Global Research Assembly

Chicago

July 11, 1978

In history, there is a human settlement that we have named "region." I know this is true because many things point to that reality. All of the economic structures of society point to it. Any major corporation has a sales region, a service region and a distribution region. Political structures point to it. There are all kinds of congressional and election districts and agency service districts. Cultural structures point to it with Baptist conventions, presbyteries and dioceses. Wherever a body of people have been joined in a particular task, they have looked to a particular hunk of the earth to say, "That's where I will pour out my expenditure on behalf of the mission that I am about." When I pass from one geo­social reality called a region into another one, there's a definite style shift. As a little boy in New York I left the Finger Lakes region and traveled to the Adirondacks; I knew I was in a different part of the earth. There was something different about it. I also observed that people usually know what region they live in. They know that by the stories they tell. "My uncle Frank lives in the creek region, and Cousin Joe is down there in the valley."

As soon as I became clear that the region was not a fabrication but the way the earth is portioned off, I asked, "What happens in that particular hunk of geography7" I began to answer this question by using this little design. I explain it in this way. There is, in the midst of life, the new reality which is impinging upon history. In the talk entitled "To Walk With Being" it was stated that Being insists upon Being its Being, and is about the task of bringing forth the new in the midst of pulling apart the old. Pointing to the globalis, I see that impinging on the regionalis at this point in history are all the seven revolutions and all the heat being created by what is coming into being. That impingement is crushing down towards the local, but finds itself focused on the region. If you began to shove all the images mentioned in this series of talks on the new reality down towards the local, you would see them coalescing at the region. It is a deadly assault on the old which insists upon the new.

Now, let's take the localis as it is on that design. Localis is where you hear the cries of the masses, who insist upon participating in the new reality. They insist both creatively and destructively, both unconsciously and consciously, but they continually insist upon participating in some way in the new that is coming into being. I began to grasp this by rehearsing with myself what I have experienced and seen. All the people forging their vision of a new human community in every human development project are creating intensive heat ­ intensive heat as to what needs to be birthed. All of those who have resolved to act out of their awakenment experience in Town Meeting are fiercely moving to act. They don't know where to act, yet they insist upon acting. All of those who have decided through the Global Women's Forum to forge their vocational passion into history are creating intensity towards the new happening. All of those that have had the energy of their youth focused by the event of the Community Youth Forum are insisting that they be part of the future. All of the agencies and corporations of our world who have had their power redirected by LENS now participate in an incredible amount of whirling and ­ are creating the heat of the new. All of this is focused on the regionalis. The heat which is emerging out of the earth itself from the globalis and the localis is coming together in the cauldrons called the regionalis.

The regionalis is the primary ordering dynamic which forces the new reality while maintaining the old. The phrase that Justin Morrill used: "forcing the invasion of the new reality," I found to be frighteningly adequate. What do you see when you go to a structure that has decided to embody the regionalis? My experience over the last twelve months is that either you find irrational wildness or disturbing silence. For example, every time I walked into the ACTION office of the Ohio Human Resource Division, there were a thousand people running around. I was certain ­­that they did pot know what they were doing. Their task was to redevelop the Appalachian Region of Ohio. They were simply running around in circles. They took coffee breaks to rest. It was incredible, maniacal activity. The other thing I've experienced is the disturbing silence. In several regional planning offices of Georgia, the silence put libraries to shame. It was as if it had become a casket. Whatever had happened in that particular structure that was a part of the regional cauldron had burned up everything in sight.

We as a body of people have decided to send a corporate body of Those Who Care into that incredible cauldron of creativity and name it a Regional House. It has one task: to care for all the earth in a particular hunk of the earth called a region. If any of you have discovered scorch marks on your blue shirts, there is adequate reason for it. It has come from the white hot heat of the new reality coming into being that we experience in our Regional Office, our Regional House. The other strange part of that is that those you find in that Regional House are neither silent nor maniacal; you find them strangely alive and effective.

