Recently I intereviewed Deiter, the new storyteller (pastor) of Humble Ancient Future Gathering of All Saints Church in Austin, Texas. I was a guest on his show “The Technomergent Channel” and asked him a few questions about the new Technomergent movement. He didn’t speak to me with words, but kindly responded with a mix of mime and sign language which was interpreted through a physical linguistics analyst and sent to my offices here in San Diego. Deiter layed out several humble suggestions for those communicating with him through his spiritual porthole (blog). Below are his suggestions from a technomergent rev.

These are not rules, only personal opinions forged out of years of painful introspection and emotional implosion. These rules were revealed to me while handling my chakra beads and crawling through a labyrinth in a bakasana yoga position as I listened to Morrissey on my iPod.

“Let’s take a journey” with no destination in mind, no captain to guide, and no map to keep us on track. Let’s “enter the conversation” but please don’t say anything, just listen. And if you do, please clarify that it is your personal interpretation, and if it is your personal interpretation or opinion, it should be all inclusive while excluding words like “only” or “absolute.” “Let’s imagine together,” but please make sure your imagination is limited only to those approved and accepted thoughts which are exclusively inclusive. Do not let your imagination wander too far, or you might begin to believe in something objective, clear, transcendent and immanent. As a matter of safety, it might be wise for you to imagine that you can’t be right. Your imagination must be based upon the assumption that you’re wrong and if you imagine you’re right, you are definitely wrong (unless you’re right that you can’t be right, then that’s ok). “Let’s find ways to creatively expand our faith horizon,” but let’s make sure that we are placing our faith in the idea of faith and not an object, lest you recommend that object to others and find yourself speaking too much in the “conversation” and pointing people to a particular destination in their “journey.” That would be taboo, and frankly annoy all of us. “Let’s express our spirituality,” but please, for the love of he/she/it G/god/higher power (if you are having difficulty with the word “power” because it sounds authoritarian, you can use the word phlifterofftenopf- we’re pretty sure that won’t offend anyone), try not to express it in a way that would cause competitive jealousy. If you do express it emotively with joy, please do so in a way that doesn’t offend those that are still having a “conversation” or those that are not as far along in their “journey” or else you might hurt their creative capacity to grow their “faith” in their “faith,” and we all know (not in any absolute way of course, just more like we know that we think we can know with our limited ability to know anything) that isn’t very spiritual.

Lastly, I want to encourage all of us to consider this collective wisdom for the sake of our authentic community. It’s important that community is seen as the main goal here, and that it is not fake but authentic. To be authentic we need to simply allow ourselves to be free to do all the above without limitation- even if the above comments feel like they are restrictive, they’re really not. These humble opinions gained by experience and filtered through several years of deconstruction are nothing more than guideposts to point us to true authenticity. You can choose to engage yourself in this emerging context or not, the choice is ultimately yours.

:::::DISCLAIMER::::: If you choose not to follow these enlightened suggestions, you will not be allowed to post comments on this board, instead you will be asked to carefully listen to the journey of our spiritual faith and imagine what it is like. Perhaps one day you too will find yourself on the same path as ours (not that one path is right or wrong) and we will be able to converse/journey/imagine/express/engage and emerge authentically.

Till then, may (fill in here) bless you!

I must confess, I have no idea what Deiter just said. Perhaps that is the point.