[Oe List ...] Inspired by Carlos, Lynn, Margaret and Marshall

[R Williams]

Colleagues,
 
I have been particularly inspired by the contributions made by Carlos, Lynn, Margaret and Marshall to the conversation on group methods, curriculum and their intended purpose.  I must confess that I have been one who has been concerned that the mission we once understood ourselves to have, as it is now being institutionally represented by successors of O:E/EI/ICA, has been watered down simply to "facilitation," that is, teaching people a set of participatory processes and the skills to administer them--a kind of "rational aim" without an "existential objective," if you will.
 
Facilitation was and is an effective tool for achieving the mission to which we were/are called, but it was never, in my opinion, more than the means to an end.  The only thing we ever intended to "facilitate" (which I take it means to "make easier"), the only "existential objective" we ever had, was a change of heart and mind, a conversion, a metanoia, so that people were called and released to embrace a new story of reality (that all life is good, accepted, approved, open) and thereby live their freedom in such a way that they became servants of their neighbor.  That's what everything in the curriculum, from RS-1 to LENS, was designed to do, and they all did it without exception.
 
As for LENS, today with organizations like the World Business Academy describing business as "the most powerful institution on the planet" and insisting that as such it must, although it has no track record for doing so, "take responsibility for the whole"--and as viable alternatives are being sought to the crass individualism of capitalism on the one extreme and the naive collectivism of socialism on the other--the experience that LENS was and still can be for the business community, has never been more needed.
 
Randy Williams


      
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