Global Centrum: Chicago T­274, J.W.M.

Seventh Guardians Consult October 13. 1974

Closing Address

HOPE

Some of the Guardians continually warn me not to get "religious" at these gatherings and I intend to be obedient. I do my best not to get religious when you men come in. But a shocking thing happened Friday night. I prepared my speech, in full consciousness of the warning I had received, and do you know, someone came up to me afterwards and told me that I had been religious during my speech? Had I known what I was doing, I never would have done it. Did you know that I even came out and read from the Bible? I was not even aware of that.

I did not bring a Bible today and I am not going to talk about a religious subject. I am going to talk about hope. Hope is a state of consciousness. It is something which, at this point in history, we must think through profoundly, with our entire being.

This weekend was really something. As the reporting began this morning, I kept thinking of the power you men have, a power generated out of raw creativity. And unless there is some fatal incident, some misuse of this precious energy, you probably will not know yourselves by the next time you meet. That ought to sober you.

You cannot cut this power off. Fate can, but you cannot. You are doing something in history that no one else can do. As a matter of fact, I anticipate that when we have some distance on our accomplishments, we will see that no one else could do what we have done. This absolutely stuns me.

When the guardians first met a few years back, we said we were in dire need of an extension of leadership, an extension of brain power. Now that has come to pass. The extended leadership of our group has overwhelmed me this weekend.

This fact also reminds me of LENS. We could not have done LENS­­and we really have not done it yet ­­ but we could not have turned it on without this group. Many of its effects around the globe are yet to be felt, but it would not surprise me if, by the time you meet again, we are not working with the 5th City Project in India, training people to use the social methods we have developed.

And if it were not for LENS in this country, however successful or unsuccessful our courses, we could not even be talking about the Bicentennial, let alone planning for it.

You have probably noticed that LENS is halfway in mothballs this quarter. We are only doing what we have to do in order to keep the wheels turning. Perhaps by the winter quarter, you will be ready to take it out of mothballs. By that time, we may have its loose screws tightened up. The courses scheduled for the fall are crucial, however.

Now if we come off with the Bicentennial, then LENS is really going to move. This reminds me of the corporation consult. If one or two of those succeed, LENS will fly. In the meantime, do not forget how important LENS has been in bringing about this moment, however inadequate it may seem.

We need to hold off on the corporation guild until we are absolutely ready. It is as if we can expect to lose several hundred people as we work through what is necessary. No one likes that, but we cannot go into those situations and play Mickey Mouse. That is the price of being a revolutionary. We have to have guts enough to pay that price so we do not spend our time playing Mickey Mouse.

When we move on the corporation, we must have our methods thought through to the bottom. We must have everything filled in with the effectivity businessmen can understand in their individual lives and can use corporately in whatever mission they are engaged in.

It is clear, of course, that we have not decided to do the Bicentennial. Instead, we have been doing a great military strategy. We have been watching the enemy. We have been taking our army and marching it parallel to the enemy and then, sending off a foray here and a foray there, a division here, and a division there ­­ until we find the weak spot, the soft underbelly, at which point we'll send the whole battalion into the enemy lines.

But as I was reflecting this morning, it occurred to me that you men had actually decided to do the Bicentennial. Is that not right? We have decided to do it and that is something we must be sober about. It certainly is out of my ballpark.

Around this world, now, we have got to stop thinking as individual nations. Certainly, we must still think as nations, but we must expand our scope.

Habitat '76, the United Nations Conference on Human Settlement will be held in Vancouver. We are going to be tied into it. Habitat is in July of '76, I believe, and we should probably think about doing the United States Bicentennial and Canada together. In Canada. we'll call it Habitat '76.

If we come off with these town meetings in North America, then they will ignite the whole world. Germany will want to do it and that is only a beginning. At least every Western nation will want to.

Now, Majuro. The Majuro consult we have been talking about today was not just the Majuro consult. We were talking about consults yet to come, all over the world. Perhaps we will call them all Majuro consults wherever we hold them. If we get the business consult going, then we will be moving.

Soon, perhaps when we come back together again, we will be ready to talk about the vocation within vocation. It pleased me no end this weekend to hear a man stand up and say he was part of a great company. What does it mean to be a Spirit man as an executive in a corporation, or as a doctor? That is what I mean by para-vocation. What does it mean to he the invisible revolutionary, right in the midst of your everyday work? I have been thinking about this for years, but the timing on it is crucial. Still, there is a dire need for it

Let's be in no hurry on these corporation guilds. We must know what we are doing for the last thing we want is a Boy Scout effort. It pleases me that you have not tried to organize. That makes me think you are not Boy Scouts. Have you ever noticed that an organization takes such good care of itself that it does nothing else? For that reason, you do not need a rule. You have to think about Boy Scoutism all the time. Boy Scoutism is getting a fine idea and running out and doing it. No! The Revolutionary keeps his ideas and he brackets the great ones. He waits and waits and waits and waits until the moment comes to pull the trigger. Then, something happens. You need to have the internal fortitude to wait for the right moment: that is, if you are interested in doing something in history for all mankind, however modest.

