Let me introduce myself. I am Lyn Mathews Edwards.

Forty years have gone by since the beginning in 1956 at the University of Texas in Austin where, over a period of six years, seven couples bonded together to move to Chicago to become the corporate faculty of the Ecumenical Institute under the leadership of my husband Joseph Mathews. Ten years of serving and being served by the community known as Fifth City allowed three major strategies to evolve: contextual re-education, structural reformulation, and spirit transformation. The application of these three strategies resulted in many diverse programs. All of them may be broadly held by the creation of curricula and methods to illuminate and demonstrate the New Religious Mode and New Social Vehicle.

It is with great joy that, on behalf of the Advisory Board of the Global Archives Project, this CD-Rom is presented to the Institute of Cultural Affairs. It is for the use of the 21 ICA locations around the world and for all who are related to and participate in the historical task of exercising spirit and practical care for the world as it is met locally.

The archives of the EI/OE/ICA/ located in Chicago are but one of many collections. They are unique in that they hold full documentation of the work done in the Global Research Assemblies, the Global Academy and the personal files of Joseph Mathews. It has taken almost four years to order, computerize and document the expended time and energy stored in 144 five-drawer file cabinets. The first product: The Global Archives Catalog was completed in 1995.

At the December 1995 gathering of a group of colleagues interested in the future of the archives, it was decided to take the nextstep: the creation of the CD-ROM. Nine months and let me digress. Forty years and nine months are time intervals that, metaphorically speaking, are profoundly grounded. Nine months of becoming technologically informed and competent; many hours of hard work by staff and volunteers; weeks of being in the desert alongside of weeks of dwelling in the Promised Land; times of "profound" fun, make it possible to present a CD-ROM that contains, in small measure, the history of Those Who Care. At the second gathering of colleagues interested in the archives held in June 1996, a new name was chosen to signify moving into the future - ICA CentrePointes. Research and interchange will represent the continuation of sharing the learnings, methods and exercises held in the archives globally and to pioneer the creation of models and programs for a new world era. It is hoped that this CD-ROM will be an item that holds for you forty years of glorious memories and the promise of an equally glorious future.

DEDICATION

We dedicate this CD-Rom to all those people who didn't know they were saints when they created this material for you to use. Imagine a list here of 30,000 or more names -- each one of whom, directly and indirectly, contributed to the creation of these materials.

On this disk are many of the lectures and writings, charts, pictures and diagrams of ICA and its colleagues as stored in the Global Archives in Chicago.

Recommended (minimum) system to use this cd:

• 486 DX 33 with 8 MB RAM, 1 MB Video RAM (640x480x256 colors), 2x CD ROM drive -- OR
• Macintosh Quadra with 8MB RAM and 2x CD ROM drive

• ---

• AND -- Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or Netscape 3.0

Many thanks to those who proof-read, edited, made creative suggestions, supported this project financially and in hundreds of ways -- possibly the first CD-ROM ever produced in such a corporate fashion.

You are welcome to copy to your hard disk any documents that need corrections, including making the language gender friendly and any other improvements. Please make the changes and send us a copy by e-mail or floppy disk. This work will be profoundly appreciated. And you will be duly credited.

PURPOSE: We are dedicated to making available as much wisdom and as many methods as possible from all work of the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) worldwide -- recorded and otherwise.

INTENT: We are eagerly awaiting other locations and individuals making their files and memories accessible to the rest of us.

STYLE: Face-to-face exchangeof models, concepts and techniques will continue and increase. Telecommunications and a world wide web site will greatly escalate that interchange.

NAME: ICA CentrePointeS is the trialballoon name for this research and services web or network operating in multiple locations (the more the merrier).

MODE: This network does not depend onsetting up a large organization but only to interconnect local findingsalready in progress

SERVICES: Currently ICA CentrePointeS:Global Archives located in the ICA International Conference Center, Chicago is

• presenting the Golden Pathways CD-Rom containing a relatively small sampling (1000 documents) of what ICA in general has to offer.
• conducting research events around topics, courses and models contained in the Global Archives such as
• Forms of Meditation for the four typical Mind Styles
• What's working in families since The Individual and the Family course
• Eventfulness in Islam, Judaism and Christianity as seen through the 20^th Century Theological Revolution
• Practical Models for orchestrating diversity as implicationsf rom six Ur-images among the world cultures
• Updating the Cultural Revolution in terms of the current edge in science, urban life style and the secular religious mode
• providing ongoing services that supply materials, art forms and other archival content (printed, on floppy disks and CD-Roms).