[Dialogue] RS-1 Events
frank bremner
fjbremner at hotmail.com
Sat Feb 24 07:35:05 EST 2007
Colleagues:
(1)
Some musings out of occasional conversations with the likes of Brian Robins
et al - although they've been percolating away for about 20 years. [And I
look forward to looking at the details of the various RS-I versions being
done. They address the issue of language from one perspective.]
One thread that I would imagine in any "new" versions of RS-I is the
addition, and emphasis, of "secular" language. In other words, really
drill, ram home (etc) - gently, with more respect for individuals than we
used to use - that these are dynamics in life as experienced by all human
beings. And they're going on all over the place. Therefore, look at ToP
and other formulations. Mini-workshop other words for "grace" for example.
Therefore we can use "secular" language to describe them, as well as the
language of historical Christianity.
Could we also use the language of historical Calathumpianism or any other
tradition? Are there people who develop this?
Some sociologists of religion, eg my Sociology for Ministry lecturer, speak
of the "interstices in society" as the places where "ministry" is
increasingly taking place rather than the conventional building on the
street corner. And the interstices are everywhere - ask any Year 9 Maths
student studying networks, arcs and nodes.
[A complete diversion - maybe some etymologist can tell me why some people
use "Maths" and some use "Math"? Did it arise from Webster's dictionary?]
(2)
Various people have written about the EI > ICA shift, and issues with the
Order. I wish to comment on the former.
As I recall the happenings of late 1973 and thereafter there were several
versions of the EI > ICA move. It also accompanied a shift from The Order
of the Ecumenical institute to The Order:Ecumenical and "the wearing of the
blue". I remember the collegium in the Adelaide Religious House at which
Barry Oakley reported on this - those where the days when "the consensus"
emerged from Chicago.
a) Version 1. Working in non-religious environments in which "secular"
language is most prominent. The previous work on "the secular RS-I" moved
into LENS Mk I "Living Effectively in the New Society".
Similarly, working in religious environments in which another religion is
dominant, and in which "Christian missionary" and "Christian imperialism"
and other epithets are common. In time, despite our Christian origins, our
ICA face and our village work etc gave us credibility. An example of
credibility: General Nasution in Indonesia gave us the OK to do our
traditional Daily Office.
[Digression: How did General Nasution survive so long through the various
changes in Indonesia"]
And we practised all sorts of rituals in all sorts of cultures - yet this
Liturgy Experiment seemed to suddenly cease without explanation. Did it
stop, as some things seemed to, because there was no instant "quick fix"? I
remember thinking at the time that some things take a long time to work
their way out, and that we must have patience. (Mary de Souza, quoting
Panikar, I think: "This is a good problem to have for a few hundred years".)
And I wondered whether this apparent impatience was another part of the
deep USAmerican cultural threads running through the movement - a
managerialst approach that emphasised planning and targets etc.
b) Version 2. The work with church renewal wasn't moving fast enough. See
above comments on impatience.
Add to that. People were not "buying" an existential approach to Christian
terminology, symbols etc that clashed with whatever they had experienced
before.
In January 2005 (ToP training, Kings Cross, Sydney) Jeanette Stanfield made
the comment about the philosophies underlying ToP: "The meaning of the
situation is to be found within the situation". That's the first time I had
heard it said eloquently and in a form I could handle, and in a form which
was not criticising (or "bashing over the head") other people and the
perspectives they came from.
And so in the present situation you may draw in insights, language, symbols
from ones tradition, culture, language etc. But there is mystery, meaning,
holiness (add your own words) within the present situation
A lot of my friends from the 1970s could handle the existential theology but
not the desperate, impatient way in which it was presented. The
presentation had an eschatological urgency which was accompanied by a "when
did you stop beating your wife?" approach at the personal and group dynamics
level.
Rev Tom Jones visited the Adelaide Religious House one evening in late 1973,
and suggested that "hitting people over the head" closed them up to
receiving further messages. (In our study of "The Image" we seemed not to
accommodate people who rejected a message - what about rejecting a Nazi
message?) "Keeping the dialogue open" (wasn't there a paper in RS-IIB New
Testament that used that phrase?) keeps people open to further conversation.
But those were the days when anything coming from the realms of
"psychology" (said in sotto voce) was anathema (now there's a good
theological term!)
c) Version 3. We were doing an "end run". To those of us more familiar
with Australian Rules football - you know, that game in which, like soccer,
you spend a lot of time kicking the ball - connecting "foot" with "ball" -
we had to learn something about the stop-start-stop-start USAmerican game.
