[Oe List ...] Trying Hard To Get Real -- about the ICA

[frank bremner]

Dear Marsha

I liked your contribution to the discussion following the ICA USA "tsunami".

Some years ago I showed the last sequence of the movie "Zorba the Greek" to 
a group of Year 9 high school students (average age ~ 14 yrs).  I suggested 
that Zorba did the human thing when the ore chute collapsed - he "spat 
chips" for a while.  Later - later - he did Zorba's dance with his 
colleague.

Maybe we need to "feel sorry" for ourselves for a moment or two, or a 
hundred or two, as part of the healing process.  And to seek some external 
comfort.  It may not always be available, or there may not be time for it, 
but "being a spirit giant" sometimes seemed to be synonym for being an 
unemotional stoic who had not worked through how to deal with emotions and 
feelings.

I have found that the recovery from clinical depression (diagnosed early 
2000) has involved getting some congruence  between (1) external, very 
measured, very careful, very intellectual, very non-exuberant behaviour and 
(2) inner, wild, chaotic, repressed emotions and feelings.  Many of the 
latter go back a long way and are increasingly triggered by all sorts of 
seemingly unrelated events or words.  Insisting on this process as a 
necessary one for healing has required some persistence.  I have had to find 
a few, very few, friends with whom I can talk about such things.

In Tillich's terms it has involved some overcoming of dis-connection and 
estrangement with my self.  That dis-connection was a very well-learned 
approach that protected the very fragile ego of a child.  Some years ago my 
late mother told me the factual details about my late 40s and 50s home life 
that I had only intuited - but the "emotional photographs" from childhood 
were extremely vivid and at last were being processed with many "aha!" 
moments of understanding.

I am now happier living with chaos, frustrated plans, "negative" feelings 
and thoughts ("That's the way it is right now") and allowing time and 
reflection to do their quiet work. Letting the seeds of healing germinate.  
In the meantime projects and plans that are close to my heart are being 
worked on - not only facilitation work with schools, but writing, screenplay 
writing (who would play Kaz in a film of "Report to Greco" and who would 
direct it?), drama studies (is "Waiting for Godot" a post-modern liturgy?), 
music etc.

