[Oe List ...] Gene Marshal celebrates his 80th Birthday

[Ken Fisher]

Gene Marshall <jgmarshall at cableone.net>



Friends and Colleagues,

For the past quarter century (or more) I have drawn spiritual sustenance from many sources - but for me, none more thought through, or grounded than the expressions written by Gene.  I am deeply indebted to his life and creativity, his writings on spirit, ethics and community.

Yesterday, he turned 80.  His email address is at the top.

In gratitude and admiration,

Ken





Dear Friends and Family,

I am sending these reflections to you to assist me in celebrating my 80th Birthday  (Jan 3, 1932).

I have for some time viewed human life as a journey through four stages of 20 years each.  According to that model, I have now gone off the map.  Is this stage of life an extension of stage four, or something rather different?  I am leaning toward the something rather different.

I have just finished a year in which I and my coauthors have completed and published a NEXT Social Vehicle book. This has been a consuming task. The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy has been a top-of-the-list project for the last four years. The relief I feel after making the last cover correction on this project is quite deep.  I smile deeply at the thought of having actual books in my hands in mid-January.  My focus has already shifted from production to promotion, whatever that entails.

Deeper still I sense time opening up for completing another long-term project -- the pulling together of a philosophy of religion that carefully defines truth, Reality, consciousness, and redefines religion in the context of a NEXT religious mode in which all religions will have to be recast in order to be relevant within that NEXT social vehicle necessary for human surviving and thriving.

This shift is consistent with my becoming more of a hermit in the inwardly focused sense during the months and years ahead.  Profound humanness and the practices of a religion that can access that profoundness is opening up as my core focus for the year and years ahead.

This includes a fresh seriousness about organizing that long-talked-about Christian Resurgence Network and explaining to more people how we can no longer speak of being Christians, but only of practicing a NEXT Christian religion in order to access being a profound human being. And this practice is quite arbitrary, as arbitrary as living on the West Coast or East Coast or somewhere in the middle. One might instead practice a NEXT Buddhism or a NEXT Judaism or whatever, or some combination of practices.  Indeed, I have already been stealing religious practices from a wide field and attempting to integrate them into a practice I call “Christian” only because it illuminates the best elements of that heritage, including a dedication to perpetual revolution in religions forms and practices, and to an inclusive context that includes boundless exploration of inner authenticity and strength, as well as the outward formation of that authenticity in NEXT religious forms and NEXT social vehicle solutions.

I  realize that much of this may sound cryptic; I want to say all this better, and live it better, and communicate it better.  But I  actually believe that the future I am envisioning has to do with being warmer and more intimate and more capable of hope and joy in the midst of these very challenging times.  Imagining such a future stage of life is actually very personal even if it sounds weird.

Anyhow, this is a fragment of what comes to my mind around my 80th birthday celebration. Thank you for joining me.  May you and I live another decade (some of you much longer) to see what can become of these vital callings.

For a viable and flourishing humanity on planet Earth,

Gene








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