The role of the Regional House is that of being the guardian of the new reality. What is the style of those who dare to stand as the guardianship of the new reality, caring for a particular hunk of earth? First, they embody the style which actively honors the given situation. In every geo­social reality ­ a particular nation, state, province, county or whatever ­ there are operating political, economic and cultural structures. Those that are sent to be the Regional House are out to honor what is already present. They're not out to slay, unthinkingly, what is already upholding the present ordering of society. Whatever the condition you find that piece of earth in, whether it is affluent or poor, conservative or liberal, those sent to care for that earth are there to honor it. And from the honoring of the given, the forging of the new begins. That is, we always go to see the governor before we do a Town Meeting and we always see the mayor. Our campaigns contain a

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reference to the state, province, or whatever given reality exists. Our work is always publicly announced as what it is. We deal with the reality of the situation that has been given to us to care for. I remember a visit by Joe Slicker and Jim Phillips to the Cincinnati House two years ago. We spent a whole week and reframed the structures of Cincinnati. Once we decided to honor the realities ­and structures of that city and that region, all kinds of things began to happen. The image of ourselves as something other than disestablishment came into being. All of our work became very exciting. We were forever changed by that event.

The guardians of the new reality embody a style which comes from knowing the real world. The real world is not nations, states, and counties. The real world is primal communities which have as their configurations what we have named the regions and metros. A sociological similarity binds particular bodies of people together. They live out of a particular self story. When we go to the map to draw the lines of reality of the way things are, they may or may not hit the lines of states and counties and nations. Our challenge here is to operate from the realities of the clustering of primal communities in what we call the region. You always know when you are in one region or another. You may find its particularity down below the regional level, into metro and polls. I understand from some of our colleagues who looked at Illinois that there are, in fact, some six territories to that state, some of them lopping over the state line. But there are six particular territories of sociological similarity where primal communities were clustered together in a common self story.

I've had the privilege to ,land in one region after another across North America this year. I don't know how many I hit per week, but it was a lot. My experience was that as soon as I boarded the plane, I immediately fell asleep. I cannot remember taking off from most of the airports I departed from. I would wake up ravenous, wanting food. If I was not getting a meal, I would beg for more peanuts. I would then immediately grab everything I could read about where I was going. I was so anxious about landing in a new reality, experiencing myself vulnerable, that I would read everything that I had stuffed into my bag. As the year progressed, my bag grew bigger and bigger. The last thirty minutes before I landed in Atlanta, Edmonton, Denver or wherever it was, I would begin to make two lists; one on the realities of the situation that I was landing in, and one about the missional task that we were about. If I finished that, then I could smile when I greeted you all at the airport. If I grumbled in the back seat of the car and fell asleep again, you knew that I hadn't accomplished that. It was as simple as that. We are a body of people who know that when we land on a particular hunk of the earth, we must know what we are about. ~

The guardian of the new reality, that is, the Regional House, has the style that gives form to the new reality. That's what our three campaigns are all about. That 'a what our internal life, our discipline and our symbols are all about.

The Regional House embodies the style which does the whole consensed upon missional task. That is to say, there ain't nobody else. There ain't nobody else to care for that hunk of earth to which you and I have been assigned. We do everything that we've consensed upon as a body to do. If we were to begin to create long lists of "do's" for "maneuvers, the lists of "do's" for the Regional House of Those Who Care would be the longest list that we would create.

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What is the function of the Regional House that is caring for a particular hunk of earth? It is to be the exemplar of the new reality. The Regional House may have a human development project hanging around its back door. You may be right in the middle of one. Or you might be one hundred or five hundred miles from one. It makes no difference. You are the exemplar of the new reality. That does not mean that you are a foxhole, because unrelated foxholes never won any wars. They just extended the pain a little longer. The Regional House is wired to all of history and all of the earth. It embodies all who have been, who are and who will be.

