[/caption] As with any form of poverty this poverty of soul is marked by a lack of local sufficiency and sustainability. Rather than a vast multiculturalism of varied forms born from varied places we have culture filtered through the manufacturing centers of industrial media. Local places are left reading, watching, listening, and even tasting what was produced from these cultural centers. How then do we develop productive culture at home? We must start by taking back the means of production and make the home a place of cultural innovation. Write plays about and for your place, film documentaries about local stories, sit around with friends and play music. Just as many of us are returning to local control of our food, growing it and cooking it ourselves, we must reclaim cultural sovereignty. We should open ourselves to the new tools at our disposal. Certain cultural forms like video are becoming widely available and affordable, as is audio recording. Of course, to reclaim local culture we must reclaim time. Producing culture take time and it takes space in our lives. We must learn to quit and quit well all of the things vying for our attention. Sabbaths are required for resurrection—and this is no different for our cultural life. So quit something, gather around the fire with friends, and make a new thing happen.]]>
Ragan,
You're comments remind me of what Wendell Berry says about place and imagination in his book Standing By Words;
To preserve our places and be at home in them, it is necessary to fill them with imagination. To imagine as well as see what is in them. Not to fill them with the junk of fantasy and unconsciousness, for that is no more than the industrial economy would do, but to see them first clearly with the eyes, and then to see them with the imagination in their sanctity, as belonging to the Creation.
To imagine the place as it is, and was, and – only then – as it will be or may be. To imagine its human life only in harmony with its nonhuman life – as one, only one, of it's possibilities. In that imagining, perhaps we may begin to see it in its sacredness, as unimaginable gift, as mystery – as it was, is, and every shall be, world without end.
I hear you saying that we are living off of borrowed imagination, as opposed to a homegrown imagination, and I couldn't agree more. A real challenge I think is that our communities are lacking the gathering places where nurturing imagination happens, locally. I'm hopeful about the way churches might play this role in our communities.
Thanks for your work. I appreciate the direction you all are going with this.
Ragan,
As important as the local culture we create is, we should also value the the local traditional culture that has managed to survive, be it music, craft, verbal art, custom, process, or local lore.
Ragan,
As important as the local culture we create is, we should also value the the local traditional culture that has managed to survive, be it music, craft, verbal art, custom, process, or local lore.