John Walker's Electronic House

So John, what’s up with you?

How kind of you to ask. I’ll tell you.

Life’s changed a bit of late. And I get a strong feeling it’s going to keep changing really rather a lot. My brain’s been in a bit of a sleepy rut for a couple of years, and appears to be waking up again. Which proves a positive experience.

A rather huge part of this is involving myself in a church for the first time in a long time. An unpleasant time at the church I worked for until nearly three years ago left me pretty bitter, and pretty unforgiving. This in turn led to a peculiar hardening of my faith, which petrified into a primarily intellectual, and fairly redundant rock. With this, my passion faded: passion for almost everything. I’ve always been, and for the foreseeable future will always be, a hefty ranter. But what made such exercised moments worthwhile was the passion behind them, rather than the mindless anger that replaced it. Angry rocks aren’t very good at much. I disappeared up inside my own anxiety, and haven’t been the most enthusiastic friend to many.

I’ve not been completely shit. I’m a decent enough person. But I think even friends who would rather I minced myself headfirst than was involved in Christianity will agree I’ve faded. I guess I’ve learned two aspects of myself: What matters when it’s gone, and what I suck at when I try to do it on my own. So what’s this, this overtly personal post on a public blog? It’s a form of confession. It’s a declaration of intent. It’s a deeply embarrassing thing to write to someone who Googled my name after disagreeing with a review in PC Gamer.

Ok, so two topics.

1) Church

Give me a millennia, and I’ll give you a lecture on everything that’s wrong with church. But tell me to shut up and stop being such a moron and I might listen for long enough to remember everything that’s right about it. However, one lament that I’ve always had, and is probably even valid, would be my frustration at the mediocrity of the teaching. I wish to be challenged, to be charged to think. Not reassured and patronised. I have been phenomenally fortunate and found a church (thanks entirely to Jo) where the teaching is just fantastic. Theological, intelligent, difficult, and set in reality. This is doubled by the remarkably warm and welcoming nature of the place. There ARE decent churches out there. This is my message to the world.

2) The Future

So, I have this first class honours degree. It’s in Youth And Community Work & Applied Theology. I really haven’t done anything with it. I haven’t really known what to do with it. I still don’t know. But I’ve always had one passion, one idea I know with a certainty is a good one, and one I really should get on with. A phenomenon of this country is that we offer nothing for teenagers to do after school. I mean nothing. The immediate face of this problem are the media and parliament’s favourite complaint: “youths”. Hanging around outside our Spars, scaring the elderly with their hoods. But these are the groups that are addressed, and joyously so. Projects, as few and under-funded as they are, exist. People are noticing. But there’s a group that aren’t noticed. The kids who aren’t upsetting the neighbours or nicking the KitKats. To have a heart for these young people is remarkably unapproved of. They’re rich and comfortable and fine! Some are. But they’re also bored out of their brains, living in a cycle of school, homework and school again. These teenagers have powerful minds that we utterly ignore. Others aren’t, and they’re struggling, and we won’t step in to support them until they’ve cross the dangerous lines. I have a passion for these people – PEOPLE – who deserve attention.

Something I’ve always wanted to create is an after-school space for young people to hang out in, with one key phrase to define its tone: “A place where young people feel safe enough to do their homework.” It’s an odd phrase, but for me it’s always defined what I’m after. So every time I read or see anything about Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia project – a San Fransisco based after-school programme for local high school kids where they can do their homework with one-to-one supervision – it calls to me like a beacon. He’s figured it out. He’s created that space.

I think the same is possible here.

Below is a video of a lecture Eggers gave to the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference after he won the TED Prize. It explains 826 from inception to its current state as a project that’s appearing all over the States, and is associated with many similar enterprises. (I’ve been to the one in Chicago, The Boring Store, and took many photographs).