Order Council

Centrum

Story Paragraphs

July 31, 1973

We see it here

We see it there

That awesome mystery is everywhere.

Summer '73 welcomed all to the greatest show on earth ­ Life. It is not life as it might or could be ­ but LIFE as it is in the NOW. The wonderfilled existence was demonstrated as a possibility for every man. The radical sensitivity to and are for all of life started men dreaming dreams of the future on behalf of all mankind. All present began concrete planning on how it is that every man can be released to embrace the glory and gift of his own life ­ to see the mundane transformed before his very eyes and to wear any face, play any role required to serve his neighbor. And the dreams that were inspired out of a love affair with the universe were filled with the impossible, the uncomfortable, the necessary. 1700 Spirit Giants have been set loose on society ­ intent on being miracle workers, intent on living life in the NOW and thereby calling all others to that possibility - the possibility of LIFE ­ the greatest show on earth.

We saw it here

We saw it there

The Turn happened everywhere.

*

This summer we played many different roles, from Masters of Ceremonies of the Greatest Show on Earth ­ Life, to Dr. Lao, to the Blue Fox. to show a manifestation of a new serving style. We caught fish in a dry stream ­ without bait. We had Uptown 5 celebrations; we dared what we know and learned nothing is impossible. We sang in time with passion.

Together we learned about self­discipline. We explored the solitary office, adventured in a new form of summer programs, discovered the difference between fellowhood and fellowship. As knighted Xaviers, we became the League.

Our love affair with the universe directed us towards problemlessness. As our mission became near play we anticipated glory in feeling like a; NSV. Traveling through the Other World charts we experienced a shift of style.

Now we know how to reveal transparency to local man. We saw ourselves not only as the secular religious, but the religious secular. We know now about bringing Holy Life to local man. With new leadership, tactical thinking and our renewal and promise of strength, we set out now to produce Guildsmen in our time, so that no man be lost.

History is to be bent­-

radically, critically, and, God willing,

to the benefit of all men,

But, not simply as secondary by-product

of our decision. to love the Church

and to renew her life,

But, because we love the world-

and now have designed the tools

with which society shall be altered.

Summer '73 revealed that fact.

It held out the prospect of a great movement in history-

Not "our" movement, but triggered

and informed by what we do.

Races will rise

Human creativity will be unleashed

Governments will tremble

Some will fall

Whole social systems will be transformed.

It will be the fulfillment of the second millennium

the unexpected un-coming of Christ.

History is to be bent

radically, critically, and, God willing,

to the benefit or all men.

Pray for Summer '74 and '75.

Pray especially for Summer; '76.

Pray for many more and much more.

*

This was the summer that allowed transitional humanness to be embraced as a necessary and God-gifted part of the ontological­historical and the socio­spirit journey. It was not a culmination or a fulfillment of Being realized in totality but a semi­focused pull­together of all threads that had emerged, ambiguous and disunified, from the past year­­so that we are now able to face the future as heading toward one direction, impelled by divine wisdom­­ toward the violent union of all creation with the mystery, depth and greatness that gave birth to it all.

We have, therefore, learned to resist the irrational short­circuit that intellectual blindness drives us to, we have learned to resist the anarchic freedom of non­being, we have recreated and intensified religious (obedient to life) discipline, we have made it through the dark tunnel from justification to sanctification We have recreated the Word in ourselves and for the Movement through Scripture study. We have learned again that disciplined suffering intensifies ecstasy­through St. John or the Cross­­ that Being conquers Non­Being­­ through St. John of the New Testament.

*

Dear God, they say you are the rock, but you're more like the sea washing away all the sands we have built on and we gloriously drown in thee. It's been many years we have waited for this flood tide. Many years of charting the unfathomable depths of the ocean's floor and caught now, dancing in intensely silent, swirling currents, we now have to build the dikes to structure this violent tranquillity. We surface in the crashing spume; creating, building in the rolling breakers.

