[Dialogue] A Mini-Library for a 21st Century Spirit Movement

[Jack Gilles]

George,

Here it is.

Jack

A Mini-Library for a 21st Century Spirit Movement
This brief book list is constructed around the notion that the life, work, and legacy of Joseph W.
Mathews constitutes a revelatory event which has both an “Old Testament” set of writings that
illuminates it and a “New Testament” set of writings that also illuminates it. For my “before
Mathews” selections, I have chosen one easy to read book from each of the five theologians who most
influenced Mathews' life and contributions. And for my “After Mathews” selections, I am listing what I
believe have been the most significant books that have been written about Joe Mathews or written in
the wake of Joe Mathews by some of those who were “shaped” by him and who attempted to further
expand and update the opening in Spirit living that he initiated.
(Assembled by Gene Marshall and reviews written by Joyce Marshall, Gene Marshall, Alan Richard, Ken Fisher)
Selections of Classic 20th Century Theology
H. Richard Niebuhr -- Radical Monotheism and Western Culture
Paul Tillich -- The Shaking of the Foundations
Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- Life Together
Rudolf Bultmann -- Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting
Søren Kierkegaard -- The Sickness Unto Death
Each of these authors wrote many other books, and many other authors (secular and religious) shaped Mathews thinking
and life. But these selections provide a baseline grasp of where he was grounded in the Spirit upwellings of his century.
Spirit Movement Writings
Theology and Spirit
John Epps -- Bending History: Talks of Joseph Wesley Mathews
with: John Cock, George Holcombe, Betty Pesek, and George Walters
Richard Elliot -- Falling in Love with Mystery: We Don’t Have to Pretend Anymore
John Cock -- The Transparent Event: Post-Modern Christ Images
-- Our Universal Spirit Journey: Reflection and Verse for Creation’s Sake
Brian Stanfield -- The Courage to Lead: Transform Self, Transform Society
John Baggett -- Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus: His Revolutionary View of Reality &
His Transcendent Significance for Faith
Wesley Lachman -- The Shortest Way Home: A contemplative Path to God
Desmond Avery -- Beyond Power: Simone Weil and the Notion of Authority
Gene Marshall -- The Enigma of Consciousness: A Philosophy of Profound Humanness & Religion
-- Jacob’s Dream: A Christian Inquiry into Spirit Realization
-- The Call of the Awe: Rediscovering Christian Profundity in an Interreligious Era
-- Great Paragraphs of Protestant Theology
Biography and Autobiography
James K. Mathews -- Brother Joe: A 20th Century Apostle
John Cock -- Called to Be: A Spirit Odyssey
Jeanette Stanfield -- “Just Checkin’ on ya”: My journey of being a caregiver for a loved one
Social Vision and Life Methods
John Epps -- Bending History: Talks of Joseph W. Mathews, Vol. II, toward a New Social Vehicle
with: James Campbell, James Wiegel, Clarence Mann, Marilyn Crocker, and George Holcombe
Gene Marshall -- The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy
with: Ben Ball, Marsha Buck, Ken Kreutziger, and Alan Richard
Brian Stanfield -- The Art of Focused Conversation: 100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace
-- The Workshop Book: From Individual Creativity to Group Action
Priscilla Wilson -- The Facilitative Way: Leadership that Makes the Difference
with: Kathleen Harnish and Joel Wright
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Brief Reviews of
A Mini-Library for a 21st Century Spirit Movement
written and edited by Gene Marshall, Joyce Marshall, Alan Richard, and Ken Fisher
Selections of Classic 20th Century Theology
Radical Monotheism and Western Culture
H. Richard Niebuhr
Harper Torchbooks: 1943
This book defines the very word “theology” for the 20th Century Theological
Revolution in Christian thought. So defined, theology is not about believing in a
supreme being or power. The struggle is not between a theism that believes in such a
divine being and an atheism that does not. In the Niebuhr analysis everyone has faith
in something that serves as his or her God or gods and goddesses. Whatever gives
meaning to your life is properly called your worship. Niebuhr defines three types of
worship: (1) polytheism in which many meaning givers characterize your worship, (2)
henotheism in which your social group provides your overarching meaning and
loyalty, and (3) monotheism is which Reality as a Whole is your worship – in which
faith or trust is attached to the Void out of which all things come and to which all things
return. This Void is also the Every-thing in which all things cohere. Niebuhr then
shows how radical monotheism relates to Incarnation, Revelation, Religion, Politics, and
Science. If the shapers of a Next Christianity were to read only one book of 20th
Century theology, this is it.
The Shaking of the Foundations
Paul Tillich
Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1948
This collection of 22 sermons on Old and New Testament passages shows clearly how
the basic breakthrough in Christian understanding requires a shake up in our culture’s
familiar presuppositions, overall attitudes, and programs of action. In these talks Tillich
clarifies how a contemporary person of integrity can appropriate words and topics such
as: God, Time, Existence, Holy, Religion, Providence, Love, Truth, Spirit, Christ, Sin,
Grace, and more. These topics are not skimmed over but probed deeply. If these
sermons seem difficult it is not because they are hard to read, but because what is said
