Listen up. The Real Live Preacher is my kind of searcher. He’s a minister in South Texas 
who started a blog as a sort of personal refuge from his church–a confessional place where he could voice some of the doubt and confusion in his life, or so he thought. He began, as he says, “on a whim”–(calling to mind Emerson‘s line in Self-Reliance: “I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim.“) But then the readers of the Preacher’s blog took over. “I lost control of the blog,” the Preacher told me. “I was drug along kicking and screaming” into the formation of “a virtual congregation,” he said. Julie Powell of the Julie-Julia Project (of New York Times fame today!) introduced me to the Preacher’s site. It’s a spiritual oasis on the blog map, a place of struggle and tears, inspired storytelling, belief in disbelief, hope against hope, mystery and authenticity. You’ll be glad you heard his voice.
The Preacher got me thinking again not only of the prophet Emerson but of the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. 
In the 1950s Teilhard anticipated this Internet space, the “planetary thinking network” which he called the “noosphere,” noos being the Greek word for mind. The Real Preacher remembered what I had forgotten: that Teilhard also coined the idea of The Omega Point. WIRED rediscovered Teilhard as the visionary who “set down the philosophical framework for planetary, Net-based consciousness 50 years ago.” Which only confirms that, as another prophet said, “there is nothing new under the sun,” except perhaps our little bursts of understanding.
Have a listen to the Preacher.
And check out another example of his storytelling here.
{ 39 } Comments
just FYI – the CSS on this page no workie in Safari. None of the links activate.
Not *quite* true – the ones on the right-hand side (calendar and other links) are fine. But yes, it’s still annoying.
I’m very fond of Real Live Preacher – I’m not religious, and don’t ever think that I will be, but he writes beautifully well, and reminds me of what it’s like to be *good*. Not all religious believers are good people, by any means, and many good people are perfectly non-religious (either agnostic or atheist), but Real Live Preacher is a shining example of a good man.
And, as I mentioned before, he writes wonderfully well. The Tamales posts – http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/2003/01/22.html and http://blogs.salon.com/0001772/2003/01/26.html – are particularly wonderful.
Safari at home also seemed to crowd text. Maybe some conflict between the combined CSS line heights and older font tags?
With Mozilla on this borrowed Red Hat box the page looks & works OK — except for unreadable italic section in the Julie/Julia report.
Alas, this machine lacks a sound card, but I’ll come back to listen to the preacher from home. Love those tamales! Thanks, Chris!
This blog is reaching the kaleidoscopic dimensions that are also characteristic of Lydon’s passionate on-air explorations.
One need merely strap oneself in and enjoy the ride!
Phil Murray
[i]There is a hunger out there for what Lydon has to offer.[/i]
I’m downloading the actual interview of RLP right now, but I just wanted to comment about how great this string of “investigations” are. This is definitely something that the Blogosphere needs — a well-researched and detailed list of who is “important” in contemporary Blog-culture.
Blogs have been creating an interesting form of “community” that has been a current topic of discussion on various Blogsites. I’m thankful to have Real Live Preacher as part of my own community and I’m glad that you are posting a way to intelligently find others who may become part of my community in the future.
Very cool. Very right.
Thank you.
As a fan of Teillard and Emerson, I hope you don’t forget about the other Jesuit media theorist, Walter Ong, who died quite recently; he was a contemporary and colleague of Marshall McLuhan who said “The writer’s audience is always a fiction”, and wrote ‘Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word’.
I have created a tribute weblog with some quotes and links, and I’m hoping anyone with comments, and quotes might post them.
walterong.jonathandruy.com
Thanks for this interview, which as you can see on my blog, has stimulated a lot.
Will check out the Ong blog, Jonathan.
http://www.google163.net
I like extraordinary here, make friends with you
U blog is useful and unique.
Thank you.
网络营销
Cool…
Nice…
Nice post and blog
Thanks for sharing
One day I was at my girl friends house and she yelled for me to come down to the bath room and said she had something in her back I tried to get it out and it hart so she stopped me. So I left her be after about five minutes she yelled for me to come to her to see what she pulled out of her back it was I littal white stone and when I looked closer I could see my name on it. in very small righting it said alton fischer.
My girl friends name was grace.
So much moor to tell .
wewewe
wewe
great post, thanks.
Thought provoking, interesting but also extremely well written. The great thing about this is that it makes me want to start digging for more. Great post.
Once in a while you come across a post, read it… and then you feel you have to read it again. This was one of those posts. Lovely work.
What a breath of fresh air this post is. Nice to get the brain thinking and digesting instead of flicking through the same old posts we are used to on other sites.
the preachers nowadays.
meuble salle de bain
Nothing new under the sun, you bet you are right
What can I say
“I was drug along kicking and screaming” into the formation of “a virtual congregation,” he said. This was an interesting perspective of the whole situation.
The earlier comment did not stick. I downloaded the audio and listened to it. It is worth listening to.
Another page of irrelevant comments
Thanks for this lyon,…
Great posting lyon..
The Preacher got me thinking again not only of the prophet Emerson but of the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin.
Thank you very much for your time.
Douglas Simons
Atlanta Pressure Wahing
Great article, I like the style! 🙂
The real live preacher’s mp3 of his story telling is excellent!
The Internet has become a vast resource for trying to discover truth. The challenge is discerning truth from untruth.
i agree with the comment above. if you don’t believe it, you need to search more
cheers
Yeah, but sometimes you can’t believe everything you find on the internet, at least the information comes from a prestigious university.
Great posting lyon..
great and good posting lyon, i always wait for your next post
It is the best time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy. I’ve read this post and if I could I desire to suggest you few interesting things or tips. Maybe you can write next articles referring to this article. I wish to read even more things about it!
{ 2 } Trackbacks
[…] http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lydondev/2003/08/13/real-live-preacher-soul-talk-in-the-blogosphere/ […]
travel forum…
This is a great site, could you be interested in doing an interview regarding how you developed it? If so e-mail me!…