The Regional House is the actuation support for the human development project. This support provides acceleration forces whenever and wherever they are needed. It gathers in its web all of Those Who Care who have the particular skills needed to create the specific signs of the new reality that are our human development projects. There are a hundred stories of how that is already happening. It is one way the new movement is coming into being. The Regional House links the bureaucrats of the unreal world to the sign of the real world. In the whirl of your going­on-ness in the region, you are always out to say, "Hey, Mr. Bureaucrat, come on down and see what is happening here." In a short while the resources of that bureaucracy are at your disposal. It extends and deepens framing. It always guards the human development project until it becomes mature enough to stand as the sign it was meant to be. It is always in the midst of funding maneuvers that the resources are formed that keep that project alive. More and more, especially in the last six months, we have seen that the Regional House has primary access to resources throughout the region that forges and maintains the human development project.

As exemplar, it is the Field Command Post for the Social Awakenment Campaign. The only people who we call about the progress of the Awakenment Campaign across the earth is the Regional House. Whatever field maneuvers have been created and acted upon are those that are created out of the Regional House. It does strategic phasing, troop configuration, logistical support, funding, framing and coordination. Those are all very familiar to us.

As exemplar, it is the Wayside Inn for Movemental Formation. It does intentional engagement of the awakened ones in the region, though we are not yet totally clear as to what those engagement forms are going to be. It provides structural care for those who are awakened and want to join the long march of care. It guards the symbols that we keep before us at all points ­ the symbols which hold the reality that we live within and have others join. It does methods training in whatever way, shape or form we so designate to raise up in that particular region those who make certain that the new reality does in fact belong to all.

It is the activating agent of missional interchange. It does absolutely no good to know what's happening at the local, when it is not at everyone's beck and call across the earth. Therefore, those who are at the regional are those that activate all our wisdom so that it becomes available to all people. This also reminds us that we need to preserve the consensus as it was last articulated.

The Regional House participates in and informs the framing. There is no reason for any of us getting caught with our flanks uncovered if the actuation of

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the interchange is operational. Also, it does strategic funding. It is always linked to the Centrums and the Nexus informing them where the resource theater can be directed. It is always in the midst of the repository. It delivers the repository. All year long it was incredible to receive from you all in the local the new methods that you had invented in the field. We have found a way to distribute this wisdom wherever and whenever we could, though sometimes quite inadequately. You think of the three hour Town Meeting model or of the LEV (Local Economic Vehicle) model. Both those are a part of the repository of wisdom and know­how that was made possible to all the earth through the region. That is incredible.

The task of the Regional House is to be the servant of the new reality. This next point more closely resembles a long list of what I think are the future beckoning, though they feel like hammers, not just little wiggles of the finger. They are not "oughts" though you will experience them as "oughts" in the first instance. If you check yourself and try to say, "Yes, that's already coming into being," you'll see that they are not "oughts", but are indicatives of what we are currently consensing upon. We are going to talk later and see if in fact this is true. My other caution on this is that what I've said has nothing to do with calling anybody naughty. Maybe I can deal with that by saying I had the most incredible year of my life because I've been privileged to work with you wherever I have landed, doing whatever we were doing. And I said to myself, "If my tar filled lungs stopped moving tomorrow, and I went to heaven, I would not experience anything different there than I have this past year." Therefore, there is nothing naughty on this list.

I want to describe the beckonings for doing the Human Development Projects as they relate to the Regional House and the regionalis. The Regional Houses will be in the midst of the expansion of the Human Development Projects. The projects will be selected for placement in critical regions in particular continents. And that is obvious, isn't it? What screen do we use to place Human Development Projects? It is in regions where people experience the same struggle for human community as the villages we select. That is, the region is one big sociogeographic entity. We placed in the middle of that entity the Human Development Project, that is all we did. We will, as we are doing the Human Development Projects at the Regional House level, intentionalize how we will deal with enabling them. We will be in the midst of exploring urban projects. We will, however, be moving rapidly with the advantage established in the rural. We will find ourselves accelerating the guardians' engagement in funding and framing. We will find ourselves accelerating staff training for Human Development Project schools. We will become incredible story tellers about that great hunk of reality. My image is that we will carry a set of slides with us as we whirl through the county and the region doing Town Meetings. Every chance we get, we'll set up the projector, tell the story and point, point, point. "If you want to know the significance of acting on the new awakenment that is yours, go there. n It is as simple as that.

