A heads up to all you interested in the fusion of the Emerging Church conversation and established Christian fellowships. Tyler Priest, a good friend of mine, has written a great primer to the whole thing here, and is asking for ideas on how to conceive of the Stone-Campbell Movement’s intrigue and experiment into postmodern expressions, and the Emerging Church. Check it out and leave him a comment. If you’re wondering what Emerging Church is, head to Emergent Village to learn more.

Katrina and I are wrapping things up here in Indy. We had an amazing time last Sunday at Southeastern Church inviting them to partner with us in some of our next steps forward in church planting in Chicago. I am continually grateful to be hooked up with them, and look forward to ways in which we can work together to develop an ‘emerging’ expression of God’s Kingdom that is deeply rooted to its ancient faith.

Taking a little breather from hammering away at my final school projects, I decided to tinker around on some favorite blogs.

A few things I found today:

- A good “overview” interview with Alan Hirsch on New Wineskins magazine. Who knew his religious heritage was the same as mine? I look forward to re-reading his and Frost’s stuff again once I graduate.

- The start of what will be a great discussion on the feasibility of non-industrialized food. Gotta love Josh Brown for bringing up the questions we were all asking, but didn’t have the photos/design to go along with it! His question: organic food may be planted in ways that sustain the earth, but is a whole world eating organic food sustainable?

- Finally, someone I can vote for!

- Rob delves into Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene here. Meme’s are ideas that are pushed by societies down through generations. It is the phenomenon of the survival of ideas. Dawkins question: Is God nothing more than a meme? a viral idea?

The latest Speaking of Faith podcast had Krista Tippett interviewing Janna Levin, theoretical mathematician, philosopher and author of A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. She has spent her career looking into the realities of existence and truths of the universe. In the interview, she describes how the universe through mathematics is completely predetermined, and nothing can be considered “free-will” as we understand it.

Now, this might just be my American free-spirit predetermining my response here, but I have to humbly disagree with her.

With what little I know of Mandelbrot Set (M-Set) Fractals (see a totally sweet post on them here) they are a repeating rhythm based on a simple equation that ideally go on for infinity. They have infinite precision, but they are not touchable.

Arthur C. Clark (wrote 2001: A Space Oddessy) narrated a movie series on fractal geometry called “Fractals - the Colors of Infinity”. I’ve included the YouTube video (1st part) below. (A little cheezy, but you owe it to yourself to watch this…)

Fractals like this explain the motion of the planets around the sun, the shape and movement of clouds, continents, or trees, right down to DNA revolving around itself. What is so unusual about the M-Set is that is both complete and incomplete - both fully definable and fully indefinable. It is like islands of order in the sea of chaos. The M-Set is infinitely complex, organic, fluid, and yet completely definable and simple.

I believe the realities of the M-Set Fractal help us understand how parts of our universe is both revealed and concealed, both mysterious and definable. When we think about predeterminism, and free-will, no longer are we confined to choose one side or the other. Maybe through mathematics, we can understand that God allows free-will and yet knows everything. Maybe we can understand how God is both revealed and mysterious…

In my opinion, the Mandelbrot Set (nicknamed the “thumbprint of God”) offers a question to Jenna Levin, and invites deep questions into existence, consciousness, and organic reality in the universe.

Now there’s a way to share other posts and articles I find on all your blogs. Google Reader (my rss aggregate) has a way to share items I’ve found to be extra helpful or intriguing. It’s also a chance to deepen a conversation started on a post I’ve recently written.

On my sidebar, I’ve started keeping a twitter box with two or three of my latest favoritest posts from around the blogosphere. Keep an eye out for it, you might just see your blog up there.

Okay - everyone’s gotta check “Talk to Jesus” out.

Pointless avarice that defames our Lord? Or culturally relevant tool for Gen X?