Global Priors Council

Global Centrum: Chicago

August 3, 1975

Grace be unto you and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus far today I have had one of the finest days of my life, and one doesn't lightly make such a statement. I have wondered again and again, and still again, when people started to make fun of bending history, what it really means to bend history, what it is to participate in history. After this morning, I don't see why I would ever ask myself that question again. It was clear that participating in the first reading of these memorials was participating in history. I don't ask you to agree with that, but now I know what it means to bend history. This was far beyond anything that I read about, and we are just immersed in it all. Yet, it isn't just this morning. It is the whole council. isn't it?

I think it is befitting that I do nought this morning but underscore an item or so. Maybe I will start with the Town Meeting, or the Global Community Forum. I am going to get myself conditioned for this next year. When you were trying to sell Town Meetings, you got yourself conditioned to the Bi­centennial, I am going to get myself unconditioned, so I literally will only think about local man around the globe, in terms of global community forum is crucial. I want to come back to why that is crucial in another way. In these days, I repeat what I said when we first came together, "Lord-Jesus­Christ­Mercy­Me. "I think in terms of Town Meeting, Social Demonstration, Primal Community Experiment, the Metro Cadres, and Intra­global Movement, and that is a crucial iron screen in my head that keeps me from going crazy relative to what it is we are about this year. This is crucial to me.

This year, the most important of these five by far, talking as a strategist and tactician, is Town Meeting. All the rest are unimportant, incidental, and particularly I mean that about Social Demonstration. I know some of you are going to lay down your life in Social Demonstration this year, but, and I mean this kindly, you are not important this year. The fact that those are underway is crucial, but crucial to what? Crucial to doing Town Meeting! There is only one thing important: Town Meeting, Town Meeting, Town Meeting.

Now, the second most important thing in that, for me, is those Primal Community Experiments; even then, if there has to be a give, it's there. It has got to feed into Town Meeting. Third most important, by far, are those Metro Cadres. Then next most important is our intra­globalism. I'll come back to that in a moment. The least important, this year, is what I am necessarily going to give most of my time to, and that is consults. If they just keep along, and we can say a few words about them, that's fine, that's all we need, Town Meeting, Town Meeting, Town Meeting, Town Meeting .. Primal Community .... Metro Cadre, Metro Cadre, .... Intra­global Movement..., and last, for this year, Social Demonstration. Now, if you come off with the Town Meeting even in one country, next year one of you instead of me might be out here saying, "This year Town Meeting is not crucial; social demonstration is." But not for this year. And so, when we say goodbye to you Social Demonstration people, we mean it. We don't want to hear from you till next year, and then we want a fine report. Now, I don't even ask you to agree with that. But that is what is going on in me. with seriousness and severity. The only thing going on is Town Meeting.

In a way, I'm talking about taking care of yourself. Just ­­ what it means to take care of yourself. If you haven't got a focus like that, then you're not taking adequate care of yourself. Now, what we are intending to do in order to take that with that kind of seriousness at centrum, is to really set up a strong post. In the back of my mind was to get eight strong old hands like Slicker, Pierce, Charles Moore, Jim Bishop, and divide this continent up into three operating arenas: one, the north land, that is, Montreal and Edmonton areas, and we have two old hands (and maybe have their wives in on it), whose basic responsibility for the whole year is to do nothing but have two suitcases, moving back and forth, and back and forth, checking in here to get a sense of what's happening with Town Meeting. And then another two strong ones would take the northeast areas of the United States, that is, Chicago and New York. And their sole job with those two suitcases would be service to the area and regional priors within that arena. The third part of the continent, the south and west United States, would also have two old hands whose job it is to be of service to you area priors and to the priors within your regions and the Houses within your regions. Then the final team of two would have two suitcases ready to go anywhere in the globe where something is beginning to break loose on this Town Meeting. We would believe that before any of them got there, they would be highly skilled in how to be a forthright and immediate servant to your own battleplans and goals. Now, I say that at this time more to underscore the seriousness, the urgency of this aspect of our thrust in history for this particular year.

