How hard is it to live in apathy and denial? Comforts abound in an on-demand media saturated, empowered consumer culture. More and more the bubble is being popped as glimpses of a plethora of pain caused by injustice seep into our awareness.

Of the heroes among us, photojournalists who capture the spectrum of human events not only inform on deep levels but move us in one of two directions - awakening us to action or paralyzing us to do nothing.

Micah Albert is a gifted photojournalist who fits such a description. Micah spends time in turbulent areas of Africa documenting extreme political strife and poverty. A freelancer for the BBC, Zuma Press and the Associated Press, he produces images that are seen throughout the world. His wife Lindsey, an RN, is working on a masters in international health care. Often their work is complimentary.

In a recent Sacramento magazine story / interview: “The movie Blood Diamond only scratches the surface of the horrors happening there. ‘I still haven’t talked out loud about many of the things I’ve seen,’ Micah says. ‘I can’t even journal because I’m afraid.’ Yet he asks Sudanese friends to get him past rebel forces to photograph school children or AIDS testing. ‘The best way I’ve found to communicate is thorough my camera. If I can tell a whole story of an extremely complicated issue with one image, that hooks me.’”

His recent atypical blog “Rent Luxury” is proof as to how experiential participation in the two thirds world adjusts our perspectives and appropriately challenges our skewed value systems (also known as reverse culture shock). It’s time for a reality check. Are we awake, paralyzed or too comfortable to notice?

You can see Micah’s stunning work at: Michael Albert.com and Zuma Press

Purple State of Mind documentary provides insightful perspectives which open up long overdue conversations within polarized cultural trenches. True freedom and honesty brings courage to help liberate others from deep bias on both sides of the cultural divide. Or at least embark upon the journey.

The scope of my personal horizons have recently been stretched to capacity. The direction of change I am experiencing has been confirmed by the “emerging” dialog. I want to move beyond the dialog, expressing vision through action. More often, I find myself identifying with non Christian thought leaders and activists for world change. I do not see God’s work in the earth limited to Christians – if that were the case – progress in many areas would be severely limited. Assuming that I was already living in a purple state of mind, and purple is a favorite color, I thought the film would present little challenge. Wrong.

Purple State of Mind is filmmaker, author, friend, Craig Detweiler’s, and novelist, journalist John’s Mark’s feature documentary directing debut. “We didn’t start with a plan, just a mutual desire to find some common ground despite our differences. We had four conversations in four states over the course of one year. We started at a polite distance, before we plunged into our past, and faced our genuine disagreements. Those haven’t gone away. But we’ve renewed our respect for one another and won a hard understanding of our differences. Making Purple State of Mind was an act of hope, but it’s only the beginning.”

Through the film, I was reminded that God values our feelings and respects our opinions about Him whether they are negative or positive. It’s about being honest with our fears, hopes, dreams, doubts, and not relying on pre packaged answers from either side of the divide. God respects honesty and transparency when we all acknowledge our human incapacities for understanding. The more we think we know- we find we know very little. Yet, He affirms our worthiness and in so doing gives us dignity. How often do we award the same dignity to one another regardless of beliefs and opinions about God?

We get it wrong when we see ourselves as more worthy and our belief systems as more enlightened than the next persons. I am undone by my lack of love and patience toward fellow Christ followers as much as I am often undone by their lack of love for one another or the world. Faith is not a one time static decision – it is a life time journey. The final destination may not be what we expected in the beginning. Faith must be honest, certain in uncertainty yet secure and comfortable with paradox and radical change. Faith must remember its origins of humility and need for forgiveness.

God’s love is best exemplified and modeled through family –His heart is tender toward his children – all of them. His heart is broken when any of them refuse His extended hand of eternal relationship. His heart is equally grieved when we misrepresent or distort His love and turn others away. So my question is how well have I loved and represented Christ’s love. How far has my capacity to show love expanded? Letting go of bias is a good place to start.

