[Oe List ...] Part 2 - Excerpts from the Polity Document

[Janice Ulangca]

Part 2 contains sections on The Decision-Making Path, Decision-Making Principles, and Future Conversations. 

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>From Part Three (The Futuric Implications), Section A - The Polity Dynamic

4. The Decision-Making Path  (Page 84)

This brief essay seeks to begin the process of understanding how it is that decisions are actually made in the Order: Ecumenical. This is one of a type of puzzle, to which the solution is always self­-evident ­­ until someone from outside asks for it. For instance, everyone .who's in the structures of this community knows that the power is in the center of the table and anyone can grasp it. Anyone can have his say in the group, and thus influence the direction of history. All of this is true. Now, exactly how is it that some 2000 odd Order: Ecumenical members actually participate in shaping the decisions that determine the direction of the Mission?

Well, the decisions are made by 'consensus'. This also is true. When we make decisions, we keep working at them until everyone is in agreement ­­correct? No, patently not correct. In fact, we occasionally make decisions with which some are, by ordinary criteria, in considerable disagreement. But then it is necessary to ask, how could that be? Even speaking strictly from the standpoint of semantics, it is just not possible for a group of persons to make a decision with which it disagrees. It is a simple contradiction in terms. And yet, there is no doubt that consensus, in the way in which we use the term, is something other than simple, straight­forward plunging about until there is unanimity of opinion.

Let us experiment with approaching the subject backwards. That is, consider that the only proof that a decision has been made is, that it has been implemented. You then ask, which decision? and it immediately becomes apparent that there are many, many different kinds of decisions, and the process may differ markedly for many or all of them. It is probably worth saying there are only six kinds of decisions: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Decisions about what relate to definition of the mission, and the strategic and tactical priorities. Decisions about "who" have to do with assignments. Decisions about where, of course, represent geographical priorities. The how's have to do with structural implementation.

Within the structure of the Order: Ecumenical, an idea that is eventually made the substance of a decision and then implemented, can originate at any point within the organizational milieu. Management is not restricted to discussion and action upon ideas relating to managing, nor is operations Centrum restricted from making a decision about management. The overall structure of operation is sufficiently fluid that this kind of interaction can, and does occur frequently. In fact, the decisional aspect of all Order organizational entities reminds one of circles of spotlights moving across a wall ­­ sometimes they lie far apart, sometimes they overlap to one degree or another.

No individual is restricted in any way from introducing any idea into any part of the organization, on any subject. However, it is important to add, the likelihood of that individual's success in having his idea accepted and implemented depends heavily on a large number of strategic considerations: timing, the context in which the idea is introduced, and, most significantly, whether his idea or ideas are aimed at the heart or the current missional contradiction.

Likewise, any group of individuals, whether operating as part or a regularly constituted missional structure or less formally, has full permission to introduce its ideas into the life of the corporate body. In fact, this is exactly what must happen if they are to be effective, for the missional consensus is dependent upon groups passing their missional plans before the gaze of the whole body before implementation, so that the whole becomes an integrated movement, rather that a series of disrelated activities.

However, some points of entry into the inclusive overall structure are more used, and more effective, than others. for instance, if you set up an ideal operational model, it might fool; something like this: All decisions might first be introduced into the deliberative bodies: the collegiums, whether at Centrums or [louses; and the Councils, whether global, continental, areal or local. These are the officially stated times when any individual can speak his piece, and insist on his right to be heard, so long as it is done within the operating context of tie body. It is the deliberative bodies of the Order that belong most properly to the "people" or to the democratic pole of the polity triangle.

Still following the ideal model, once an idea has been discussed in the deliberative body, it would then be submitted to the oligarchic dynamics of the Order, meaning the Commissions, the Panchayat and the Priories, for refinement and incorporation into a missional strategic plan. When approved by these oligarchic dynamics, the idea would hen be returned to the Centrums and/or to the Houses for direct implementation.

The fact of the matter is that no decision ever made by the Order or any of its members ever had such a clean, straightforward path. The process actually is often foreshortened: an idea may be conceived of and then directly implemented in the same place and the same missional structure. This might occur for any of a number of reasons, the most frequent being' simply the missional necessity to act with maximum speed and effect in an arena where it is anticipated that there ::ill be very lit~2e opposition, resistance, or few suggestions of alternatives. This is possible because the context is clear: the year's priorities, the major contradiction, and the strategic objectives of the areas or the centrums. As a case in point, the assignments Commission might make an interim or short-term assignment to fill a crucial gap checking only with the concerned Area or Centrum prior. This might be because the alternatives are already clear, the cost of not acting quickly high, and the serious possibility of resistance to the person or persons assigned to a job, almost nil.