Then I don't suppose you are going to make a speech on this, but the most startling news I ever heard in my whole life is this list of the Metro Cadres. The total of them all around the world is 222 right now. I was asking some of my colleagues what an average size would be, and they said that, around the world, it would not be less than 10, and probably more, because some of them have up to 100 people in them, and that gives you a little bit of a start. I don't know what figure you are going to set and hold yourself before, but since I saw this, I am more convinced that it would not be impossible to have 500 of them by this time a year from now, and maybe even more. And the day after that, it would be very simple to have a thousand, and by that time, with the Town Meeting and the Social Demonstration and the Primal Community Experiment, they will be ready. By that time I have no doubt but what God should have chosen to make clear what the movemental dynamic in the order is to look like in the years ahead.

You know that the World Council of Churches is going to meet in Nairobi on the 23rd of November, and the two weeks before that, the consult of Kawangware is going to be held. That is going to be a crucial moment in our history, and I say this lightly, but I am not feeling lightly, if the people in Nairobi can move it, move it, move it, between now and November to get ready for that consult, then we will be ready for that meeting as never before.

Most of you know that in the last three or four weeks, I have been so harried that I can't remember more harried times in my whole life. A good bit of it was concern over making a last minute mistake in Washington. And we would fail. It's not that we need that money from Washington. It is not that. We could go get that money from some place else. It was in terms of what we are about, at this moment, that we would not dare a failure, and particularly one of such colossal dimensions. So with Town Meeting. You see, you've already put the flag up, and there's no taking it down except you surrender. That's a block that our centrum would have a hard time doing at this moment in our history. This is just hard­headed practical sense over against my own theological position that a man of faith does not fall. Now, I would believe that between the unbelievable transrational battleplans that you have created for the areas and the regions and the metros, and the micros of this country, and the nation of Canada; with that kind of a plan, plus this kind of a seriousness behind you in the centrum band here manifest in Chicago, it would seem to me that we can stand tall, and walk with confidence into sure victory. Now I didn't mean to get off so much on the mission, but in a way I said to myself, that's not the mission, this is our private interior life relative to being prepared to move into the battle.

So, the second thing that comes out of our fine conversation here this morning. One of the glories of this morning, as we went through the 24 memorials of the Global Priors Council together ­­ Do you know what we manifested? We manifested what I mean by corporate discipline. Unbelievable. And you were dealing with white­hot potatoes that would have had a group of liberal people at one another's throats. You weren't dealing with some kind of toothpicks. Also there are extremely volatile people in this room. What discipline ... there were differences of opinion in this room this morning, but the way we worked through it, I was proud to be a part of it all. I want to point out again, with pride in my colleagues, this march we've been taking in going areal, this could not have been smoother if God had been on our side. I am excited about it, and a lot of the ghosts I saw at the beginning were just not there at all. Now, this next year...you know Lyn's speech this morning deeply addressed me. She probably knows better than most of us the terror of the thing we're going to do now financially, and she said, "Well, let's just face it and march on into the unknown. We're disciplined enough not to lose our stomach over it." This is going to be a difficult time. If any of you area priors want to get upset with centrums, boy, this is the when you're going to have all the opportunity you want with stupid centrum people. You centrum people, if you want to get upset at the area priors, this is a fine year for your to do it. And you know that what I'm saying now isn't simply abstraction. One thing you can plan on, however, next summer, every area prior that got upset with centrum, next year will be a centrum prior, and every centrum prior that got upset with the area priors will be one. This is the glory of our polity. That's all I want to say about going areal.

Now about our inner life. I promised women some months ago that I wanted to say a few words on the subject of women. Well, I'm not going to say what in those days I was planning to say, though I want to one of these days. I want to talk about our order and women. You know, there was a time when the women didn't go out to teach much. (You can laugh at some of this if you want). Two women about clubbed me to death. I'll never forget the day when one of them came and squatted in the old Lumumba room over there, and I mean, she wasn't asking, she was telling. And the only thing we could do was say, "All right...you demonstrate that you can teach and you can catch the next plane." She became a teacher and became one in a hurry, and became a great teacher of RS I. The other one, I won't mention her by name, is a moralist like I am, and she can be as mean as can be, though I know she really loves me. Anyway, she came to me and said why, sure, she thought the time was come. Well, we started.

I tell you the women in our order are blue. I'll not rehearse step by step on it, but as the women pushed, we began to open and open. My point is, we have got to keep doing that. Where you just can't go like this all the time, life doesn't come that way. You've got to open and embody it, and then open and embody it. My point is that the time has come now, and particularly this year' as we move toward '76, and what you've laid out for the next few years. The time has come when we have got to, and the women have got to break loose. There are four things to say on this subject.

