[Oe List ...] I.C.A.

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

I really appreciate David's letter, and this discussion, and have a few 
thoughts on who we are (or who you have been for me) as an Order.  It has to do 
with how we celebrated Daily Office and House Church.  Because of our history, 
(rehearsing before the Mystery our confession, praise and dedication, the 
celebration of rites of passages in our lives, the support of intercessory prayer, 
holding one another accountable and pronouncing absolution) my connection with 
this community is more profound than with the several beloved communities I've 
formed in the last 30 years.  All that has to do with collegiality, right?  
The common understanding that came from our study (seminary), and the methods 
that developed as sodality -- all these things are still in history.  Without 
college and seminary, can sodality maintain its integrity?  The new board is an 
experiment to see if that is possible.  It's not looking good.

The list serve was a lifeline for me and a large part of my recovery from 
lymphoma and Fred's recovery from cerebral hemorrhage.  How in the world would we 
have been able to plan our daughter Suzanne's memorial service without the 
understanding you've given us?  How could we participate in a sick local church 
without it, much less have showed up in public school classrooms for all those 
years?

The ICA (U.S.) is dead for me, and I guess it has been for a long time.  Just 
as old colleagues who were on the staff have done quite a few consultations 
in this county without ever getting in touch with us, we have given to a lot of 
good causes without considering that our old colleagues needed it.  I'm truly 
sorry.  

I grieve for the death, and let go,  and then turn, with a kind of 
standing-on-tiptoe anticipation of where our Order will go from here.

David, all your responses are and have been, as real as it gets.  You don't 
have to "get" anything.

Love, blessings, grace and peace,
Jann McGuire


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.