Global Research Centrum: Chicago
Social Methods School
12/14/74
I am out in front of the hounds and I am here to
report on the state of being of the rabbit. I do not know how
Summer '73 came to you, but when I walked into Summer '73, I'd
been prepared to spend my life teaching RSI, working through
the local congregation and hoping that someday, somehow, in some
miraculous way, that we would again turn to the local community.
At times it seemed virtually impossible that this would ever happen.
Then in the middle of Summer '73, 1lolcombe pushed the button
that just changed my life. I will never again relate to geography
in quite the same way, and I have never quite recovered from that.
Do you remember from Summer '73, what the first operating
image of Uptown 5 was? You had the movement pressing on the church,
hoping that at some point down the road, it would engage the local
community. Holcombe said, 'The time is now. We have all the necessary
tools. We can begin the 'end run' immediately." He articulated
the end run in which the LENS course allows the formation of the
protoguild. The protoguild presses back upon the local
church, and out of this, the guild finally emerges.
In the midst of that summer, the articulation of
the temple dynamic changed my life more than anything else. That
was finally, for me, the most radical aspect of what we did. After
we did the minipark, nothing else made any difference to
me. That little old postage stamp park setting on the corner just
changed my life. It became clear that when I teach RSI,
almost simultaneously, I have to go out and plant a tree. Finally,
everyman must articulate where he will raise up the sign of new
possibility for life. That statement forever alters any relationship
one has to life, and creates whole new possibilities.
Finally, a new operating image broke us loose to
begin community reformulation through RSI, the Galaxy, LENS
and the Guild. That image held our work for a full 3 quarters.
There was symbolic activity, the business services survey, mini
parks, cabarets, and a car park cafe. In the second quarter, our
goal was to intensify all that, pushing hard on the guild pole.
The galaxy came into being, too, at this point.
The first LENS that summer was basically a global
one, with a few participants from Uptown 5. The second one, with
70 people recruited from the parish, really broke loose the guild.
We had a followup meeting with 40 people, and they were
ready to move. We organized ourselves into task forces. They articulate
a battleplan that should have taken a year, but we did it in six
weeks. Then they were almost paralyzed, because they had accomplished
nearly everything they had set out to do. They went Christmas
caroling, snow shoveling and recruited another LENS.
We realized then that the focus was too broad, so
the next LENS focused in on the protoparish itself, and
we were off and running at the point of a clear demonstration
sign. It became clear that Uptown itself was too big. A more delimited
geographic area was needed to create a powerful sign.
The dynamics of the core, the auxiliary and the Order
operate within the parish, which is on behalf of the whole globe;
a sign for the whole world. This is pretty close to our operating
image of what we are about. It is becoming clearer the you are
always outside the context of the local once you move to community
reformulation. There is no way to be only local. We are some "other"
and we will never be anything else but that. The moment you go
through LENS, you are an "other" independent of any
relationship you want to take to the community.
Fundamentally, we have been about standing outside
the context of the local, beaming in tactics tactics that
explode that situation, that explode the operating images of the
community, explode possibility for the sake of being the breakloose
revolutionaries who go about the task of building a revolution.
Many activities have marked this quarter, but our
edge has been at the point of indicative battleplanning, at the
point of catalyzing penetration, of launching community PSU's
and task forces and radicalizing the ward six system.
We found ourselves walking into this quarter with
Uptown 5's job fundamentally done. The global guild network was
in history. We had to ask the question, why continue? Why even
mess around? Why not just go around and help everyone else get
going? Why do Uptown 5? The first step, we thought, was to state
our three good reasons. But we did not have these reasons to continue.
Two weeks went by, and finally we began to articulate the role
of Uptown 5 relative to the Movement, relative to the world and
relative to the church.
Relative to the Movement, it was clear that the world
needed a sign of the radicalized guild, and the guild had to radically
Be in being to shape the future of the Movement, for the
sake of the church and the world. In addition, immediate signs
of the new urban community were demanded by the current historical
situations of collapse of old forms all around us. The world needed
signs of forms through which you and I are now living. They needed
signs of what these forms would look like in the local community.