The first: and you knew I was going to say this. Whenever you assume the terrifying responsibility of reaching in the middle of that table, and picking up the power, it is there. And at this point, nobody can help you. It has to do with selfhood. I don't care what you women think, God did not make men-selves and women-selves, and that men-selves had to pick up their selfhood, and women-selves could only be selves if men-selves let them be selves. That doesn't fit my theology. Nobody can help you. Nobody. You pick up your selfhood and move, and this means that on the inside. If you've got one excuse, then you haven't picked up your selfhood. Do you hear what I'm saying? Now you men can listen in on this, too, for the same is true about you. If you could pick up your selfhood if you had a different prior, if you had a different wife. . . .oh no. So, with women, that's the first thing. The key to it is in your own guts, always. And frequently, the ones hollering the most are the ones that look most manly.

The second thing: you women don't support each other. I'm going to tell you a truth; you may not like it. Almost every time a women gets up here and does a tremendous Job, sooner or later some woman comes back to my cubicle and tears her to pieces. One of our woman colleagues made a speech, the only time I ever saw anybody of us give a speech and get a standing ovation. And guess what. Only yesterday a woman paid me the dishonor of coming by and tearing up another woman. Now, a little secret is, and I've got to be a little careful of this, but I believe what I'm going to say, you women are a sorority that men aren't in on. And I suppose, we men, we have a sorority of sorts too, for I am shocked at the way we support each other. Rarely does one of our young men stand up here and do a good job, that I don't almost run to him and kid him a little, but I try to get communicated that I am basking with him in his glory. How many of you men came by when you saw me fall on my face the other day? I knew what you were about; you were trying to pick out something in it that wasn't making it as bad as possible. You offered me your support. Now this is a word of wisdom to you women. You can get so used to clawing that you claw when you ought to be supporting one another.

The third thing, that I want to say at a time when we want to take a great leap forward with the women of our order, that we men as persons have got to make a deep resolve down in ourselves , that we are going to support our women and to give them every opportunity, and support them in that opportunity to develop. I'm not being sentimental. We need the women of this order as front line forces at this moment in history more than we have ever done. We men have got to make a deep resolve, about what I'm not interested, except to support any woman who will rise up and move. Now, most of us men don't even know when we are not giving that kind of support to the women. I've been in the uncomfortable position, I must confess, again and again, where I've had pointed out to me what you would have thought I ought to have known. Oft times it had to be pointed out to me five or six times before I really saw it. But, you let one of those liberals come into my cubicle, and I sit there, and I keep on sitting after I sit them out and they leave. I'm not even remotely interested in them. But I'm interested in a woman who's got guts enough to come in there. We men have got to make a resolve that we're going to support the first little flowering of a woman on the move. And remember, it's going to cut across a lot of invisible things. It's going to cut across my moralism, I know. We've got to make that resolve.

Now, last is important. We, as an order, have got to open structures. In a way the women don't need to listen to this part. They can go back there on that selfhood part. We have got to open the social structures of our order. This is not simple, it is not easy. Anyone who thinks it is, is out in liberal heaven some where. It is extremely difficult to open structures, and it always will be. If that were not so, you wouldn't have revolutions, now, would you? But we have got to work together to try to keep open the structures.

I got very tired of women coming in and telling me about doing more for them, so I said, "You come back in here with five highly concrete things that need to be done, that you would do and do immediately." And one woman did. She got back in there with them. And after she gave me time to digest those ten or twelve things, she brought me in another set of ten or twelve. It's not easy to do. Just thinking something ought to be done isn't enough it's got to be concrete, and it's got to be concrete relative to where our edge is. Otherwise, what good is it going to do for a woman to fill in a vacuum that was our edge yesterday? What I mean is, it has to be specific, useful and concrete. Now I hope that this year as we move toward '76 that sign of the women in our order taking off into a new orbit may be quite evident I think that you women need to keep pushing at it. I would prefer that you push at me as woman and not a man. But if the only way you know how to push at somebody is like a man, feel free to do that because I'll be needing it as well as the rest.