*

Summer '73 was a time of realizing that the only authentic life is lived in the other world, and that never could have happened without being totally grounded |in the everyday mundanity of this world. Somehow what this world is about became fall new under the rubric of, or on this side of, sanctification, and yet we never said or learned anything new­­all of a sudden everything was just new. Space is a fuzzy category because I can't see it or touch it or chart it, but it's the filling of that space that holds every man in being. That filling of one's space­­not just what he fills up with his body­­is a way to talk about endlessness­­ his style, holiness, his revealing life to others transparently, his passion, what he does with his I electedness. And every man creates and fills his space, but how he does it reveals his decision to live the holy life or not­­it's the intensity of all that's ever been and how that intensification turns the holy life from inward to society.

*

The traveling troupe of medieval entertainers and guildsmen who articulated to local man his journey through the morality plays came alive as we on the West Side planned and participated in the Cabarets. Traveling pedagogues for the last twenty years, now became singers, dancers, comedians, showmen and magicians who took the pain and burden of the Mountain of Care and transformed it into love and joy. In the Cabaret secular evangelism became the horrifying indicative demanding the same intentionality and comprehensiveness as RS­I.

*

I Could Have Danced All Night, and I Got a Chance To

Incarnate awe pulled up a chair

in the happenings

We've long since known how to make happen.

Flooding and rushing and drowning the everyday with significance

that need not

and does not intend

to end­

And here we are

rather sheepishly

Looking down the barrel

of the holy (and unholy) Roman Empire

And knowing it won't possibly point

anyplace else. And it's a

horribly beautiful view.

*

Secular­Religious Healing ,

The holy life is what we live and be and build across the world ­ out of the holy past. It I, the sum not the subtraction of the world and wonder.

Sacred space/Cabaret style

The holy space is where we dwell whether we stand in the kitchen or riding on the circus train to outer elsewhere ­ for though we are not recognized we are known ­ the unexpected mask of everyman transformed to servant of the world.

Team/Collegiality

The holy Other is who we are ­ a cosmic collection of crappy folk who see the Word standing between them and their brothers ­ which gives an unjaundiced eye ­ we are not fooled nor do we fool with life ­ wholly consumed, committed we move out ­ fresh every moment.

Fulfillment/Turn

The Wholly Holy ­ the everyday, anyday wonder incorporated into nowness for there is nowhere else that we can be where we are is where the movement is, and the Lord of History. The feast is set out and we are already full ­ the fullness of time ­ of space ­ of the holy.

*

If this summer is about anything, it is about exploding the Cabaret dynamic in every situation. From being the wonders of the day to writing paragraphs in your team, the bottom of life just keeps on dropping.

The key explosion for me was after the second Cabaret. The Cabaret was beautiful. The dancing was beautiful. Even the drinking was beautiful. But I never dreamed that the clean­up could be beautiful. But I found myself fully participating in the clean­up (even though I had already expended my life the whole evening before). It's a glorious thought that even in clean­up the bottom of life can be blown through and the life style of the happy death explodes every situation into a key event towards your death.

*

There's a line from an old Christmas carol that I can't get out of my mind these days … "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight." I have broken through naiveté, fought through activism, almost died in nihilism

and begged to be killed in great spiritual struggle, but the one common thread in it all is that I have been waiting for the realized fullness of all of life for everyman for a long, long time. I came into this summer not expecting much ­ a dried up riverbed is a dried up riverbed; an old movement is an old movement and the (BANG!) some crazy old Chinese guy pulls a fish out of the riverbed. The fish I beheld were these: a Sisters of St. Joseph Assistant General giving the missionalizing Roman Catholic Orders report, Walter's Endless Felicity lecture, those cabaret comedy skits, being able to work out and still be in the summer .. oh, happy chance! There was rock image - that is about a man whose pathway has turned into quicksand and oh, happy chance! There was a rock in the middle of the road. My weary eyes have beheld and my unhopeful heart has rejoiced at that rock ­ that rebirth of wonder; that great news.