Relative to the church, Uptown 5 seemed destined
to be a breakloose for the new ecumenism. There are Christian
denominations, Buddhists, Muslims and Jews in Uptown 5. The whole
world sits at the doorstep. Uptown, like no other place I know,
could play the role of breaking forth a new ecumenism which would
shape our mode of operation for the future.
Once we said this to ourselves, we were off and running.
Boy, did we run. In the guild's first battleplanning, stating
the contradictions was a major achievement. On our first battleplanning
night, we stated the contradictions and then were paralyzed. It
took 3 weeks to get 4 people back to build the rest of the battleplan.
Stating the contradictions brings out the pain of being broken.
I learned in the midst of battleplanning that knowing
the contradictions is of no help whatsoever. You have to do your
battleplan down to the level of implementary tactics. You are
always beaming tactics at those contradictions. You don't release
their power and rehearse the contradictions. That would be suicide.
I went to meetings where people would run out of the room yelling,
"Well, you cannot do anything here." That was one painful
lesson.
This quarter, we did our indicative battleplanning
in one weekend. We took the Uptown post plus twenty people to
Maryknoll Conference Center, and locked ourselves up for two days.
Lives changed! We had people whose only context had been one work
day last summer in which we did miniparks all over the place.
They were enthralled, excited, as they began to see ways of moving
practically, ways of creating miracles and turning this community
around. We became clear that indicative battleplanning is a form
of evangelism it alters human consciousness.
This quarter, we wanted to catalyze penetration.
The guild took over the recruiting. It was wild. We had an LCC
Week 2, the LENS course Week 4, and an RSI Week 5, and the
guild recruited them all. The LCC came off, although at 11 a.m.
there were only ten people in the room. By the end of the day,
ninety people had come through that room, participating in the
LCC. Thirtyfive people attended tile LENS course and it
was a phenomenal happening. We had people from a halfway
house as well as middleclass bourgeois people.
You know, the guild is not supposed to recruit for
RSI. They are supposed to hold the secular. But a pattern
of recruiting had been set by the time the RSI arrived,
and the guild just kept going. Half the course consisted of people
from the guild, who had insisted on going. I did not know what
to do except say yes. RSI was a happening in which we found
ourselves with people who were running into the future
and we had all we could do to keep up.
We pulled together the Community PSU's, published
a brochure and circulated it in the community. We had PSU's every
other weekend, alternating with task force weekends, and everyone
was welcome. I was scared to death, thinking that you had PSU's
only for the guild. We set up procedures that anyone could follow.
Thirtyfive to forty people showed up for PSU's and walked
away having had a great time of high fellowship.
We pulled our tactics through the 5th City model
to organize community task forces. The guild was assigned to different
arenas: the political task force, the community style task force,
the community symbol task force, the community education task
force, and the community economic task force. These are ongoing
permanent task forces.
Our major insight into task forces is that they are
not concerned with planning. They make, fundamentally, no decisions.
They just go out to get a job done. These task forces made montages
of Uptown 5 which we put in all the store windows. They worked
all over the community. The economic task force swept the streets
in the business area. The symbol task force planned a Christmas
program and publicized it. We had five task forces out on the
street every other weekend.
The edge of our work is in the whole wardstake
system. In it, we are out to recover "next door" care,
or to establish a network of people who decide to care for their
neighbors. A major breakthrough occurred in gaining clarity on
the function of the ward. We became clear, even in 5th City, that
the wardstake structure is not a convenient way of recruiting
courses. It is not a way of getting people to meetings.
The wardstake system is a care net which deals
with the depth problem. It always deals with the spirit problem.
It says, "Praise the Lord, Christ is Risen," in a thousand
ways. It demonstrates that "The world out there is great.
You can live in it." It says, "The future is wide open
and you can create it."
In initiating our wardstake system, we initiated
a format very much like Ecclesiola. We also began Wednesday night
visitation. We build a construct for visiting that I am most excited
about. Would you believe that the one night visit construct is
contextual reeducation, structural reformulation and spirit
remotivation?
Your contextual push might be something like a conversation
about the economic crunch. In the midst of that you push resurgence:
"1ley, you know what is happening in the economic, don't
you? I believe rebalancing of the whole economic system is taking
place right before our eyes. It means we can rebuild the entire
economic base of this community." Others react to this statement
and say yes or no to it. This is contextual reeducation.
