Posted by Helen on: 11.05.2006 /
These were some highlights for me personally:
Thursday afternoon and evening
- Meeting Pam and Sunil Sardar (and their son) and Kelly Bowen as soon as I arrived at the hotel
- Seeing Jim in person again
- Chatting with Beth and the book table guys at the conference site
- Seeing Mike O again and meeting Eliza and Mike’s son Zack — and being able to have coffee and chat with them
- Hearing Mike say to Eliza “We’re the same but opposite — you and me!” — referring to the curiosity they both have about understanding “the other side’ better; and then agreeing they probably won’t “meet in the middle’ ;-)
- Getting to chat with Christine Wicker as we drove to dinner together (she was with me each time I drove back and forth and I very much enjoyed her company)
- Meeting Esther, Pam Hogeweide, Pam’s friend, Florence and Craig at dinner
- Esther being so happy to meet me
Friday
- Todd getting up early to meet me
- Having breakfast at a table where I was surrounded by pastors — I never got to do that before!
- Meeting Lisa W and Lisa remembering to give me the sand dollar she saved for me
- Rachel coming up to me with a huge smile on her face to meet me in person
- Being able to help Todd get a cool name tag
- Meeting Bianca and her baby and Bianca giving me some ibuprofen — which was just what I needed right then
- When Bill Bean the book table guy said “Guess how many of our books have a foreword or acknowledgement by Brian McLaren?” and someone guessed “All of them?”
- How many people decided they wanted to hear me talk about being almost an atheist
- That people laughed when I said in the Almost an atheist workshop: “I wonder if God looks down from heaven at Christians and thinks “Oh Myself — I wish they would just lighten up a bit!”
- Mike Howerton thanking ME for being kind to him — I’m not even sure what I did…I thought he was the one being kind to me!
- Meg Ady pleading with Jim to let her say something encouraging before he closed the Almost an atheist workshop session
- Meeting Benjamin and Meg Ady and being able to chat a bit before lunch
- Throughout the rest of the day, having a number of people thank me personally for coming to the conference and sharing what I did in that workshop — for my courage and authenticity
- Sitting next to George Barna at lunch and hearing him talk about his new ministry area
- Darcy getting my attention when I was walking around the main conference room in a short break and indicating “Let’s go out in the hallway and talk!”
- Listening to Peter and Bruce share about their blogs in the blog network workshop
- When Pam responded to something Meg said in the blog network workshop – then commented “Hey, this is just like blogging, isn’t it?”
- Peter coming all the way from Australia to attend the conference and him saying that he thought we’re respectful in how we share OA stories involving other people
- Seeing Brian McLaren around talking with people in between sessions — making himself very accessible
- Brian McLaren saying “Where it says Jesus had a sword in his mouth, that tipped me off that just maybe, this passage was intended to be metaphorical…”
- Being at dinner with Peter & Jen, Bruce & Bev, Mike C, Christine, Mike O, Zack, Pam Hogeweide, Pam’s friend, Rachel, Esther and a few other people who had asked to join us
- Finally meeting Jason Clark in person Friday evening, after looking for him all afternoon and being afraid I wasn’t going to find him before I had to come back to Chicago
- Winn introducing himself to me
- Teasing Jim onstage about whether he was violating the “Pledge of Kindness’ ;-)
- Watching Jim “doing his thing’ onstage throughout the day (including singing the blues as a ‘benediction’) and even though he was incredibly busy, still taking time to meet people
- Being able to chat with people back at the hotel after the conference went off the air Friday night: Sarah Henderson and her friends, Deb, Kelly, Dave, Jim and Christine
In general
- Meeting Ken and Deb Loyd and Rich and Rose Swetman and thinking I might not have quit church altogether if I’d been going to theirs
- After various recent experiences elsewhere this year with Christians who evidently are people-not-like-me, feeling like “Wow, there are a lot of people like me here!”
- Meeting other neat people I haven’t named
- Finding that everyone who has been friendly online is ten times as friendly in person
- How incredibly supportive all the bloggers there were
I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention some highlights…I guess you won’t be surprised reading this that the main reason I wanted to go was to meet people…
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34 Responses to "Conference Highlights"
Comment by: Revolution Conference Blog » Blog Archive » Conference highlights
1 11/5/06 10:40 AM | Comment Link |[...] I posted what the highlights were for me over on CatE, here. (Mostly they had to do with meeting people/my interactions with people one-on-one) [...]