Ever feel overwhelmed by information? With increased use of Internet, social networks, and mobile devices - the sea of digital information turns into a deluge. The next challenge will be trying to mine, manage and utilize massive amounts of information effectively. Researchers seeking to determine how much new information the world produces in a year found that twice as much new information had been created in 2002 as in 1999, which translates into five exabytes (an exabyte is equal to 1 million terabytes, and a terabyte is equal to 1 million megabytes) of new information created in 2002. It would take 500,000 Libraries of Congress to hold five exabytes of information.

Rest assured once you have your ducks in a row, new technology is poised to disrupt them. This week, Google is announcing an app engine: a new web-hosting platform that enables developers to build highly scalable web apps that run on Google’s infrastructure.

Apps will become very portable and dimensional - moving through a fluid web - they will be able to gather, bundle and deliver interactive, relevant information to various types of delivery points. I envision aps as ultimately becoming holographic.

The approaching Semantic Web is the next step in the evolution of the Internet. As a technology that could transform the way websites work, the semantic web is often also associated with the term “Web 3.0″. According to twine.com a Semantic App developer, “the Semantic Web creates a web of data that allows computers to find, extract, share, re-use information, and potentially even reason with it. Semantic content can be embedded in web pages, published from databases, and gathered into online repositories. Most important, semantic data itself contains “meta-information” so that other services are able to make sense of it.”

Semantic Apps, using the web as a platform, try to determine the meaning of text and other data, and then create connections for users. Here are “10 Semantic Apps to Watch” from Read Write Web.com. Twine uses a semantic approach to act as a personal organizer, bookmark service, and a social network combined – for starters. It follows your tracts, analyzes and sorts your digital activity all with the intent of increasing productivity, collaboration, and minimizing information overload.

My hairdresser routinely carries the recent version of Oprah magazine at her station so I usually check it out. Sometimes you may find something worthwhile, most times not. Oprah is doing a Change the world campaign and listed some interesting comments made by some even more interesting people. The comment that jumped off the page was a quote from Stephen Lewis, Co-director of AIDS-Free World, and former UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. It simply said: “What the world needs most can be conveyed in five words: equality between women and men. What more is there left to say? “

Whoa. Obviously, this guy is on the front lines of some global issues. This topic is high on my radar and I believe that women’s issues are humanitarian issues (since they are half the population) Check out his list of accomplishments, awards, 26 honorary degrees etc. here . In 2005, TIME Magazine listed him among the World’s 100 Most Influential People. I resonate with excepts from an Interview at Dissidentvoice.org:

“One of the most crucial factors at this moment in time before the UN General Assembly is to create an agency for women. I feel strongly the need for this at every front. How can you marginalize 52% of the population and think realistically about achieving social justice?

There is a tremendous job ahead. There is sexual violence in Eastern Congo; there is a need to compile the litany of early alarms and comments that are being made and to document the horror stories that have etched the landscape of public commentary and how much worse it has to become before we end this war on women.

The international system only deals with this on the occasional press release. Instead of a strong women’s agency, the issues get lost as only part of the broader violations of human rights. They are without precedent. Soul destroying. We don’t have an organization to speak about essential human rights components like these. It’s an idea whose time has come. It is only one of the components. There is no sexual autonomy for women right now. It is very much a major factor in the spread of the virus.”

Last week was invited to jump into a blog entitled “What Women Want” part 2 by Johnny and Jenny Baker- part one having garnered the most traffic to the site. I discussed the possibility of creating challenging opportunities outside emerging or institutional church structures. Women of faith have huge potential as world changers – but for the most part, they are muted, devalued and disenfranchised within the church. If empowered, they will in turn empower and help other women globally in tremendous need. There is some real simple math here. It is: one shall set a thousand to flight, and ten - ten thousand to flight. So if the church all of a sudden says it is all about social justice – I’m simply not buying it…How can you marginalize 52% of your constituency and think realistically about achieving social justice.

In the wiser stage of life, somewhere between the ages of 5-7, I often found myself lost in daydreams about infinity and space. I visualized what might lie outside of incalculable material universes and expansive empty voids, musing as to how God might preside within immeasurable time and borderless space. These are the types of things the human mind cannot comprehend. These are also the places where the human imagination begins, is free to roam, and does so within the spheres of science and religion. Imagination is our door to the universe and the unseen. It empowers us to discover and invent as well as construct the future. Its diversions relieve us from the pressure of confronting eternity.

