Listen up. The Real Live Preacher is my kind of searcher. He’s a minister in South Texas 
who started a blog as a sort of personal refuge from his church–a confessional place where he could voice some of the doubt and confusion in his life, or so he thought. He began, as he says, “on a whim”–(calling to mind Emerson’s line in Self-Reliance: “I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.“) But then the readers of the Preacher’s blog took over. “I lost control of the blog,” the Preacher told me. “I was drug along kicking and screaming” into the formation of “a virtual congregation,” he said. Julie Powell of the Julie-Julia Project (of New York Times fame today!) introduced me to the Preacher’s site. It’s a spiritual oasis on the blog map, a place of struggle and tears, inspired storytelling, belief in disbelief, hope against hope, mystery and authenticity. You’ll be glad you heard his voice.
The Preacher got me thinking again not only of the prophet Emerson but of the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. 
In the 1950s Teilhard anticipated this Internet space, the “planetary thinking network” which he called the “noosphere,” noos being the Greek word for mind. The Real Preacher remembered what I had forgotten: that Teilhard also coined the idea of The Omega Point. WIRED rediscovered Teilhard as the visionary who “set down the philosophical framework for planetary, Net-based consciousness 50 years ago.” Which only confirms that, as another prophet said, “there is nothing new under the sun,” except perhaps our little bursts of understanding.
Have a listen to the Preacher.
And check out another example of his storytelling here.
{ 13 } Comments
just FYI - the CSS on this page no workie in Safari. None of the links activate.
Not *quite* true - the ones on the right-hand side (calendar and other links) are fine. But yes, it’s still annoying.
I’m very fond of Real Live Preacher - I’m not religious, and don’t ever think that I will be, but he writes beautifully well, and reminds me of what it’s like to be *good*. Not all religious believers are good people, by any means, and many good people are perfectly non-religious (either agnostic or atheist), but Real Live Preacher is a shining example of a good man.
And, as I mentioned before, he writes wonderfully well. The Tamales posts - http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/2003/01/22.html and http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/2003/01/26.html - are particularly wonderful.
Safari at home also seemed to crowd text. Maybe some conflict between the combined CSS line heights and older font tags?
With Mozilla on this borrowed Red Hat box the page looks & works OK — except for unreadable italic section in the Julie/Julia report.
Alas, this machine lacks a sound card, but I’ll come back to listen to the preacher from home. Love those tamales! Thanks, Chris!
This blog is reaching the kaleidoscopic dimensions that are also characteristic of Lydon’s passionate on-air explorations.
One need merely strap oneself in and enjoy the ride!
Phil Murray
[i]There is a hunger out there for what Lydon has to offer.[/i]
I’m downloading the actual interview of RLP right now, but I just wanted to comment about how great this string of “investigations” are. This is definitely something that the Blogosphere needs — a well-researched and detailed list of who is “important” in contemporary Blog-culture.
Blogs have been creating an interesting form of “community” that has been a current topic of discussion on various Blogsites. I’m thankful to have Real Live Preacher as part of my own community and I’m glad that you are posting a way to intelligently find others who may become part of my community in the future.
Very cool. Very right.
Thank you.
As a fan of Teillard and Emerson, I hope you don’t forget about the other Jesuit media theorist, Walter Ong, who died quite recently; he was a contemporary and colleague of Marshall McLuhan who said “The writer’s audience is always a fiction”, and wrote ‘Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word’.
I have created a tribute weblog with some quotes and links, and I’m hoping anyone with comments, and quotes might post them.
walterong.jonathandruy.com
Thanks for this interview, which as you can see on my blog, has stimulated a lot.
Will check out the Ong blog, Jonathan.
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