Global Centrum: Research Assembly, Chicago, .July 16, l975

This morning, our task is to think carefully on the other side of the Research Assembly and 10 years of experience about the question of the Metro Cadre. Let me read this first:

'The king's priests, the holy nation, God's own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God who called you from the darkness into his marvelous light. At one time you were not God's people but now you are his people. At one time you did not know God's mercy but now you have received his mercy."

Since I am going to be using the term "transrationality" in my talk I have written this statement: Transrationality appears when we push through the rational and the practical to the beauty of comprehensive simplicity which, as a statement of high intentionality, allows a stance in relation to every particular circumstance of one who is more than conqueror. Another way of saying that is that transrationality is the key to victory, in every situation. The minute we try to approach any situation, including Town Meeting '76 without pushing through to the comprehensive simplicity of transrationality we are programming ourselves for a failure.

I would like to explore the second use of the word "cadre" in the normal, accepted English usage which is to point to a group of people. The Chinese have used the word "cadre" more generally to point to individuals. The Chinese word for "cadre" can be used both for a group and for an individual. I want to talk about Cadres, indicating individuals. Or, maybe to understand the use of the word ''Cadre" as pointing: to an individual as a synonym for another term that we have been using, and that is Those Who Care . Not only Those Who Care, but those who decide to act out their care through corporate structures. Each one of those persons is a Cadre .

I also want to acknowledge the fact that, after working through Town Meeting and then sitting down to prepare something to say about Metro Cadre, a new understanding of what transrationality means broke through and its relationship to our task of developing a network of Metro Cadres around the world. It became clear to me as never before that we are not here in history for the sake of acting rationally according to the world's patterns. That is not who we are. We are not here in history in order to do the logical thing that everyone would agree upon. That is not who we are. We are not here to go around building a great fine structure of solid groups called Cadres. That is not who we are. We are here to do the catalytic task or deed. We are here to act beyond logic and rationality in response to the will of God.

I want to point out that the base of all of our transrationality, the base of our whole approach to Metro Cadres and to our entire effort across the world is the grid. The workshop for the last two days on Town Meeting has been built on the grid. There is one world. There are three spheres, nine continents, fifty­four areas, three hundred and twenty­four regions, one thousand nine hundred and forty­four metros, and eleven thousand six hundred and sixty­four polises, and then multiply by six to get the micros, then again by six to get the parishes and the final figure is slightly less than 500,000. That is a transrational grid because at each step along the way, starting at continent and going to parish, you multiply by six. There is nothing rational about doing it that way. A rational person would divide continents and nations according to political boundaries or population statistics or world power or influence. That is a rational way of approaching it. A transrational way is to push through to the comprehensive simplicity of that grid, where the world is simply divided, divided, divided, so that finally when you stand in any given Parish you know exactly where it is that you relate to the whole world.

Now, to the Metro Cadre. I want to make four statements and then talk about each one. First, it is the care that calls us into Metro Cadre. Second, it is the grid that relates. Third, it is the form that journies and finally, it is the task that catalyzes.

First of all, the care that calls. The universal care that belongs to every man elects some, hut not all, to make the decision to be a Cadre, and no one who has not responded to that election with a singular decision is a Cadre though he may be a member of a Cadre group. That is to say that when we talk about Metro we are pointing to the individuals who have made singular decisions about their lives to care for the world in response to the care that is common to every man. We have talked about Those Who Care­­Those Who Care are those who suffer over the suffering of the world. It is those whose deeps have been awakened by the cry of humanity and who respond to that cry with their lives. That is, they pick up their bodies and do something with their lives. That is what we mean by Those Who Care and that is, finally, what a Cadre, as an individual, is.

We have become clear in a new way about Faith beyond faith, Love beyond love, hope beyond all hope and about the Profound consciousness that is in the midst of all that. That profound consciousness is precisely what we are pointing to when we talk about the spirit man or the one who has responded with his life to the cry of our despairing world. If you have not somewhere deep inside experienced the collapse that is despair and the journeys through to the Faith that is beyond faith, not the faith that takes you out of the Dark Night, but the Faith in the midst of the Dark Night; if you have not experienced going through to the love which is beyond love and the Hope which is beyond hope, then there is a dimension missing on the journey into what it means to be a Cadre.

