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

[Herman Greene]

Dear Jamie,

I haven't met you but I like your reflections and the questions you raise.
Sometimes by focusing on right-left, red-blue, we forget that this is the
drama that is perpetuating the America that is.

Herman

-----Original Message-----
From: OE-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:OE-bounces at wedgeblade.net]On
Behalf Of SVESjaime at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 6:12 AM
To: grapevin at comcast.net; KroegerD at aol.com
Cc: OE at wedgeblade.net
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Rabbi Michael Lerner West Coast Phenomenon


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




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