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5. The Decision-Making Principles (Page 86)

The decision ­making process depends for motivity on the participation of all members of the group effected by the decision. But for effectiveness, it depends also on other less tangible factors. Even the cleverest social forms and the sincerest personal resolves cannot guarantee that a group of 1400 people scattered throughout the globe can achieve any real consensus. And even if that were ensured, the mere fact of that consensus would not guarantee its "rightness". The Order isn't only or even primarily concerned about the purity of its polity process; its main concern is that effective decisions be made, decisions that incorporate all available wisdom and guide missional action in creative directions that address the moral issue of our time.

Two principles have guided us: first is the assumption that everything required for a victorious action already exists in the situation, whether the issue be one of self­support or of programmatic implementation. The issue is how to determine what those elements are, especially when they have been overlaid with decades or generations of clap­trap. How does one see into and through the particularities of his situation with eyes that black out eons of primordial and parental prejudice while letting through the stark objectivity of reality itself? For victory comes from using reality, not from striving for ideals. Practical results occur when the given, actual reality is found to have latent within it all that is required for a resolution to the issue at hand. A method of discernment is required whose major characteristic is TRANSRATIONALITY, seeing through the apparent to the creative.

The second principle, closely related to the first, is the assumption that effective decisions occur when they are in accord with the underlying currents of history. Historical change comes when forces deep beneath the surface of events gather momentum, become trends and push to the fore. Historians' search for causes is in fact an investigation or those currents that existed long before their visible manifestations. Decisions and actions which profoundly effect the course of history are those which tap into these existing currents and give theta a social form which thereby releases there into history. But determining these currents or "waves of history" is not easy. It, too, depends on having the eyes to see. methods of analysis are required which move beyond the individual or corporate prejudices of a group and which allows perception of what is present.

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b. The Context Building

Context building is a critical procedure at various points in the decision making process and is used in a number of direct and indirect ways. Usually the context is formally set at the beginning of a corporate sessions by the assigned leader. In less structured situations the context for discussing an issue can be set indirectly by one or several parties at various points as they deal with various issues. Broader contexts are built over periods of time which extend beyond a single session.

When effectively established, the context significantly shapes the work of the group.  Effective context setting dramatizes that the power in the center of the table is available to all. The function of the context is to delineate the focus of the group's attention in such a way that its motivity and engagement in deliberation is sustained and the relevance and quality of its treatment of the issue is assured. The basic components of any context are as follows: 1) an affirmation of the present situation as the required launching point; 2) an identification of the current contradiction and historical trend which necessitate a response; 3) an indication of the future indicative before the corporate body, and 4) radical permission for the group to make the indicative called for creative response to its imperative.

These components are not intended as procedural steps, but rather as a screen for use in creating and checking a particular context. A context can be as short as one sentence or as long as a brief spin. It never attempts to do the work for which it is intended to set the stage. Its power depends on the degree to which it compellingly presents an image which communicates "we are the ones, now is the time, this is the task. "

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>From Part Three (The Futuric Implications), Section on The Timeless Concerns (Page 97)

 The Future Conversations

Sometimes human conversation belongs to the realm of the fine arts. Such conversations take place over years, and even lifetimes, and exchanges take on the concretions of battlefield maneuvering. Their content was nothing less than history, and because these conversations were done with care, they shaped history.

Life in the Order Ecumenical is a kind of conversation with history. It is a very good thing that the Order does not do programs or projects or strategies, like the Ecumenical Institute and the Institute of Cultural Affairs, became it is of crucial importance that the conversation should be protected, and for the moment, be kept apart from the realms of mundane doing. But if you can hear the conversation of the Order rightly, then you have the best imaginable clue to the real future of the whole functioning corporate body.

Let us submit that there are seven conversations now in progress: there is the conversation the Order is having with itself, which means also the E.I, and the ICA. There is the conversation it is having with local man, local man of the West, and of the `East, local men of the 15% and of the 85%. There is a pair of conversations that are related, yet distinct between the secular establishment, and the ecclesiastical establishment. Then there are three "spirit" conversations: one with the ancient wise ones, one with the "Enemy", and one with the "Mystery."

What comes next for the Order: Ecumenical very largely depends on the direction those seven conversations take. But there is no straight line projection that can help very much in attempting to grasp the realities of the future. You might, for some purposes, draw a line from 5th City in 1967, and say, "see the roots of our 24 Human Development Projects plus the Maharashtra replication. But if you lived in 5th City in 1967, you have to be aware of the kind of game that is. Nobody would ever have predicted Ijede or Kreustberg 0st from 5th City. No one would have predicted the New Jersey: 100 out of RS­l, or the Local Congregation Course, or Cultural Studies I, even though the seeds were all there.

