[Oe List ...] An Answer to Jim

Sat Oct 24 20:52:03 CDT 2009

I would like to pick up on Jim's question of how facilitation differs from
what we were about with RS-1 and also Carlos's comments. And I would like to
pose a new question on which I will also comment. The question is "What in
the life of the Ecumenical Institute and its teaching was/is most important
to you?"

I joined the order approximately the same time Calvin did, fall of 1967. And
we both began our studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School at
that time. (John the problem with Calvin, as I recall, was that he left the
University of Chicago Divinity School after two years and enrolled at UTS.)
I actually began my life at EI, however, by coming to Summer 1967 and I
stayed on in the fall. (I did take a month off in August. I think my parents
were a little surprised by my new comprehensive, intentional and futuric
style and that I maintained a timeline . . . which continued through
graduate school. It eventually was broken into 15 minute blocks and that is
the amount of time Joy and I allowed each week for smooching for quite a few
months.)

I wouldn't call EI my "ideal community" but I would say that the nicest
people I ever met, I met there. I had and have tremendous respect for so
many people with whom I lived during those years. 

Joy and I left in 1975. Nathan was two at the time and I think he had
established himself as the biggest eater and toughest guy in the Kemper
pre-school. (Joy taught there, so she got to be a mother too.) Joy left for
me and I left because I was desolated. Part of that I now know was
depression and only a part of that was situational. I later discovered I had
a drinking problem which is another story, and I have been sober now for 23
years. No one would have known because I was a closet drinker and drinking
was a kind of self-medication for depression. (Depressants for depression is
a losing battle, but is a common story for many people who are alcoholic.)

In the year before we left we had studied The Dark Night of the Soul as a
group. Looking back, I felt this was a device to say if you are feeling
terrible you are on a spirit journey or you are apostate. I remember people
saying, well I guess it was Joe, that people who leave the Order are
"Traitors of the Spirit." 

I wrote a long letter to Joe before I left and gave it to him. I saved a
copy, but lost it after awhile. I left with the intention of going to law
school - this thought literally came to me in a dream, but the idea that I
could be a lawyer came from working with the North Shore group while I lived
in the North Shore Religious House. I knew I wasn't too good at nurturing
people as a pastor, I was too rational-an emotion became a thought for me,
something I later understood when I learned my Myers Briggs type (INTP). I
identified with the lawyers in the North Shore group, though it was five
years after the North Shore House that I left the order to head in that
direction.

Everything Joy and I had fit into the back of a mid-sized station wagon, and
I think we had about $125 to our name. We weren't "vested" in the Order's
pension plan, such as it was, and took nothing with us from what had been
set aside from our stipend. We went to live with my Aunt in North Carolina. 

I didn't have resentments against the Order that I can remember. At the age
I was, though, I had to go through some thoughts of how I was right and
"they" were wrong. I didn't have any significant contact with Order folk
until 2000 until I went to the Millennium Event in Denver. Joy went to Joe's
funeral but I did not. 

I can see I could go on in this vein for quite awhile but I'm not getting to
the matters in the first paragraph. Let me only say for those whom I haven't
spoke with about this, Joy and I were separated in 1985 after we returned to
her home town of Denver. Divorce was the most painful thing I ever went
through. I admire Joy to this day and neither of us was ever critical of the
other. I remarried in 2000 to Sandi Payne. Joy remarried in 1988 I believe.
She continues to live in Denver. We had one child after we left the Order,
Brendan. Nathan, now 36, currently lives in LA, works in television
production and will marry next summer (and intends to move back to Denver
then). Brendan, now 32, works for the Immigrant Rights Association of
Denver. I am living in Chapel Hill, NC, with Sandi, nearing the end of my
law practice (though it's not over yet) and as Jim Wiegel pointed out, I am
quite involved with the ideas of Thomas Berry and expect my remaining days
to be largely devoted to ecological issues, more specifically ecology and
human culture.

I have watched from afar as I have seen my Order colleagues travel the world
and do amazing things. I never had an international assignment and probably
could not have handled it then. I realize the focus of the work changed in
stages after I left and the life of the community changed. I think I know a
little more about ICA than the transitions in the life of the community,
which must have been very difficult. 

I am amazed at all of the human development projects. I'm amazed that the
roles people have played. I saw Rob Work in September and learned of his
work with the UN. I met people from all over the world at the Millennium
Connection and heard there stories of what ICA meant for them. I have heard
the anguish of the Order children and have also seen many become incredible
adults. 

I know I am very different because of my life in the Order. Maybe this is
the first time I have really stopped to think how. What I think was the
greatest gift of the Order to me was learning how to translate religious
language into one's own experience. I think there is more to religious
language than one's own experience, but if one cannot look beyond the
literal meanings of the language, then religion becomes a set of facts and
beliefs, and messes with your mind and your relationships. I wish everyone
could have the experience of understanding religious language and meaning
this way.

The second thing that strikes me about what I learned was "Commitment." When
we committed to do something in the Order, it got done . . . well, most of
the time. I haven't read Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life and I suspect
without knowing that he gives a pious interpretation to that. What I learned
in the Order though is that we are meant to live purpose-driven lives. In
the Order while we had the world as a context, we narrowed our focus quite a
bit. Not being in the Order I have had to understand purpose in the midst of
complexity and a variety of needs and without the illusion that I can
control the world or determine the outcome of things. Nonetheless, I'm still
pretty driven to make a difference and I think the Order was a major
influence on that. 

The next thing that occurs to me is "Integrity." I don't know of a group of
individuals who I felt had more integrity. What impressed me was not the
secondary integrity we talked about but the primary integrity. For the most
part, the people of the Order had solid cores and they were giving of
themselves fully everyday. I have always felt the need to continue to live
out that kind of integrity.

I may have to stop with "Hope" though when I began to write I never thought
I would have this list. The 'sixties were hopeful and no group was more
hopeful than we were. We truly believed we could change the world. I believe
we did, in local churches, in getting the church involved in social issues,
in Fifth City and later around the world. I know lives were changed by RS-1.

We could have done even better than we did, I think, if we had been more
open to letting things develop in people's lives without always narrowing
the focus to the next course to take and getting people into the Academy and
the Order. Yet, if we hadn't done that we would not have grown from a little
over 100 in 1967, to 1,500 people in 22 countries when I left.

It wasn't perfect, but it was what it was. If I have a regret it was what we
put families through, especially the children. This is something we have
gone over before. Those things that were hurtful can't be changed now, and
the hurt can't be dismissed by a simple "nevertheless" but people can still
go on and heal and be healed and draw strength from their total experience. 

I went to the Springboard retreat at Lake Junaluska a couple of years ago.
John Cock quoted me as telling him that the Order was my primary community.
I don't think I actually put it that way, but there is truth to it. I came
of age there. The Order was my family and in significant ways it still is.
You never really leave your family. It is in your blood.

Herman

_____________________________________________

Herman F. Greene, Esq.

Greene Law, PLLC

2516 Winningham Drive

Chapel Hill, NC 27516

919-624-0579 (ph)

919-942-4358 (f)

Skype: hgreene-nc

hgreene at greenelawnc.com 

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