[Oe List ...] JWM quote
Jean Watts
jean.watts at comcast.net
Tue Oct 18 18:53:33 EDT 2011
thanks George. Great JWM quote.
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Subject: OE Digest, Vol 90, Issue 29
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> 1. Re: Still here (George Holcombe)
>
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:44:43 -0500
> From: George Holcombe <geowanda at earthlink.net>
> To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>
> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Still here
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>
> I ran across this quote in one of JWM's speeches in the upcoming Bending
> History 2. Kinda interesting to the string.
>
> "I am clearer than ever that we are not and will not be a movement. A
> movement may come but it won't be our movement. I see ourselves as a
> happening. I see ourselves as having the potential of being an explosion
> that could bring forth in our day a new form of profound awareness,
> effective engagement and an absolute plethora of humanness. If we become
> such an explosion, let us remember no person or group of people have ever
> done anything but failed. It is Being itself that succeeds in us and
> allows us to participate in the success of Being."
>
> GLOBAL COMMUNITY FORUM & GLOBAL SOCIAL DEMONSTRATION
>
> Joseph W. Mathews
> 1976
>
>
> George Holcombe
> 14900 Yellowleaf Tr.
> Austin, TX 78728
> Mobile 512/252-2756
> geowanda at earthlink.net
>
> "Stay hungry, stay foolish" Whole Earth Catalog via Steve Jobs
>
> On Oct 18, 2011, at 9:20 AM, M. George Walters wrote:
>
>> While in India we taught the International RS-I (1969-1971) before Carol
>> and I went to SFO where we worked with the LCX Galaxies. In the
>> curriculum in the states these were split into two different courses.
>> I-RS-I had a heavy focus on the parish mission and I loved it. If we were
>> to develop anything new that started with theological grounding, it might
>> be like putting a frontend on ToP that focused on the understanding Randy
>> is talking about and the Sense of secularity that is needed to transcend
>> doctrinalism, institutionalism etc.
>>
>> On the issue of compartmentalization I am always amazed at the smoking
>> break section adjacent to the cancer wards in hospitals where the nurses
>> and doctors go immediately after surgery.
>>
>> With kindest regards.
>>
>> M. George Walters
>>
>> Resurgence Publishing Corporation
>> 4240 Sandy Shores Dr
>> Lutz, FL 33558
>> USA
>> Tel: +1 (813) 948-7267
>> Fax: +1 (813) 333-1787
>> Mob: +1 (813) 505-9041
>>
>> URL: www.ResurgencePublishing.com
>> Professional Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mgwalters
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On
>> Behalf Of Jaime R Vergara
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 09:28
>> To: oe at wedgeblade.net
>> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Still here
>>
>> Randy's question is well phrased.
>>
>> Visited the westside on February '66 (from Asbury Seminary in Wilmore KY)
>> but did not really hear the "no-messiah messiah" until the '68
>> assassination of MLK while at SMU Perkins in Dallas, and later in the
>> year, resolved to be a 'global citizen' with the 'earthrise' of Apollo 8
>> among residents of the Faith and Life Community House in Greensboro,
>> N.C.. Finally joined EI Manila in '72 to live out the Neibuhr church
>> dynamic in and outside (mostly) the institutional form (serendipitously
>> on the same day that Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines).
>> The turn to the world saved my anarchic iconoclosm but I was under no
>> illusion about 'bending history'; a two-month stint in Maharastra made it
>> clear that whatever I did was not going to amount into anything piddly
>> (regardless of glowing Prior reports) but that my 'sanctification' was
>> simply the absolute freedom to decide to "just do it."
>>
>> Doing it, or being the church, is both a personal resolve and a social
>> reformulation, or as Brian Stanfield noted in his Courage to Lead,
>> transform self, transform society.
>>
>> The question then requires both a testimonial and methods-manual
>> response.
>>
>> The power of the Marshalls and the Realistic Living folks is the lucidity
>> that one walks one talks, otherwise, it is only a head-trip. We differ
>> in practice only at the level of metaphors: RL and the Marshalls still
>> adhere to the images of the Christian witness, albeit, metaphorically
>> translated. I've ordered Chinese!
>>
>> Clarity about the 'church dynamic,' however, is in our bones. (Returned
>> my Methodist ordination to CalPAC in 2002.)Am living out the dynamic with
>> third World foreign students (mostly Moslem and Christian adherents,
>> along with secular socialist) and Chinese students whose only sole
>> purpose in life is "to make much money so I can take care of my folks and
>> travel with my spouse around the world."
>>
>> How am I being the church? Ask me again in a year! Might have a manual
>> then.
>>
>> Meanwhile, I seem to recall giving up Occupying Main St. Methodist Church
>> long time ago. But no mistake about it: I am being the church!
>>
>> Turning back to Randy, Bud, Karen and the rest of the listserv - might
>> not a fruitful conversation be on what we have or are doing (knowing,
>> too) in being the church? As to the reason how "turn to the world"
>> happened in the EI family - don't know and don't really care, because I
>> did, and I am grateful.
>>
>> j'aime la vie
>> China
>> From: R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com>
>> To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 8:29 pm
>> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Still here
>>
>> Please allow me to raise an honest question in the midst of this
>> conversation. I'm not trying to ring anyone's bell. There are two
>> things that come to my mind out of the church section of RS-1. One is
>> that one of the perversions of the institutional church was/is that it
>> had abdicated its mission to serve the world in favor of building itself
>> as an institution--"institutionalism" I think we called it. Second, in
>> studying HRN's paper, The Church as Social Pioneer," we concluded that
>> when Niebuhr used the word "church" he was pointing, not to an
>> institutional form, but to a social dynamic. So wherever you saw a group
>> which "in its own thinking, organization and action...functions as a
>> world society, undivided by race, class and national interests," (one of
>> HRN's descriptive phrases) that was the "church" (little "c"), whether or
>> not it had a steeple with a cross.
>>
>> No doubt the institutional church is indeed still greatly in need of
>> renewal, by some estimates, with local exceptions, maybe even "beyond"
>> renewal. So here's my question. Instead of trying to renew an
>> institution, that is clearly more burdened with dogma, ideology,
>> hierarchy, gender-ism, etc. than most, just for the sake of the
>> institution, why not relate to and serve those groups and communities
>> that are already awake, engaged, creating positive change, and doing, in
>> today's terms, what Niebuhr described then as the "church" dynamic? (I
>> believe there are many such communities but we have to search them out.)
>> My assessment of the crisis created by the "turn to the world" is, we
>> never got beyond the abstraction of "world" in order to decide in any
>> practical sense what or who we were in fact turning to. I sense that the
>> national ICAs and ICAI are struggling with that issue today.
>>
>> Again, I'm not grinding an axe here. This is an honest question posed
>> for the sake of soliciting new insights in the midst of this dialogue
>> about a very important issue.
>>
>> Randy Williams
>>
>>
>>
>> From: "KarenBueno at aol.com" <KarenBueno at aol.com>
>> To: oe at wedgeblade.net
>> Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 5:10 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Still here
>>
>>
>> "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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