What will determine our future, if it is to go on being the sort of creative adventure that it has been until now, is the periodic intrusion of the sort of "quantum leap" that has marked our past. That term is not a good one, but a better is hard to come by. One idea is that we need continually to be sure that the possibility of radical intrusion into our going routine is always possible. Much as it is necessary for some purposes, what moves the human race is not plodding, routine attention to duty, but gestalt shifts into wholly inconceivable realms. Creativity is not rational; it is not logical. It is wild, fierce, unpredictable, though it uses rationality and routine and predictability as its servants, Creativity is "unnatural'', and the object of huge kinds of resistance from the "normal," and "natural" ones. You could make a case, although it would be questionable to take it too far, for saying that the spirit of real creativity and the Holy Spirit were one. So, the underlying, critical question of the Order: Ecumenical is: "How do we remain exposed, and open to the wild winds of the future?'

There 's no way to legislate in that wild uncertainty. In fact, there are many ways of making a good case for increased emphasis upon bureaucratization and routinization. Looking back on the history of the Order, it seems that every year, at least 20 times a year, we require ourselves to re­invent some set of procedures, or some way of doing things that we did last year. We re­invent the wheel, and sometimes it feels like we re­invent the horse. Perhaps this is one way of maintaining the openness. But re­inventing the Summer program from scratch can become just as boring as looking up the manual on doing Summers, and doing it by rote.

Perhaps this says that in the future, it will be necessary to allow some kinds of routine and bureaucratization in the door; maybe even the little tiniest bit or efficiency. If we do, what may yet protect us is the incredible gymnastic feat we have cultivated among ourselves of being able to sit for record­breaking numbers of hours, while problems and solutions whirl through our corporate mind until it is impossible to perceive which is which. And at this point, sometimes, there emerges the genuinely new, the genuinely creative. There is something to the promise that where two or three are gathered together..." in the name of spirit, or the name of creativity, or the name of the new humanness, or the moral issue, or whatever. The whirling, endless hours do produce revelations (spelled, please note, with a lower case "r"). For that is finally what consensus is all about.

If we can maintain that openness to creative incursion, to the intrusion, then we may eventually find that that also becomes the kind of service role that the Order plays for society at large. If we cannot afford to be without the intrusion, society at large simply cannot afford to do without efficiency, and it cannot afford to open the door to very­much creative chaos. If you do, you don't make money, you don't get streets repaired, you don't collect taxes.

In other words, if we remain faithful to our own insights, and faithful in our word, it just may be that one day, the world will require of us that we be the discontinuity and the intrusion to which we are loyal, for the sake of society at large. And after all what better role for the religious of the world­­ the controlled friendly intrusion from the other world, the intrusion that heals, the intrusion that opens new roads when stony paths are no longer visible.

One more rambling bit of grist for the conversations. Once, some years ago, one of the members or the Order used the idea of a "new Medievalism" to illustrate a lecture. The idea is that there is a parallel between our times and the age of the collapse of ancient Rome. One further implication is that the church alone was sufficiently strong to withstand the flood of chaos and disruption, and begin the rebuilding process.

The "Chicken Little" quality of the illustration may have been more appropriate to the occasion in a way that it is not now. But Order Living, with its mobile style, moderate austerity and objective external focus is, in several ways, an attractive alternative to much of what passes for contemporary culture. The corporate task emphasis lends a legitimacy to conservative values that is hard to justify elsewhere in a relativistic world.

But far beyond that, if it is possible, yet, in the 20th Century, to talk about the "new morality," then surely the Order: Ecumenical is one of the very few living laboratories for giving form to it, with any real capacity for intentionality. And surely the quality of global inclusiveness has to be one corner of a new moral structure, along with passion for the awakened consciousness of every man, and an obsession for the total engagement of everyman.

One might anticipate more tears than victories in ­that arena for a time. Being global is appallingly difficult at close range when matters of protocol and cultural form loom larger than the rise and fall of church and empire. But morality in the 20th Century requires that the effort be made.

And so, we continue the conversations: the Mystery provides the general context and the specific situations in which those conversations take place. The "Wise Ones" of the past provide the insights into what has been said and thought and done before, in the history­long conversations. The "Enemy" provides all the fun, interesting and exciting answers to the life questions that last one hour and are gone.



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Janice Ulangca
3413 Stratford Drive
Vestal, NY  13850
607-797-4595
aulangca at stny.rr.com
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