I want to say a word on the team. I have said before, and I believe it, that the team construct is to the sociological dimension of transparency what the model is to the intellectual aspect of transparency or transrationality. The other would be trans­sociality. The team, the team, the team. It's like we have learned to work in teams almost unintentionally (I exaggerate). We have never really come off with our team construct, however. Some people were sitting in my place the other day and I was shocked at their brilliance. And I said to myself, why do I always come across to myself as sort of stupid? Then it dawned on me. I am not stupid. Now why? I have developed methodologies in myself of where I can gear my little shriveled up hunk of grey matter into other grey matter like that; and bring them all together quickly. I don't come across as stupid. I feel stupid to myself inside because I know about this. And I look at my colleagues and I don't experience them as having their minds wired in. Now I know it but I don't experience it, therefore they come off as bright. However, I do know their secret that they too are wired in a lot of different ways. For instance, one of us made a speech up here the other day that was out of this world. But I could list twenty different places and he could do it better than I would, where he got the ideas for that speech, and maybe I could get up to 100. That's the power of a team.

And then the sociological power. Miracles are not miraculous. Those things that they do out there in Majuro. . . somebody has literally got to do them. Overnight. It's the team work that enables you to accomplish the impossible in an impossible amount of time. This fits in with the feel that the polity in our Houses is going to be different, and has to be different. Years ago someone suggested that in our congregations here, we ought to have families in congregations that are in Development, and other families that are in Management. To become a team you've got to sit down in one another's presence and think and plan. It doesn't matter what you're thinking about or planning about, but think and plan together. Then you've got to march together in various kinds of activities, if you're really going to get the discipline. I don't know whether we can do it or not. Part of it has to do with male and female as to where their gifts could do the best. But I would urge us between now and when we have our meeting in '76 to take this team seriously all over again, and see if we cants have a breakthrough in corporateness.

Then lastly, just a word on the spirit life. I saw signs that pulled things together for me this morning, and that make me wonder if my time line doesn't have to be speeded up. I intuit that once again corporate care will become profoundly effective and strong and steady. My guess was not before 18 months, and you know a part of it is that we would rather not fail next summer. Or never again shall we be anything like we have been previously. That's part of the soberness of that excitement of that kind of picture. I saw signs in here this morning. You had a speech on this new kind of discipline when the spacecraft is coming in, as over-against the thrust when it is leaving. And you've got to have something to slow you down, like those parachutes. In this kind of corporateness there is a new profundity. Can't you see the excitement of rushing off to get into space, into some kind of revolution,...they didn't think of the kind of corporateness that you require when the break has come and you march. I wanted to say to the women today, the sixties was a time of protestation. (Who was it said that?) The seventies are a time of demonstration. Demonstrations of the new woman as a leader. Anyway, in the time of demonstration, which is where the turn is, a new kind of corporateness comes to be. It is far more profound than the kind that got you off the ground. Maybe as you move, that I was thinking about '76 before.

I know as well as I stand here that I've got one more year in which if I don't care for myself alone, the corporate structures, the corporate body is not going to maintain me. Yet I think I smell the blowing of a new and a fresh wind of support. It still will be a stark year in terms of the spirit dimension. To hear myself say that I want to stand up tall and be sure I was able to bear the starkness of it. And if you're sure you're going to bear it, you don't hear what I'm talking about. And there will be others that will fall by the wayside. There will be others that will try to get out of their situation by blowing up their marriages. There will be others that use their two suitcases to get off the road. Yet, indeed the fragrance is there. That image would help this year, I think. Walking in the knowledge that this is a stark moment, but nonetheless, the wind is blowing, the new depth of consciousness.

I was going to read from the twelfth chapter of John. In the twelfth chapter of John, Jesus is clear that they are going to get him. And two strangers in the city, men of grace, heard the story and perceived also that they were going to get him. So they, in sympathy and sense of helpfulness, came to Jesus and said "Look, why should you have to go through that? If you'll come along with us to Greece I can promise you that the people will be delighted to hear you speak and will listen to you and will talk with you and obviously your life will be so­much better, and fulfilled and who knows, you might just make it and be somebody." And it was this moment that Jesus said "No, I can't go. For this cause came I into the world."

His words are with me now for I sense that I feel very much like I think most of you have been. You wonder if after all there isn't a much better way to live your life, and you found some possibilities there. Well, if you are fortunate you just might make it. This happens to me. In the last 24 hours I have dreamed about going back to seminary and teaching what we used to call practical theology. I thought, what a fine way to go. Yet I know for this possibility that is at hand is the clues that for many years now is exactly what we have been laboring for. Even more than that, this is a faith statement. But it is who I am. In recent months I have been able to say, apparently with you for here you are; "For this cause came I into the world." God, what a statement. And now you all take care of yourself, you hear.

Joseph W. Mathews