[Springboard] Some Reflections

[jlepps at pc.jaring.my]

Dear Colleagues:

It was good to "be with you" via Skype at Junaluska. Sorry not to have 
gotten these reflections in prior to the meeting, but maybe they're not too 
late.

Reflections for Springboard

The question from the Springboard group was, "What's laying a claim on us 
personally regarding the future?" and it's a good question that deserves 
serious consideration. First answers are usually the most reliable in terms 
of revealing ones inner consciousness, but I have to admit that not much 
came to mind.

Of course I could name the numerous clients that are literally badgering us 
to facilitate for them and to teach them facilitation skills. Something is 
clearly going on that has not gone on before. Is it really getting through 
that the role of facilitation is important if groups are to work together 
successfully? Somehow that particular trend is welcome and something I've 
worked on for many years. But these days it doesn't ring my bells. Ann is 
handling that with skill and panache, and I am more than willing to help 
and to participate where possible. It's fun to facilitate and to see groups 
come alive. I seem at this moment, however, to be in the mode of "handing 
over" this particular mission.

  Then I could name the online graduate courses I am teaching. There is 
plenty to do there, both in the sense of learning and teaching. And, of 
course, using the computer to do increasingly complex tasks is fun. 
"Meeting" students places me in touch with a huge variety of personalities 
and life-events without having to actually meet people f-2-f. Courses need 
tweaking and polishing to get them "right" and students need a bit of 
personal guidance from time to time that I find gratifying to 
provide.  It's good work and it makes a contribution. Still, the bells 
don't ring.

  Writing is still a hobby that I enjoy. The last thing I wrote that was 
pretty good was a witness in June entitled "Sometimes a Hug" about 
confronting (my) death. There are now 8 bound volumes of my writings in KL 
that need to be sorted by topic and put into publishable form. But since 
they are more like journal entries and reflections on experiences, it's 
hard to see any publishable value. Going through them would be a great 
memory trip, but I don't yet see their futuric thrust. My interior 
glockenspiel remains undisturbed.

  There are groups that are important, worthy, and a joy to work with: IAF, 
the Denver ICA team, and the KL conference committee. I've played a helpful 
(minor) role in 2 of the three. But even the best of groups has dynamics 
that bring out the "been there, done that" interior response. Somehow the 
prospect of getting seriously involved in making things happen effectively 
in a group keeps my chimes thoroughly muffled.

  I have been able in the past to discern the "mood of the times" with some 
accuracy, and that's a role I don't mind continuing. But analysis is not 
strategy and what to do with the insights that emerge is not something 
about which I have much expertise. But here are a few insights: Authentic 
spirituality comes in the midst of intensified knowing and doing. Any other 
approach is off target. We've often said that the great gift of the OE was 
doing theology first -- knowing the religious basis on which everything 
else must be built. We first built a complex mental model and then did a 
series of social demonstrations. And throughout those efforts, continual 
reflection on the spirit yielded wonders.

  So maybe one task of Springboard now is clarification of current 
theology. The times are not now the 60s. And the immediate issue may not be 
the existential one, though that's what will eventually have to be 
addressed. But suppose we're back to a time of ontology. Suppose the 
insights of quantum physics and string theory have so disrupted the common 
worldview that even the idea "God" is unintelligible. It's more likely that 
the technology springing from physics has created the change rather than 
the actual theoretical physics about which most of us remain blissfully 
unaware. There's also this younger generation and their technological 
expertise that embodies a new type of consciousness. One presenter at the 
IAF Europe conference mentioned that his son often had nine interactive 
screens open at the same time on his computer and was carrying out 
interactions with each of the nine simultaneously. That's a type of 
consciousness that is more foreign to my way of thinking than the mindsets 
of Malaysians. It's not just chaos theory and fancy physics that's creating 
the new context: it's technology that is providing a new consciousness.

  People aren't against religion; they're more like Tony Blair's press 
secretary's response when asked about Tony's church habits: "We're not into 
God." If you base it on church attendance, you could also say I'm "not into 
God," at least in the ways of organized religion. But I am deeply committed 
to the proposition that life is 2-dimensional, and at the dimension of 
depth reside those realities spoken of in religious poetry. Looking at the 
perversions that fundamentalists have inflicted on religion in the past 
decade, it is no wonder that sensitive and responsive people often give 
religion a miss. But that's to view life as one-dimensional. As Niebuhr 
once said, life has two dimensions, and whenever either one is negated, 
something goes seriously wrong. Maybe the starting point for our work on 
theology might be "Towards a New Otherworldliness" from H. Richard 
Niebuhr's 1942 article. But we mustn't simply use it to justify our own 
work on the Other World. That may still serve as a springboard, but it's a 
bit too subjective; we need to get at its ontological basis. Maybe there is 
a way to talk about the two dimensions of life without getting into the 
"supernatural." It would be momentous (literally) to produce a world view 
that was scientifically credible and accounted for the dimension of depth 
that religious poetry expresses. Tillich never quite accomplished that, 
though he tried. Maybe we could give it a go. Then we have a chance to 
address lives, i.e. to expose the existential gap between reality and 
ourselves.

There seems to be a faint jingling in the distance. Anyone else hear it?


Now here are a few thoughts about bells. What rings my bells is not 
necessarily the primary value to determine how I spend my time. For me the 
bells indicate an emerging concern that I would like to pursue, but it is 
not necessarily a priority unless it is related to practical needs. So the 
identification of primary societal contradictions at a deep level may be 
the task before us now that will disclose the necessary deeds.

                                     --John Epps 3 December 2007


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email: <jlepps at pc.jaring.my>  
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