[Oe List ...] FW: John Cocks' List of OE Formation

[Herman Greene]

I'd forgotten how long John's list is in his book Called to Be

 

Now I'm thinking this list is quite long, because I have a lot to add to
John's list. Don't know if we could have one meditation on each of these,
but it's thought.

 

 

Called to Be: A Spirit Odyssey, by John Cock. Pages 217-22:

 

HOW DO I BEGIN to list what I learned from my years in the Order:
Ecumenical? Maybe with a variation on some of the Order's operating
principles that are quite applicable to any sensitive and responsive group:

THE 20 PRINCIPLES OF CORPORATENESS

1.                Corporateness grows out of a mutual calling.

2.                Covenant and discipline sustain community.

3.                Regular accountability of each member is necessary.

4.                Absolution is that without which corporateness fails.

5.                Each member has a gift to be developed and offered.

6.                Everyone is responsible for the whole mission.

7.                Worship of God is the most important act of the community.

8.                The community has one mission, not many.

9.                Sacrificial commitment of time and resources is crucial.

10.             Care is provided structurally.

11.             The power is in the center of the table.

12.             Decisions are made by consensus, not by majority vote.

13.             Equity, not equality, is the key to fairness.

14.             Effectiveness, not efficiency, is the hallmark of service.

15.             The first response is always yes.

16.             Indirection is preferred to direct encounter.

17.             Only criticize with an alternative model to offer.

18.             Only decide or act as a team of two or more.

19.             The external situation is never the real problem.

20.             The community has local autonomy and global responsibility.

 

I list my ]earnings during the sixteen years in the Order under the five
categories of the spirit journey: 

primal community, functional aptitude, destinal calling, historical
engagement, and spirit prowess,

 

PRIMAL COMMUNITY

*        Corporateness is very painful, especially when one is as
individualistic as I am.

*        Religious houses of 12 to 20 persons were more creative living and
missional environs for each person than a nexus group of 50 to 250 persons.

*        Living with persons of other nationalities and religions is most
difficult, though very human.

*        Living in a black ghetto, an Indonesian village, and an Indian
village
give one perspective on being an outsider and being a guest.

*        A missional/covenanted family is an awesome sign in our time.

*        A missional/covenanted family order is a more awesome sign in our
time.

*        The team, cadre, or guild is the crucial unit of corporate mission.

*        Demonstration children, youth, and elder structures are catalytic
to social demonstration.

*        Our sons had an upbringing par excellence in the Order and around
the world.

*        There is no such thing as a perfect community, and those who go
looking for it are doomed to despair.

*        The humanness of the poor is no less than that of any other group;
maybe their humanity is more pronounced because of their living on the edge.

*        A secular-religious community is much preferable to a religious or
a secular one.

*        Individual and community journey markings and celebrations are
crucial to community vitality.

DESTINAL CALLING

*        Encounter with the mysterious presence calls one to vocation.

*        I appreciate the opportunity to decide my vocation even if I become
angry with the person or situation that confronts me with the Word.

*        The human need seen in ghettos, third world villages, and first
world suburbs calls forth my compassion.

*         The church is our vocation, not an avocation.

*         Universal compassion is inherent in human beings.

*         The paralyzed masses call me.

*         One's story, myth, or operating images indicate one's vocation.

*         The communion of the saints, the league, or the crimson line
(Kazantzakis) are my colleagues.

FUNCTIONAL APTITUDE'

*         Consensus allows the whole group to move together rather than
dividing it through a vote.

*        Pedagogy for the Religious Studies-I course by all the members of
the Order built a deep common memory and operating context for
corporateness.

*        Corporate discussion after individual study of a particular piece
focuses a group and reduces the sharing of common ignorance.

*        A methodology can be built for any human activity and facilitates
rather than restricts creativity when one makes the methodology his or her
own.

*        A model is a human invention, not a supernatural gift.

*        Contextual re-education, social re-formulation, and spirit
re-motivation are strategic directions that most interest me.

*       Every human needs the Academy experience, an intensive 8-week format
of comprehensive wisdom and intentional life in community.

*       My internship year in the Order was the most radical year of my
life.

*       The corporate memory of the Order still reinforces my life.

*       The Other World methodology is a break-through that the church
needs.

*       The conversational artform method is the most generally useful
social method I know.

*       Humanness is built upon sociality (community), sexuality (male/
female ontology), phaseology (four life phases), and transparency
(relational meaning).

HISTORICAL ENGAGEMENT

*       Being under assignment by a group I respect can be more human
than my trying to figure out what to do with my life by myself.

*        All time is assigned time.

*        Long-range planning and short-range modification keep the corporate
mission on track and give the persons involved a sense of autonomy and
responsibility that produce authentic expenditure.

*        We are always re-creating the world for good or ill.

*        Social demonstrations create signs of possibility.

*        Global reconstruction is a crucial task.

*        Engineering the new religious mode is a more crucial task,

*        The 15 percent of the global population with the resources must
take responsibility for the 85 percent who are denied easy access to the
essentials of life.

*        Economic tyranny and imbalance is a most obvious cause of human
paralysis.

*        Human resurgence is my vision.

*        Everyone finally cares, but those who care most comprehensively,
passionately, and in depth change history.

*        Calling forth, training, engaging, and sustaining those who care
into a global servant force is the work of the church or the Order.

*        Xavier (or the Iron Man or Woman) is the one who leads the 10 who
train the 100 who catalyze the 1000's.

*        Awakenment, formation, demonstration, and permeation are
strategies to build and sustain a human development movement.

*        Universalism and ecumenism are big enough frameworks for mission,
if given an eternal context.

SPIRIT PROWESS

*        Spirit disciplines and structures are inventions we make to help
sustain our lives in mission.

*        Weekly accountability and absolution helped release me from the
burden of guilt.

*        Beginning the day with worship is the proper human stance.

*        A high weekly celebration (House Church) is essential to esprit de
corp.

*        Weekly accountability and absolution are essential to the human
journey.

*        Despair can be creative.

*        We live out of symbols and images.




*        We are reflective by nature.

*        Because of the impingement of the mysterious power in life, I can
transcend my given situation to find meaning in it.

*        I can decide to be or not to be a victim.

*        Awe is objective.

*        There are no absolute answers in a relative universe. To want such
is to live out of illusion.

*        Humanness operates effectively out of the archaic, the futuric, the
comprehensive, and the intentional.

*        I can play the necessary role.

*        I only know the Word if I can ground it in my human experience:

*        Poverty, chastity, and obedience are human dynamics, not restricted
to monasteries.

*        Meditation, contemplation, and prayer are human dynamics, not
restricted to the religious.

*        Spirit resides in matter, or one can bleed the meaning out of any
piece of creation or any situation, or matter can be turned into spirit.

*        The land, river, mountain, and sea are primal symbols.

*        I am my relationships.

*        Beholding, revering, and serving the mysterious power, that I call
God, is the meaning of life

*        Above all else, I learned that all is good, my life is received,
the past is approved, and the future is open.

BRIEFLY, WHAT I LEARNED IN THE ORDER IS

To live simply
To love structure
To live on behalf of
To celebrate our living
To reflect on the mystery
To serve the shattered earth
To dream the impossible dream
To build the earth, the common earth

 

 

 

_____________________________________________

 

Herman F. Greene

2516 Winningham Drive

Chapel Hill, NC 27516

919-624-0569

hfgreene at mindpspring.com

 <http://www.ecozoicstudies.org/>  

 

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