*

ROUNDING THE CORNER for two voices

In the dark night

the march went on

I was hungry and you gave me food

Rounding the corner

I was thirsty and you gave me drink

centrifugal force

I was naked and you clothed me

Hand clasped together

I was in prison and you visited me

Tightly, to avoid being thrown

I was sick

like a useless asteroid

and you comforted me

into an endless trajectory of psychotic space

I was thirsty

Each man's destiny

and you gave me drink

dependent on the grasp

I was hungry

of his brother's hand

and you gave me food

In the dark night

No No No screamed into the night

I was naked

the march went on

and you clothed me

to stop was to imperil

I was in prison

not only yourself

and you visited me

but your brother

I was sick

and the whole march

and you comforted me

indeed the whole future

I was hungry

dimly perceived, no surety

and you gave me food

only the march

I was thirsty

and the dark night

only the fire within

and you gave me drink

and your brother's hand

only the care of the world

I was hungry

and the glorious Yes

and you gave me food.

*

Healing is the appropriation of authentic humanness. Health is present only in the presence of the Mystery­­for that is what man's life is. This happened in Summer '73 primarily through reports from overseas. The indicative of globality, or my oneness with all of creation, is a constantly healing interior presence.

The Mystery is encountered in space primarily through shape and color, but also in movement. Summer '73 was the fulfillment of space, an interior enrichment.

This experience of space is intensified in the presence of a disciplined body of people, using their spatiality to transform exterior space which is then interiorized.

Fulfillment happens when the self and sacred space are in harmony. This is what happens in the cabaret.

*

Once upon a time, time was too much for us. The burden of the day today was overbearing. And so we decided to transcend time (not to withdraw from it, as if that were possible) and dwell in the realm of the eternal, which is not a time but a space category. We decided to intensify our expenditure in the given moment and the given place, and in so doing the monotony of the past came together with the fear­filled anticipation of the future, and in that moment the present was transformed.

The summer was the movement's self­conscious appropriation of the shift from longevity (time) to intensification (space), in terms of living every moment in the present, where the memory of the past finally caught up with the vision of the future.

A 90­year old man in Uptown said, "I hope you don't live to be this old. I've had a good life, but now life is all gone. I'm just walking around saving funeral expenses." In some sense, that is not only the plight of the elder, but of everyman in this time. The question, which is the indicative for us out of the summer, is how we take that 90­year old life and every other one and shove it into the depths of the place we have­­at this moment. The Guild, the Cabaret, the Ecumenical Parish are the clues.

And we were and are transformed­­ from those who die in their tactics to those who are fulfilled in their dying.

*

The summer of '73 has exposed in our midst a clarity about the style and role of the secular/religious which will be a launching pad for the next twenty years. The decision for holy life has become clearly the decision for missional expenditure as radical corporate servanthood to the civilizing process, which is fulfillment as, and only as, one lives his given life before the Mystery alone. The presence of the Mystery in all things has been observe1, and a resolve to embrace the awesomeness of every moment, event, situation and thing has birthed a consciousness of the cabaret dynamic as the embodiment an celebration of the presence of God. We now know something about loving God as loving with our death this world his creation. It has also come clear who the enemy is­­ the one who constantly calls one to less than fulfillment, to partial expenditure rather than total expenditure on behalf of all creation. This one, Satan, is our only foe. His defeat is our only task for this alone unbinds and releases men's creativity and allows their spirits to fill the space of the universe with care for all.

*

The days have become holy ones­-

Getting up in the morning means

getting spiritually dressed­

Every moment a Mt. Everest event

with every human being present

The great kneel has become my stance for the day­

praying continually for Jesus.

For the first time, I believe in Satan

and know the necessity of holy armor­

And still I remain a child grown immeasurably taller

with all of the journey of man before.

Knowing that wherever I go

I carry the very altar in my being to every one.

The days have become holy ones.

*

Once, on the journey to the East, the league gathered in high council. The portent of a new age dawning and a crossing point of epochs had become so manifest that at the given moment league forces from across the planet and spanning centuries were there. Tillich, S. K., Niebuhr were there, and the Patriarch of Constantinople Chad from the floating city was there, beckoning. Romberg, Nelson Eddy, Hammerstein and Lowe. St. John, Richard the Lion­Hearted and Pachomius.. All were clear that a new direction was called for, yet all were there to celebrate and to dance.