Those Who Care, who have become conscious of their care and begin to respond to it, have only two options. Either they allow their care to be universalized and intensified beyond their wildest imagination, or they die. They turn into zombies. Once that has happened to you, you are on a journey which cannot be aborted, or if aborted it is at the peril of your own immortal soul. Those Who Care are on that kind of journey. The Bible says, "Many are called but few are chosen." That is true. In our poetry we say that when you go out to talk to people you talk to a thousand people for the sake of finding the hundred who respond for the sake of finding the ten who start the journey for the sake of finding the one who remains steadfast on the journey. Many are called but few are chosen. You look out there and ask, "What is that body of colleagues? Who are the Cadre of the world in our time?" Finally there is no way to answer except to say, whoever it is, is it. You look out and when you see people living that way, there is your Cadre. The Cadre dynamic is in history. It is a dynamic and not an organization. We are all clear the Cadre dynamic in history is on the one hand utterly inclusive, it is open to the entire human race, but on the other hand, it is utterly exclusive in the sense that finally only those who respond with their lives, who give their lives, are ones that you would want to call, finally Those Who Care .

On the other side of looking at the role of care in calling human beings into this kind of activity, is the indicative of providing an occasion for people to acknowledge their care and to respond to that acknowledgment through some particular form. That is where we get to the grid, and it is the grid that allows people to relate their care to the world and to other human beings.

The transrational grid provides the single framework for our task of occasioning happenings which intensify consciousness and allow Cadres to recognize their election, to engage in caring for the whole world in the context of a particular metro. The grid, then, has two functions. It has both the function of providing the framework for our activity and the framework for individual response. We made a strategic decision sometime back, that the focus of the Cadre network would be at the Metro level. That means 1,944 metros according to the transrational across the world. That a network of cadres located by geography in 1,944 metros is precisely the network that is needed. It is both intense enough and comprehensive enough to tie together in history that elected body of people who have responded to their election, who have within themselves the possibility of bringing into being the new form of the future. Now, at one time we thought that network was going to be at the regional level. That is 324. We talked about regional Cadres, hut then it became apparent that the network needed to be intensified to the metro level. Therefore, the term Metro Cadre came into being and is now the basic focus of the activity of people relating together in a network across the globe.

I want to introduce you to G.S. C.A.R.P.M.P. because someday you may get a letter or a telegram signed by him. If you want to get something on a high priority of attention when you send it to this building, you can also choose to address it to G.S. C.A.R.P.M.P. he is a very interesting gentleman, but he has never been seen, only in the form of a transrational grid. If you take the levels of the grid and just let the first levels stand for each level, you come up with

G

S

C

A

R

M

P

M

P

If you want to understand where you are related in the world, GSCARMPMP, you stand in the first "M". That is Metro. Going down from Metro is Polis, Micro, Parish. Going up from Metro is Region, Continent, Sphere and Globe. Standing there in the middle you touch both ways. That is the function of the transrational grid.

Out there in that world that surrounds us we already know that the Lord has prepared Cadres, that is individuals in every one of those 1,944 Metros. They stand there as that already existing invisible college waiting to be called into self­conscious relationship. To stand in the Metro, then is to have a relationship both to the Globe and to the Parish. on the one hand, related to the globe, the Global Social Demonstration, the Global Community Forum. But on the other hand, related to the local, the Global Social Demonstration and the Global Community Forum. Both of those global campaigns are intensely global and intensely local. To be a Metro Cadre, to stand in the Metro as a Cadre is to be related both ways. Of course, the form or the vehicle for that relationship is the Intra­Global Movement and the greatest symbol within that relationship is the Primal Community, or it is at the Primal Community level that you touch the Parish ­­50O,000 Parishes across the world. But, in touching the Parish you touch the world.

