[Oe List ...] Still here

Tue Oct 18 19:00:54 EDT 2011

Well that was after, and before, he said 10,000 times that we were a
movement. 

Joe never really spoke for history in my view. He always spoke to address
something that was going on in the people to whom he was speaking. 

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of George Holcombe
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 6:45 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Still here

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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