It was clear to all that the whole future of the League and the journey was at stake, that each was responsible for it all. The presence toward which the League always pointed was present and now was present throughout creation as never before or the journey, here and here and, lo, here. John of the Cross pointed to the inner torment; the artist to the new light. The musician played the new dance, and each was the choreographer.

The pace of the dance became tumultuous though the underlying beat did not change. And from it all re­emerged the march.

*

Reverence for the awe was kindled in many who were dead inside­­ the sense of mysterious majesty in the Daily Office and the verses of St. John of the Cross on the dulcimer. The greatest show on earth is going on, and many of us have been let in under the tent. Am I ready to participate in calling masses of men to live a life of total expenditure?

*

Drawing the picture of man's spirit journey

This summer of portent, revealing God's Glory,

Burned out in the fire, consumed, yet life's fullness

Rests in us, breaks through us, shouts Love to the world.

Acting out, singing and dancing the story

Each man expended his life, yet in flowed new passion.

The M.C., the clown, the cook or the bar girl

Were one and the same­­silent servants to life.

Our past is not only accepted, it's blessed;

Our time, our colleagues, our neighbors are holy.

The world in its pain is purged and prepared for

The future, where vision's enacted in space.

The league's come together, a feast is in progress.

The knights, monks, artists are one, side by side

Freely trained in obedience, fulfilled by outpouring,

Life, yet more life, is transmuted to love.

*

It was the gigantic circus tent, under whose panoply a multitude of mysterious and awesome acts were performed, and miracles of healing were reported. At times the huge tent could not contain the explosion of excitement as the crowds roared for more and more daring acts to be performed. And then there were those times that a hush fell on the crowd as lives perched atop the high wires were balancing on threads of sheer will to do the impossible. Halfway through the circus you discover that you were no longer a spectator but that, in fact, you were on center stage, performing almost before you realized what had happened. The huge spotlights moved across the crowd as one by one each began to perform various juggling acts, called dogs to walk upright, danced on top of drum, and revealed the masks of clowns and historical figures and the masters of comedy through the ages.

At every moment you said­­ "It is enough­­it is enough" and yet you knew that you could no longer live from big event to big event anymore, but rather it was being continually surprised and caught off balance by the eruption of the mysterious at any moment. Wherever you sought for it, it wasn't, but always coming through secretly when and where you least expected it.

*

The main concern of the summer seemed to be stoking up the engines of a machine that had not quite decided to be turned on yet. But these were people who already ran at top speed­­ but still were standing in one place. What was the one thing that would propel men out of their standing position? What would precipitate the chaos for one second to allow a jump on a future that needed to be created. Men's eyes suddenly saw something they had not seen before, for some mysterious force smiled at them for just a moment. And what they saw was their death­­ and they saw that it was glorious. Finally they had seen a new work before them­­to become restorers of the streets, to rebuild the ancient ruins of men.

*

Summer '73 was a time in which the journey of the holy life, which we have all experienced but could give no form to, was pulled through the screens that objectified our individual journeys in the corporate journey and the experience of our time as the experience of the religious in every time. We developed interior strength or courage as we rehearsed every step of the ladder and , discovered each step was ours and everyman's. We tested that strength in the Cabaret as we encountered radical possibility for suicide and radical possibility for transformation. All states of being became our own and the possibility of trusting God released us from our subjective responses to the suffering of mankind to the power of life given in servanthood.

*

Resurgence reaps creative powers of her guildsmen to re­invent the human myth.

A dreadfilled planet numbed by the weight of the times implores:

"What's happened to my space?"­­as rents in the social

fabric are transparentized to uphold the 100 ton crane

by global magicians cum file folders.

Who are these guildsmen? History bristles as Bombay man articulates the stance of trans­local man. Three­and­a­half life phases participate in varying time to recapture the holy life.

