[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] Trashing the Archives

[frank bremner]

Dear colleagues

Well said, Stuart!

Time to re-read Herman Hesse!  And a good excerpt you quoted, about how "The 
League" (by whatever name) gathers and disperses, gathers and disperses, and 
so on.  At the back of my mind is an image from "Shrike!" (or soem similar 
name) about a samurai order which disperses, and one member heads off to 
Rome or somewhere like that.

The different understands and memories are just what I want to record in my 
academic work - I am certainly not interested in "proving" my understanding 
of events, but rather recording the diversity of such understandings, and if 
and how they form into clusters.  There may be a "meta-story" or two about 
such understandings, related to studies of social change movements, 
movements within religions, movements within movements, and so on.

And thank you, colleagues, for continuing the discussion.  I'm heartened by 
Bill Bailey's report of pastors who were influenced by EI - and similar 
reports.

Old history and old practices and old images are not necessarily passe.  My 
philosophy lecturer found that his young students wanted to hear more about 
the ancient Greeks - and they found the old guys (hmm ...) relevant.

Similarly I use the recommendations of St Athanasius (of Carthage, or was it 
Alexandria?) to illustrate
how corporateness was maintained amidst the diversity of early Christian 
communities.  A bishop was always consecrated by someone form another 
community.  I see this practice continuing.  The same saint also recommended 
Rome as a symbolic (first among equals) centre - and we know what happens to 
such centres - for better and worse - in various centuries!

Best wishes

Frank Bremner
(From Adelaide, where Sturt - the Double Blues - are second in the footy 
table, nipping at the heels of Central Districts - the Bulldogs, in recent 
years the premiership team to beat.  Some of you will understand this.  It 
is our winter time, after all, where a Saturday afternoon means lots of wet 
footy grounds, lots of rugged-up supporters with beer and meat pies at hand, 
and lots of heckling of "the maggots" (the umpires).)

