We’re usually looking forward to find innovation. What’s the next big thing? What’s coming next? Future! At times though, looking backwards might provide a richer source of inspiration. Overlooked ideas lay in wait to be revived. Simple practices long forgotten may be the answer to a present problem. There’s also the cyclically recurring retrofitting of culture, most obvious in the fashion world. Iconography of an earlier age is appropriated and remixed into a hybrid form using past style values to make a statement.Dan Gould :: psfk.com :: Old Is New? Tangible Vs. Virtual
This paragraph from one of my fave blogs caught my eye today... and its been circulating around my head... orbiting, if you will, as I considered possible implications.
...Overlooked ideas lay in wait to be revived. Simple practices long forgotten may be the answer to a present problem...I look at the concepts/ideas/inspiration of emerging missional expressions of faith... and I see people trying to rekindle old ideas... revive simple practices that have been overlooked in the modern world. Its an ancient/future thing... looking back beyond all the nonsense to a time when things were more aligned... and then seeking to apply these ideas to now... and to the future. Celtic Christianity is one such source of inspiration... for me, anyway.
I also look to the origins of the Salvation Army and consider what the movement could be if we weren't so parochial in our thinking and so obsessed with our ways... and our separateness. Back to days where the fire was hot. I don't want those days back... I want new days filled with new experiences... but I would be a fool to forget my past... or try to base my expression of faith on the sands of recent days.
Seek inspiration where ever you can find it... but make it work for now... don't follow slavishly like some retro-obsessive. We need to remix the past to bring it into now.
What do you think?
2 comments:
Nice post
We've all been futurized.
Even in the tiniest things we are looking and thinking about two or three hours in the future.
Its hard even to centered enough to live in the present...be still and all that.
I find more (is it because I'm getting older) that I love the power of the ancient...ideas that have lasted generations...knowing that saints and sinners have said the same words and undertaken the same practices for millenia. At the same time I find them relevant for today.
For me, one of the best things Booth did was help destroy the old match-making industry which gave the poor workers phossy jaw (deadly). He did it through social enterprise. He set up a new business making matches using a different material which didn't use stuff that caused phossy jaw. 10 years later, when the industry was revolutionised and using the new method, he shut down the original operation. Brilliant. How can we do this today for the world's exploited workers?
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