Crimperman.org

Below is a guest post by a friend and colleague at Free Software Magazine – Terry Hancock.

Like me, Terry is interested in the subjects of free (as in freedom) software and free culture. With regards the latter (and unlike me) he has got off his backside and started to do something. This post describes Terry’s project to produce a science fiction “TV” series and release it under Creative Commons licences. This is both ambitious and encouraging. As you know I have focussed [my own attempts](http://www.crimperman.org/tag/freedom/] at free culture onto the church and the way “worship” resources are locked down and restricted by archaic copyright and “intellectual property” laws. One obstacle I have come across is that if resource producers do not release the material under free licences then any attempt to bring freedom back into our media and other cultural elements will fail. Terry has encountered this and “Lunatics” is an admirable response.

Right now the issue – as ever – is financial. This project is – by nature – on a much smaller budget than mainstream productions but – like the Blender open movie projects before it – it still requires some cash to get started. Also like the Blender open movies, backers get rewarded for their donation.

You may not like science fiction, you may not like the concept of Lunatics but you may know people who do. If you like the idea of free culture and are fed up with the ever-increasing tide of restrictive actions by media companies – try supporting one of the good guys.

Update

The target funding has now been reached. This is exciting news as it means there is support for such a great venture. You can still find out about the project and catch up with the latest news at the project website lunatics.tv.

Guest post – Terry Hancock

Lunatics - somebody's got to be crazy enough to go first!

Support this project

Lunatics is a story about the first permanent settlement on the Moon. Politics are inevitable, physics is implacable, and the colonists are indomitable fanatics. After all, normal people don’t really colonize new worlds, do they?

“Lunatics” itself is largely based on character comedy, but we take the science and technology very seriously. Much of the technology in planned Lunatics scripts is not only real and relatively new, but also largely ignored in prior science fiction. Perhaps the greatest realism, though, is in the way the characters are presented.

The series and all the original source material will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, and it will be created using (mainly) the free software Blender 3D application on GNU/Linux workstations. It is a free-culture production from end-to-end. We are taking advantage of the massive body of existing free-culture work (music, sound effect, graphics, and so on) to help make all of this possible. And once we get our series up and running (we plan to do 18 episodes a year, of about 30 minutes length each) we will be one of the biggest free culture film projects going!

What makes this possible is a fan-financed business model which has been pioneered by only a handful of free-culture projects. But it’s enough to show that it can be done.

This project will require a lot of innovation on everything from merchandising business models to real-time animation techniques.

Right now, we are trying to raise $2400 through a Kickstarter project to support pre-production work — especially paying artist Daniel Fu a commission for creating character design drawings which will be used to create the 3D characters for the series.

Backers at any level will get early access, and for those who pay just $15 or more, we have a variety of “rewards” — ranging from character art posters to the complete “Character Art Book and Writer’s Guide”.

We also have corporate sponsorship levels if you know someone who’d be interested — for $400, you can get your company logo printed prominently on our pre-production materials, and featured on the website. Needless to say, a couple of such sponsorships would go a long way towards meeting our goal (these are limited to just 4 slots to make sure we have room for your logo).

Like all projects, we have to start small and work our way up. I don’t have a fan-base of thousands to draw on yet, because Lunatics doesn’t exist… yet. But with your help, we can get there!

Thanks!

Graffiti on the wall surrounding Bethlehem ( (c) HolyLand-Gifts.com )

An h/t to Phil Groom for bringing Martin Leckebusch’s modern take on the Christmas Carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem to my attention. What I love about this is that it starts as many a “modern Christmas retelling” does: by almost pointing out how the message of Christmas (hope, love and peace etc.) is almost conspicuous by its absence in the town of Christ’s birth.

And yet it still manages to usher in the hope that Christ coming would have all those centuries ago. The world hasn’t changed that much after all. The message of Christmas (the real one without the tinsel) is still valid and still needed.

O West Bank town of Bethlehem,
how still thy victims lie;
the grieving weep, deprived of sleep;
militiamen roam by;
for through thy dark streets rageth
the never-ending fight:
such hopes and fears, such bitter tears
are met in thee tonight.

O morning news, O papers,
report the dreadful dearth
of saints who sing to praise the King,
of peace across the earth;
where Christ was born of Mary
‘midst wondering angels’ love,
in anguish deep, sad mortals keep
few thoughts of things above.

How violently, how violently
the hope of peace is riven;
can God imparts to these torn hearts
the blessings of his heaven?
Who now recalls his coming
to this dark world of sin?
Where harsh words still promote ill-will,
can Christ now enter in?

O Child once born in Bethlehem,
draw near again, we pray;
you died to win this world from sin -
yet sin persists today.
May we, like Christmas angels,
annouce Immanuel,
till all are given a glimpse of heaven
and not a taste of hell.

Martin Leckebusch
Copyright © 2010 Kevin Mayhew Ltd

Reproduced under the terms of Kevin Mayhew’s fair use copyright policy.

Image by Joelk75 - CC:By

In the past couple of days I’ve seen the subject of worship come up on Twitter a bit more than usual. Initially it was a series of joke #machoWorshipSongs and this seemed to evolve into a discussion about the use of masculine/feminine/romantic language in worship songs.

In the first instance I and a few others commented to each other that the “joke” was somewhat lost as so many of the songs we use in worship have a masculine or (as one person put it) pseudo-aggressive tone to them. In the second it emerged from a comment about how men don’t like the “Jesus is my boyfriend” type songs intoa debate about the appropriateness of this language and how it’s not just men who dislike them.