My musings never end. I am an artist. Not a theologian or scientist but a visualizer, an empathic, a visionary, a sage, an interpreter of dreams and metaphor, an anomaly, a threat. A harmonizer and diplomat. Most likely to be misunderstood, I thrive outside the box. Sometimes even a time traveler. Stardust is nothing new and thankfully, the visions, metaphors and dreams never end. They continue to enrich life with dimension and meaning and most of all purpose and creativity. I’ve come to see the various aspects of creation as metaphor – metaphor being one of God’s best languages to humanity. Adults need metaphor to understand the coming age in a cosmic sense as much as children need metaphor to understand the coming world of adulthood. The job of an artist and storyteller is to portray both seen and unseen worlds and repertoires.

With creative license, I continue to ponder the Originator creating invisible spirit and visible material universes, giving life and breath, setting diverse physical realities and dimensions into motion, each having its own sets of physical and spiritual laws governing its existence. If He could set them into motion certainly He could alter, invade or even end any motion as He pleased. Or the motions could play out of their own accord in a cosmic symphony and dance. All of creation could be engaged on deeply personal, intellectual levels and emotional dramas, as the creation itself participates in creation and imagination with Him. Or He could pour the essence of his divinity into the thimble of an earthly existence, conquer death and rise again.

I muse about a reality (I will not even confine “reality” to time and space) that is perfect. Obviously, that reality in not on earth - perhaps it was at one time (ie the garden) but if God were to measure time perhaps that would have been less than a nano second ago for Him.

In pursuit to discover, we find to our peril, that the apparent end of one universe opens many more. Our “knowledge” opens more questions and often creates more problems due to our extreme short sightedness and lack of knowledge, or more appropriately lack of “true” knowledge, or lack of knowledge and wisdom of the invisible worlds that frame the visible.

Artistic imagination can synthesize and mash up concepts for fun. However the real visions and metaphors from a place of super quantum (perfect) reality are timeless and speak through generations of time and space – those are the ones to seek and value. They hold the pearls and kernels of truth, justice, light. They are the cosmic stories which will win out in the end. For the universe is framed on the invisible not the visible. Love is more powerful than any physical force including gravity. It will remain when all else entropies.

Often this preoccupation leads to reading books on physics. An intellectual butterfly, I skip the math and dive as far into the metaphysical concepts and abstract imagery as possible. I am a detective, looking for scientific explanations that give clues to time travel, unexplained quantum events (otherwise known as miracles) visions, mystical experiences, perhaps angelic visitations. I am aware of physical and spiritual realities beyond the ones we daily internalize. As I frequent these realities I become aware of powerful vehicles of transport, the most powerful being prayer. Prayer becomes a quantum activity - we can experience a mundane uninspired reality, or participate in life realities beyond ourselves.

Emersive is living in anticipation and communion. In Him we live move and have our being…. It’s stepping into accelerated time and moving quickly, participating in life’s quickly converging intersections, amassing information, scanning the horizon. Or intentionally transcending the motion and chatter and holding onto the stillness, listening for a long time. Or being patient in pain, and participating with Him there. It is finding adventure and challenge to your faith by being emersed in and participating with a creative God. So creative that every moment is a simultaneously unfolding gift, alive and new on many levels building on the previous yet unlike anything previous. It is expectation of finding Him in the most unexpected people or possibly dangerous places and acknowledging Him there. Spirit is greater and already somehow at work for His purposes and overarching designs. Often His hidden work in us and others is only known to Him. Even if the threat is death – He is there. It is time to be emersed to the fullest measure in all arenas of life.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Harold Whitman

Emersed is life everywhere, connected, overflowing, a cup running over, activated, sustained, energized and motivated by the oil of communion. He is everywhere. Emersive is finding Him there.

