Summer '73
Congregation A
July 3, 1973
1. Maybe it's time to go back to the old evangelism
and discover the new evangelism. We have a taste of that in the
LENS course. Or are you teaching RSI differently? We are not teaching
RSI to a bunch of bad guys. I must admit that I don't quite have
it down like Don Quixote. Don Quixote was the new evangelist.
He walked up to Aldonsa and said, "My Lady!"' And she
said, "SHUT UP! I'm just an old whore!" Remember how
offended she got? She wanted to claw his eyes out. The Word is
so offensive. It is not the offense of going up to somebody and
saying, "You are just an old worm on a dungheap." No,
that's not offensive these days. That may be what people want
to hear, depending on their neuroses. But to go up to somebody
and say, "My Lady, you are whole, you are perfect, you are
well, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the
world, you are a royal priesthood, you are the savior of the world."
The response, "No! No' I am not just right, this moment"'
Just one little flick of the dial is all the difference in the
world, and you go out and look at *his creation. This is fundamental
to the ontology Of the New Evangelism.
I. ONTOLOGY OF NEW EVANGELISM
2. The ontology of social change is contained within
the understanding that spending my life is doing nothing other
than going out and announcing to people and to society that they
are whole wherever, whatever they are at this moment. It is allowing
them to see that that piece of wood there is burning, that their
life is sacred, that all time, space, and relationships are whole,
because the Mystery is everywhere and all is stuck in the Mystery,
planted in it. That means that the whole thing is sacred, or that
the Other World is in This World, or that This World is transparent
to the Other World, or that this world and everything in it is
a secondary symbol. Everything is pointing to the presence of
the Mystery in all. You can take a person, a table, a piece of
Wood, a rock and just look at it, knowing that the Mystery, if
it decides to, will erupt.
3. Then it gets a little harder, for example, the
tragic transparency inversion. Everything appears tragic, all
external appearances seem rotten to the core. Apparently Watergate
is tragic. Apparently death is tragic. But, what's apparently
tragic is transparently glorious. I'm going to shower you with
a lot of poetry like that. It is not what meets the eye, apparently,
that we are talking about. It is like Dali's "Crucifix",
the one where the crucifix is sort of stuck. I can't tell whether
it 18 stuck in the Other World or This World, but somewhere in
the back of that threedimensional picture is this eschatological
hero sort of leaning. Maybe he is tied into this world and hovering
over this world, representing the Other World in This World. Dali
spends his whole ministry, as an artist, revealing the Other World
in the midst of This World, or taking mundane things like watches
and allowing the Mystery to come through a little old watch curled
over a box to illuminate the Mystery in it all.
4. Everything is a portent. What is the portent of
this burning candle? Someone, anyone answer. ("It is expending
it's life.") A man just did it on us here. The portent of
this cradle? Someone else, what is the portent of this candle?
("The light has never been put out yet") And I don't
know. I don't want to look at its etymology, but I put the "in"
in front of that word and everything is "inportent."
Everything is full of portent. Portent is in all. Everything is
"inportent." We will have to look at that word.
5. All of that old brainwashing that the Church is
holy and the world is a "pile," and the "holiness"
of the Church has to go out there and be with that "pile'"
and maybe the "pile" will become more "holy?"
You know all of that old programming we did on ourselves? The
good guys and the bad guys? Now the church is not holy except
as it is in the world, and the whole world is holy. Period' Because
the Church is a part of the good creation, it is holy. Everything
is finally the good creation, and the church happens to be stuck
in the good creation, like everything else is.
6. However, the church happens to have a special
function to play in all this. It is to go around and say, "Lo,
here; and lo, there," and to point to the importance
of everything; to the significance of everything. The Church represents
the world to its essential glory. It goes out and introduces the
world to itself and says, "World, you really are holy."
Or the Church goes out and holds art form conversations
that's about all and allows the world to see
what it really is, not what it thinks it is; the world thinks
it is just a '"pile." The Church allows the world to
see through itself to what is behind what appears to be only a
"pile." The Church goes about objectifying to the world
its reality, or the reality in the midst of it at its bottom.
II. THE STRATEGY OF THE NEW EVANGELISM
7. You can come up with all kinds of poetry here.
That is the foundation out of which we begin to talk about social
revolution. If we ran a social revolution out of "We've got
to go out there and change those bad guys," that's one style
of revolution. Another style of revolution is to go out and introduce
them to what they really are. Once they get an image of that,
its done, essentially. It's just going out there and twisting
their image one notch. So you begin to talk about the strategies
of the New Evangelism. You have to use words like "transformational."
