[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Mutual Accountablity, my dog in this hunt

Wed Jul 25 17:30:47 EDT 2007

Mary,

  What I may not have realized 25 years ago, but do now, is that I was never about building an institution, be it the ICA, EI, the institutional church, or whatever.  As I remember it, the incorporation of ICA was an act of expediency in response to the fact that EI needed a non-sectarian identity in order to open doors that were shut to a religious institution.  Unlike Marshall, I was much more at home on the West Side, although I never lived there, than at Kemper, where I did live for a time.

  But my real identity was, and in some strange way still is, with the Order which to my mind, despite the fact that it had a Rule, etc., was and is a movement and not an institution.  Institutions are defined by by-laws, mission statements and contractual agreements.  A movement, such as O:E, is a community of people, defined and bound by virtue of a common calling that is symbolized by a covenant,  in our case to be "those who care."  A movement may camp first with one institution and then another, but never becomes synonymous with the institution it camps with.  A movement finally has "nowhere to lay its head."

  For me it's all about vocation.  EI/ICA were merely structures to provide those of us bound by common calling a way to act out our vocation.  25 years ago I dissolved my contractual agreement with EI/ICA, but my covenant with the Order is "un-dissolvable."  Whether faithfully maintained or not, covenants are just that way.  During the last 25 years I have been keenly aware that as you and our other colleagues were doing what you were doing and I was doing what I was doing, even though for the most part each out of sight of the others, we were still doing it together as those covenanted to care.  Boulding told us that the college may be invisible.

  Whereas I deplore that some of my colleagues were hurt by the actions of the ICA board, I have not the slightest interest in seeing the ICA sustained for any reason other than as a structural form within which those who care may act out their care.  As for that purpose, it appears that that particular institution may have abdicated its mission and sacrificed its usefulness.

  Thanks for your good words.

  Best wishes,
  Randy Williams

"W. J." <synergi at yahoo.com> wrote:
    Mary, it is inspiring to hear from you. And I appreciate your articulating your personal stake in our common future as well as our heritage.

  The three metaphors that come to my mind to get at my experience of being who I am in history are: exile, excommunication, and hijacking.

  Being in Exile is not being able to go home. In my deepest experience of who I am, "home" is at 4750 Sheridan Road, with those dual brass plaques next to the front door: "The Ecumenical Institute" and "The Institute of Cultural Affairs." The facade is the same, but the inner being, the guts, if you will, has been gutted. And I'm not even welcome there, as far as I can tell.

  Being Excommunicated is having your membership revoked. Somebody decided that they have a legal, proprietary interest in the signs and symbols of our 'election' and took them away. I don't think they remembered to take back the Iron Cross, but they took back the "ICA" monniker. 'Nough said. It was about a struggle for control.

  And finally, Being Hijacked is about somebody taking control of the plane and flying it where we don't want it to go--that is, in violation of our consensus about our destination. I bought a ticket to Timbuktu and instead of going there, I don't have a clue as to where we're all headed. And I feel deeply violated.

  Some of us are quietly doing an "end run" around the residue of ICA-USA. Stay tuned for more details.

  Marshall

mhampton at att.net wrote:

  I have saved numerous email documents since the ICA firings, documents discussions and so forth.  I was among the indignant at the Mathews misspelling.  When I put our local dinner-once-a-month-and-study group on my calendar I usually write “ICA”.

  When I was in the Order in its residential, shared income, gathered community mode I was a permeator.  I wanted to be a permeator.  I remember in the 1987 or so writing and publishing via connected computers (what did we call that early form of internet?) A profession and a calling.  Basically, I was saying I was (and am) an occupational therapist, a specific health care professional.  AND I was (and am) a member of Those Who Care, in the specific form of the Order Ecumenical.

  I normally call the dinner and study group “the Alumni Association” in my head.  It consists, at this time, of Hamptons, Glenna and Dane Adkinson, Nick and Deborah Denner, Ken and Deana Henry, Terry and Diane McCabe, George and Wanda Holcombe and Laura Westbrook.  None of these folk were ever assigned with me in the residential Order.  Everyone except Deborah had their own first hand experience that manifestation of our community.  AND, since we have been meeting with some of them for 14 years, they are among my deepest colleagues and friends.

  We don’t do ICA together.  If we are at your house you are responsible for the main course and the program.  We have studied many wonderful writings, artform conversed about music, watched movies and gone tubing together.  

  And all of us invested our lives in Town Meetings, Development Projects and IERD.  Leading them and holding the outside jobs that were a substantial part of how we paid for it all.

  I have wondered why I keep saving all these emails.  I still am invested in this community.  I am invested in my children, but Lis is 30 and Chris is 26; I don’t presume to tell them how to live (and when I slip up and do—they don’t follow my “instructions”).  

  Is ICA different?  Should we have had a symbolic burning and dissolved those ICA and EI corporations/disallowed use of the names when we called the symbolic Order out of being?  Are these names among the words “that should be hung out on the clothes line to air for 50 years”?  

  I have more questions than answers.  I have a stake in the products of our work—the archives.  I am still waiting to hear the answers to questions others have raised about where ICA goes from here.  I want to respond to “that of God in each of you,” in the Quaker phrase, and trust what is being born is an aspect of Those Who Care in action.

  Please keep us informed.  Please do not take our interest lightly.

  Grace and Peace,
  Love and Light, 
  mary kincaid hampton

  -------------- Original message from dpelliott at aol.com: -------------- 

  Marshall,

  An interesting factor in the decision to sell or not to sell the Kemper Building is the research Jim Troxell did at the time.  I'm sure he will share it with you  if you ask.  As I recall, a survey at the time indicated the land value was about $600k, if it was vacant land.  There was virtually no market for the building.  Removing the building to have vacant land to sell would cost about $600k.  This market research which indicated our major asset was virtually worthless as a marketable asset played a part in the decision not to sell.  It is a minor miracle that a lot of hard work, imagination, and dedication turned this virtually worthless asset into the major community asset present today.

Don Elliott

-----Original Message-----
From: W. J. <synergi at yahoo.com>
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net; oe at wedgeblade.net
Sent: Sun, 1 Jul 2007 4:20 pm
Subject: [Dialogue] Mutual Accou ntablity

    Duncan raises some VERY interesting questions. 

  Using the Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs and affiliates as a kind of mirror to reflect on our experience with ICA-USA, what pitfalls did they avoid, and what creative new processes and/or structures did they invent in struggling with financial/programmatic accountability?

  And how did the staff and the board remain mutually accountable?

  I recall that the Ecumenical Institute would not own the Kemper Building today if the Board of Directors had had its way. Faced with an empty and deteriorating building, the Board decided to sell it. But, as Mary Warren Moffett recently reminded me, a bunch of people--let's call them the Guardian Dynamic--said to the Board, "OH NO, YOU WON'T!" And those determined people succeeded in pulling off what I would call the Kemper Miracle, giving us the investment in Uptown that survives today.

  So let's not assume that any version of the rapidly changing Board of Directors automatically has the final wisdom or the last word--unless we let them.

  And finally, Duncan, who is the owner of the ICA Associates in Canada?

  And why did our Board of Directors prohibit the use of the concept of "ICA Associates" in the USA?

  Marshall

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