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iBrian

iBrian

Peace, Love and Unity
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So I built a little house, and invited people to stop by if they wanted to chat.

I said the house would be a good place to discuss spirituality, and those who came by were interested in discussing spirituality.

I called them my friends and they called me my friend, and we had good company together.

Material responsibilities called me away from the house - another child, moving home twice, and especially setting up in business after being unemployed nearly a decade.

I asked friends to help keep the little house friendly and they jumped in to help, even though it would cost them time and patience.

Responsibilities meant I returned to the little house less and less frequently.

When I did, I felt I had no time to talk with my friends. I simply looked in to make sure the place had not fallen to fighting, and where it had, try to resolve it.

As the company grew, so the arguments grew. So it became a labour simply to turn up.

I tried different ways to prevent the fighting - hard and ruthless, soft and forgiving, but neither approach particularly worked for long.

And now I have come back to find the little house in disarray. Friends hurt, the place a mess, the little house exhorting my negligence.

My friends, one and all, I have let you down by not supporting you when you supported me.

For that you have my abject apologies, and sincere thanks for your patience.

I have a lot of PM's to go through, a lot of threads to read. I need to think seriously on what CR is and should be. I need to re-open forgotten doors long-closed on spirituality.
 
It's a lovely little house. :)

The more friends you have to stop over, the more of a mess gets made. To have a perfect show home you just need to have no-one in it...;)

s.
 
Rose colored glasses alert....


I see this place as not so different than our world at large...

in the best city in the world....there are streets that many wouldn't walk down....

in the nicest home in the world...there is a garbage can...of stuff that was once required and useful....

sure there are issues...and some are hard headed that one chooses to ignore or encounter...

but they are known entities and after a few tussles folks make choices...

and even the hard headed have friends...and see themselves as the solution and others as hard headed...

there are folks that are loose with their thought and those that are tight...

folks that follow a wide path...and folks that follow a narrow path...

all truly want to be understood...and believe that their thought and ideas would benefit others...if others would only understand what they do....

there is a lot...a lot of love here...on all sides

there is a lot...a lot of tolerance here...on all sides

I appreciate the house....and the variety of tenents.

I honor what you've done....and those you've left to tend it in your absence.

I thank you...I don't wander in a lot of other homes....I've found one that I like here...and I thank you.

Hey...is this my beer in the fridge?? Well it is now! Any responses, you'll find me on the recliner in the lounge.
 
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Enjoyed your post, I,Brian.

I found it a parable of Christ and thought of this...

"...Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8

Keep up the good work!
[/FONT]
 
I, Brian-this is still a great place to hang out.:) thanks for creating it, earl
 
wil said:
Any responses, you'll find me on the recliner in the lounge.
Click to expand...

Don't mean to be rude...but that's my recliner you're on.:p

s.

(and actually my glasses are blue tinted!)
 
Brian, you're doing a fine job. This has got to be one of the highest quality comparative religion forums on the internet. Sure, there have been and will continue to be bumps in the road. Ever notice how a true community will pull together when faced with rough spots? This community will do the same. :)
 
The pressure builds slowly for a long time, until the earth crust can take it no more, so earthquakes and volcano eruptions come along, the tectonic plates shift and then all is back to normality.
 
Brian...do whatever you have to to keep the home fires burning bright. But whatever you do...do it so that this house is kept as "real" as possible. That's what real people long for the world over, to exist and interact in a "real" place. CR is the best I've found. Lots of wonderful people here.

flow....:)
 
Hi Brian--

I was trying to put myself in your shoes, and I was thinking that the situation reminded me of one of those interior design shows where the chief designer goes out to secure funding or materials or even eat lunch, and comes back and the design team is arguing with the carpentry team, and the drywall team has walked out along with the painters, and the woman who lives in the house is in tears because she hates the Pepto pink walls in the living room and the purple suede sofa in the den!

I wonder if that is how it feels, sort of? Anyway, as you and others have pointed out to me before (and it has become a favorite analogy of mine), CR has stormy seasons, but they pass by, and what they leave behind is what enables the new grass to grow and the roses bloom again. When the storms get too intense for me, I tend to say so for a short while. But what good does shaking one's fist at the lightning do? One might get one's portrait painted doing it, but ultimately, unless a stroll in a gullywasher is the goal, then taking temporary cover has its merits. I notice the lounge is filling up--must be the beer and the big "comfy chairs". :D

InPeace,
InLove,
Debora
 
InLove said:
I was trying to put myself in your shoes, and I was thinking that the situation reminded me of one of those interior design shows where the chief designer goes out to secure funding or materials or even eat lunch, and comes back and the design team is arguing with the carpentry team, and the drywall team has walked out along with the painters, and the woman who lives in the house is in tears because she hates the Pepto pink walls in the living room and the purple suede sofa in the den!
Click to expand...

I loved that analogy. :)

It looks as though calm is returning again, and I'm going to try and stick around a bit more for some time.

I try and work with CR on an intuitive basis, but at present it isn't telling me to make any particularly radical changes.

The only change that immediately comes to mind is to move the Lib Christianity board back into Christianity, and try to keep a holistic approach to the faith even if that sometimes means turbulence. Even still, I know some people like the idea of a Liberal board, so I'm not jumping in to remove it at present, even though that was also birthed from previous turbulence.
 
Hi Brian.

I think that from a forum user's point of view it's natural to want to hang out where the action is. Look at it like a hotel. Everyone enters into a grand lobby, and a great many people will most enjoy meeting and greeting and conversing in that large space. When they get thirsty they can head into the lounge, but they may want to bring their drink back out into the lobby and continue hobnobbing. But some people will want to find a semi-private space for a more intimate or specialized conversation. That's where walled gardens should come in.

Being that Christianity, as a meta-topic, is where the most interest lies, I think that the problem has been that there is no large space, no lobby or rumpus room, where everyone interested in Christianity as a conversational entry point can hang out and discuss whatever without some pesky staffer trying to herd them off into one or another smaller venue. There needs to be a commons in regard to Christianity where all manner of conversation is permissible. That should be the large end of the funnel. From there break it down any way you want structure wise.

The fight over what is, and what is not legitimately Christian should occur several levels of specificity below the large space of Christianity Common. Those with an overwhelming itch to fight that battle should not control the larger conversation. They shouldn't control the rumus room.

Chris
 
Oh, and Brian...

You've got a really nice little forum here. Don't get obsessed with structure. You know, I've played a lot of strategy computer games. And I'm an aquarium enthusiast. When you're setting things up, wanting to achieve a pretty flow chart of how things will be structured, with x number of categories, each with x number of subcatagories, trying to make it so everything will work by itself, it's easy to forget about the users. People herd worse than cats. If the fish in your aquarium, or the mice in your maze don't want to herd the way you had in mind,the solution may not be to add more complexity to the habitat.

Management loves structure, but structure has to be ergonomic to promote harmonious growth. You gotta figure out what the fish want!

Chris
 
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