There is a point at which
chaos swirls so powerfully, so chaotically that it ceases to be chaos at all, and becomes a
calm.
The
contracts are all signed; the
authors are committed (twelve of them, from all over the world, and with some leeway to add more).
And, on January 12, 2015 (give or take a day for approval), our group of dedicated theological paradigm-shifters will kick off a
Kickstarter to support
Pandeism: An Anthology. This book, incidentally, will not be an effort at pandeistic apologetics. Submissions have, as well, been sought and pledged from
atheists and
theists providing critical views of
Pandeism from these perspectives. This will be a whole work, a broad addressing of what is liked and disliked, alike.
And
Everything2 is very much a part of this -- though this
won't be the first Kickstarter launched from E2, neither would it have been possible without the presence of this
community. Here, after 150 years of languishing on
ivory tower shelves, a wild-eyed noder was given the freedom to stretch out and (between bouts of poetry and short story-writing and occasional absurdities) to explore the implications of Pandeism to fellow creative thinkers. (Note: it was the theory of Pandeism, not the wild-eyed noder, which languished on those shelves). But here,
thought was organized and
direction directed. Critical feedback was sought and received. Sometimes there were downvotes -- oh, were there downvotes -- but those too proved instructive.
Our own
draft Kickstarter page is up, and we're aiming to raise $2,450 (my literary agent has already advanced to publisher John Hunt Publishing a $2,011 "subsidy," and we're committing $250 to a national collegiate writing contest on the topic). I'd much prefer to have 2,500 people give a dollar each, and at least reach that many more people. But if 500 people will throw in $5 a piece, we'll be done. That's 17 people a day, and I really think we can do it, if we tap into our surprisingly broad networks.
Add to that, that we will on the same day be emailing out our invitation to collegiate
philosophy and
theology departments around the US, inviting their students to submit an article on some aspect of Pandeism, with the winning writer of the best piece to have theirs published alongside the experts in
Pandeism: An Anthology, plus the cash prize amount mentioned above.
Can Kickstarter birth a new theological paradigm? Can E2 be the womb of such a thing? Come and see....
Blessings!!