[Oe List ...] 2007 Living Legacy Event

[SVESjaime at aol.com]

I joined a movement,not an organization.  I was once advised by a  colleague 
to drop-in on JWM and profess to him absolute allegiance and  loyalty.  I 
thought it was a joke until I realized my dear 'colleague' was  serious!
 
There is an element of "The King is dead.  Long live the King!" about  JWM.  
Before I was unceremoniously kicked out of the organization, I  relished the 
story about JWM asking the symbolic 12 to visit him individually in  his death 
bed, bequeathing to each the future of the Order.  A few thought  that as a 
special singular assignment to the deanship of an organization, others  
understood the old coot's desire for the movement to continue.  Most  anecdotal 
stories are apocryphal but plausibility is the only currency for  acceptance, and if 
the above is factually inaccurate, it nevertheless made a  good story to me.
 
We were studying about dissipative structures in physics when in 1984. it  
became evident that the organizational center would not hold.  I was  delighted 
in 1968 when the University Christian Movement voted itself out  of existence. 
 I was already out in '88 (?) when the Order called itself  out of being in 
Mexico City.  Amen was my cry!
 
If the Living Legacy folks were intentional in downplaying the memory of  
JWM, they are in good company, JWM himself included.  Jesus was a Jew who  
probably never heard of the Greek structure of 'ecclesia.'  But he was part  of a 
movement along with cousin John and guilt-ridden Paul.  Paul would  'organize' 
the movement.  In my tradition, Wesley started a movement.   Asbury would give 
it form in the Americas and now, we worship the organization -  never mind the 
movement.
 
JWM's message that I got was not so much a focus on the genius of his  
synthesis and packaging of RS-1.  That was group effort, and still a work  in 
progress.  It was his permission-giving demonstration that one can take  the 
crudy-ness that one is, and fully, unconditionally inject it into the  historical 
civilizing process, and take that resolve as one's personal identity  and 
vocation.
 
What he told the symbolic 12 was an echo of the Galilean carpenter:  "go and 
do likewise."
 
Dick is right.  Where a party gathers, let 'em and join them if you  can.  
Shit-ing on one's colleagues does not fertilize!  Santayana's  oft-quoted "those 
who do not learn from history ..." is a crock, perpetuated by  the archivists 
and journal-writers.  Life cannot be lived forward without  looking backward. 
 The Semitic memory of what a Mesopotamian couple did  four thousand years 
ago allows them to take anything that comes their way in the  next four thousand 
years.  JWM's real heirs are not those who can narrate  the chronos of his 
life, nor recall the words of his mouth and pen.  They  are does who heeded his 
call in the kairos of their own space/time to "go and do  likewise."  Bill and 
Mariana Bailey did, and I could name a hundred more,  Judy, Janice and Howie, 
numbering among them.
 
The iconic job has pretty much been done by Bishop Jim, and the precis of  
the summa theologica presented effectively by the Bending History  editors.  It 
is time to talk stories among those in diaspora, and if the  Living Legacy 
gathering will be one among many getting organized, more power to  it.  David 
Dunn's repository could use more usage, if only we were not too  stingy in 
repositing!!!  Blessings to Denver and Toronto, and the RL  Symposium in Houston.  
May there be more.  Let us be clear, if I went  to Atlanta and started spewing 
JWM-memory to IAF folks, I would not be enabling  the movement.  Nor would the 
human development folks in Tokyo have an ear  for it.
 
The fact is, JWM is dead.  Long live the Movement!
 
Jaime
 



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