CONSENSUS METHOD
I lied when I said last
time I talked would be the last time. What I am going to do now is what
I think that the symbolic dynamic of the Order, the Panchayat, henceforth
at each Council must do. In the future the role of the Panchayat at Council
is to inject its symbolism and say the consensus is "XX". Then,
in order to make the symbolic dynamic operate for you as well as the tota1
mission, when they speak, that is it; unless you have heard very clearly
that some mistake has been made: this has to do with an operating principle,
used by the Taize Community. They operate by consensus. They get together
and talk the matter through. If an obvious consensus does no appear, the
Prior of the Order makes the decision. But that is a decision in brackets
to be re-opened the next time the body is in session. I believe that is
a life or death operating principle relative to the symbolic dynamic of
the Order. We must be very, very careful that the Panchayat never, never
gets in a position where they run the Order. As long as you keep them out
of that position, you have a chance to authentically honor them and their
symbolism. I believe that we are such a disciplined people that outside
of the whole dimension of sinfulness, any group of us could be trusted
to bear the weighty burden of the symbolic aspect of the Order.
I want to make a few comments.
These are opinions but they are not off the cuff. Still, they must be treated
as just opinions. Several times during the Council I have heard references
to seven continents. Actually, there are nind geosocial continents.
When I asked Sister Oyler where she would like to be assigned next year
she had the audacity to say, "Vienna". There is a huge joke our
colleagues had in Europe that they needed a vacation so they would go to
Vienna. The audacity! I found that request exciting, but I did not know
why until I got to thinking about the nine continents.
For a long time we have
realized that SEAPAC is one continent. Mainland China is eight, so it is
the other half of Asia. Originally, we came up with that in Australia.
The knew it was an awkward situation, too, relative to political circumstances
in the world-that pushed apart from the oriental continent or the main
body of the continent. Now, after Sister Oyler's suggestion I thought by
just turning 200 miles we could now have spots in all the continents.
This would mean that you
would put Taiwan, Japan, and Korea into the Orient continent. They might
be called out as a huge area with various regions, which would leave five
areas or mainland China. On Saturday we are going to have a surprise about
mainland China anyway and then you would actually have Seapac, Southeast
Asia Pacifica, in which you would put the Philippines in and through to
the ASEAN (Association of Southeastern Nations) configuration. It seems
just absolutely ideal. With a little bit of readjustment in terms of area
in the new SEAPAC, but then we have now on a new continent.
Now the other continent
which we call USSR. The Eastern part of Europe is part of the Soviet bloc
and that's the way we originally did it. And despite the political and
legal issues, the grid has to be this way. I would be willing as a citizen
of the U.S. to give up a lot more autonomy than I was a few years ago to
keep such a nation happy. Anyway, if we went back to that grid, we would
have to redo the present European grid, then Vienna would be a stronghold
within the continent USS?. You are aware that we would consider Berlin
in the Eurasian continent, too. It has nothing to do with politics. That
was grid line. Most of you know that tomorrow we can have a social demonstration
an Greece and probably outside of Spain and Portugal. There is no other
nation that needs it more. In that way, we would be on our nine continents.
I think you ought to think about it and of course nobody is in a hurry.
Now, a few other comments.
First, Town Meeting. You have now adequately worked through the master
strategizing of Town Meeting globally or in terms of North America. You
actually have to have two sets of strategies. First, if North American
does not come off with dramatic intensification, the other nations of the
world do not have a chance of doing it. Now this county thing is absolute
genius but that is not all of it. A great deal more thought needs to go
there. You shoot anybody who goes around worrying about funding Town Meeting.
They have slipped over into the establishment and we are not establishment.
We are transestablishment and cannot operate as establishment. What revolutionary
body would actually work out of funding each segment of your program? If
you do, you 1ave already become establishment and there is not reason for
you to exist in history.
That does not mean that
inside ourselves we do not seriously hold each other accountable for getting
the most out of every community and everybody else we can think of in Town
Meeting. If the villages of this nation or Canada or the world were willing
to fund the whole Town Meeting, they would not need a Town Meeting. The
only problem in the finances which is not a problem at all because you
worked like hell that we just need to find a gimmick for funding. My guess
is that we are that close to it and it is going to explode. I have already
tested out the idea of selling Town Meetings to Corporations, and their
eyes stand out like sausages. That little gimmick, or one like it, and
this is going to move.
