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

Thu Apr 21 17:38:17 CDT 2011

Thank you Herman.  Very helpful

Jeanette

On 2011-04-21, at 5:03 PM, Herman Greene wrote:

>  
> 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.
> 
> <image003.gif>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
>  
>  
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