"What, another covenant between the secular/religious?"

the Church sighs.

In bold humility we beckon forth our brother­ shepherds of the deeps of sacred space.

*

Out of the past came the long forgotten colleagues, the songs of the 30's, 4O's and 50's. Yes, I remember them as though it were yesterday. But were they the songs of the 30's? I don't remember them that way. Why, the mundane began to glow with life. It was fantastic. And that wasn't all. Why, every struggle was filled full of life. It was beautiful. There was not a moment that did not fill life with awe. I suppose that the time was right, but life became the great gift that it was.

I have been asked before to say yes to my life expenditure. Well, not like this. It is coming like a freight train or a fluffy cloud. It makes no difference. Life expenditure is the gift I receive.

*

Fish in the water

Happy in the bowl

Burst loose in the night

Become an AWESOME SOUL

Clowned down from heaven

Filling this ARID PLAIN

Strange showering succor transform­ satan's domain

At last I've found you. Incredible one

Present in UNIVERSAL INDICATIVE undone.

*

Have you ever wanted to know, I mean really know, the secret about life ever wanted to dance sing, scream, so what you felt would haunt you until you did it ever wanted to stand as one who lived a problemless life,

In the midst of society's collapse

No one need be lost

Your calling has come just in time

just in time Election/ blessedness

Calling to participate in the Greatest

Show on Earth ­ Life

Did you think it was gone

No my brother

The Spirit is here

Society is a spiritual reality

Local man shall rise again

Holy life you local man

are you surprised, Surprised

by the transparency

New assignment master of ceremonies

God has wonderful things planned.

*

Although we moved ahead however falteringly during times of unclarity and doubt, once the whole whole universe shouted "AMEN'' when we stumbled upon the clear vision and the steps to it, a strange blend of passion began to well up and defeat the stoicism that allowed us to hold back and the skepticism that allowed us to sleep­driving us , driving us to reach the prize. Death and life became insignificant­ only the shout and cheers of our fathers and the suffering rang in our ears, the exhilaration of knowing that the victory is won, pushed the second and third winds through our tired miracles and a restful peace took over amidst the breakneck pace.

Finally­ oh finally it has come to ether. The beginning and the end are held in this moment. Time is centuries. Space is unlimited ­ if death should come at that moment it would all be worth it for life is now complete. The religious and secular have come together, the longing and sociological completion are one, the self and eternity are one reality.

*

This summer, the Movement got sanctified.

I don't mean anything religious.

I mean this summer we got the shit kicked out of us so somehow

we learned how to grow flowers in manure.

We all came unbelievably washed out,

thinking maybe we might take back everything we had said

about resurgence.

Houses were falling apart, courses cancelled

priors were in total collapse.

It was Shinn's lecture on something or other

It got communicated that your weakness is all you got

and that's your strength.

And the funny thing was some of us knew that Shinn

hadn't told everything

But there he was

Just standing there

And a new kind of confidence broke loose

And if you didn't believe it, it hit you in the face

at Desert Song

Right between the eyes.

We had found the movie for the Sanctification course

And then Fishel drew a circle around the Wedge Blade

And you knew that fulfillment has something to do

with filling full your space

Since you were already doing it anyway.

*

For twenty years we have been a movement that has lived out of a story that what we were about, and all that we were about, was transforming the entire world through the Church of Jesus Christ. It has been a long journey through naiveté, quick answers, shattered illusions, and deep purgation but always with the vision before us. We have been cynics laboring against our cynicism, liberals hoping to talk the new world into being, fatalists looking for the disappearing deed into which we might pour out our lives. Beginning with the shocking decision to "take on the Historical Church" through the Local Church Experiment and journeying through research into the social processes, we have arrived at the incredible, devastating place where we are ready to "take on the whole world" through the Guild in the context of the Ecumenical Parish or ''transforming the entire world through the Church of Jesus Christ"! For the first time the mission is not a story but a battle plan into which every man can participate fully in all that is human­love for God and love for neighbor. For the first time (I now really) I believe it can be done.

