[Oe List ...] Niebuhr/Tillich, etc.

[Janice Ulangca]

A thought-provoking conversation.  What especially struck me:  Jon Elizondo's fine poetry, including his response to Rumi; and John Epps' comments about cultures.  When I first began teaching in the Philippines, my students surprised me by inquiring about my family, who they had not met and would never meet, since my family lived in Iowa.  When they heard that I had just one sibling, a sister 13 months younger (very important to know the elder and the younger),  spontaneous expressions of sympathy came out.  "Oh, very lonely, ma'am!" they exclaimed.  Having an individualistic U.S.A. mindset, I had never thought of myself as lonely because I had only one sister.  But to them, having just one sibling meant I was missing a lot, and my family is a part of who I am - I am not separate, and cannot be understood apart from them.  As I write, I also recognize that while my relationship is not as long nor as deep as some,  the O:E will always be part of who I am.

Finally, a paragraph from Randy Williams about going on to wholeness.  This reminds me of  a key point from John Shelby Spong - that Jesus can be our guide into becoming fully human.  I am privileged to know a few folks who seem far along that path toward becoming fully human - and what spirit they bring into every situation!

Thanks to all.

Janice Ulangca

>From Jon  Elizondo: 
We are beyond where some of those writers were... we are adding to their thoughts and ideas.  Our experience is always growing... building.
That is my experience of life.

AND we are the Master Dreamers.

That is why it is so important to ponder Rumi's call.
"What do we really want?"

Do you want separation?  you will see it and create it.
Do you want grace and/or connection to the oneness of all that is?  It is there and you can see it and create it unless you have an underlying belief that you can't.
The story creates the event.

****
On perfection...
look at the sunrise
a perfect sunrise, right?
Does it stay the same?
and tomorrow is another perfect sunrise, and yet it is not the same.

Speaking only for myself and my belief and life experience...

Perfection is a dance of Original Blessing of the Mystery that We Are.

******

>From John Epps:

I've been interested lately in cultures and their differences of perception. It seems that many cultures do not find individual separation the jinx that we do in the West. There is a "communitarian" assumption, not an "individualistic" one. By that, I mean that for many cultures, the basic unit is the group, not the individual. People assume they "fit in," and their striving has to do less for individual achievement than for honoring, protecting, and strengthening the group. You don't, for example, motivate people by awards for individual performance but for team successes. When there is failure to live up to demands, the experience is not guilt but shame (you have dishonored your group). 

For more on this see Fons Trompenaars & Charles Hampden-Turner, Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural diversity in Business  (London: Nicholas Breadley Publishing, 1997).

I'm sure what we point to with "separation" and "alienation" and other such terms applies equally to those cultures, but the terms will be different. It seems these days important to demythologize not only in terms of 21st century mindsets but also of global mindsets. 

>From Randy Williams:

Think of "incompleteness" in the context of Tillich's "sin as separation."  If I'm separated from my own mystery, depth and greatness, from my neighbor and the ground of being itself, I think it's safe to say I'm incomplete.  This, it seems to me, is to see the situation in terms of the ontological, existential, indicative, etc. but clearly not as an issue of morality.

So, for me my human striving is not to "go on to perfection" but "to go on to completion," to become reunited with the G-O-B, self and neighbor and to thus experience myself as whole.  In the quest I discover that my completeness/wholeness is all wrapped up with everyone and everything else's completeness and wholeness.  Where anyone or anything is less than whole, I am diminished as well.  Therefore my striving is to serve all creation, not so that it may be "un-flawed," but so that it may experience and live out of its completeness/wholeness and in the process I, as a part of all creation, may experience and live out of my completeness/wholeness as well, to the degree that that is possible, assuming JWM was right, this side of the grave.
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