Cheers

Frank Bremner
fjbremner at hotmail.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>From: <mhahn013 at sbcglobal.net>
>Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community  <oe at wedgeblade.net>
>To: "'Order Ecumenical Community'" <oe at wedgeblade.net>
>Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Trying Hard To Get Real -- about the ICA
>Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:58:18 -0600
>
>David,
>
>Thank you for your eloquent and thoughtful reflection.  I am deeply sorry
>for the sudden and traumatic events that you and other ICA staff recently
>experienced.  You are clearly attempting to make sense of what has happened
>and to respond out of the kind of faith that has defined your journey and
>the collective journey of the Order.
>
>I have one small response that I hope may be beneficial.  I was struck by
>the reference to our old preschool song: "I am always falling down, but I
>know what I can do.  I can pick myself up and say to myself, 'I'm the
>greatest, too!'"
>
>Several years ago, my sister Shelley suggested that there might be a step 
>or
>two missing in that process.  I will grant you this: if it's a little
>stumble, then the song stands as written.  Big fall with skinned knees and
>elbows - that's another story.  Giant crash with broken bones, concussion,
>and damage to internal organs - well, you get my point.  In all these 
>cases,
>you can pick yourself up and move on.  But the process for getting to that
>point, and the time required, may vary.
>
>Shelley says the missing pieces are that, first, you get to cry.  It hurts,
>dammit!  Then, you get to be comforted.  Your mother comes to your aid, 
>gets
>out the bandaids, gives you a glass of water, pats your back, and says,
>"There, there."  Then, at some point, you realize you're up on your feet
>again and out on the playground.  And you're likely out on the playground
>before the knees and elbows have healed.  For a while, you're the walking
>wounded.
>
>If you can go with this metaphor, I can't see how things could be much
>beyond the crying stage right now.  This was not a minor stumble.  This was
>a crash of life-altering proportions.  The world was turned upside down in
>every way, and it has impacted every facet of life - economic, spiritual,
>political -- you covered it all beautifully in what you wrote.  Rage,
>despair, and disorientation make complete sense right now.  How could it be
>otherwise?
>
>It also makes sense to me that this listserv community has the potential of
>being part of the "mother" dynamic.  For the preschooler, the mother does
>not actually heal the wounds.  The child's body has the capacity to do that
>on its own over time.  The mother provides a safe space, encouragement, a
>presence, really, that helps the child recover his equilibrium.  So, write
>on, dear brother.  I think we can be present to you, and to any of the
>others who are struggling through this same "mini-tsunami," as you called
>it.  (I'm not sure about the "mini" part.)
>
>Like Marilyn, I will let my other thoughts germinate a bit, and perhaps
>share more later.
>
>With deepest love and respect,
>Marsha
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On 
>Behalf
>Of David Dunn
>Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 4:23 PM
>To: OE Community; 'Dialogue' Listserv
>Subject: [Oe List ...] Trying Hard To Get Real -- about the ICA
>
>This is the second in a series of talking papers that attempt to broaden 
>and
>deepen the conversation about the future of the ICA USA.
>
>***
>TRYING HARD TO GET REAL--The Challenge of Intentional Community
>David Dunn, January 14, 2007
>
>As you might imagine, being ŒRIFFED¹ leads to a mini-tsunami of deep
>emotions and further reflections, along with a trickle of insights. This 
>may
>also be true for our Board colleagues who thought about and chose Œforce
>reduction¹ from among the available strategies for saving the ICA from
>bankruptcy. The upcoming three-month anniversary of what I now refer to as
>³the ICA¹s October 16th frontal lobotomy² has prodded me to work up just
>enough spiritual prowess to set sail toward the abyss of meaning making. It
>is the new year and it¹s time to move forward
>
>It seems important to admit that while I eagerly process my life experience
>by writing, I don¹t presume that everyone is eager to share in my
>³processing out loud.² I will not think less of anyone who chucks the whole
>thing in the trash. For those who extend the benefit of the doubt, I hope 
>to
>offer some provocative entertainment, if not priceless insight. Nothing is
>guaranteed. I welcome feedback, but ask you to be gentle. I¹m still a 
>little
>tender in spots.
>
>I¹ve tried for some weeks now to write insightfully but have become mired 
>in
>the too-muchness of everything. I get all wound up but never seem to get to
>the bottom of anything. I also freely admit that I am usually inclined to
>choose a delimited topic and do my level best to make it broader and deeper
>than its natural boundaries permit. Sometimes this habit leads to something
>new and other times it leads to entanglement without enlightenment. So I¹ve
>chosen a more cautious course this time. I¹ve chucked much of the writing 
>to
>date and instead I¹m going to try to skim off the obvious stuff that rose 
>to
>the surface of the bucket before I attempt any Œdunking-for-apples¹ type
>maneuvers. I¹m working out how to separate the disconcerting from the
>essential.
>
>The first thing that I need to get off my chest is a simple admission:
>I am always falling down, but I know what I can do: I can pick myself up 
>and
>say to myself, I¹m the greatest two.
>
>There I¹ve said it. I knew that I had to come clean on that first, key
>point. It seems important to acknowledge that I know and believe that this
>is an appropriate understanding of the way life is. What is striking to me
>is to be discovering the difficulty of living out of this understanding for
>the first time at age 64. I¹ve lived a sheltered life.
