[Oe List ...] JWM Quote

Tue Oct 18 23:45:50 EDT 2011

Thank you, George. When something 35 years old speaks as wonderfully as  
this speaks to me today, I have to say the speaker was speaking to  history.

Regards,
Jann McGuire

"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_ (mailto: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_ (http://www.resurgencepublishing.com/) 

Professional  Profile: _http://www.linkedin.com/in/mgwalters_ 
(http://www.linkedin.com/in/mgwalters) 

From: _oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net_ (mailto: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_ (mailto: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_ (mailto:rcwmbw at yahoo.com) >
To: Order  Ecumenical Community <_oe at wedgeblade.net_ 
(mailto: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_ (mailto:KarenBueno at aol.com) " 
<_KarenBueno at aol.com_ (mailto:KarenBueno at aol.com) >
To: _oe at wedgeblade.net_ (mailto: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 hi
story 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_ (mailto: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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