The thing that irritates
me most in development, particularly for our people who call on corporations
is when they get panicked, they go out in a week to raise money. They go
out to raise money rather than break loose orbits of funding. We never
will win that way. They slip one month after another a little more behind
each month, a little more behind, until you know what. Then, what are you
going to do when old fatty dies? The Old Fatty has to come in and redo
the whole thing. It comes out of going out to get money. Old Fatty comes
in and puts a stop to getting money and gets some kind of approach and
we start all over again. What are you going to do when old Fatty dies?
And I mean to sound just as smartalecky as it does.
I want to say a word about
Social Methods School. We came through what we thought we could get by
with if we had one mixed school in Maliwada. They are going to have to
get so many in there next year. I think that we can do two mobile schools,
one in Latin America and one in the Orient. I would like to suggest that
two of you get on the next plane to Maliwada and start going to school.
In time the school needs to be nonwestern, certainly nonNorth American.
Then they need to work vigorously in replication until the next school
starts. Next they stay in that school until they get through the part they
missed in this school so that they can do it. Then Mr. Kang Byoung Hoon,
of the Continent of the Orient, would have the first mobile Social Methods
School in Korea around the first of November. The Occidental team should
be intercultural and international.
Now Social Demonstrations.
There are fortyseven houses in the U.S. But next year this means we
need to do fortyseven. I reiterate what I said last year, that any religious
house prior around the world that is not prepared to turn into a caterpillar
tomorrow, to birth life in social demonstration, does not know what it
means to be a prior. Now, we do not want some prior to get ants in his
pants. We want to do this sensibly. I think twelve would be a decent number.
You need to get some hardheaded maneuvers down anyway. You've got a got
a whole year, you know. If next June 30 you pick the last four sites of
he twelve, you are all done. You noticed that to the degree that you do
not have a set of realistic maneuvers, to that degree you panic down in
your guts. Because of the hard headed thinking that they had done in India,
we are doing 232. They said because of this and they are right. Without
it, you have nothing to do but slow down and hood your guts. For some gathered
here that is a lot of holding. Well, I think we need this prayer.
In my opinion we ought
to be in Bengladesh now and in Pakistan now. I am not quite sure of Sri
Lanka anyway, we would be doing two phases. Those nations are in
dire need of social demonstration and we now have the instrument. That
means we would be completing, Brigadeer Paul I just promoted you,
Captain Paul, we would be finishing the subcontinent. I am not suggesting
you do it there but boy we ought to pray. The other place here we need
to pray is about the location into the Arab nations. Saudi Arabia probably
would be the best place. We could very easily get into Iran. But when you
pick up these nations you are talking about new troops, not turning a metro
house or a regional house over into a social demonstration, and this must
give us pause. It is the same thing for Mrs. Oyler; there are no houses
in Europe that we could close in order to start Vienna.
Another place we should
be praying about is Africa. Africa is just too colossal. We got these three
strongholds we started like the four in India. But India is a relatively
small nation compared to Africa. We could not possibly have a centrum
in Africa at this moment the way we are. If we did, you would locate it
at Ijede; you would have a have an outpost, and I mean just as strong as
the one in Australia or Canberra in Kenya and in Zambia. Although
I am grateful, I believe we struggled in Africa this year. But we barely
touched the surface of it when you think of the hugeness of it. The place
I believe we should go next is to Tanzania. Then you hare got to think
over west Africa. It is as if we have two in the west and one in the East
and one in the south, which would be in Zambia, hoping that the day would
come when if the what is the new name of Rhodesia? Well, the
other think you go in, depending on the possibility of how you would alter
the area structures.
I think, for instance,
next year, you have thought of this is the Walter's Chart. I know
George is not bright enough to do this; he stole it from somebody in his
area. What is needed next year is a scheme of where you would have a regional
house and then a social demonstration rationally spread across the geography.
But the thing that is intriguing about this proposed North American scheme
is that it could be done in Timbuktu just as well. For instance, we have
had too many houses as such in Japan. There is a social demonstration up
north. In the south let's turn Fukuoka as soon as we can into a social
demonstration even if it has to go to Okinawa; tho I would hope not go
there. Then, the regional house for the north would be Tokyo and the regional
house for the south would be Osaka. This is a possibility toward which
we could move all around the world. As soon as possible.
