[Dialogue] [SPAM] Re: Letter to Alumni of the kemper building communitiesof the last few decades

[frank bremner]

Dear Ed et al
 
I am heartened by your comments about "this administration" etc.  I have grieved over some of the things that I've read about. 
 
I have a memory that sometime in the thick of the community forum / community project it became important to get people on the ground and into action, without burdening them with having to write a 2000-word essay (metaphorically speaking) on the history and understandings of the O:E/EI/ICA.  An analagous issue: you don't expect a new member of a football/baseball/ basketball club, or a local church congregation, to know a great lot about the practices and traditions of that community before becoming a member - these are things one learns along the way.  And some get into it deeper than others.
 
But making a complete break with the past seems to be "throwing the baby out with the bath water".  It seems that there's a wonderful diversity of expression out of our tradition - a diversity that is like a diaspora made up of many seeds which gather together in different ways to make different gardens.  And, like real-life gardens, things get re-designed occasionally, and companion plants get together - other analogies might be made.
 
There is still some discomfort about our "religious" tradition, particular in many quarters of Australian society.  It's probably accurate to say that Australia is deeply spiritual, but not very religious - there are historical reasons for this.  But we can talk spiritually, once we are comfortable that the other person is "not trying to convert us into their club", in all sorts of languages.  This is where I find much of the language of the OW and so on very useful, and the secular translations we placed on many "churchy" words.
 
My stance is that if someone has a problem with our background in "religion" and "church", it's their problem.  They have picked up negative connotations to such words - and understandably so.  But the best thing for me to do is to be credible in their eyes, as not being a "bible-basher", but someone offering a service to them , often via my expertise of various kinds.
 
"The ICA does not do religious programs" is a good comment I heard recently.  Period.  That does no mean that I couldn't adapt some of the ICA work for use in Catholic schools, or example, where I could use "secular" and "religious" language in the same sentence.  And, as someone with a Religion Teachers Certificate and a Retreat Leaders Certificate from the Catholic Education Office (Adelaide), that is something I could do.  But not as ICA.  It would be under one of my own umbrellas, acknowledging a variety of influences, including O:E, EI and ICA.
 
On the other hand, in state schools, my events would be drawn from ICA work, and could be clealy checked by any education authority for supposed "religious" content.  But I would probably have to acknowledge that ICA work drew on the work of O:E and EI.  People here do have long memories, and can recognise some brainstorming appoaches from the late '60s and since.
 
I'd love some comments on this - I'll bet Jim Bishop has some thoughts.
 
Cheers
 
Frank Bremner




Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:10:07 -0500From: edfeldmanis at gmail.comTo: dialogue at wedgeblade.netSubject: Re: [Dialogue] [SPAM] Re: Letter to Alumni of the kemper building communitiesof the last few decadesDear Colleagues.I have a few more added thoughts about creating a new community -- as it were. 
We have had to spend exhaustive time coming up with the form of the community, and dealing with the newer version of the ICA.  These folks are very new but hoping and even rushing to figure out how they, in their own framework, can be "old hands."  It has been difficult for them and for us. Now there is a director that is in place today, and not like the others, leaving tomorrow.  When we started working with this administration  We did not have or start this community as an organic, evolving program, which would seem appropriate.  Instead we created community with the help from the past inheritance, that is to say the Order and past community members, and symbolically from all of you and the "Keystone Community."   This came over against demands of some kind of  "new ICA  vision" of a program-matic direction that, frankly, assumed that we could over-night build organizational maturity of an on-going entity, say, one that would be 5 years into operation.Along with that and the great confusion of going through 5 former executive directors (Ken, Betsy, Suzanne, Kurt, Pam:  sometimes at no fault of their own) the right hand of the ICA did not know what the left hand was doing. For most of them everything appeared to be slow going. Today this is not so much the case. Since the new direction of the ICA was created (however that will evolve) troubling ideas and actions have had to be tackled.  For example, on the ICA staff, incomprehensibly, there was a staffer that was given free reign to invent rules about almost anything.  This person, now reportedly silenced, not only was,  the defacto ICA public relations voice, but also in what appears to be - and I mean this as an impact statement as we take it in - making personal attacks on past  ICA staffers, the community and on the building's clients.  I, among other people,. have put forth the case to the that all of this kind of behavior has to stop. Whatever this behavior was, it was outside the tradition of the old ICA and worked against the stated aims of the new ICA.  I believe that the Executive Director has heard the message and hopefully has taken constructive steps to put a stop to this.  Appropriate overtures have been made by this, the Sixth Director, Nino Tillman, who seems to be a grounded and genuine person.  The ICA and its new director have now said that they want to work with us, create a community program that might be replicated elsewhere and join us in various expressions of our green ecological revolution. We welcome these overtures. We hope to open talks in this appreciated atmosphere of what seems to be good will.  Although we have spent a lot of time meeting ICA initiated demands (Now well over a year and half of weekly meetings and more community meetings than a water melon has seeds) we have also begun a major vision in ecological education and demonstration.  Many practical activities have been started in areas of biking, in living with conscious low energy consumption, and in creating forums, such as our Second Sustainable Saturday programs, with organic food, educational direction and old-fashioned socializing.  I, myself, have become with others a worm farmer (wrangler?) making compost. We are making relationships with those around us.  One example is our interactions with the ecologist at Field Museum. And yet more practical efforts than I have mentioned here.It is true we are experiencing exhaustion. We have rising costs and I am sure like some of you we have been greatly impacted by the current inflation.  We still are both a community demonstration and -- I believe -- we are becoming responsible ecological pioneers. What I want you to know is that even though we have made seemingly huge investments of time and money (without guarantees), we still continue working.  We are also focusing on how to live in the now.Thanks.Ed
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20080620/45ad9fb3/attachment.html