The web is the next creative frontier and new formulas for online creativity are beginning to emerge. Imagery will become the dominate communicative tool communicating messages and conveying meaning. As a creative fanatic, I am anticipating and toiling to create venues of opportunity for collaborations between creative digital teams; as artists, filmmakers, and musicians will collaborate virtually to create powerful on line experiences.

Broadband penetration is now more than 80% amongst regular internet users and growing. AOL estimates that 80 % of its page views are driven by images. Google’s new image search generate significantly higher click through rates than text search. Premium rich media ads – video and HD3D out perform other online ads, increasing brand awareness by more than 200% and brand favorability and purchase intent by nearly 100%.

The explosion of sites, blogs and almost unlimited content is driving new online behaviors that demand a more visual approach to capture the attention of web surfers. It’s the simple and iconic images that draw our attention. Check out Miro a great web video utility – technology created by Participatory Culture Foundation. Images will become the essence of search, serving information faster than text. Internet and video will converge. Imagery stirs emotions bringing creative ideas to life, initiating dialog and helping us connect on deeper levels. Get ready for an image rich web.

Read Starfish and the Spider the other night. Love the analogy. The spider is the hierarchical, top down, CEO model organization and the Starfish is the regenerating leaderless hero. Favorite take away: “The decentralized sweet spot is the point along the decentralized - decentralized continuum that yields the best competitive position.” (referring to a hybrid). I’m thinking start out in the sweet spot and go starfishy. The authors never mention the initial visionary, architectural factor. In a way, they put the entrepreneurial element into the creative “catalyst” description while drawing contrasts with the CEO, “…a catalyst interacts with people as peers not by command and control….catalysts depend on emotional intelligence, their job is to create personal relationships, not shareholder value. CEO’s are powerful and directive; at the helm, catalysts are inspirational and collaborative, they talk about ideology and urge people to work together to make the ideology a reality. CEO’s create order and structure; catalysts thrive on ambiguity and apparent chaos (love that one) they do well in situations that call for radical change and creative thinking. A CEO’s job is to maximize profit. A catalyst is usually mission-oriented.”

Playing the analogy out on larger scales such as the Apache based, open source Internet vs corporate / government control leads to some interesting possible future scenarios (and would make some good PS games). One can identify the spider vs the starfish in a historical context seeing how top down cultural institutions invaded the starfish quality of the early church. Now Apache driven models are invading faith community restoring the natural self-regenerating dynamic. Tension between these two types of organizational structures are some times necessary. Most human or natural systems have a way of balancing or self correcting through cycles of time.

Accelerated travel accessibility and virtual communications technologies will change the definition of “missionary.” An inventory of insurmountable global challenges facing humanity along with rapidly evolving virtual technologies are certain to impact the future(now) church. The structure of our near-future global faith community will bear little resemblance to “missionary /church structure” known in the past.

Mission activity will no longer be out of sight, out of mind. An emerging ubiquitous connectivity will help refocus attention and rechannel resources to real needs. Travel “correspondents” or local liaisons will upload video or journalistic stories and events – keeping church donors and those directly involved informed of the physical and spiritual needs of a community. Some of the stories could be picked up by major news channels.

Short term missions, in particular, will need to become media and virtual-centric as wireless, mobile and satellite technologies and infrastructures cover the planet - shrinking diverse global communities and enabling “partnering with a village” as faith communities establish relationships with a village or community in the developing world.

Christian short-term mission organizations are not missional. On an extensive search, I found only 1 out of 40+ that was faith-centric in its purpose and mission yet graciously accommodated and invited people of any background. Most short-term mission sites were characterized by strong Christian language that effectively excluded pre-Christians / non-Christians from participation. A large percentage of sites had shoddy presentations and were not tuned in to the possibilities of incorporating video or emerging virtual media. Rarely were any of these mission organizations included on clearinghouse sites for volunteer programs.

With growing concern regarding possible negative impact their travel might have, people are starting to see a bigger picture and want to be involved in a sustainable, holistic approach to travel. Non-Christian “mission” websites were more far-sighted in their approach and gracious in their hosting abilities. The Internet opens the opportunity for a higher standard of collective wisdom and partnerships. It presents a bigger picture - a connected, participatory global community.

