Last night was really powerful, both within the community we live in and for me personally.  I am exhausted today, but there are a bunch of things bouncing around me:

• being planted in nourishing soil is a fragile gift - I am so grateful for finding that here in Austin
• there is a generation of people taking up leadership across institutions in the U.S. that are REALLY different from the Boomer/Buster constructs - yea yea yea
• singing is usually more powerful for me than some one speaking opinions or facts
• never underestimate the power of BBQ & good tex-mex

There is something going on in the creation we inhabit.  For me, it is easy to mistake programs or candidates for movements - to see thing like web 2.0 or the emerging church phenomenon or even Barack Obama as trigger of social change.  Every once in a while, when I can peek around the edges of the frame I process the world in, I can see that web 2.0 or the emerging church phenomenon or even Barack Obama are symptoms of a social & cultural change, sometimes even accelerators of that social change, occasionally even distractions from that social change.

There is also something going on in the ways we locate one another.  Most of my adult life, categories and key words served as short hand - hypelinks that unpack the coordinates of who I could imagine you to be.  In truth, these categories were shields from ever having to interact with people as...people, as a real live creation made in the image of some Creator. 

As I stood at the back of a glorious old building last night, my mind wandered to a person I admire a great deal - Will Samson.  The Samson family are pioneers in the rag-tag movement that is shape-shifting all around us.  Will is PhD student, studying social movements & how faith communities are animated/aminating so many of these movements (from defending mountains in Appalachia to living more sustainable lives to new moedls of community).  In response to the litmus test of 2008 categories (Fb), Will lists himself as:

 

For the longest time, I clung to categories, party  & denominational affiliations as the primary way I plotted out who I am and what I know.  Last night, Jim Wallis likened these categories to the gang warfare that continues to grip so much of the neighborhoods around the world, the sectarian violence that pits Shia against Sunis, Crips against Bloods, whites against non-whites.  If there had been an altar call last night, I suspect I would answered it - and laid down again my "colors", the categories I use to bound myself.

I suspect that part of what is propelling many of these movements is what Will calls post-categorical - and I am overjoyed to leap into that stream.