[Oe List ...] Still here

Mon Oct 17 19:34:32 EDT 2011

Dear Rev. Bud and Karen,

I'm most excited about Evolutionary Spirituality as taught by Ken Wilbur  
and Andrew Cohen, whose new book is like reading Kazantzakis' Saviors of God 
for our time. There are so many exciting courses on the web, such  as the 
AcademyforEvolutionaries.com., Jean Houston's site, and many  others. I agree 
with Karen that the web is the likely source for a  movement to coalesce. A 
note in my journal from one of these courses is,  "Community is necessary, 
not to come together to feel good, but to  step outside shared agreements and 
social norms together."

Sundays, I take my 99-year-old mother to the fundamentalist church I grew  
up in (the Church of Christ). The building is sold. The few people left are  
looking for a place to meet. The local Presbyterian and Methodist 
congregations  are also dying. When the prosperous families who have supported the 
churches for  years, die off, it's the beginning of the end. The middle class 
is almost  gone from my small town of Lindsay, CA. There are the prosperous 
growers and  business owners and the laborers. Most public employees commute 
 from other places.

I awoke in the night thinking of the San Francisco Religious House of  
1970-71. My late husband Fred and I and our children, Suzanne, Scott, Patrick  
and Barry, lived there from August, '70 to December, '71. Besides the folks  
who have been mentioned in response to Rev. Bud's e-mail, there were Dick 
and  Linda Alton, Tom and John Wainwright, JoAnne Slicker, John Mathews, Wayne 
 Marshall, Beverly Gazarian, Jim and Shirley McCabe and Dale Griffee. Tony, 
 Ellery, Jon and Debra Elizondo came in '71, as wll as Doug and Lorie  
Rozendal. Jerry and Sarah Carter pastored a Methodist church in the south  bay 
galaxy with the Clutz's church. I may have left some out. Gil and  Lynn 
Woltjer, Dan and Diana Smith and another beautiful young couple whose  name I 
can't recall were in the University Presbyterian galaxy church in  Berkeley.

I also recall the shock when the local church experiment was abandoned, and 
 agree it would be interesting to know how the decision was made. I was 
with  the children at Geneva Crossroads camp that summer.

In a message dated 10/17/2011 3:10:32 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
KarenBueno at aol.com writes:

"the Church is at least as much in need for renewal as it was in the  
1970s."   Ain't it the truf, Bud.  Those of us who are still  working in ordinary 
local churches, those that RS1 did not reach and  make an impact, can 
surely agree.  And the course about Progressive  Christianity is a great need.  
It would probably take as huge a maneuver  as it took to put RS1 into history 
to create and disseminate such a  course.

Will our beloved Christianity die, if it does not change (as Bishop Spong  
writes)?  And those good-hearted folks who still show up on Sunday  morning 
to worship and study, those good-hearted women who still show up at  the 
women's groups will probably just disappear into history.  The United  
Methodist Women, in their district and conference and global bodies, if not in  the 
local churches, seem to be able to make an "end run" around theology and  
step forward to do justice activities.  That is why I continue to work  there.

I doubt that a weekend course, or maybe any format of a teaching method,  
(as books, study group curriculums, etc.) will reach enough people to make a  
difference.  I think it will need to be something that explodes on the  
internet, in order to catch the attention of those who might be able to  
listen.  

So many seem to be able to put all of their scientific learnings into one  
box, and then put their faith understandings locked away somewhere else in  
their brains.  When people don't have to confront the difference between  
the two, they don't necessarily think about it.  

And those who understand that scientific understandings contradict  
orthodox Christianity seem as likely to just quit the church as to try to  
reinterpret the faith.

I'm guessing that the lack of responses to your proposal is a lack of  
vision, not a lack of interest from our colleagues, about how such a  movement 
would be structured.   

Karen Bueno  (active with EI/ICA since 1967)

In a message dated 10/17/2011 1:39:57 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,  
rev.bud at mac.com writes:

Several days ago I posted for the first time on this listserv. I  want to 
let you know I am still here. Thanks for the number of you who  responded to 
my emails in my mission to try to create a transformational  course for 
Progressive Christians. I haven't got back to all of you yet. I  will, but I 
have been trying to catch up on having been out of touch with  you for over 30 
years. Right now I'm going through the archives to see where  you have been 
in those years. I've come across an issue that had made me  reflect on my 
own experience.

I read with sympathy the responses of  some members of the movement who had 
just been laid off in 2007 by the ICA.  They felt there was an injustice. 
An action was taken that was not  corporately decided. They felt they were 
'riffed', just like they were  workers in some hierarchical corporation rather 
than in a community that  made decisions corporately.  

This made me remember how we who  were part of the Local Church Experiment 
felt when the movement took the  'turn to the world'. We were riffed. And we 
had had no say. It was just  reported back that the decision had been made, 
like it was coming down in a  hierarchical decision from Rome. But in this 
case, the Order had convinced  us all that decisions were to be made not 
only intentionally but  corporately. Those of us in the churches were left high 
and dry.

I  enjoyed the emails where Brother Van's song was reconstructed on the  
listserv. If the clergy and laity in the LCX could have added to Spirit  Songs 
it might have included: 
"It isn't so easy believing,  you'd leave after all we've been through. 
It's breaking my heart to remember the Dreams we depended upon. 
You're leaving a slow dying ember; I'll miss you my love when you've  gone."

Reading Slicker's memories of the beginning of the Order  reminded me of 
how central the renewal of the Church was in its reason for  being. So it was 
no little shift to desert the churches when you took the  'turn to the 
world'.

There had been no place to raise a couple  questions back then: How was 
this turn decided? Who decided it? Why were  those of us who had made the 
commitment to renew the church through the EI  methodology not included in the 
decision? 

In reading the prologue to  the LCX on the Golden Pathway DVD I'm struck 
that the Church is at least as  much in need for renewal as it was in the 
1970s. 

Grace and  Peace,

Bud  Tillinghast

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