>
> >From this side of the RIF, the sanitary acronyms related to Œreduction in
>force¹ are at best quaint euphemisms. Yes, they reference fair labor
>practice laws intended to keep bosses and Boards fair-minded and
>even-handed. But reduction in force is a labored contrivance that avoids 
>the
>human truths. Its use is an insult to our souls.
>
>The truth about a reduction in force is something far broader and much
>deeper than a sterile acronym can ever convey. In human terms and in no
>particular order, a reduction in force is a reduction in vision, a 
>reduction
>in wisdom, a reduction in energy, a reduction in trust, a reduction in good
>will, a reduction in context, a reduction in possibility, a reduction in
>imagination and a reduction in momentum. I¹m headed toward praise and
>dedication here, but I can¹t not pass go. Avoiding confession on this walk
>around the board (no pun intended: game board, not board of directors) 
>lands
>us somewhere in life where we don¹t want to be.
>
>So I¹m going to offer a little perspective on what a reduction in force
>creates--in human terms--not in the language of platitudes, euphemisms or
>wish dreams. I¹m going to try to get us grounded in reality so that we know
>what we¹re up against when we come to the spiritual prowess part that moves
>us from ³life is never the way we want it² to ³nevertheless we are free to
>live.² Yes, the man at the pool picked up his bed and walked, but I¹ve not
>had any real luck with quick miracles and believe that gradual and
>considered miracles are a better bet.
>
>THE WAY LIFE IS AFTER A "RIF"
>There are a number of interesting and disconcerting physical, emotional and
>mental realities after a RIF. As stress levels go up, anxiety attacks and
>tightness in the chest are not uncommon. Eating levels may go up; Pecan
>Sandies offer relatively low risk, if temporary solace. It may be hard to
>get to sleep some nights and it may be hard to stay asleep other nights.
>Some nights, especially when I¹m sans my usual bed mate and have to throw 
>on
>three extra blankets just to stay warm, I don¹t want to go to sleep at all.
>I stayed up until 5 a.m. once last November. It¹s not hard to wake up,
>shave, dress and put on my shoes in the morning, but it¹s devilishly hard 
>to
>face the day two hours later.
>
>Self-confidence and esteem are a sometime thing--not that they weren¹t
>always a little shaky. These days they seem to ebb and flow like the tides
>at the Bay of Fundy. Just when it might be really nice to enjoy a little
>playful, adult intimacy, my adult self can¹t quite imagine how to pull it
>off. Furthermore, while the first floor part of my adult self can be light,
>steady and unruffled, the basement part of my adult self is quite another
>matter. When I need to rummage around in the cellar for something I¹ve lost
>or need or want or whatever, light, steady and unruffled promptly give way
>to anger, frustration, grief, feelings of betrayal and shrill demands for
>acknowledgment, justice and redress. It ain¹t no emotional picnic down
>there; all is not sweetness and light.
>
>Concentration is either non-existent or hyper-focused, depending on the 
>time
>of day, or the relative humidity, or the barometric pressure, or the phase
>of the moon, or how long it¹s been since I had a job interview or a
>breakthrough in my business plan, which ever I¹m into that day. I¹ve become
>a great story teller, working over the same material from a different 
>angle,
>finding a nuance in the familiar drama that I had not noticed before. 
>Though
>I¹m boring myself to tears and want to ³get on with it,² whatever ³it² is, 
>I
>seem to be harnessed to this persistent, iterative load from the last year,
>recalling the events and players with whom I was more or less hauling in
>synch until the ground opened up and swallowed us whole, team, harness,
>wagon, and cargo.
>
>This is where it becomes immensely fascinating and frustrating to observe
>how skillful I¹ve been--or not--in grounding myself transparently in The
>Power that posited me, while still working on taking an honest, creative 
>and
>constructive relationship to my situation, my interior and my undoubted
>freedom to decide.
>
>If I have forgotten any important experiences of the recently-RIFFED I¹ll
>receive any and all additions, amplifications and corrections.
>I have not forgotten the other side to this coin, the other partner in the
>tango. I have no doubt that the members of ICA Board of Directors have 
>their
>own litany of bodily woes, emotional frailties and mental mayhem that has
>accompanied their journey this last year. I pray that they may find a way 
>to
>speak their truth.
>
>ANOTHER LEVEL OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
>Why am I carrying on like this? Hasn¹t this just been a rehearsal of the
>obvious? Doesn¹t this just rumple the sheets of the bed about which we all
>know I must someday make a decision? Why not just walk away from the pool
>right now, the bed be damned? I can think of at least two good reasons to
>attempt to be both sharper and clearer than broken crystal.
>
>One, though the ICA¹s Board of Directors seems to me to have ignored the
>fact, we are, at bottom, an intentional community, and our community‹we
>might say our corporateness--has taken a beating in recent years, economic
>realities and necessities notwithstanding. Remember the three dynamics of
>the social/organizational dynamics triangles? We¹ve witnessed the 
>inevitable
>result of not just an imbalance in an organizational process, but the
>collapse of any organizational process. We¹ve not just witnessed an
>imbalance among the democratic, bureaucratic and symbolic aspects of the
>ICA¹s corporate life, our corporate creation has fallen victim to the
>simultaneous inattention of all three. Staff, board of directors and the
>ICA¹s supporters and friends have been asleep at the switch for at last ten
>years and more likely the last twenty years. Hear me well. ³I, David Dunn,