There is an Xavier principle that operates there. That means that wherever you stand, there is the entire universe. The practical way of talking about that is, if you were standing at the regional level a few years ago, you had six metros to care for that gave you life. I remember what happened to people when they realized that they had a hunk of geography called a Region that had six Metros in it and their responsibility was to care for those six Metros, their lives came alive and they moved with their being to create. Now we stand in the midst of a Metro. You look at a Metro and lo­and­behold you have got six polises to care for. Those little squiggly circuit lines on the grid in the Area rooms say that so intensely. Lives are going to come alive when we start moving. Then you stand out there in one of those Polis cities, you know what you have got. You have got six Metros to care for. You stand out there in one of those Micros and you have six Parishes. You stand in the Parish, you have six Wards, you stand. ..it goes right down. There is a universe of responsibility in the midst of standing anywhere in that grid.

I remember years ago when we first were working the grid of Australia, and beginning to teach courses and calling the movement into being across the continent of Australia. At that time our grid had not quite taken final shape. We had Australia gridded into twelve Regions. In order to make, twelve Regions in Australia you had to "fudge" a little bit. There is an awful lot of territory but not very many people. So we had a couple of Regions that you had to count a kangaroo or two in order to have any really legitimate population. The real symbol of that was the Region called Eucla ­­ which was really the Nullabor plains where you, can literally travel for hundreds of miles and not see one live thing of any nature except maybe an occasional scrubby tree. But there was a little place on the railroad called Eucla. It was really only composed of two motels, and a gas station. That was our regional city for one whole Region of Australia. But, the interesting thing was the power that that symbol had. Nobody who was part of that early Movement in Australia felt relaxed about that grid until somebody had actually gone out and visited Eucla. Then we could relax. But, having the twelve Regions also meant that there were other cities in Australia that just beckoned.

The grid served always to call us out, to call us further into the complexity of the whole social situation. A trip to Port Hedland, a trip to Darwin, a trip to Alice Springs, and on down the line ­­ because that is the function of the grid. It shows your unlimited responsibility in relationship to any particular geographical level. Or another way of putting that, the grid says, relate to the globe and then go down to the next six and both of those are equally powerful indicatives. Relate to the globe and then go down to the next six. Always, down to the next six where you find that you are there only to beckon, and to awaken the people that are there into an intentional relationship to their own care. The transrational grid does not coincide with a rational pattern, but what it does is to take that globe and to cover it with sheer intentionality. You take the globe and cover it with your intention to care for it. That is what the grid does.

It is the form that journeys Cadres. The transrational forms of the Spirit Movement provide the context in which the Cadres create their corporate response, grasp themselves as a global network and journey into a disciplined expenditure of their lives within the global strategies of the Movement. To translate that into the most particular, means that when groups of these people, groups of these Cadres get together and call themselves a Cadre, it is the form, and only the form that counts. That means that no matter where you go in this world, if there is a group of these "Those­Who­Care" people meeting together, you would expect to see a meeting that started with College, then Seminary and finished with Sodality. You would expect to see that dynamic, that format in every single meeting of Those Who Care. It is the form that gives life. It is that common form. You would expect to see the same symbols and art forms on the wall, to hear the same rituals used, and to sing the same songs. Your expectation would not be disappointed. That is our secret. Anywhere in the world you go, that common format is there. It is that which allows the journey to take place within the lives of the Cadres. These forms and common formats have one great message, they take human life seriously. How many meetings have you been to where you spent untold hours doing nothing but piddling around, unimportant, no kind of method or intentionality that allows the meeting to happen? Well, in the meetings I am talking about lives are taken seriously. Just straight on. Those people understand. We understand, for we are those people, we are a sign. Our lives are a sign.

The role of the Symbolic Order, as a part of the Metro Cadre dynamic, is always to stand as those who beckon. I would say to you who are in this room that your one job is always to stand and beckon. It is never to get behind and push. There is no way of pushing somebody on this kind of a journey. You go ahead yourself and then you beckon.

We have been talking about circuits. Once again we understand that regular meetings with a global presence with absolute faithful regularity on the circuit is the key to the kind of form that gives life for the Cadres. India pioneered this and we are going to learn this year what it means to do this seriously across the North American Continent.