Out of this understanding, then, the old social vehicle is good.
How in the world are you going to allow it to be transformed unless
you allow it to see transparently. Out of this understanding of
the New Evangelism, you don't go out and say "nix "
on that and then go create this thing over here. That is not the
revolutionary strategy of the P.O.G. to go out and
destroy the old because it is not worth a tinker's. the New Evangelism
sort of starts and spins as it comes out to do an end run on the
world, and then the world sees the swirling dervish that it really
is, and allows the world to become, to see, to get a new image
of its glory so that it embodies its essence. We are that type
of catalytic presence which holds up a new image, the real image,
the authentic image of what it means to be human, for all to see.
8. My best illustration of a tactic is an Irish priest
in New York who was in a PLC. One fellow got up and attacked me
in that course, and the priest stood up on my behalf and told
him to sit down. Anyway, he told about this motorcycle gang, about
a hundred of them, with their girls on the back and their black
leather jackets, circled up in the churchyard parking lot. He
goes out with a big tub of water and a pitcher and just sort of
hurls water all over. You know what I mean? No questions asked.
You know what? Those guys came to mass one night, 100 of them
walked down the aisle in their black leather jackets and, of course,
all of the good guys in the church scooted to the outside of the
pews. It is that type of a revolutionary strategy. It just plants
the flag and says "This is the kingdom of God." It takes
the whole nation in the name of Jesus the Christ, "You are
all virgins'" This is a wild kind of massive evangelism.
It is going up, like we do in LENS, and throws buckets of water
on the economic tyrant and say, "You are a glorious being."
Not, "Change your ways," in the first place. We say,
"Look what you are. Look what is your power. There it is
Boy. Pick it up...Your Greatness." You take the big
old economic tyrant that has been eating people alive now for
several hundred years and baptize him. All the churches have been
preaching against old bad economics all these years. Oh, it's
a new type of leavening, transforming that is going on, or transsubstantiating,
out of the understanding that we are a geospirit revolution;
we are a chronospirit revolution; we are a sociospirit
revolution. What that means to me is that all of apace is holy,
all time is holy and all relationship are holy. This is the hour.
This is the right time. This is the right place. This is the right
hunk of relationships. No other. The People of God in history
are those who give civilization a new image of style, do a little
dance and get that style present in the consciousness of those
who are gloriously condemned to die. A little dance by those totally
vocated is the thing. That, all of the world is hungering for.
If they see it, they will follow it like following a Pied Piper.
That is what happened in the Middle Ages. Society said, "My
God!" When they saw it going on and just sort of followed
the Church. The Church at first was authentically pointing to
the reality of the Other World in the midst of This World. And,
of course, later on they got fouled up. But not in the first instance.
That wee a glorious day in the world because of the church.
III. THE MODE OF THE NEW EVANGELISM
9. When you begin to talk about the strategy of the
New Evangelism and the mode of the New Evangelism, how did it
go about doing its strategy of mass awakenment? You remember Peter's
vision? This unsacred man came to Peter, this fellow of the wrong
religion. Peter had a vision telling him to eat all the meat.
Peter said, "No, it is unclean." And then a big sheet
came out of heaven and dropped down its four corners, that big
sheet enveloped the whole thing, and the story that was revealed
to Peter was that everything is clean. The whole world is clean.
Well, out of that picture you begin to see the strategy and model,
and you begin to use words like drama, cultic, and, I don't know
how to spell it, "pneumenation," If that's a good word.
These are the types of ways. You know dramaturgically, eventfully,
corporately, pneumatically you begin to do it to society. "Cabaretily"
that's the mode. You just go out there and do a song.
You do a dance. You go out there and just sort of breathe on society...just
"pneumanate" all over it..."enthusiate" all
over it. "Resurge" in the midst of it. You be the new
being. You be that one who lives out the style of the gloriously
condemned to die, of the one who gloriously embraces everlasting
suffering, You be the one who lives his struggle triumphantly,
and they'll begin to fall in line. The dance has always been associated
with just portraying the story. Ballet tells a story. The Siamese
dance tells a story in the faint wiggle of a finger. Maybe that
is one of the critical tactics.
