Movement 105

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Iternatlue ruorlds Gendered agenda TYPE lN the words 'women' and 'web' into a search engine, and you'll be confronted with a stark illustration of the two polar presences women have on the web: interspersed with sites promising FREE SEXY NAKED PICTURES OF SEXY NAKED WOMEN one finds a whole range of web sites dedicated to women's issues. The man's man's man's world of the web has a small corner which distinctly belongs to women, if you only look hard enough. I started with WorldWoman www.world woman.net, a Scottish site that promises 'you make the news as well as read it!' This site is a spin-off from the wildly successful Scotswoman experiment. ln lnternational Women's Day in 1995, female staff on fhe Scotsman produced an edition of the newspaper that was commissioned, written, and edited by women; the paper sold out by 8:30 a.m. The site offers a range of news and political updates of particular concern for women, including an exposri on the chemicals in tampons and a brief discussion of the persecution of women in Malawi. ln the 'not women' section (presumably their equivalent to the small 'woman' section in most dailies) there's a solitary article by a man on a subject I can't recall. The paper has definite potential - provided they keep updating the news stories, and get a broader readership/ writer base. Worth a look. A more unusual site is the one run by the Network of East West Women, www.neww org. lt claims to link 'women across national and regional boundaries to share resources, knowledge, and skills' and also to 'empower women and girls throughout Eastern and Central Europe and Russia.' That's a tall order. lt includes job and fellowship listings and a calendar of'conferences and events. Most intriguing is a database of commentary by women in Kosovo and Serbia dating from the 1999 NATO bombing campaign. As is typical with web searches, I ran into a few duds - sites no longer maintained or simply not there. One of them was the Global Community of Women, which is alas 'no longer maintained' by one Katrina MoonDance. Fortunately, the final two sites I found were excel I ent. At www.igc.o r g/ igc/ gatew ay, I found a site dedicated to a wide range of activism. lt lists 'action alerts' - currently xj.rElolttrlr4 t'/ EtI!--,a-- \\i rt'lt ht'rut tiu rt lhrrtr l? t.r F rdiltlrn h clwtl l*ntllth Itillarl rpahsrtuI urr lrish intrriurtit.r E^t b-&fdrtitlierrs /i!1 1 r/r611:|.a.1.r,r f tltrrl;,tilJ lt ,r,tl ff s. concerning timber sales in the US and the preparations for AIDS Watch 2000. More helpfully, it provides a link to 'womens.net' that includes interviews with women activists, and a clip about the 'Virtual March' on October 17th. Activists around the globe will show their support for women's rights (l take it by logging on but I'm not sure how)' Finally, www.iwhc.org, the site of the lnternational Women's Health Coalition, gives enlightening updates on its sexual health programs in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and explains how these projects are established and maintained. I'm still an e-sceptic, and not wholly convinced by the wondrous world wide web, but I did find out more than I expected in a short trawl through the ether. Who knows, maybe I'll be one of those people who goes on line on October 17th, to virtually march for women's rights. See You there. (KATY GORDON) $ World wide ebb? STANFORD UNIVERSITY claim the internet makes us lonely. They recently released a study showing that the internet causes social isolation and increases workload; but does it? Has Stanford missed the point? Being a geek (and reasonably heavy internet user) myself I see flaws in their argument. Amongst their assumptions, they appear to class the telephone as a superior form of communication to the lnternet. I agree that the current text-based chats and e-mail are pitiful, but so is the telephone. I imagine when first introduced people claimed it would replace more traditional forms of communication such as the letter and visiting for tea. The lnternet can provide much richer, faster communication than anything previous. Would my mother, for example, prefer an e-mail every few days to a phone call once a month? I can spend five minutes here and there scribbling an e-mail when there is no hope of me picking up a phone. The lnternet is richer because I can quickly and easily make copies of my first baby's ultrasounds available to all my friends and family by popping it In my 5Mb of free webspace. Later we'll add baby's first footprints, drawings and so on. I could never have done this over the phone and would probably never have bothered by post - so the web has increased the level of family contact and i nvolvement signif icantly. They also miss the fact that when 13% of heavy internet users say they spend less time attending events outside of the house that means 87% don't spend any less time socialising. Also, because this figure is derived by survey, it is based on what people think is happening, this is known to be unreliable. lf we assume that this 13% do genuinely feel that they do 'get out less', we have to ask ourselves who this group is' Based on personal experience I would imagine this 13% is made up of the circle of friends around me on my Computer Science degree and while they are all great people, 'getting out' was never their fort6. So, Stanford have missed the Point because the lnternet doesn't replace the forms of social contact we have now, it enables more and better ways of sharing information and experience with groups of people you could never otherwise have known. (ROB STYLES) Stanford's report can be found at www.sta nford.ed u,/grou P/siqss/ And coverage from the American press at www.wash i ngtonpost.com/wpsrv/busi ness /teed/ a56927-2000feb16.htm a n d www. usatoday.com/ lit e / cybey'techlcth381 .htm I movement 12
