Again, building connections between people through social objects. Social objects that are things or ideas that are sitting around waiting for someone to go "oh this is interesting" and someone else to go "yes I think so too" because that's the beginning of a new relationship and lots of those together make a community. That's the schtick.
It's why blogging and social media can be really good for building community. At the moment, we give more attention to the connections that people make with each other through anger, resentment, confusion and hatred - finding common bonds in who we don't like and in the arguments that show other people are just wrong.
So I try to weave into that environment some positive and useful bonds, ones that encourage diversity and start from the principle of inclusion. That's why working in a church ought to be a good place to do it. Not all churches are as at home with diversity and inclusion as they profess to be on Sunday. I'm grateful though that I landed in one where it's written into our mission. One of my worries at the moment is that the members of the Muslim community, who use our Hall for Friday prayers might not be able to come to lunch because they're praying.
I had a few people to contact today after yesterday's post about Friday Lunch. I also had some work to do on the website. Oh and the Bowls Club has some vacancies.
Following yesterday's order of service from 1965, today I pulled out 18 chorister's caps from the box. One or two of them still had name labels in them. I think they might have been the non-standard sized ones. It must have been important that they got the same cap every week because they had a bigger head than everyone else. Or perhaps it was lice...
And then I started counting out the dead batteries from the waste-box, but realised that some of them were a bit leaky and just needed to go to the recycling centre. There were a lot. We're looking at all the things for which we might be able to be a central point for collection. To make it easier for people to recycle and re-use. Social objects again - something to talk about, something to do that feels useful.
OK that's 28 days of making, sharing or at least being conscious of my creative process in a randomly guided way. From tomorrow I'm going to choose a project to work on for the next 28 days - it will be something big enough to take a few weeks of thinking, making and then probably re-thinking and re-making. It might not be finished in 28 days. I don't know what it's going to be yet, that's the first decision.