*

The walls came tumbling down.

There was nothing left for protection.

And suddenly all became possible.

Suddenly there was no excuse.

Suddenly people were running while standing still.

*

The ordinary experiences of everyday life

became the fulfillment of long expectation

The struggle and torment of life

became the gift of the day

The awesome responsibility of the world

yielded to joyous embracement

The fearful possibility of the future

yielded to an adventuresome journey

The procrastination of doing a necessary task

was transformed to exciting initiative

The rigidity of personal responses

was transformed to creative inventiveness

The one role of being a clergyman

was multiplied to whatever was needed

The one meaning of secular celebration

was multiplied to a profound celebration of life

What was a foggy idea of inter­church cooperation

was increased to a plan for local­global humanness.

*

We talked about the year as the Dark Night, one of pain and doubt, and feeling that God had abandoned us, and then feeling that we had never been worthy of his affections anyway. But as St. John talks about it, Cod purposely gives us those times to struggle with Satan...that in the battle we gain strength for the continuing journey. This summer we saw that we had indeed been strengthened. The commitment was so present you didn't even have to talk about it. The Cabaret was no escape­­ it was intensified engagement. The sanctification course was like pouring salt water into our wounds­­the seemingly masochistic delight in it was rejoicing in the pain of being healed. If there was an escape, it was through research; the nitty­gritty intellectual work was a relief from the spirit intensity. But no, the research and the building of the earth became a secular­religious exercise. St. John' image of the fire is no longer from another time.

*

THE SHAPE OF LIFE

The segments of life with as many shapes and forms

Come in on one to create a mosaic of many cuts and lines

Some of them are small like particles of dust

And some of them are like meteors crashing to earth size,

But whatever its size, shape or form

It is the Mystery shaping earth to make it a sacred space.

*

The sheer genius of the Summer '73 design did not become immediately evident until the "spin outs" began happening. What was happening was the purgation of the soul (through the ontological and sociological grounding of the scriptures, the songs, the "abstract" guild concept, cabaret, etc.) My image is that we were indeed refined by fire, pulled out from the fiery blast just long enough to recover only to be stuck back inside the inferno itself.

St. John of the Cross study closed any escape to the two­storied universe and occasioned the darkening of the intellect. Then the songs released the romantic floodgates and then dammed the flood with the conversation­­mystery was everywhere.

The awesomeness of Daily Office sobered the cabaret giddiness­­or rather the two became one (one without the other seemed reduced). ...

*

Summer '73 as a time of healing pulled together one's whole past and anticipated future through the use of the secular and religious poetry, the solitary exercises and the Cabaret. The early experiences of romanticism were catapulted into the mountain of care. Loneliness and ambiguity were intensified, objectified and transformed by the Xavierism of the PSU. Stoic marching orders became delightful and awesome expenditure through the Cabaret. One of the aspects common to most of the "spin offs" was a section of their life and experience wholly undealt with. The un­dealt with portion raced forward to be heard, only to consume one's whole being. In the construct of the team, the task, the cabaret, one has the only possibility to take the unclaimed past and the wholeness of the future and give them all to the All.

*

The summer was one when the whole being was pulsating with life­­the pain of finding yourself bound to engage in and be expended in life and yet the release and fulfillment in finding one's self bound thus to life.

The summer of the consciousness of interior space­­or the constant awareness of the altar within one's being­­of the awe and amazement in life...For the order this is the promise of strength or the assurance that life cares enough to demand of it such things as have not been demanded of life before and the assurance that you will be sustained through it.

The summer of a variety of tools­­The disciplined use of tools used over the last twenty years has trained and disciplined us to use with great discipline and finesse tools we have not dared to touch before­­allowing life to flow through in every moment.