Like many of the early RS-I illustrations, "the end run" was used as if all
the world understood the term.
See also comments on impatience. There were also comments from people my
acquaintance about doing the same thing in every Local Church Experiment
location in the same week all around the world - as a demonstration of what
was then understood [except for suppressed heretics] as "corporateness".
I'm pleased that we've moved on from those straight-jackets.
[And when people currently tallk about residue of RS-I and the LCE on
parishes here and there - wedgeblades and so on - don't be like the
so-called "World" Series - remember that there are countries other than the
USA where these things went on.]
But at least the image was to draw the church out of its buildings on the
street corner. And that included "the latent church", "Those Who Care" and
other images. Out into the parish.
One variation of this version was that we moved from a focus on the
congregation to a focus on the parish. But didn't the Local Church
Experiment include cadre/congregation/parish, with "parish" as the third
component?
d) Version 4. We decided that the Christian language was too limiting for
our work, especially the "spirit" dimension.
I suspect this is a version more appropriate to looking back from the
present on the events of the 1970s. Professional historians can say more
about how new interpretations of events emerge with hindsight, and more
clarity from a longer-range perspective.
Versions 1, 2, and 3 are ones that we used at the time, as we haltingly
moved forward into "strange new territory". Territory that was really
nothing other than the creation around us.
(3)
I say these things in order to charitably tease out some of the threads and
dynamics, looking back and into the remnants of those threads and dynamics
in the present. As indicated, or inferred, I had/have disagreements with
some threads and processes, but didn't/haven't we all? And haven't we all
gone along with things because we couldn't find a way to express our
concerns convincingly or because what we wanted to say was "way out in left
field" (unlike USAmerican "football", I'm familiar with baseball, and played
in the U13 C team in Year 8) for the O:E/EI/ICA Zeitgeist of the time.
In my B Th studies, and in Education (looking at student government changes
over 30 years), I'm working as an historian, looking at the various threads
of thinking and practice that have occurred at times, and what the "final"
result was. So "mapping" what was actually going on in is rather important
to me. It's also a way of keeping my own ideology and propensities in check
and in context.
I remember David Zahrt, at a LENS Mk I in Adelaide in 1974 - forgive my
elephantine memory for trivia - suggesting that the LENS method developed a
consensus by "mapping" the opinion and ideas in a group and work on that
map. I always found that image useful when working with groups of secondary
students, and teachers with a very upfront political ideology - that the
"mapping" used all the ideologies and ideas in the room, and dug beneath
them for common threads.
Best wishes
Frank Bremner
Adelaide, South Australia
PS My Year 11 and 12 Chemistry teacher at Unley High School used to tell us
about a student who was always drawing in the back of his practical
workbook. His name was Pat Oliphant. Is he still doing wonderful cartoons
in the USA? Does he still have the penguin in the corner?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: "Bill Schlesinger" <bschlesinger.pv at tachc.org>
>Reply-To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
>To: "'Colleague Dialogue'" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
>Subject: Re: [Dialogue] RS-1 Events
>Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:47:10 -0700
>
>My memory was in the early 70's watching the number of RS-1 participants
>drop. We were assigned to phone banks in last ditch efforts to recruit the
>course. The weekend seminar format had pretty much run its course in the
>churches, and there simply wasn't a sustaining market. The 'decision' to
>stop teaching RS-1 was a recognition of an external situation that created
>an internal crisis and...
>
>Bill Schlesinger
>Project Vida
>3607 Rivera Ave
>El Paso, TX 79905
>(915) 533-7057 x 207
>(915) 490-6148 mobile
>(915) 533-7158 fax
>bschlesinger.pv at tachc.org
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
>[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of William Alerding
>Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 5:59 PM
>To: Colleague Dialogue
>Subject: Re: [Dialogue] RS-1 Events
>
>It's interesting that some of the colleagues are still doing RSI. The
>last one I ever led was in the Jamaica House in Kingston back in the
>1980's. I later remember an old colleague who some years later told me
>that the Order goofed up by dropping RSI. I reminded him that we never
>gave up on RSI and that we had been doing it in evey course or Human
>Development Consult we ever did. The dynamics of the Word was in
>everything we ever did. What we did do was change the language away
>from an overtly Christian idiom to a broader one because we were
>dealing more and more with the larger number of humans for whom the
>Christian language meant absolutely nothing. This is still true.
>
>Bill Alerding
>
>
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