[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] Now Showing on Your Local Repository: the May Report

Wed May 27 06:28:08 EDT 2009

A big thank you to the team!

Marianna

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gordon Harper 
  To: Colleague Dialogue ; Order Ecumenical Community 
  Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 12:20 AM
  Subject: [Oe List ...] Now Showing on Your Local Repository: the May Report

  (I warned you there'd be another message . . .  This one is about what's new with the Repository.)

  Warning: This is the first of a series of monthly updates.  Our Repository team thinks that perhaps we may have been just a bit too laid back recently, that like some of our friends in the US financial sector, we may have put slightly too much faith in the Invisible Hand of the Market.  So, starting with this note, one of us will be assuming the role of town crier or newsboy or something like that, to let you know about some of the new material that has found its way, possibly undetected by your sensors, into the inky shadows of the Repository during the previous thirty days.  There are now five of us shouldering this burden; we'll see how it goes.

  To get right to some highlights for this month:

    a.. You've already had a heads up on one of our major projects: making the Golden Pathways available to us all.  As you might guess, this wasn't a simple matter of just plopping the contents of the CD up there.  There are lots of categories, subcategories and sub-sub-subcategories on that CD, along with a variety of file formats.  Tim spent several nights on this, while the rest of us checked out and reported back which pathways were now working and which still weren't.  We think they're all working now.  We all now have access to a wonderful compendium of our corporate wisdom.

    If you haven't already bookmarked the link, here it is again: 

http://www.wedgeblade.net/gold_path/gold.htm

    b.. Equally exciting--and brand new--is a book that many of us have been waiting for and hoping to see for several years now.  George West, with editorial help from Karen Snyder and Ken Gilbert, has completed his book on our foundational understanding of community development.  He's generously given us permission to publish it on the Repository.  This is from the opening of Creating Community:

      This book is dedicated to the two thousand souls who participated in the research and demonstration of community development in 24 communities one in each of the 24 time zones across the globe. Sponsored by the Institute of Cultural Affairs, the work began in Chicago in 1965 and continues today in various countries. The book is a distillation of wisdom gleaned from their work and reflection.

      The reflections in this book are what I wish I had had in 1965 when I walked into the west side, inner city of Chicago for my first experience in an intentional effort to create community. I hope that those on the journey of creating community will find the reflections helpful, if not as a guide, then as something to bounce against to deepen their own insights and intuitions. We began with the conviction that development had to be bottom up, that all the people must be involved , that all the problems had to be addressed, and that whatever operating images blocked the self esteem of the individuals had to be overcome. These were great principles; however a somewhat larger context would have been helpful, hence this book.

    c.. This is the first book the Repository team has ever published, and we feel very honored.  ICA International is passing the word on to all its national member ICAs, many of whom are deeply engaged in community development today.  You can scan George's Table of Contents and download your personal copy here (sorry, you have to go to Litibu to have your copy autographed):

    http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Main/CreatingCom

    d.. Len, with help from Jack Gillis, has added a page to our Completed Lives for David McCleskey.  A number of you shared memories and stories on these listservs as David approached the end of his life and may want to add some of those to the page.  (We also need a good photo.)

    http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Main/DavidMcCleskey2

    e.. To conclude this update, a small treat.  At one of the Springboard gatherings, George Walters shared some old recordings of Joe made while he was still at the Faith and Life Community and teaching in Texas.  This audio clip is from the end of a class he is concluding on Kierkegaard.  It was obviously recorded on an open reel deck (remember them?).  We had to work a bit to clean up the sound, but I think you'll not have any trouble following it.  I've called it, "JWM: Our Crutches and the Word."

    http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Main/JoeWord

  So endeth the May update.  (You can see why I didn't try to combine it with my previous message.)   Now get out there, and share some of your own treasures; you know what they are!

  This is probably obvious, but any of you who'd like to work on the Repository and think you could put up with us would be most welcome.  We do almost everything as a virtual team (I don't believe that Tim, Len and I have actually ever sat down around the same table in real time and space to work on it), using email, Skype, Google Docs and the like.  Shoot one of us a note --

  Gordon

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