*

"I don't know what it's like out there, but in here everything is beautiful." After living all of our lives knowing that out there was ugly, broken, imbalanced, and likely to remain to, suspecting that the only way in which in here was any different was that we had decided over and over agate the nevertheless of see tag life where there was none, the year and the summer have been the discovery that we do know what it's like out there and it's beautiful, objectively, sociologically, indicatively, resurgingly beautiful and that in here is merely the daring to embrace the already present beauty in life. The guild, the cabaret, the scripture, the songs, the dally office, all sociological responses to a real clarity on the presence of God In the world. The summer was that of practicing the presence of God - designing the practices which are postulated upon a radical trust that the mystery Is everywhere, that life is meaningful, that the radicalness of the 2Oth Century no longer is predicated upon an unabridgeable gap with the heritage, that man Is man, has always been was and shall always be, man struggling with the appropriate acts of love, the shape of destinal civilization in a universe which loves him.

*

The awesome flame that burst forth from the walls in color and in music, that glowed in intensity in the Great Hall during dally office and cabaret and Desert Song, that flickered and burned us in the PSUs, that cast us into a trance of contemplation of our inner space at evening solitary to name the day, that gathered us as a team (like

our cave ancestors hovering around a fire, to spin and play with color quads ­ this awesome flame of 7.rstery would keep popping through In the most extraordinary manner from the ordinary routine of activities and of places. This was the Summer of flaming tongues that spoke of the Other World in the midst of romantic love songs, of climbing stairs,

of one day wonderful, for a small group of Roman Catholics to dally offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on the Table in the Great Hall revealed a new light for me as a Roman Catholic priest on the movement and the role of the Ecumenical Institute as servant to the Historic Church. Centrum and Religious Houses, besides being wayside inns, are dynamos of

transformation where we recover our past as motivity to create the future and to transform or to discover that the substance of all reality has the potentiality of bursting into divine flame, even as the ordinary bread bursts forth into the presence (sacramental) of Christ through the Word.

*

Summer '73 has been a summer of incognito. There has been the incognito of making things happen, behind­the scenes action, as you find yourself thinking... This was a cabaret last night...who turned it into a circus this morning?" There's the incognito of playing brand new roles ­ a preschool teacher becomes a dancing girl, a Religious House prior shows up as a dashing operetta singer, a Methodist minister is a bartender. And masks. Masks that hide not only all previous roles, but sometimes hide all trace of Individual recognition ­ a clown, the Red Shadow. Ah, listen, don't I know that man? Yes? No? What matter, he's the Ringmaster and he's inviting us to participate in the GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!

*

The summer was anticipated so clearly in the spring, a pedagogue told the participants in an RS-I just to have fun. (Have fun? At an RS-I) But oddly enough they did, (with a beer party Saturday night.) I should have realized then what the summer would be like. I didn't really want such things to penetrate my burden, my fear of being eaten away in care, and the anger I leaned on to bottle my care up. So, this summer crept up incognito. At first it was like a Dr. Lao monster, with a million faces sprouting and nodding at me(Millie Baggett saying, "God was laughing at me," Porter shouting "I stayed up all night," cabarets at 2:00 a.m. In the print shop). It was so crazy, Insane, and irrational. I had an insatiable urge to dance on a table ­ and did. And in the Process, I became more careful and calm than ever before ­ channeled passion. I know what people In the world want and what all of the poets, painters, and theologians have ever needed to say. Do you remember the line "That's the sort of dignified exit I can boast about."? Now we are making that sort of dignified entrance. We are all clowns In flesh faces. DAMM EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE CIRCUS!!

*

Summer '73 was the impact point where the Spirit Movement rounded the Turn and hit the highway into the mountain which is the future. The twists and turns of the past 55 years have now reached their destination. Those were driving lessons to equip us for the yet more rugged ascent. We have left the foothills called theological revolution and cultural revolution. We have learned the basic maneuvers. Only the race Is before us. It Is a race through the eons of mountain crevices and avalanches and tower peaks which are the world. The mountain range, called the Top of the World, is a cosmos, a universe. It requires of us more finesse, more skill, more caring and more nerves of steel than anything the foothills could ever foreshadow.