Comment by: benamin ady
2Helen–I’m so stoked that you had a good time. Me too! I was also totally happy to meet you and Rachel and Mike O and Zach and Peter and Jim and Bill Dahl and many other also. It’s so kewl to have faces to go with the names. I was really complimented when Mike O. met me he said “I had imagined you and Megas as African–black skinned!” I’ve always secretly wished I was black, so I was stoked when Mike said that, and also it made us laugh. Mike said he visualizes people from the blog, which I found fascinating, because I visualize people on radio/based on voices, but I don’t do that for the people I meet online/blogging, so I sort of have an empty space in the “what do they look like category”. I’m going to start doing the visualization thing. I think it will help me to get to know people online better. I wonder if the off the map blogs could include a feature where people could upload a photo of themselves? that would be kewl, like on blogspot or myspace. I had the same experience you had that people who were friendly on the blogs were 10 times friendlier in person. I wish that somehow the world was even smaller than it is, getting from here to there wise, so we could see each other more often.
Comment by: Meg
3Thank you Helen for your kindly mentions of me in your list of conference highlights!! One thing that really struck me in listening to you speak, Helen, was that you and I have much in common in our thinking, and the Christian-or-not element seems almost incidental. I like this. It seems to be a people-connecting we’re-the-same-kind thing. Which is what makes this blog so attractive to me. It’s nice for whether-i-decide-i’m-a-christian-or-not to not really matter, and who i am and what i’m thinking and feeling to matter. i think my early christianity obscured myself. I loved your ‘oh myself’ line, Helen, though i laughed late as it took me a sec to get it!
Comment by: Helen
4Meg wrote:
There are so many things I didn’t say…one of them is, maybe I don’t have ‘no God’ but rather I have a bigger God than a lot of other people Maybe mine is soooo big he doesn’t mind whether I pray or not or like church or not. If I were God I wouldn’t mind – and it doesn’t make sense to me that God could be meaner than I am…
Comment by: Helen
5Benjamin, I don’t know how involved it would be to add an ‘upload photo’ feature. I expect some people would decline to participate but I agree it’s fun to see peoples’ photoes.
Comment by: Meg
6BTW, tomorrow, November 6th, is Benjamin’s birthday… HAPPY BIRTHDAY BENS!! love Meg
Comment by: Rose
7Helen, I am so glad to have met you in person and I am sorry we did not have more time to talk. Next year :)
Comment by: Todd
8Ken and Deborah are my pastors and dear friends and I would not be alive if it were not for them.
Comment by: Helen
9Happy Birthday today Benjamin!!
Rose – yes, next year! :-) The few words we exchanged were enough to show me that I would find a lot of grace in your church.
Todd, I can well imagine how Ken and Deborah could literally save lives through their ministry. I’m so glad to hear they did that for you. Thanks for sharing.
Comment by: Paul
10Sounds more than awesome!!! :)
Comment by: DonnaV
11Sounds like you had a great time! Sure sorry I missed out & am looking forward to getting a full report from PamH.this week…maybe I’ll get to meet you next year….or you could just move to Portland…yeah…that would work!!
Comment by: Stephan
12I realize I’m breaking a commandment, but I covet the time you all had together. I wish I could have been there with you.
Comment by: bianca
13i was so blessed to meet you, helen, and many other people at the conference… even with adam being such a stinker, i felt like i was able to bask in the fitting-in feeling i had… the sense of not being alone in my thoughts about ‘revolution’ as it were… i hope to be around a lot more, and next year? counting the days… :)
Comment by: Helen
14Hi bianca! Thanks for posting here.
Yes, I had that fitting-in feeling to, in spite of being ‘almost an atheist’ – wow, I love having that feeling! It’s so different from the feeling I’ve often had…
Comment by: Mike O
15Benjamin – One of the hilights of the conference was your laugh!
Meg – Another hilight was you running up on stage to find Alice. How many people in a crowd of 600 would be daring (and FUN!) enough to run up on stage like that?!?
Rachel – You fierly little spark plug, you! That conversation at dinner was awesome, what we call in the evangelical world “rhobust dialogue!” And you really did make me think, even though my scandinavian stubbornness makes it look like I’m just blowing you off.
Eliza – Sorry I never got your map back to you … Oh, well, I guess you should have tried harder to make it to dinner Friday night, huh? :) Seriously, I loved your company.
Helen – You ROCK! What else can I say? Loved the “Christian hat” bit
Christine – You are SO funny! Zack absolutely loved you and it was cool running into you on the plane back to Minneapolis.
BTW – One of the first things Zack told my wife when we got home on Sunday was that I left him alone with three atheists at dinner (Eliza, Helen and Christine) unsupervised. Thanks for that you little schmuck!
Jim – You sure know how to put on a show. The band intros were awesome. We need to incorporate that at church . “OK, now for announcements [cue groovy David Letterman style bumper music] Pastor Silas!” Crowd cheers. Pastor Silas waves off the band.
Bruce – You and your wife are awesome! Have a cup o’ joe on me.
