Plastic Language

We should start by saying that this site is comprised of working documents: fragments, collections of quotations, passing thoughts, and ideas as they are still forming. While the podcast is more crafted and ordered, the blog is likely to be messy and chaotic. Working through complex ideas is always difficult, possibility painful, and full of unknowns. Each of us bring different perspectives to the table – both from one another and within ourselves. In the words of the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd." We are never singular, always caught between different versions of ourselves – we’re weird collections of matter, trying to understand what it means to exist.

One of the many hopes for this space is to reveal the plasticity of ideas and language. Concepts, beliefs, doctrines that the church holds tightly are interpretations developed in particular contexts. This is not to say they are untrue, but that they might be more flexible and slippery than we usually imagine. We are always looking for new readings, unearthing forgotten readings, and seeking pathways through texts and traditions that we are deeply embedded within.

Many of the positions taken up here may appear to be in conflict when they can actually exist simultaneously in one individual’s thoughts. This does not slide everything into a singular sameness, but instead, it is a way to affirm difference, to allow for complexity and nuance within seemingly unified ideas.

One example of this might be the way in which we think ourselves as singular individual human bodies. We can identify the edges of our bodies as different from others, carrying our own thoughts and actions, navigating the world alongside others, but differentiated. We have to do this to function in society.

However, it is also true to say that we are a collection of cells, working together to performing the necessary functions to keep us alive.  These cells come into contact with other cells, dying and continually being replaced. Within our bodies are trillions of organisms (bacteria, archaea, protozoa, fungi, etc.) – more than half of the cells in our body are made up of these microorganisms.  This structure is far more chaotic and messy than we like to think about – we have very little control over the majority of what we are.

We can also think about the human within group formations. We often think of ourselves based on different identity markers, separating ourselves from other groups and aligning with our own. While the cellular level unravels the individual at the microscopic level, group formations unravel the individual on the macro. Differences in scale reveal different actualities.

These are just a few of many simultaneous and true perspectives on the ways we conceptualize the human individual. Depending on the context, you will have to slide between these structures. It would make very little sense to talk about a church as a strange cluster of microorganisms with a hint of human cellular structures, but it doesn’t make it less true – just generally something unconsidered in this context. With that said, what would it mean to test out the cellular perspective in this context? How might we rethink our church practices?