[Oe List ...] Order Polity document relevance

[Janice Ulangca]

Shelly, you've hit a nerve.  And done ICA a service.  Possibly the reason for the response is the recent foundational shakeup in ICA in the U.S. and our recognition that the new is upon us, painful as that might be for many.  We're forced to rethink who we are, where we're headed, how we're gonna get there.  And -- how do we decide these questions?  Decision-making  methods - that's polity.  We can, of course, ignore the wisdom from our past experience, and just grasp at something that looks "doable".   But in recent conversations with some board members, I've been pushing for more foundational  research on what the world requires at this time in history, and what in our asset base of people, tools, wisdom can respond to what parts of this call.  

Re what the world requires:  We don't need to start from scratch - there's good thinking available that has exciting stuff that could be right up our alley.  Consider two books published in 2006:  Rabbi Michael Lerner's The Left Hand of God  takes an in-depth interfaith look at U.S. politics and culture, and puts forth an exciting Spiritual Covenant with America.  (See also the Tikkun website and the Network of Spiritual Progressives - Dick and Amelia Kroger are working on a Minneapolis conference for this group going on now.) Ervin Laszlo's The Chaos Point gives a global and broad historical perspective on both crises and hopeful clues.  Laszlo's book includes comments by (among others) several whose books many of us have read:  Peter Russell, author of The Global Brain (1983); Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade (1988), and Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth (1990) and The Great Work - Our Way into the Future (2000).  (Several of our North Carolina colleagues have worked with Thomas Berry.)

Back to the Polity Document:  Thanks to those who referred us to the Golden Pathways CD.  Lots of good stuff on that CD, from EI:ICA:OE history.  You do have to wade through a lot to see what is mostly a good memory and what lights up in terms of present and future.  I checked out the Polity Document a couple of hours ago, and some parts of it jumped out as being exactly what the "we" need who are concerned with the future of the ICA organization in the U.S.  I'll copy those paragraphs into an e-mail and send it separately. 

Thanks, Shelly.

Janice Ulangca




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Janice Ulangca
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