I spoke yesterday about
my priorities relative to the Centrum bands. I question anyone who thinks
you do this forever and do all four of these centrums in some kind of predetermined
concept of perfection. That was never revolutionary. Now management, I
think it became clear in everybody's mind in the room, is number one. Rafos
is one who is the symbol for this, has a tine tan, and a prestigious person,
has done a fantastic job, and his wife wants to go to Brisbane. The last
thing she wanted to be was to be assigned to Siberia. So she was trying,
to persuade Rafos that the crucial issue of all was not management this
next year but Operations. But he ground out from under her yesterday when
Rafos himself, before her very eyes, wilted under the burden of managerial
problems that we would have around the world, and this morning he came
in with several suggestions. As he started off, he said, if we could get
in one strong right arm, he would consider being assigned for one year
to Siberia for the sake if trying to get the managerial band around the
world, and I suggest we give a hand to Rafos to do that.
Now a word on assignments.
The number ore priority for me relative to assignments is replication in
India. I want to see four giants in India more than anywhere in the world,
including Rafos, to be in charge of those divisions. As a matter of fact,
I may be willing to suggest they pull McClain and get him to India in charge
of one of these divisions. I am not going to go over the criteria. Some
day I will give you a talk that will deal with the assignment criteria,
but I want to mention a couple of things. I believe that the area priorship
needs to be disturbed. I tried like hell to get one of the North American
prior, I mean that, yanked out, right out of their area. I thought a long
time on Duffy. I thought a long time about Clark, and Morrill, and particularly
long on Walters. I think he was the most vulnerable one, but in each case
it was my opinion they had to stay another year. I will not mention around
the world, but I would like to see as manv as six area priors yanked out
and put into some other kind of activity. Some of them should be in Centrums.
The point in critical. I do not know yet know how in the future you ought
to determine your area priors, but I do know that after so long an area
prior should be an unarea prior if we are going to move into the future.
Once we are not consumed as we are now with the mission, then, this is
what will become less and less important to anybody. I tell you I owe Joe
Sliker a tremendous word of appreciation. And yet, it is really humiliating.
He said, Joe come here, I want to say something to you. You know me well
enough to know that I an highly honored to have been a part of the first
Global Panchayat and really much as I'd like to do this, I'd like to stay
in India and do the replication. Kamala is not at all a woman of that kind
of virtue at all. She did not even have a chance to come to me, when it
leaked out to the people in India; they decided for her: No. Then, Kang
Byoung Hoon: I have learned not to look upon myself as being duped by some
non Westerner who thinks he has a hold on my western guilt. Bullshit on
that. I do not operate out of my western guilt and I am not vulnerable
to Captain Paul or to Kang Byoung Hoon. But I have learned to trust Kang
Byoung Hoon's wisdom. As I look back over the timing in Singapore to this
hour I have not seen a major mistake that he had made in the maneuvers
in running first o all the region and then the area. At this time he needs
to continue to work with the church in Korea. There are other places in
assignments that need to be roughed up.
Yesterday from the floor
some lady said that the memorial of selfsupport is not a memorial,
because we already decided that. A memorial cannot ever be a restatement
of what we already decided. If we are not doing it, then we do not make
another memorial. Somebody who has guts enough gets up and beats the shit
out of us. You do not make a new memorial. If you do that, you have taken
the power out of every memorial. We decided at the beginning that every
house is selfsupporting. That stands. This includes every religious
house. I repeat, an area house is first a religious house and a social
demonstration is first a religious house. A social demnonstration as a
house must support itself just like a regional house or a metro house.
You better get clear on that.
There is going to be a few years when our support is going to have to come in different ways. You are going to have to take stipends from the Peace Corps or any other kind of corps you can get. You are going to have to go on salary for grants and pre-schools and so on. This is self support. Do not let any daydreamer tell you that selfsupport is only when you send me out to the
position as pastor of
the First Methodist Church in Paducah, Kentucky. We are out to win a revolution,
not to do things properly and befittingly. We have to have rules and they
have to be iron rules. But, the first things a revolutionary knows is that
rules are made to be broken in order to win. Wouldn't you feel like an
idiot if you got to heaven keeping all of the principles and not having
done a goddamn thing? This means that every religious house and every person
in this order is a developer. It is up to every religious house to raise
its program money as it is to raise its support money. We have got to understand
that.
Now, I want to warn about
a little bit about careful exposure. The moment you have a global Town
Meeting book you have already started slitting your jugular vein. Matter
of fact, the most gorgeous thing about India is a book on the Indian people
that decided that their nation is going to come off. They are not there
trying to make global people out of the people of India, for heavens sake.
I'd like to see more of us in Canada decide Canada is going to come off.
