The center is where God is…

EmergentVillage just posted a series of videos of Peter Rollins and Phyllis Tickle, along with some short annotations. I haven’t had time to watch all of them, but this caught my eye:

Peter Rollins describes two of the “values” shared by those in “the emerging community”:

“suspended space” — “We try to create a space in our week, a liturgical hour, where there’s neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, Republican nor Democrat, employed nor unemployed, liberal nor conservative; where we can encounter each other at a deeper level than our mere affirmations. Not because they’re not important, but because we need to have a place where we can encounter each other at a deeper level.”

“donut structure” — “I love the idea of a community that has no center. The center is voided. The center is where God is. And we practice relational tithing and relational pastoring. … We call this the idea that the role of the leader is to refuse to be a leader, so as to push back and get a priesthood of all believers.”

I LOVE that they are speaking in these terms! I suppose, in part, because this is what learning is about and it’s a wonderful evocation of something Parker Palmer’s been talking about — and I’ve been trying to practice — for years.

Fernando muses on a similar set of ideas, concluding that “I’m much more interested in being honest than right.”