Second, structural reformulation is getting people
to talk about their concerns. You offer them possibility as you
hand them all the PSU brochures, the task force brochures and
the indicative battleplanning models. You lay out the community
activities and then recruit. "This is what we are doing."
You offer people a way of taking their concerns and concretely
dealing with them.
Finally, spirit re-motivation occurs when you help
people create a new story. My favorite story for Uptown these
days goes something like this: "There was a time when you
and I could count on living in one cultural reality, in one ethnic
framework, and never moving out of it. I can be a bourgeois, middle
class white man all my life, but my kids are not going to have
that. New men are being born and a new man will be born here in
Uptown. Something wholly new will emerge from today's situation.
By God, can you imagine a New Man walking the streets of the earth?"
That, in essence, is what a ward visit is like. You
did not "recruit anyone to anything. You just gave people
images; gave them a chance to respond in new ways to their situations.
We visited 100 people this ·quarter and we have a list for
our next LENS course.
Things are beginning to happen, probably because
of the continuous practical undergirding. We have been working
on program funding. We are searching for a facility appropriate
for a Guild Hall, University 13, a preschool, and for use as a
node.
We have been working intensely in cadre or core formulation.
We meet as a guild one Tuesday night and meet as wards the following
Tuesday. We also meet on alternate weekends in the same fashion.
We have dinner meetings with the leadership to go over the meeting
plan, rehearse the roles, and make assignments. After the meeting
we spend a half an hour working with people on their roles and
before everybody goes home, all of us sit down to reflect on what
happened. then, after the Saturday PSU's and task forces, we clean
up, reflect and have a Saturday night celebration just
a great time. This is the pattern we have set this quarter.
As many as 25 people show up just for the Friday
night leadership sessions! That many people show up to find out
"What are we going to do?" They are getting ready, getting
themselves prepared for the task forces and PSU's on Saturday.
Fifteen to twenty people show up at 6 p.m. for supper and guild
meetings.
We are also working toward signposts on the
Long March. The funding push for getting the Guild Hall and the
educational complex into being are related to this.
And then, there is the elder's node. We have had
five elder's courses in elder's homes this quarter. There are
five session courses on 5 separate nights. We are learning a lot
about elders. Senility is created by the structure of society.
On the first night, you have a bunch of vegetables on your hands.
At the end of the fifth session, quoting John Epps, "You
have a bunch of roaring tigers ready to come out and tear the
world apart."
The happenings of these LENS courses are just rocking.
It is incredible to watch people who had given up hope of playing
any creative role in society, come alive and be ready to roll.
I am afraid of them. I don't know what to do with them or how
that force will be creatively shaped at this point. We are brooding
on that.
The node will be a vehicle through which elders can
operate outside of their homes and play the role that elders need
to play in a community. I am not sure what that role is anymore,
but they will decide what it is and look out!
Our edge at this point is in bringing together the
galaxy and the guild. The first common event, a Christmas caroling
party, is out to do two things: to bring together the churches
through participation in a great Christmas celebration and at
the same time, to catalyze stakes and wards. Groups will carol
all over Uptown 5 at key locations in their stakes, and then march
over to People's Church for a great Christmas celebration. This
is one step towards getting the cadre selfconsciously into
being.
I think our time thus far has involved simply creating
rational forms and formats. We are claiming time through various
practical forms. We have rational formats for meetings, rational
formats for visitation, rational formats for everything. Each
group, whether in PSU's, task forces, wards or guild, has a solid
time design. Ten p.m. every Tuesday night is reflection time.
Wednesdays are ward visitation night. Every Friday night is leadership
preparation time and Saturday is either a PSU or task force day.
Twentyfive, thirty or forty people are giving their lives
in those kinds of taskframes.
I did not believe it was possible to claim the time
that the mission in Uptown has claimed this quarter. But people
are showing up. We are now getting selfconscious and steady
participation in all ward meetings. Dennis Jennings is starting
a Sunday morning breakfast at which we look at the week ahead.
The "rabbit' is running. It is healthy. The dogs are not
biting too badly at his heels, although there are a few places
where they are. But, I want to say that I am grateful for George
Holcombe. I am grateful for the first image he put up on the board,
because it gave you and me the world.
Eugene Boivin
12/14/74