I also think it is getting to be time that your wives should be attending these meetings. For some time now, we had to slap ourselves around a bit. Lady Aster of London said on a visit we had with her that the English school system turns out four-year-old-boys and asked if we knew what it meant to be married to a four-year-old boy. We are not going to remain boys. It's almost as if a clarion call has been sounded for us to rise up and be men. I suppose I mean that it is time we brought our wives here when we meet in April.

We also need to think about doubling in size, so perhaps each of us should think about bringing someone with us to the next meeting. We are in no hurry, but the Bicentennial is a big, big, bite to consider.

I would also like to see us transform the sixth floor of this building into a Global Guardians suite, perhaps by March. Keep that in mind in case you run into someone who has money for just such a special effort.

Your accomplishments in the area of finances have been astounding. It is as if you wrapped up any problems we had in that area and put them in your back pocket. Now, you have turned your creativity not simply to the programmatic aspects of our work, but to forging the very future of everything we are going to have to do.

If you men continue to set aside time to help out our circuit people as they come by your regions, it seems to me we will be able to forget about finances and get our minds on the jobs we have to do. And if we do these consults around the world, believe me, it is going to take all of the energy all of us have and more.

I have been working hard at getting the finances out of the way. Do you know, it takes 200 dollars a month to support me here, along with Order funds, from which I need less and less since it includes children's education and such. I was thinking that for some of you, for missional - not selfish - reasons, you remain exactly where you are, instead of becoming part or the Symbolic Order. Then, you might think about taking upon yourselves the support of, say, a whole family in the Order. I am not pushing for that, but you must think of some way to more fully participate, for your own sense of integrity.

I was supposed to be talking on hope. Well, perhaps when you come back, a few of us can go aside and I will do my last religious speech - on hope.

Recently, a few of us went to see a very wealthy manufacturer who is 71 years old. We went filled with hope that we could tell him about something that would really excite him. We took him to a fine restaurant in a fine old hotel and the four of us sat down at a table. This gentleman proceeded to talk for the next two hours straight. I barely had three minutes to bring up the subject we had paid for the lunch to talk about and by the time that three minutes came up, I did not want to say a thing. I just wanted to leave.

For two hours, this man spouted nothing but cynicism, cynicism, cynicism. He did not come up for air. The interesting thing was that in no time, he had the three of us down under the table with him because everything he said was true. Everything he said was true and there was no contradicting him, because he was right. He talked about business, about politics - there was scarcely a subject he missed. He was highly informed. I kept trying to muster a debate with him but my head kept shaking up and down, affirming. what he was saying.

We were all in sheer despair. We were grateful when he finally left so we could drag ourselves back to our hotel and sink into our misery.

This is an experience you have had. It was in the midst of this oppressive despair that I became aware of an objectivity called hope. It is an objectivity called hope but it is beyond hope. Camus suggested that the last point on the journey to a man waking up has to do with when he fin ally surrenders hope. What have you got to hope about? There is no hope. The only image left you is a funeral director's office where you, naked as a jaybird, lie , as cold as his refrigerator will make you. It is that simple. Everything you spend your life for -- your children, your nation, your fine company -- the day after tomorrow, they are not going to be there any longer. That is finally surrendering the last vestige of hope.

The old man we visited with was spelling out exactly the way life is, in its deeps. He did not know that, but he was still reaching for hope. Kazantzakis calls hope the last temptation. When you grasp this, you have become a believer - and not in any religion­just a believer. Camus, in the last The Stranger called it a "benign indifference to the universe." It is like what the Arab people, the Semitic people mean when they say "believer." To use theological language, it is a believer in God, a believer in the Mystery, a believer that you are this relationship.

When you take that belief and grind it into your being, which is the Dark Night of the Soul, and grasp that all of life is humiliation, weakness, resentment, and suffering, then you have entered into what I call profound belief.

When you have become a believer, sooner or later, you grasp that you are responsible for the whole world. Belief and care are simply two sides of the same coin. If you are a believer, you care. Taking that love and burning it through every fiber of your being, takes you through what I call the Long March, the sense of eternal rootlessness. You have no home, no home at all. The moment you pick up care for the world, you become aware of your final ineffectivity; you become deeply aware of your depletion.

You are burned out at a moment, but you become aware of lifelong fulfillment. When that happens, you are in the state of being called Profound Love.

When profound belief and profound love become realities in your consciousness, then "there appeareth" hope. Hope that is beyond hope, as Paul put it, the hope against hope. It is not you hoping, you just find yourself with new hope. The difference between that old manufacturer and a Man of Faith is that in the midst of participating in exactly the same world, the man of faith gets a crunching experience because he cares profoundly. He finds himself hoping with an everlasting hope.

Do you want to know the very secret of the wellsprings of motivity? It is hope. It seems to belong to the mystery itself. If you start out on the journey you have already started on, and are not aware of secrets like this one, then you are not going to make it. And if that sounds religious, then you will just have to make the best of it.

Joseph W. Mathews.

10/26/74