Now, the beckonings for the doing of the awakenment campaign. This list is a bit longer because I know the most about it. At every regional level, no matter what phase of awakenment we may be in, we are now approaching the awakenment of one half of one percent of the population of the earth. From the talk, To Walk With Being., this image became utterly clear to me. There are points in history where the old poetry is helpful ­ the heavens break open. They break open and you see, and it is delivered unto you the new reality. But as they open, they also close. I experience now, more than I have in the last four years, the cruciality of getting this done. With such a chance to awaken the earth, we find ourselves hastening in all that we're doing.

At the regional level, there is acceleration of the phases of all nations. We will find ourselves jumping a phase from initiation to impact. This year, I believe we can consider continental reconfiguration of troops to ensure that all the nations are completed, although I believe that this will be nullified by the methods that we now have at our disposal in every nation. We will operate at the micro and polls level to do multiple impact events. We will phase by polls and metro to accomplish all of our task.

All of the campaign will be linked to the Human Development Projects. I have always been awe struck every time someone asks if they can bring a group to Fifth City. George always says, "Well, yeah. You all come, just tell us when you're going to be there. We'll have a host ready for you, and we'll take your group on a little trip through this hunk of wonderment." Do they have eighteen people over there just to give tours? Next year we will experience throwing people into a Human Development Project just to experience what is there. The awakenment, formulation, training and funding components will each be one of many. we all know that maneuvers at the regional level will inform the relationships between the operational interface of impact tools, such as LENS, Global Women's Forum, Community Youth Forum and the Community Forum. Through these tools, we will be doing geographical coverage with Community Forum, thus deepening impact and awakenment sociologically. We'll discover how to do that. we may even have some inklings already. At the regional level we will be acting upon the presupposition that every campaign supports itself. And we will discover that the awakenment campaign is in fact self-supporting. That will become a functional reality, not an "ought".

Next, the beckonings for the formulation of the movement. Here I am the most foggy but also the most anxious. First, the Regional House will find itself intentionalizing its corporate structures. We'll be grounding how you live in the new reality, reflected day in and day out by our structures. we will intensify our symbolic life and our use of symbols. At points this year you walked into an ICA office and it looked like every other bureaucracy you had ever been in. It was not in touch with the new reality that we are about. We will create something like metro circuits that begin to reforge how we care for all the awakened ones. We will build training constructs to include the elements that are part of the shadow dynamic. That is, picking someone up in the car and training them on the way to the Town Meeting to do the challenge workshop. This is someplace between the Academy and the HDTS. Between these two, we are experiencing and incredible wasteland in forms of preparing those who are awakened to deal effectively with the new reality. And some new structure will begin to close the gap, perhaps resembling a social methods school. I do not know what it is yet. Our facilities will also symbolize our identity and our purpose. It will be hard to do what we are about in five room apartments.

Self-support will be seen as a symbol. Those Who Care are committed to the task of being exemplars of the new reality and do not suckle their existence off the innocent suffering of anyone. We will assure their sustenance from the matured component of the social process which in our case is the economic. We will explore getting paid for what we do. In our staffing configurations, at the Regional House level, we will honor the tri­polar dynamic that lets consensus and models be forged

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creatively. For me, that is three family units, two of them couples. The retreat will become a new form by which those who are awakened decide to become a part of the corporate body. This will be used at the regional level. We will continually articulate who we are without denial. Someone gave an incredible witness about two months ago. He said that the only time we have ever been in trouble is when we denied who we were. Isn't that true?