It is meeting the Final Mystery himself, El Shaddai, whereas before we have only known him in our bowels. It is Mount Zion where we announce the very presence of God, the King. It is no longer the rehearsal of our memory of having once known God. It is now being the High Priest who alone' on behalf of the people, enters annually the Holy of Holies to commune with God Himself. Entering the mountain passes of the world is simultaneously entering the Temple of God. We are called to build that Temple which we have entered because the Temple has also entered us.

Summer '73 is the point at which we realized the humanness to which we have been called since the dawn of the 20th century. It is consciousness of consciousness of consciousness obviated, made manifest, enfleshed, Incarnate. God the Destroyer has revealed himself anew as God the Creator. Christ the Judge is now seen again as Christ the King. The Spirit as the free pioneering spirit, the forgiveness of sins, has become the fulfilled endlessness, the life everlasting, the Holy Spirit.

*

This has been the year of our "coming out" as a sociological entity. Our first 20­year phase is done, and it's time to take on the responsibility we have been preparing for. This is, first of all, a style shift, which is what the Cabaret was about tints summer. After years of using Images of political or military revolution as metaphors to inform us, now we have discovered an image of cultural revolution--Dr. Lao or the Cabaret. This style involves being public, yet one's soul is cloaked within the performance; is indirect, yet addresses the paramount contradiction; requires daring and sophistication, yet is nonchalant and appealing. our future lies in being this style. Secondly, we experienced in being tints new style a sense of a new convergence of our vision or self-story. The work this summer is complex and difficult to piece together, yet we have no question that the pieces all belong to the same puzzle, and the picture will be glorious. Thirdly, we were sustained by a disciplined corporateness beyond our previous experience. We sense we could do anything, that we could co­exist with ambiguity and bleed the meaning for the sake of the future. The sense of readiness to create the destiny and do the twenty years gave our collegiality the power to catalyze new doing. Finally, this summer occasioned an interior resolution that we experienced as fulfillment. Many demons were exposed and the battle was intense. Yet the conviction that tints was the only place to be, that this struggle is the right struggle has been overwhelming. We saw that mystery can be trusted.

In our internal life, we know ourselves to be the servants, although that is incognito: we come off as the MC, inviting, cajoling people into self­consciousness about the way their life is. That is how we serve them. We use space to hold ourselves before The Way Life Is and color to represent a joyful yes relationship to The Way Life Is. Only as these people, with this kind of understanding about life, can we presume to catch fish out of a dry stream with no bait."

The discipline we put ourselves in is that of obedience to the whole League, held in tension with the solitariness of "you are the only one" of Xavier. That's the comprehensive/particular; that's the universal/individual struggle.

What we're out to do is bring the Holy Life, the WORD of God incarnate, to Everyman. What we're out to do is create the possibility in each of three billion lives of radical humanness. What we're out to do is be a sign of what is to come: The Time Is Come.

*

It had been a long and trying year­­a year that tested everyone's decision to pay the price of being a radical movement in the life of the church and the world. For those of us who stood fast in this time of great testing, the summer was like an oasis where the deep well­springs of the spirit were refreshed. New images, an expanded context, transformed space, awe-filling worship.

The Movement is a new creation. The confluence of the Guild research, the Ecumenical Parish and Uptown 5 gave us a new story. Dr. Lao and his circus and the cabaret gave us a new style. We went back to the front lines with a renewed sense of playing a significant role in the catalyzing of a new human civilization.

*

Summer '73 will indeed be recorded as the rehearsal of sociological purgation. By focusing the order's wisdom of 20 years of experimentation with methods of the spirit, we were able to characterize the methodological tools needed to recover man's interior experience of his world for the next 20 years. People were given the tools for objectifying and delineating the typography of sanctification. That is to say, the times in which we live are those of socialogica1 pain. Pain of realization that it is we alone, every local man alone, who must create the future of the total globe for all of time. To say yes to this experience is to say yes to the pain that being human is n our time. As in Dune to dare to test one's human ness with reflection of utter self­consciousness is that which creates humanness. This was the summer of the "gom Jabbar".