What I find interesting is that both fell into the standard trap of presuming “worship” is a) collective/corporate and b) uses words and language. Yes it’s true we get as many “Worship is more than singing!” declarations as we do “The church is the people not the building” ones and to the most part both are valid statements but what these discussions reminded me of was something I preached about a few years back.

What is worship?

It’s a well known meme that wroship derives from worth-ship, that is when we worship we are giving God worth, telling him what he is worth to us. This is interesting because it makes it easy to extend worship into the rest of our lives. Sometimes I struggle to think of worship in any other context than singing, praying, making, painting, playing etc. in a collective sense. It’s easy for us to say our lives should be worship but how do we do that.

The answer – I believe – is found in the following passage:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. _{Matt 5:14-16 NIV}

When we shine, when we show our best in service to others we are giving God value in our eyes and in theirs (note v16). This is something that I find very important and it’s the inspiration behind #EntertainingAngels (formerly known as Give Up bad Coffee For Lent).

We give God worth.
We worship.

Service is worship, worship is service

Serving others is worship. Putting the needs of others before yourself is worship. Look at how that passage appears in the Message (emphasis mine):

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colours in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand-shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven. _{Matt 5:14-16 The Message}

So let’s stop worrying if Church doesn’t appeal to our particular tastes and start figuring out if we leave a good taste in the mouths of those we meet. Because I have a sneaky feeling that in heaven people will spend a lot more time interacting with each other than they do standing beside each other singing.

As a side effect of this, once we also start to think of worship emerging from service it puts our roles in church in a new perspective, particularly if we are “worship” leaders.

I have noticed an increase of problem caused by these people:

These people are the ones we blame when we’re too lazy to give an appropriate name to those we accuse.
These people exhibit behaviour we deplore but that we rarely have evidence of.
These people follow whatever thought processes (if any) we wish to assign to make our point.
These people are a group of varying size but rarely do we think they really count.
These people are a convenient way for us to write real people off by lumping them together and not treating them as people.
Jesus said “Treat other people the way you want them to treat you.” Fortunately for us he didn’t specify how we should treat these people.

Too often we lump people into groups of our making so we can dismiss them out of hand and write them off. We decide what these people know, what they think, how they act and how they should be treated. At no point do we consider whether those we group together as these people actually want or – better yet – deserve to be in that group.

We owe them more than that. We owe them what we’d like them to owe us. A chance. A non-judgemental, open minded chance to be treated as an individual. Probably like you, I have had my turn at being grouped with these people and on occasion I have looked at those I am grouped with. Rarely do I find much in common with them. Other than being a human being who is being stereotyped by another human being of course.

This video is pretty well known and speaks for itself. But it’s good. Let’s stop talking about these people. Let’s talk about a person. Let’s look at them in the way Jesus did: one at a time.

I came across this video the other day. It’s cute and one of those ones that can make you go “awww” but as I watched I started to think about the parallels we have with the baby squirrel. Watch the video, I’ll explain afterwards…

… So here’s what struck me:

• sometimes what stops us is the knowledge of how to progress
• when the knowledge is there the problem can be lack of courage
• even when help appears it may not be in the form we expect and tackling that requires a whole new batch of courage and knowledge
• perseverance works if you are a) motivated, b) encouraged and ultimately c) helped

But you know what really struck me? It was the big squirrel. To me it seems to get very frustrated yet it keeps trying to get the baby to jump – even to the point of pushing it up the wall. I looked a that squirrel and I wondered how often am I not like that? How often do I allow my frustrations to get the better of me and I end up giving up on someone who needs help? How often do I give in too easily and just help the other person take the short-cut? And how often am I the baby squirrel without realising or recognising it?

I’m doing some basic research on teaching kids to program computers. If you teach (or have taught) kids to program I’d value your response. I’m using zoomerang for this so if the survey doesn’t appear below try going to the direct page for it. If you know any ICT teachers (or just parents who teach their own kids to program – please pass this onto them.

I’ll post the results later here and on my Free Software Magazine blog.

Another quality video. Although sometimes these types of productions can become a bit “samey”, I think the presentation here really brings the text to life and in the end it is a cracking text.

( h/t @biblefresh )

The passion in the message here is excellent as is the quality of the video. ( h/t @theeruditefrog )

Thanks to Robb (@changingworship) for highlighting this brilliant and cutting piece by Bill Maher in the US. Be aware that it has swearing in it. Also I feel it will probably make us Christians feel a little uncomfortable – if it’s only the swearing that does that then I applaud you.

The thing is that non-Christians have long been able to better tell how Christians should be behaving than we seem to be. “That’s not a very Christian thing to do”, “I thought you were a Christian?” – that kind of thing. We dismiss it with “I’m not perfect” and “God isn’t finished with me yet” but we need to ask are they right when they make such accusations and also why do they make them in the first place? For some reason they expect more of us than we often expect of ourselves. Maher says: “If you ignore every thing Jesus commanded you to do then you’re not his followers, you’re just fans” and he’s right. Yes we can laugh at the idea of “fundementalist Christians” holding babies under the baptismal water until they talk but let’s be careful not to distance ourselves too far from the message behind it. If the rest of the world has a poor view of Christians and Christianity then there really is only one place to lay the blame: at the feet of the Church – which we keep on telling ourselves is the people and not the building.

Recently I had a conversation with a new Christian (for want of a better term). They expressed a concern that they felt they still weren’t getting it right (after 3 weeks!). After 35 years of being in the same boat all I could say was “join the club”. In the end though we must remember that the message we bring (and should live) is that all fall short of the standard Jesus set and that God loved the entire world so much that he gave his only Son to make up the difference. This does not give us an excuse to stop trying and to live in ways that the person we claim to follow would not have done.