The key to the beckonings for doing missional interchange is rapidity. My list is very short. We are now creating rapid access to the framing information necessary to get the task done. We will have at the regional level the funding data available that allows us to do strategic funding. We are providing input into the continental maneuvers from the local that allows the whole Development Centrum to attain a new level of effectiveness. My last point is that the region will experience the effect of the Centrum Bands learning how to do their interchange more effectively. This comes out of my own incredible experience of trying to accomplish this all year. Now I have finished, I think. What I said was this: we are at a stage when we are about to intensify, broaden and deepen our care of the earth by doing the same for the region to which we have been assigned. That is all very complex, and yet I believe that is our consensus. Let's talk for a few minutes

What seemed on target for you? What made sense? What would you add? Where would you add a note of caution?

There is probably a word of caution. Creating an HDP in a region is like announcing there is free ice cream. Everybody wants it tomorrow.

The statement about the regionalis being economically identifiable is true because the network of relationships is geographically close enough to ride from one place to another; so that once you begin to secure a track record in a region, you have a way of capitalizing on it unless you mess it up yourself.

In a regionalis, there is enough work to keep many very fine people going for a long time. This is a way of strengthening them, but there is no way to journey them except in a localis.

Ten years ago, there was something called an International Training Institute, very closely linked to awakenment. We want to see something like that in a Community Training Institute which takes 3 weeks of intensive training for people at the point of awakenment, so that they can go back to their community or other points of engagement. Maybe that's the new form of social methods school ­ The Community Training Institute.

You might have a Human Development Project that is your Regional House that does all the programs and they will be regional.

Track record is going to become extremely important. We are going to have to learn to manage with some degree of sophistication everywhere.

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Every bit of authorization you have must operate out of a regional dynamic, so we will need to set up an advisory board of 20 people in Alaska, comprised of people that are decision makers. They may not be the top people, but they are the decision makers, and people listen to them. We have already approached those 20 people. Some had participated in Town Meeting or Global Women's Forum, and they put their names on the board. They all not only agreed to be on the Advisory Board inventing its function, but on funding as well. They will let us know the right structure and person to see. They will also care for a project, or whatever direction we decide to take in Alaska. And they suggested 100 more people who need to be serving in that same capacity around the state.

I wish we had more impact tools aimed simply at the region. More are necessary because the results of impact at the regional level show that the school receives the most impact. This is true even if it is a local youth group. I wonder if the exposure that the Town Meetings will have caused at the micro­saturation level will require the framing and support of those regional structures. We also have to have that frame or its like letting loose with no control whatsoever. Your assembly must now be a combination of regional structures and local participation, but we're out for that local heat.

Yes, precisely. Where the assemblies have been successful has been when the region and the local have participated and something happens to the regional

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The only way we can keep everybody is to be able to say where they can immediately plug in again. Not one after another, but all at once congruency.

In North America alone, we did over 4,000 Town Meetings. That means that there are over 4,000 people just waiting to do something. What do we do with them?

One incredible advantage we have now is that people are anxious to learn the methods. I have never experienced, as I have in the last six months, people anxious to know what an art form conversation is. How do I set a table? How do I put up decor? People just sit and watch what you do and then go and duplicate it, immediately. This whole beckoning is where I become excited forever learning Social Demonstration and teaching people how to think in every situation. How you think practically and contradictionally ­ We need to do it in every encounter.

The time of Being that is coming is already here.

Remember when Joe used to scream at us, time after time? There is not follow up after awakenment. The issue of Global Social Demonstration is a different issue than awakenment and the question of formulation and strategic issues. We cannot afford to stop by every wayside of awakenment trying to do some kind of formulation. We have to continue this task of awakenment. The pain of leaving people hungry is one we are going to have to beat relative to the entire task of awakening the entire globe.