10. Another one of the critical tactics of the mode
is music, which has something to do with time. It punctuates time
with its rhythm and sound, and it fills space. I'm not quite sure
what music is out to do, or paintings. I'm sure that paintings
have everything to do with space. Do you ask what is going on
there? (Turner painting) Now apparently this was just an old broken
down boat and some fishermen trying to get in out of the weather,
a storm wee coming up. And that is what he was painting. But what
was he really painting? Do you see the light in the darkness?
Everybody knows that that is really the way the world is. How
is it that you allow what is really there to burst, even in your
dress? How do you dress - What kind of glass frames do you wear?
What kind of perfume do you put on? Do you polish your shoes for
the last Fat Lady? Do you allow the ontological reason for shaving
and bathing and taking your clothes to the cleaner? Maybe, maybe
there is an ontological reason for doing all that, particularly
if you are going out with the economic tyrant, because of the
economic tyrant is a clean human being. He takes bathe, and he
wears nice suits. Or some of the bestcreased people I have
ever seen are those who Just had one suit of clothes, too, but
they were always clean, even though they were worn out and faded
out. Everything reflects one's relationship to life, finally,
doesn't it? You can tell a man by the way he dresses. If a man
considers himself a slob, guess what. It shows up. If a man thinks
of himself as a dance, as an act in history, as a piece of drama,
that is, on behalf of something, then he cares about how he looks
and acts and whether or not he eats like a pig. That is to get
at etiquette or sophistication ontologically, you see? My sister
kept saying, "John, you shouldn't eat like such a pig. Hold
your fork right." So I held it wrong, but she was coming
at me moralistically. "Bad boy"' No, I mean if I am
an art form, and everything about me is an art form manifesting
the glory of the presence of the Mystery in life, then it make"
a difference, doesn't it? I decide whether I'm going to have sideburns
or not, or a mustache. I have to decide how it is that I am going
to represent the reality of life in my costume. This is
just a costume. You do not need clothes, especially in this room.
We are in a drama, sitting here in this room, now. The whole thing
is a big play, and life i8 a stage. That bleeds into the style
of the guilder, all I am saying about style.
IV. THE STYLE OF THE NEW EVANGELISM
11. Every moment is crucial, so you don't sit there
unselfconsciously, like I do so often, when something important
is being said, and I know I need that little acorn in my tree
for the future, I just sit there and say, "I don't feel like
it. Just pour it on over me, boy." Or you know, it's gracefilled
intentionality. If I am an art form, and if everything I do is
art in every situation, I just go and "art" the situation.
I just be "art" to it. Then my every motion does a dance,
and that moment does a dance. I get 30 mad at some of my colleagues
who seem to be perfectionists, they take every little inconsequential
sliver of life and just wring it out. They Just keep at it; "Let's
go at it one more time. Set that table one more time. You know
how offensive a thing it was the first time you saw a pedagogue
setting the table? You went around and slopped the dishes down,
and he came around behind you, and he.... Well see? It reveals
your screen. It reveals how you see life. If that room is an art
fore, a stage, it makes all the difference in the world. Precise,
decisive, disciplined, exquisite in every detail that
is one who is living out of an ontological understanding that
all of time, space, and relationships are holy and he, in his
holy function, is giving form to that holiness.
12. To talk about passion, if I am an art form then
I have to decide how to use my voice, my eyes, my feet, my body.
Every man has passion. If you send someone into a situation and
he sits there and hopes for something to happen, guess what? Nothing
happens, because he doesn't let his passion loose. I was hungup
so long in that, what was it, "I don't want to be wrongism"
and I don't want to do anything unless I genuinely feel like itism..
all of that bad stuff that psychologism did to me. Then it was
revealed to me that I invent every situation. I create every situation.
I am the artist in every situation. I am the secondary symbol
in every situation pointing to the primary symbol. I am being
itself, pointing to being beyond myself. ~ am passion for God.
I am an event in history. I am a oneman Cabaret. I am a
miracle worker. I carry the theatrical trunk on my back; and put
it down, open the lid and do a little play. You have to carry
your theatrical trunk around with you and be ready at any moment
to do a scene, to be as ready as those two guilders in Man of
La Mancha who marched into that death hole, opened their trunk,
did a little whirling dervish here and there, walked out, and
the whole place was transformed. Just two men. One man could even
do that, I suppose. Look at Jesus. He just walked around and cabareted
everything he saw, really happened to it.
13. Hell, that is probably enough. Do you have a
lot of images flowing now? What we need to do is take all this
and give form to it, shape. That is when research comes from the
bottom up. The same is true of the New Evangelism.