Peter – A man after my own heart. You’re younger than I thought, but now having met you, I can see how you can handle the heat you get (from me??) on churchrater! Keep it real!
Pam H – You are out there, man! Love the paisley tats!
Pam S – We didn’t get much of a chance to talk … sorry ’bout that!
Sunil – You da bomb, man! You’re awesome. And if God can help you free India of the caste system, he can help me free my conservative evangelical bruthas and sistas from the shackles of beliefism! Keep it real, man. You’re an inspiration to me!
Esther – What a sweetheart! I wish we could have talked more!
OK, my brain is fried now and I’m going to bed. I usually sleep like a baby (I wake up screaming every two or three hours), and I’m sure I’ll think of a hundred people I forgot. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!
Comment by: Mike O
16Siamang included pictures on this blog entry. I wonder how he did it?
Comment by: Kelly B
17Helen, I was totally humbled to be a part of your conference highlights! I’m so glad that I got to meet you. I have to say that my most memorable and enjoyable conversations were with the atheists and almost atheists!!! You guys rock!
Comment by: Helen
18Thanks Kelly! I’m very happy you introduced yourself to me.
Mike – you da man!!! Thanks for coming! I’m impressed you were brave enough to bring Zack somewhere full of people who don’t quite believe as the two of you do. Your poor wife! Hopefully she’s finding that Zack has been restored to her (largely) intact. Please tell Zack it was a delight to meet him. I understand how he feels since I had breakfast surrounded by pastors, with no other almost-atheists there at the table to protect my almost-faithlessness ;-)
Mike & Benjamin, if there’s enough interest in setting up a photo library I expect we could do that. If we do then we need to respect the privacy of people who would rather not share their photo online.
Comment by: Helen
19Mike, I’m glad you liked the hat – you are the first person to mention it! I was getting worried that maybe I shouldn’t have done that…anyway I just posted a summary of my talk at the top of the blog, for those who missed it and are curious.
Comment by: Meg
20Helen, I love that you said that, bc that’s exactly what I was thinking about you and your god at the end of your talk – that
‘s partly why your presentation was so comforting to me. Thanks!
Comment by: Meg
21Hi again! In the previous comment, I was referring to your comment #4, Helen – how do I paste it in to my comment the way you pasted my text into yours, in comment #4?
I get so frustrated sometimes with computers. They are so non-intuitive for me! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
22Megsie
If you click on the button that says “block quote” above, then paste in the text, then click on “/block quote” (the button will change to “/block quote” after you click it once), that will create a block quote in your text. Or you can just do the html manually. Html is composed of tags, which have a beginning and an ending, and they go inside these two marks “”. the beginning tag just has the tag name, and the ending tag has the tag name with a “/” in front of it. so you type “
“. but the problem is that when I post this, it’s going to get rid of the tags (I think) and just make a block quote. oh well. I’ll show you sometime.
I’m going to try the post a photo with my post here, per Mike O’s suggestion.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
23how about now?
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
24or now?
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
25sorry Helen–just trying to make the upload a photo thing work. I’ll stop now
Comment by: Helen
26Benjamin thanks for trying! If I may speak ‘html-ese’ for a moment: what you need to do is replace ‘a href’ with ‘img src’, take out any ‘rel’ or ‘target’ conditions and lose the final ‘/a’ tag. Then hopefully you’ll get this:
Nice photo!
Meg, the easiest way to do a quote in your comment is this: first get the quote into your comment with cut-and-paste or by typing it. Then highlight all of the quote using the mouse. Then click the blockquote button above the comment box. That will add the coding that makes it look like a quote. See if that works for you! (Another way is, click the blockquote button right before where you want the quote to be, type/cut-and-paste the quote, click the button again. But that is a bit risky because it’s easy to forget to click it again at the end!)
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
27a spider!! (maybe)
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
28another attempt at spiderweb
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
29hmmmm….maybe it just won’t let people at my power level post photos…
Comment by: Helen
30Sorry Benjamin…I’ll try that out later and see if I can still post photos when I am not logged in i.e. if I have the same status as you as a commenter.
Comment by: benjamin ady
31Spider again
Wonder if that will work?
Comment by: benjamin ady
32hey, at least I’m working my way up the frequent commenters list (hehe). how about this…
Comment by: Mike C
33Helen,
It was great meeting you in person too. I didn’t get a chance to say so at the conference, but I kept wanting to tell you how much I appreciate your tone, intelligence and even-handedness here at the blogs – and also that I think you’re a really gifted writer and blogger.
I hope we can meet up in Chicago sometime soon.
-Mike C
Comment by: Helen
34Thanks Mike! Let me know if you’re ever close to my neighborhood – it would be fun to get together again.