Every meeting that is called a Cadre meeting has got to be a meeting that is history­long and world­wide. That is, it is a meeting that is not limited by any kind of parochialism. It is a meeting that stands within the journey of Those Who Care across all of history. It is a meeting that reaches out and touches every particular part of the world. That is important. because in any movement, and certainly in the life of the movement that you and I have experienced, programs, tactics, particular efforts and even colleagues come and go; they come and go. If you get your being attached to any particular program or task, next year you are either going to die with that task or you are going to learn detachment, one of the two. It is the history long, world­wide nature of every meeting and of the entire stream of consciousness which remains. It is that form. that history­long, world­wide form held by symbols that journey Cadres through every turn, always toward the comprehensive. Every meeting is a great spirit happening.

Then, the task. It is the task that catalyzes. The Global Community Forum ­­ for our continent, Town 'Meeting '76 and Community Forum Canada ­­ is the particular task that God has ordained to catalyze radically our decision to penetrate to the Polis and Micro level of every 'Metro and will be the occasion for the effective intensification of the Metro Cadre dynamic across the world.

We are in for a great year. It is going to be the year in which what we have intended for ten years finally gets released. For at least a decade we have looked at the grid and have talked about secondary penetration, tertiary penetration and whatever comes after that. We have talked about being able to put a name on every Metro and every Polis and every Micro as a symbol of the network of colleagues that are there. But we have never quite brought it off. But, we are in for a great year because Global Community Forum, Town Meeting '76 is going to serve as the occasion that is going to release us to do exactly what we have intended to do for ten years.

I am so excited I can hardly wait to go home and tear up all of our planning and start all over again to get out and do the real job this time. One of the great things, of course, is that when you work through the tool called Town 'Meeting '76 or Community Forum Canada, the range of context is no longer limited. We are not even imaginally limited by a certain thing as Church ­­ the world is there. That is going to be experienced as fantastic release going into Polis and Micro cities.

We are going to be forced, every one of us in this room, to learn to act. That is to say, we are going to have to learn that, instead of doing it or being present in every Polis, it is the releasing of collegial network to be the global presence that catalyzes new Cadres, new colleagues in every Polis and in every Micro. Of course, the Town Meeting circuits that we have been working on are the Metro Cadre catalysation circuits. What do you think you are doing out there on those circuits if you are not calling forth Those Who Care? Now, it cannot be a one­to­one relationship. If you go out there and do the Town Meeting, that is if you go out and allow people to respond to their care for the world by engaging in sponsoring a Town Meeting, you are sure enough going to have the Metro Cadre dynamic alive in that city regardless of what else you do. That is where we are, to go and do that particular kind of job.

Well, we are standing on the threshold of what we have intended. We have a new tool, Town Meeting, which is the happening which intensifies consciousness and smokes out Those Who Care, and gives them a chance to become a part of the global network.

What are some of the next steps? First of all, the grid. We are in the process of shifting our thinking from Region and Metro to Polis and Micro thinking. The workshop that was done on the circuits, needs to be reduplicated in every single Metro across the United States and Canada. We ought to go back and do that circuit workshop to get people's minds oriented toward Polis and ,Micro thinking and the next level down, always the next level down. Also, this year we are going to have some great occasions of touching the spirit deeps in human beings. The Town Meeting format will allow that to happen. Then there will be other occasions for working with committees of sponsors, working with people who ask for some kind of a follow­up. The only thing that is important, not those proposals, though they are important, hut it is what is underneath the proposal. It is the spirit deeps that we will he touching. The next step is to learn what it means to touch the spirit deeps in the midst of the Town Meeting.

Another step has to do with common discipline of doing the circuits with great regularity, a high degree of regularity. It does not necessarily have to be the same person who does the circuit every time but just that the global presence is on that circuit on a regular kind of basis. It becomes the discipline, the symbol of the common discipline that holds things together.

Then the next step is to make sure that we never forget that it is the great vision that calls people forth and sustains them in being.

It is this abstraction - this high abstraction relative to what it means to be Metro Cadre, that is our key to the immediate future.

­­­­­­­­Don Clark

7/27/75

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