, o You're pushing the boundaries of Celebrity Iheologian again, I see... Not necessarily. Henri Nouwen may be first and foremost regarded as a Christian writer or Christian thinker, but he was a proponent of a theolog that was as radical as it was simple. Do tell. Nouwen in 40 books over a 30 year span encouraged people to embrace their humanity in all its frailty, and to use that as the basis by which they engage in ministry with others. Ho-hum. Been there, done that, have the T-Shirt Certainly this approach to ministry is now regarded as old hat, but Nouwen was one ofthe first, and the finest, proponents of this approach. When he wrote in his book Ihe Wounded Healerin 1972: "Compassion is born when we discover in the centre of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbour is our fellow man." lt was, to use a clich6, like bringing fresh air into a stale room. And just how did he get to this point? Nouwen grew up in the Netherlands and became ordained as a Catholic priest in the 1950s. He was interested in pastoral ministry and studied t0 become a Psycholo$st - quite a radical path to take in an age when the discipline of psychology was frowned upon ln Church circles. He developed and taught courses in pastoral theology that reflected this background. He wrote two highly regarded texts on the subject in the late sixties. Sounds pretg academic. It was at first. But Nouwen was offered a teaching position at the Yale Divinity School and demanded as part of his acceptance that he would not be required to do any academic writing. Ihe tone of his work became much more accessible, more contemplative. Duringthe 10 years at Yale, he wrote some of his finest work. Someone who wouldn't let a thought go unpublished then? Sometimes it seemed that way. Nouwen tended to write slendervolumes and so he tended to have books published with a frequency that seemed sometimes disconcerting. Some of his books are, admittedly, a bit light in content. But much of his work uses its pithiness as a strength, and is able to communicate simple but powerful ideas. Such as? Nouwen exhorted people to acknowledge their loneliness, their frailties and their brokenness. That only by acknowledging these things can we best engage with people and find a sense of God. He also wrote simply and passionately about the need to live contemplatively, dwelling in the lonely places thatJesus did, as itwere, to find strength and hope. Where did he go from there? He made an abortive attempt t0 live in Peru among the poor, but this did not seem to work for him (although he did write two books on the subject). ln the mid eighties, he became involved with Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, an internati0nal movement of communities where people with developmental and physical disabilities and their friends live together. Nouwen moved into Daybreak, a L'Arche community in Canada, nearToronto. He lived and worked with the residents in this community for the next ten years. A million miles away from the lvory Tower, then. Nouwen was hardly cloistered, but L'Arche affected his work profoundly. His bookAdam, Gods Belovedlalks about his relationship with one of the community members, Adam Arnett, a severely disabled man, and how simply helping him with his morning routine changed the way he saw himself and so much of his work. When he wentto speaking engagements, he always brought a member of the Daybreak community with him. He wrote duringthis period, We are not healers, we are not reconcilers, we are not givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. Died? Yes he did. He died in 1996 while he was visiting his native Netherlands. He was buried not far from the Daybreak community. ls there a list of recommended reading? You are keen. His bestworks areTheWounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary SocieU 9972), Outof Solitude (L974),ln Memoriam (abook about his bereavement over his mother, 1980), Ihe Road to Daybreak ( 1986), ln The Name of Jesus (1987) Any last words? Nouwen said it best "The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and uncondiUonal love of God. lherefore ministry must be mutual. And, For a compassionate (person) nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying." GRAEME BURK movement 13 Mea Culpa A GUIDE TO THE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF A MOVEMENT EDITOR (1) The pout used when begging for food (or pay cheques or late copy) (2) The fear grin displayed when approaching an animal of higher rank (usually in Editorial Board meetings) (3) Dang it! Another typo The last issue of <strong>Movement</strong> carried more than its normal quota of mistakes. Some gremlin crept into the t6te-d-t6te piece so that the lettering was so huge on the end credit that half of it fell off. lt should have read: "Craig Russell is an artist involved in the Art and Spirituality Network and the newly formed United Religion lnitiative. Matt Bullimore is a theology student, formerly of Cambridge SCM and currently studying at Harvard." However two typos that cannot be blamed on a gremlin is misspelling of Claire Horsnell as Clare Horsneer and Ellie Mensingh, who became Mensigh - and that is exactly what this man does, very deeply, whenever he spots a typo. Sometimes he pulls the expression known as 'editor's grimace' - shown in picture 3. There was no excuse except an addled brain and too many late night editing sessions. These were probably the best mistakes since the mix up with the spot colour cover on M103 when lime green became mushy pea green. Tasty!
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Movement 105

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