[Oe List ...] a third talking paper

[David Dunn]

Hello colleagues,

I've just completed a third talking paper that I've called: "Context,
Collegiality and the Future: a talking paper about three essentials" (Three
Essentials for short) but the paper is eight pages long so I'm going to
spare you an eight page email. The introduction and conclusion are pasted
just below and in between that are the questions to which I address myself
getting from the one to the other.

If you're interested in taking a look at the whole thing, I've posted the
paper on the repository at:

 http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Main/ThreeEssentials

and attached an .rtf version (rich text format) to this email:
 
If you want a nicely formatted .pdf version, click the following link:

http://homepage.mac.com/dmansel/filechute/3-The_Essentials.pdf

All the best. David Dunn


INTRODUCTION
The striking thing about last year was the deafening silence: the absence of
public comment on the departure of ICA's first professional manager last
June, the muted response to the lay off of ICA USA's senior program staff
last fall and the conspicuous absence of illuminating communication from
ICA's board of directors. With a few notable recent exceptions, there has
been little public reflection from the intentional community that surrounds
the ICA. A contextual vacuum like this invites wild speculation. My
candidates for the most creative explanations range from shell shock to
yawning indifference, i.e., from "everyone has been struck dumb" to
"everyone has discovered how bored they are with the ICA 33 years on."

As I cast about for explanations, Burna Dunn recalled "The Year of Magical
Thinking" in which Joan Didion wrote about grief and illusion after her
husband's death. Didion said in essence, "I saved his shoes. I knew he was
never coming back, but I saved his shoes." Saving the infrastructure in
order to save an organization is a little like saving a dead man's shoes.
The "thinking out loud" that follows is an attempt to wrestle free of the
illusions that keep me from moving toward a practical vision for the future
and to move through the grief that keeps me fixated on the past.

[AFTER WHICH I POSED AND ADDRESSED SEVERAL QUESTIONS]

How can a conversation that has to do with passionate matters of vocation,
livelihood and vision proceed constructively amidst sticky illusions and
fresh grief?

What posture will allow us to share responsibility without self condemnation
and to be constructively provocative without arrogance or presumption?

What got disconnected from what? How could [the ICA and 'the movement'] have
come to this?

How could [such a catastrophic] loss of intention and energy have happened
and why is this an important question?

How do we find the wherewithal to replace the self-defeating image of
temporary existence or the illusion of eternal existence with a commitment
to continual reinvention?

What agenda for the ICA and the Ecumenical Institute would throw open the
curtains and air out a stuffy house?

Challenge 1. The ICA USA¹s first challenge will be to find a way to expand
the context of the conversation about the future in a way that allows us to
see beyond nostalgia for the past and the trauma of the present. Only the
largest, most provocative context will reveal whether subtle creative forces
are at work in the midst of decline and suffering.

Challenge 2. The second challenge will be rebuilding patterns of inclusive
participation and profound respect. Moving forward requires concrete
repentance for falling asleep and forgetting who we are.

Challenge 3. The third challenge is discerning whether the ³movemental²
character of the early ICA remains a foundational value in the present.
We¹re going to need help avoiding the blindness of nostalgia and embracing
the possibility that the ICA and its relationship to the ³movement² will
both look quite different in the future.

The meaning of emotions. The business of anger and honesty. The source of
joy. 

CONCLUSION
A strategy for bridging. How are we going to create a context that allows us
to transform near calamity and abrupt loss into a creative open space where
invention is possible? The ICA board and the Interim Executive Director,
Kirk Harris are far too isolated. No one person or small group knows what
energies are flowing and where they are going. Beyond the ToP Trainers¹
Network‹a specialized professional network and a voluntary association‹that
has recently met and appears to be energized, there must be several dozen
other isolated centers of brooding and conversation of one sort or another.
>From where I sit, however, the moment seems to be without form and void.

Kierkegaard offers a clue to capturing the moment: the self is a
relationship that relates itself to itself and in deciding to be itself,
grounds itself transparently in the power that posited it. The words that
leap out at me are 'relationship, deciding and power.'

At the moment, it feels like we are stuck between the no longer and the not
yet. There¹s no discernible point to be 'out on. We need to remake broken
connections: the board and the ICA¹s diverse constituencies, board and
former staff, present staff and the larger movement, former ICA programs and
future possibilities, ICA USA and ICA International, ICA USA and sister
organizations overseas, the movement¹s intellectual property and the needs
of the world, the Ecumenical Institute and the church, the Ecumenical
Institute and the ICA, and so on and so forth. We¹ve got to figure out the
bridging strategies that give us something concrete to walk on and that will
get us from this side to the other.

Here¹s an idea that I want to put on the table that has to do with
relationship building, new decisions and claiming power.

Why don¹t we join Judy Lindblad, Betty Pesek and others, claim the Living
Legacy Project as a movement event and invite the ICA into partnership. Why
don¹t we set up a dialogue between what we know of our inherited wisdom and
the needs of the world¹s future. Why don¹t we use the question of the future
of the ICA and EI as the concrete, practical context in which to reclaim the
contents of our movemental archive. Why don¹t we organize a distributed
corporate research effort that places the content of our institutional
memory into dialogue with the content of the world around us. Why don¹t we
use the resources that we have at our disposal‹the listservs, 'The
Repository' and the untapped capability of the World Wide Web to foster a
distributed conversation and evaluation that culminates in a gathering that
deeply serves the ICA.

Why don¹t we carry some of the load of figuring out the ICA¹s future and why
don¹t we take the board at its word that the new ICA intends to foster
participatory partner networks.

It is way past my bed time and probably past yours as well. I salute you for
perseverance and look forward to what¹s next. All the best.


---
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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