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>From: "Hampton, Stuart" <shampton at hoovers.com>
>Reply-To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
>To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
>Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] Trashing the Archives
>Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 11:29:26 -0500
>
>Colleagues,
>
>I have been both dismayed and exhilarated by the dialog that has been
>evoked by the Living Legend (ICA) and Springboard (OE) discussions on
>the Internet. Such passion, such pain, and so many conflicting
>understandings and memories.
>
>It strikes me in a powerful way that maybe we need to reread Herman
>Hesse's "Journey to the East."
>
>He wrote our story in 1932.
>
>(By the way, in the book HH's accountability session happens in a room
>full of archives.)
>
>I'm still waiting to see what Leo's e-mail input is (or maybe I have
>missed it).
>
>Cheers,
>
>Stuart Hampton
>
>
>
>
>Here are some excerpts (courtesy of a Dr. Neil Chadwick's website)
>
>
>It was my destiny to join in a great experience. Having had the good
>fortune to belong to the League, I was permitted to participate in a
>unique journey....
>
>One of the characteristics of the Journey to the East was that although
>the League aimed at quite definite, very lofty goals during this journey
>(they belong to the secret category and are therefore not communicable),
>yet every single participant could have his own private goals. Indeed,
>he had to have them; for no one was included who did not have such
>private goals, and every single one of us, while appearing to share
>common ideals and goals and to fight under a common flag, carried his
>own fond childhood dream within his heart as a source of inner strength
>and comfort.
>
>This expedition to the East was not only mine and now; this procession
>of believers and disciples had always and incessantly been moving
>towards the East towards the Home of Light. Throughout the centuries it
>had been on the way towards light and wonder, and each member, each
>group, indeed our whole host and its great pilgrimage, was only a wave
>in the eternal stream of human beings, of the eternal striving of the
>human sprit towards the East, towards Home.
>
>It was not unusual for us to be mocked at and disturbed by unbelievers,
>but it also happened often enough that priests blessed us and invited us
>to be their guests, that children enthusiastically joined us, learned
>our songs and saw us depart with tears in their eyes; that an old man
>would show us forgotten monuments or tell us a legend about his
>district; that youths would walk with us part of the way and desire to
>join the League. The latter were given advice and apprised of the first
>rites and practices of novitiates. P.14
>
>There were wonderful festive days each time we encountered other parties
>of the League's hosts on our way; sometimes we then formed a camp of
>hundreds, even thousands. The expedition did not, in fact proceed in a
>fixed order with participants moving in the same direction in more or
>less closed columns. On the contrary, numerous groups were
>simultaneously on the way, each following their own leaders and their
>own stars, each one always ready to merge into a greater unit and belong
>to it for a time, but always no less ready to move on again separately.
>Some went on their way quite alone. I also walked alone at times,
>whenever some sign or call tempted me to go my own way. P 22
>
>It was very pleasant whenever we met one of these groups, to attend
>their feasts and devotions and to invite them to ours, to hear about
>their deeds and plans, to bless and know them on parting; they went
>their way, we went ours. Each one of them had his own dream, his wish,
>his secret heart's desire, and yet they all flowed together in the great
>stream and all belonged to each other, shared the same reverence and the
>same faith, and had made the same vow! P23
>
>I, whose calling was really only that of a violinist and story-teller,
>was responsible for the provision of music for our group, and I then
>discovered how a long time devoted to small details exalts us and
>increases our strength.   P 24
>
>Yet our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a
>country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the
>soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times. P27
>And so we League brothers traveled throughout the world without
>motor-cars or ships, as we conquered the war-shattered world by our
>faith and transformed it into Paradise, we creatively brought the past,
>the future and the fictitious into the present moment. P28
>
>Yet we had within us something stronger than reality or probability and
>that was faith in the meaning and necessity of our action.
>Since I wrote the forgoing, I have pondered over my project again and
>again and tried to find a way out of my difficulty[in conveying the true
>story of the League's Journey to the East]. I have not found a solution.
>I am still confronted by chaos. But I have vowed not to give in, and in
>the moment of making this vow a happy memory passed through my mind like
>a ray of sunshine. It was similar, it seemed to me, quite similar to how
>I felt when we commenced our expedition; then also we undertook
>something apparently impossible, then also we traveled apparently in the
>dark, not knowing our direction and not having the slightest prospects.
>Yet we had within us something stronger than reality or probability and
>that was faith in the meaning and necessity of our action. I shuddered
>at the recollection of this sentiment, and at the moment of this
>blissful shudder everything became clear, everything seemed possible
>again. P54
>
>I will be mindful of the first principle of our great period, never to
>rely on and let myself be disconcerted by reason, always to know that
>faith is stronger than so-called reality. p54
>
>Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have no stronger hunger
>than to forget. P59
>
>"It was only possible for me to do", he said, "because it was necessary.
>I either had to write the book or be reduced to despair; it was the only
>means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide. The book was
>written under this pressure and brought me the expected cure, simply
>because it was written, irrespective of whether it was good or bad. That
>was the only thing that counted. And while writing it, there was no need
>for me to think at all of any other reader but myself, or at the most,
>here and there another close war-comrade, and I certainly never thought
>then about the survivors, but always about those who fell in the war.
>While writing it I was as if delirious or crazy, surrounded by three of
>four people with mutilated bodies-that is how the book was produced."
>p59
>
>[Leo says:] "That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy- a
>game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make
>a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it
>any prettier." P75
>
>[Leo says:] "The defendant did not know until this hour, or did not
>really believe, that his apostasy [desertion] and aberration were a
>test. For a long time he did not give in. He endured it for many years,
>knowing nothing about the League, remaining alone, and seeing everything
>in which he believed in ruins. Finally he could no longer hide and
>contain himself. His suffering became too great, and you know that as
>soon as suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward. Brother H. was
>led to despair in his test, and despair is the result of each earnest
>attempt to understand and vindicate human life. Despair is the result of
>each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and
>understanding and to fulfill their requirements. Children lie on one
>side of despair, the awakened on the other side. Defendant H. is no
>longer a child and is not yet fully awakened. He is still in the midst
>of despair. He will overcome it and thereby go through his second
>novitiate. We welcome him anew into the League, the meaning of which he
>no longer claims to understand. We will give back to him his lost ring,
>which the servant Leo has kept for him." P 111-112
>
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