[Oe List ...] An Answer to Jim

[Nancy Lanphear]

Dear Herman,

What a wonderful reflection on your journey!  Thank you for sharing it with
us.  As you know, our family shared a great year with you and Joy in
1971-72!  It was a big part of the continuing journey with the Order.  we
all grew in so many ways.

Take care,

Love,

Nancy

2009/10/24 Herman Greene <hgreene at greenelawnc.com>

>  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
>
> www.greenelawnc.com
>
>
>
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