I would like to see more of us in the USA decide that the United States
is going to come off. We need to come off or you have not been able to
see through history at all. When we get over this romantic nonsense about
the poorest of the poor, and the 85% and the 15%, you may discover that
it is the twenty fat pastors like myself in the U.S., West Germany or Canada
or Australia who are in the direst need of awakenment and significant engagement
in history. A revolutionary has to be so mush at one with the Tao, but
you cannot be utterly global without it showing in this act or in that
act. Right now, I would be pleased, if even l% of the people in India were
global enouga to care about the breadth of their own country. That is what
is happening. These guys have got to be thinking far beyond India, but
if they told everything they know, then shoot them.
The second thing, proliferation:
legal spokes and bank accounts is going to kill you in exactly the same
way. Every time a bank account is opened you show where your soft underbelly
is. A week ago the Executive Committee of our Board was meeting and I decided
I would not go. When somebody told me the auditors were there, I ran. And
it's a good thing I ran. You think that for the last couple of years I
have been trying to scare you into some kind of globality or unity. I hope
that you do not learn the hard way that hat was not it at all. I'm trying
to keep ourselves afloat. Then I sat up there and listened to what the
auditors had to say about us, I froze for about thirty minutes, and then
I was able to get my tongue and talk back a little bit to it. You had better
run every single penny of funds through one set of books. That does not
mean bank accounts in the nation in which you live or in the continental
construct of where you are. One of the most frightening things is the word
is out around the world that Arthur Anderson is our auditor. The auditor
sat there and stuck down my throat that they had received letters from
people saying that funds have been raised in certain of our North American
outposts that were not recorded in the books that they audited. Now, the
next time one of your regional priors gets greedy you just remember that
I will be glad to donate my stipend over the next ten years to your greediness,
the amount of money you are trying to pull off the top of something. Put
all money into the legitimate bank account. I understand your sweat. You
have only a matter of months until relief is going to come, when we do
not have to sit around and worry.
I was so angry at the
way some of you people in India sat around and fussed about money last
year. If I had not been so fat and old I would have picked them all up
and put them down the big deep well in Maliwada. Because I am not a poker
player, you can read my face, even though I do not say anything at all.
One of the big mistakes they did was to put the area priors on the economic
commission. The last person in the world you ought to put on an economic
commission is an area prior. You are just asking for vicious fighting.
There ought to be one area prior on it just to represent area priors, but
the people who sit around most of all wanting the money should never be
on the economic commission. You would have been far better if you would
have had the little Jenny Wiegel or the Parekh kids. I was going to talk
on priorship. But I won't. But I do want to say an area prior should not
have the final say so in the use of money. Neither should the first among
equal priors in a religious house or in a centrum have the final say so
in the dispensing of money.
One other thing. I do
not care why somebody outside gave us money. There is no designated money.
It is given to the global group. Now, you are talking from inside yourself,
not what they are after. Our integrity through the years has been that
we have delivered, and then some, on every cent of money ever given. When
one foundation gave us $500,000, the first $150,000 came in the morning,
and in the afternoon it was going to keep us afloat. But the foundation
got out of the black methods school that which they never dreamed of. When
I showed them the blue social demonstration book, and how Fifth City had
gone to twentyfour nations of the world, I thought that everyone's
false teeth would pop out. I had courage enough to say that you got more
out of the first $150,000 you gave to us than you got out of any grant
you ever gave to anyone in all your history.
I would like to talk about
how proud I am of our women, and the increasing importance of the area
council, about a new kind of sophistication, and about the morning office,
about the solitary office (we are on the road so much we have to do it
again in a very simple way). If I were going to talk about the solitary
office I would suggest that you take the writings of Tagore that they are
putting together for the morning office in Maliwada. One of the causes
of many tragedies in Maliwada was that our people were denied the opportunity
of morning office, without which you think you are going to stand tall
but you do not have the slightest chance of doing so without it.
The day Mary Kurian married Desousa, I couldn't believe it. I got to Maliwada on the day that Mary married Desousa. They had fixed up the castle that our people live in, a space like our morning office. Pretty soon, old Slick comes out and he is the first liturgist. We had the morning office. We went through that from beginning to end, and I mean with power. The thing that shocked me most was that the chairs were filled with Hindus. The ones that could not get a chair were peeking in every window and hole in the room. Now, if I had
been there we would not have done it. I am glad I was not there, ready to suffer the fright and fear. However, they cannot do that every day. So what they are going to do is take on Tagore and use him in Act I, II, and III o~ the "office". You liberals don't get in a any big hurry. When you do not
have a 45 rifle to fire
when a fellow is coming at you, you use a club. Don't think for a moment
that a club is a 45, when your life is at stake. Let us not be in any hurry.