be making an appearance.

Style Three: Chick Tract!

This one could be the most fun, a satire/tribute to the most incendiary “Christian” comics of all time. I’ll be summing up the message of my book in a kind’ve self-deprecating, ironic way vis-a-vis the Chick style.

So there you have it: Three styles, short stories, we’d write ‘em “Marvel style.” If you’re interested drop me an email at zoecarnate [ampersand] gmail [dot] com and we’ll talk details–you show me your portfolio, I’ll show you my manuscript, and we’ll see if we’re a good fit for each other. Feel free to post this link around the web and help drum up interest. I’m looking to commission this work around December. It’s gonna be an awesome book.

(Note: I didn’t mean for this to be a re-publish; its just as well, though, as I’m narrowing my search. New content coming soon!)

CLASSIFIED AD TIME, friends. I am looking for three comic book artists…or it could be one, I suppose, a really diverse artist. I’ll probably need a letterer too. Here’s what’s for: A book I’m wrapping up, a Christian spirituality book, a kind’ve memoir-ish title with some far-out ideas. I’ve decided that I want three comic-book interludes, in three distinct styles. They’d be 4-6 pages each in length. I’m not rolling in dough or anything but I’m willing to pay (flat fee) a competitive rate. (We can negotiate whether you’d keep the originals; I’d probably want to hold onto at least a page of each, with “first buyers’ rights” on the rest.)

Okay, here are the three styles I’m looking for:

Style One: An indie comix Daniel Clowes style.

Or Evan Dorkin:

Or maybe even Paul Pope:

…anyone who can draw interesting ordinary conversation with splashes of magic realism, in black & white.

Style Two: Manga!

I want to do something fun and flashy for this one interlude. You don’t have to be Tintin Pantoja…

…and while it won’t be as in-your-face as this:

…Jesus will be making an appearance.

Style Three: Chick Tract!

This one could be the most fun, a satire/tribute to the most incendiary “Christian” comics of all time. I’ll be summing up the message of my book in a kind’ve self-deprecating, ironic way vis-a-vis the Chick style.

So there you have it: Three styles, short stories, we’d write ‘em “Marvel style.” If you’re interested drop me an email at zoecarnate [ampersand] gmail [dot] com and we’ll talk details–you show me your portfolio, I’ll show you my manuscript, and we’ll see if we’re a good fit for each other. Feel free to post this link around the web and help drum up interest. I’m looking to commission this work around December. It’s gonna be an awesome book.

Psalm 92 (Re-Imagined)

1 It is good to give thanks to Adonai,
To make much of Your glorious reputation;
2 To publish word of Your grace by daylight,
And Your loyalty ’til the midnight hour;
3 On parchment and in hypertext,
In prose and spoken word.

4 For you, Adonai, have turned me into an avid reader;
Your Story has me turning life’s pages in joyful anticipation.

5 What an awesome storyline, Adonai!
How layered are your plots!
6 The un-nuanced don’t know,
The hack critics just don’t get it;

7 Pop-bestsellers waste entire forests
While widening the wardrobes of one-book-wonder-writers.
But their books (so-called) are destined for the bargain bins—the recycling bins,
ultimately!—

8 While your Story, Adonai, is an enduring classic.

9 The characters who try to sabotage your loving subplots
Will meet untimely ends;
Their Injustice League will be disbanded.

10 You have imbued me with the strength of the animal kingdom,
And have deputized me a super-hero before you.

11 I don’t need super-sight to see my foes’ downfall,
Or super-hearing to hear my assailant’s doom.

12 The strength of the just flourishes like palm trees in nice weather,
They grow deeply-rooted like cedars in Lebanon.

13 Planted firm in the dwelling place of Adonai,
Organic life flourishes in the soil of God’s courtyard.

14 Ancient trees will still produce fresh fruit,
Green and brimming with their life-giving energies.

15 If trees could talk they’d say Adonai is good and fair,
The embodiment of unadulterated, Rock-solid justice.

Continue reading ‘Loving the Bible, Part Two: Creativity is ‘Holy’ Writ, Large’

I’m going to blog about Scripture 2-3 times this week, and then by weekend hopefully write a bit more about my travels in Virginia last week and some exciting anti-slavery happenings in the Triangle area.

Ah, the Bible. 66-83 sacred texts (depending on your canon), comprising one volume, the most-owned and least-read piece of literature in the Western world. “Breathed” by God, written by people, transmitted in a variety of mediums throughout the ages–I love the Bible, and have grown to appreciate it (and wrestle with it) more and more the older I get, even as its significance and use in my life (and the life of my church community) has kaleidescoped as the years go on.

One way in which we, as the Christian family, continue to express our engagement with and delight for Scripture is through fresh translations and Bible publishing projects. There is a lot of debate over “formal” versus “dynamic” equivalence in translating Scripture into contemporary living languages–some say do it word-for-word and others, idea for idea. Most contemporary Bible-readers, though, utilize a variety of translations (and thus, translation schools), and for different reasons, ranging from scholarly to devotional. I like to think of dynamic equivalence renderings as contextualized, incarnational, in-the-moment responses of worship to God, made public for the benefit of a longing humanity. With this in mind two projects in process now are worth raving about… Continue reading ‘Loving the Bible, Part One: Fresh Expressions’