[Oe List ...] Still here
Isobel and Jim Bishop
isobeljimbish at optusnet.com.au
Tue Oct 18 21:52:05 EDT 2011
Hello George and all the dear colleagues around the world,
Thanks for all the notes you are sending around- in response to Bud
and his quests.
I am re- living some momentous occasions in my life, so many thanks
to Bud and each of you.!
Today I say Salaam, on behalf of the Christians and Muslims in Egypt,
some of whom wish to live peacefully with each other.
Isobel Bishop.
On 19/10/2011, at 9:44 AM, George Holcombe wrote:
> 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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