[Oe List ...] Rabbi Michael Lerner West Coast Phenomenon

[SVESjaime@aol.com]

Thanks, Dave.

I was in the DC area during the Clinton years, so I am quite familiar with 
the Rabbi and what he represents.  I was actually enticing Dick Kroeger who I 
imagine is the same guy who used to serve Monday morning bloody Marys at 
Development Centrum after a great Sunday celebration, to reveal where his excitement 
is regarding the book and what in life it is pointing to.

The stale political dichotomy of the Left and the Right, blue and red states, 
etc. is what I meant by the East Coast thing.  Geographically and 
mindset-wise, my east coast begins at the International Dateline in the Pacific.  And 
though the sun rises on America in Guam and the Marianas, we are really more than 
just "over the horizon from you on the other side of the big pond."  

The deep Marianas trench does indicate a more profound divide than the 
appentage symbolized by the US zip code in our address.  Though schooled in the 
tradition of the wandering Sumerian who spawned three major world religions, and 
bloodied the Crimson Line through Babylon and Assyria, Persia and the Aegean, 
Egypt and Rome, Europe and the globe, and now America and its craving for 
Middle East oil, there is a sense in which we are not kin to this tradition.  We 
may have joined the 230-some-years great experiment of the US of A, but we can 
also tell when the dreaded militant Sparta prevails over democratic Athens, and 
we feel no affinity over the struggle.  In fact, contradictional dichotomies 
is evidently not in our DNA as compared to that of the Semites in the Levant 
and the Aryans of the Caucasus.

The Left Hand of God is a metaphor for the "kinder and gentler" side of the 
ISness of life, (in religious code words, the nebulous Holy Spirit) and I was 
hoping that there was something in the Rabbi's book that goes beyond 
confronting the likes of Robertson, Rove and Limbaugh.  Books are not that accessible 
here even through the Internet (though a US territory in the UN, we are a 
foreign land for all other purposes; two years ago, we won the International award 
for our float in the Pasadena Parade of Roses!), nor are they cheap by our 
standard of living, so my query was a practical one.  I wanted to determine 
whether it was worth investing our meager resource on the book, and at the same time 
hear what is excite-ing former Order colleagues in their life journeys.

Being peripheral in the Wedgeblade circle/dialogue, I thought I'd stick my 
snorkel up and check what's going on.  I was one of those who literally uttered, 
"JWM is dead; long live Joe," in seventy-eight, and am impressed by those 
colleagues who, like Joe, took the stuff out of their particular circumstances, 
created their identity and vocation, and stuffed their vision and mission into 
human history without having to rely on their connection to Joe or any 
previous guru, on the one hand, or not having to seek a pied piper that they could 
follow next, on the other.

If there is anything the Global Academy ingrained in this eastern coconut, it 
is that one need not rely on the Prophetic, Messianic, or Priestly tr
aditions, rich as they are, to be religious, let alone, spiritual.  Nor are they the 
only demonstrative roles that one may use to express one's social conscience 
and sense of justice.  From my perspective, Pat Robertson and Michael Lerner are 
but extreme ends of the same spectrum of Pax Americana, and I hope I might be 
forgiven if I do not jump up and down just because a Methodist congregation 
considers itself progressive.  (Isn't that an oxymoron?)

Oh, and yes, Dave, do say 'hello' to Ellen.  And yes, I will read the book.

Jaime Vergara
Saipan