[Oe List ...] Still here

Mon Oct 17 19:53:34 EDT 2011

Just realized I left out Ricky and Kevin Walters.
Jann

In a message dated 10/17/2011 4:34:48 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
LAURELCG at aol.com writes:

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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