The church is often seen as lacking credibility – uninterested in moral issues that are of major concern for many, including the negative effects of globalization, poverty or global warming(ie creation care) and is better known for its adversarial stance rather than what it supports. In this regard, the church is not presenting a balanced image of the Father heart of God. God’s heart is for the marginalized and vulnerable.

Missions typically taken on by the church are now being pursued by social entrepreneurs and the corporate world, who view their social missions as both spiritual and evangelistic in purpose. Sincerely concerned about issues such as extreme poverty, AIDS, environmental and cultural preservation, they model compassion and responsibility.

The church, now employing modern business models to build mega organizations, may not even be aware that this phenomenon is occurring. One day it may awake to find itself superseded missionally by the social enterprise and business sector, which are on many fronts starting to merge. However, this might not be a bad thing. World needs are far greater than the combined global church can address. I believe that God has heard the cry of the poor, the suffering, the broken hearted, the dying, the fatherless, and He is calling “whoever will” to become involved - the more innovative, the more radical, the more productive – the better. A strong sense of urgency is becoming globally pervasive.

Organizations of all types are increasingly recognizing the church as a pivotal partner in humanitarian and social justice efforts. Local churches have intimate knowledge of the needs within their various communities. All efforts are needed in consort – bridges must be built to work together – each has strengths to be acknowledged by the other. To achieve this, the church must act in humility rather than its historically exclusive attitude. Bridges must be built and crossed over by Christians in all channels of culture. That bridge is not going to be built by the secular world or the self-sufficient marketplace. The emerging, decentralized, virtually-leveled landscape is the window of opportunity do this.

Ideally, we can build cooperation and dialogue across diverse faith and business communities around a shared commitment to service and community building, thus creating a stronger sense of mutual trust, respect, and understanding not only in the church but in the global community at large. In doing so we express Christ’s love, passion, and concern for the whole world.

In recent dialog with a friend Mark Beam, and stumbled on one of his delicious links to the Washington Post blog “On Faith” and a series “the Faith Divide” by Eboo Patel.

Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that promotes interfaith cooperation. His blog, The Faith Divide, explores what drives faiths apart and what brings them together. I resonate with his thoughts on this particular post. “We will watch your career with great interest…” (quoting StarWars episode 1)

Tribal Religion, Transcendent Religion by Eboo Patel

There is a story about a Christian minister living abroad during World War II. His congregation sends him money so that he can return home for Christmas. When he doesn’t come back, they ask him why. He says that he used the money to help a group of Jews escape Hitler’s death camps and flee to safety.

“But they’re not even Christian,” writes one member of his congregation.

“Yes, I know,” the minister responds. “But I am.”

All religions have both types of people – the tribal and the transcendent. The tribal type see in the particular narratives of their tradition a narrowing of concern, and therefore care only about the people who look like them, talk like them and pray like them.

The transcendent see in the same particularity a universalizing of care, and therefore focus their energies on all people, especially groups most in need, regardless of creed.

If tribal religion wins, it necessarily pits groups against one another based on identity, and it means that people like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are right – religion will destroy everything.

If transcendent faith wins, it opens the possibility for different identity groups to use their particular narratives to articulate a collective vision that includes everybody.

If that isn’t the future, there will be no future.

This is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of my faith heroes. A German Lutheran religious scholar and pastor, he was one of the most important leaders in the resistance to Hitler in Germany, ultimately dying for his cause.

After Kristallnacht, he said to his fellow Christians on German radio, “Those who did not stand up for the Jews do not deserve to sing Gregorian Chants.”

Bonhoeffer died for the Jews of Europe because he was a Christian, one who found the transcendent instead of the tribal in the particular. Drawing on the depths of his faith, Bonhoeffer spoke of “the cost of discipleship” — which meant a commitment to the transcendent ethic of Jesus and the universalizing word of God, not a narrow concern for a tribe that shared his particular religious rituals.

All of our faiths have a definition of discipleship that transcend.