I have just returned from one of the best events in which I have participated for a very, very long time: the Garage Blackboard Lectures. I am told that they started when a few students got drunk one night and thought, hey, let’s have some lectures in our beaten up old garage. And so it began.
The setting provided a very different and welcome feel:
As you can see, a good crowd turns up – attentive, relaxed, with sharp minds and sharper questions:
And this goes on for hours (I was there for more than six hours). Two speakers, each for an hour or so; plenty of discussion … and a keg:
In the break we all had soup:
No tired old positions here, since everything is up for debate and rethinking. This is where new ideas and practices happen.
The biggest surprise for me – on the question of Marxism and religion – was the number of theological questions: on grace, miracle, predestination, God, creation …
Thankfully, we were encouraged on our way by a Chinese revolutionary poster:
12 February, 2013 at 12:57 pm
[...] week at the garage blackboard lectures, I was asked a simple question: what is a successful [...]
15 February, 2013 at 10:40 pm
[...] If you are in Melbourne on the last Sunday of the month, contact the organisers for the address and get to one, get to ‘em all. In fact, if you are visiting Melbourne and you can do one thing and one thing alone, then this has to be it. [...]