>former staff member of the ICA, was asleep at the switch.² We all were.
>
>The result of our inattention is having profound human consequences, some
>having to do with our relationships with one another and others having to 
>do
>with the very being of our creation--the Institute of Cultural Affairs.
>Two, the corollary to ³symbol is key² is ³story is all.² Our movement and 
>in
>particular our intentional community, has been adept at telling stories.
>Sometimes we told stories with the strategic intent of energizing our
>partners and colleagues. Think ³5,000 Town Meetings.² At other times we 
>told
>stories to avoid the truth. Think ³Children need alert and honest adults to
>protect them from abuse.² Secondary integrity is a slippery slope from
>strategy to illusion and even worse, to subterfuge.
>
>It will be tempting to create a fiction about the reduction in force that
>laid off nearly all of ICA USA¹s senior program staff--notably the staff
>with values, practices and images grounded in the Order Ecumenical. A 
>smiley
>face is not adequate. We need to be honest about the operating images,
>patterns, systems and structures that led both staff and board down the
>primrose path toward the insolvency of the institution with which we were
>entrusted. If we try to invent something new and durable out of fiction or
>ignorance, we¹re likely to create something new without integrity or flawed
>or both.
>
>Our intentional community needs to stand up, ask questions, take stock,
>engage energetically and think acutely. We need to attend to the human
>fallout of this bomb that has just exploded in our midst. I have reason to
>believe that the ICA¹s board of directors is exhausted, wounded, numb and
>fundamentally clueless about how to approach the future and how to relate
>concretely and helpfully to former staff members and to members of our
>intentional community and other stakeholders in the ICA. The consequence
>must surely be an uncomfortable mixture of consternation and remorse. We
>need to wrap our collective arms around them and hold them tightly until
>they find the grace and confidence once again to govern with enough
>peripheral vision and depth perception to include more than economics and
>profitability in their calculations. Care for these people. Ask for a role
>on the Board. Take charge again.
>
>Some, if not all, former (or soon to be former) ICA staff members--of whom 
>I
>am one--are exhausted, wounded, numb and fundamentally clueless about how 
>to
>approach the future of the ICA and how to relate concretely and usefully to
>the shell of the organization that remains and to the members of its board
>of directors. The greater share of the employed brains, vision and memory 
>of
>the ICA has just been let go without so much as an exit interview. Pilots
>and mechanics get more say about the future when their companies face
>bankruptcy. The consequence is a kind of bewildering sense of being cast
>off, discounted and left without standing to figure out how to relate to an
>institution and vocation that we helped shape and embody but from which we
>have just been practically abstracted. Help us talk through this
>discombobulation and find our way into a role that is useful to the future.
>Help mediate the severed friendships and damaged collegial trust.
>
>CONFESSIONAL AFFIRMATIONS
>The least I can say about this 33-year experiment in evolving a conscious
>strategy to be the People of God in a global, secular world is that we were
>all naive to think that we could remain viable, let alone thrive, with part
>time amateur managers managing by committee. We fell all over ourselves:
>interpersonal feuds and tyrannies, team revelries and guarded turf, tacit
>agreements to hold our noses and ignore the sacred cows and collusion,
>Byzantine (or is ³Rube Goldbergian² more apt?) accounting systems, and
>failing to acknowledge the harm done when one person¹s genius was felt or
>understood to threaten or diminish another¹s. We were never able to 
>maintain
>our corporateness--after Joseph¹s death? after Oaxtepec? after the shift to
>regional offices?
>
>No one I know doubts the genius of the Learning Basket Approach, Imaginal
>Education, and the Rite of Passage Journeys; the Neighborhood Academy,
>community drama, and community resource centers large and small; ToP 
>methods
>of facilitative leadership for participatory design, economic
>revitalization, organizational transformation, and international
>development; and HIV/AIDS education and prevention based on community
>capacity building and engagement. Lord have mercy on my challenged mind if 
>I
>have inadvertently left out any of my colleagues¹ inventions; mia culpa in
>advance. But we were a collection of irresponsible geniuses, some would say
>uncharitably, working on immortality projects. Most would affirm with
>profound gratitude, that paid staff members and volunteer colleagues alike
>shared work on many fronts that, in sum, established lasting social
>inventions with the power to transform society.
>
>SUBSTANTIAL CHALLENGES
>Now we¹re faced with at least four tough, interrelated questions:
>
>-- Do we intend to be an intentional community that shares responsibility
>for the future of the ICA?
>
>-- Is the ICA a strategy whose mission has been fulfilled that we may
>celebrate and let go of or is it an institution with a futuric purpose and
>mission that we need to resurrect and reinvent?
>
>-- Do we have energy for this agenda or have we run out of steam?
>
>-- What on earth do we intend with the Ecumenical Institute? Death by
>neglect?
>
>I intend to write more in the coming weeks and I hope that you will talk 
>and
>write too. I¹m posting these talking papers on the www.wedgeblade.org
>"Repository" site under Reflective Writings.
>
>---
>David Dunn
>740 S Alton Way 9B
>Denver, CO 80247
>720-221-4661
>cell: 720-314-5991
>icadunn at igc.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
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