requires so much re-evaluation of life on the part the reader. We may need to read
other books by this author to meet Tillich, the philosopher, social critic, and systematic
theologian, but this book allows you to meet Tillich, the person – and perhaps your
own person as well.
Life Together
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Harper and Row: 1954
The communal nature of Christian practice was a core theme in Bonhoeffer’s life and
writings that characterized everything, beginning in his 20s with his fabulous doctoral
thesis and lasting to his death at the hands of the national Nazi “anti-community” that
he so thoroughly opposed. Life Together goes straight to the vulnerable heart of living
together within the Word of forgiveness that restores humans to their authenticity. He
makes it painfully clear that Christian community is not an ideal that progressive
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leaning leaders impose upon the reality of a group of people. And he also makes it
clear that the “real” community of Christian living is not about the idolization of the
ego strengths of an accomplished leader who binds others to his charisma. Though
some of Bonhoeffer’s orthodox language needs to be translated for our times, he may
be, among all the great 20th Century theologians, the most existentially personal. It is
essential to a viable spirit movement that we take this interpersonal wisdom into our
intimate circles of practice.
Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting
Rudolf Bultmann
Meridian Books: 1956
Bultmann’s emphasis was excellence in scientific New Testament scholarship and the
translation of the New Testament message from two-story metaphors into one-realm
down-to-Earth ways of talking about our fundamental existence. So penetrating was
his work, that theologians in this century tend to be divided into (1) those who think he
went too far and (2) those who think he did not go far enough. Primitive Christianity is a
helpful choice from among his many writings, for it explores in an existential manner
the historical context for the New Testament writings. With respect to our own lives,
we get an understandable summary of the Old Testament Heritage, first Century
Judaism, the Greek Heritage, Stoicism, Gnosticism, and more. Then we get an
exploration of how the original Christian community used and opposed all these
influences. At some point in our Christian education, we all need this grasp of our
origins as a community of faith, and we need to learn Bultmann’s method of seeking
the existential truth that breaks open for our era these Spirit expressions from an
ancient time.
The Sickness Unto Death
Søren Kierkegaard
first published in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus.
Princeton University Press: 1941
published with Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard considered Sickness “his most perfect book.” In it he defines sin, not as the
opposite of virtue, but as the opposite of faith (by which he meant trust in the given
Mysterious Eternality with which we are inescapably related). Because we are
inescapably a Mystery-related mystery ourselves, our unwillingness to be so related is
a condition that can be described as despair. Sin is despair. We can be in an
unconscious form of despair in which the despairer hides this unacknowledged
sickness. Or our despair can become painfully conscious, but still hidden away behind a
reserved, accommodating exterior. Or despair can break to the outside into a desperate
plunge into noble work or sensual debauchery. And despair can become a defiant
project of self-created selfhood that can be resolved in the twinkling of the eye into the
nothingness that it is. Finally, despair can become a defiant project of dismal living that
“proves” to the despairer and to the world that the whole of Reality is “no damned
good.” Kierkegaard satirical description of these states of despair needs to have its
place as a vivid picture in the memory of every leader of Spirit transformation and
nurture.
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Spirit Movement Writings
Theology and Spirit
Bending History
Talks of Joseph Wesley Mathews
John Epps with: John Cock, George Holcombe, Betty Pesek, and George Walters
Resurgence Publishing: 2005
This first of two volumes of Mathews’ talks focuses upon the religious and Christian
aspects of Joe’s ministry. These well-selected sets of talks reveal the “soul” of this
amazingly intuitive and creative critic and formulator of religious understanding.
Without ever ceasing to be a Christian and a church renewal advocate, Mathews looked
into the profound humanness that all religions access in their various ways. He spoke
of the revelation of a New Religious Mode that any religious renewal movement can
ignore only at the peril of losing all relevance for our times. His talks are spellbinding
in their colorfulness and aggressive combativeness with illusion. The editors of this
book have done an excellent job of choosing, arranging, and contexting these wild and
widely scattered contributions that Joe Mathews put forth. Take your time in reading
this book, and promise yourself to read it over again, for it is deep enough to continue
addressing us decade after decade into the future.
Falling in Love with Mystery
We Don’t Have to Pretend Anymore
Richard Elliott
Dorrance Publishing: 1998
This book is an exception to the rule that theological writers are confused in their use of
the word, “God.” With simple, readable, and colorful life stories, Elliott tells us what it
means to confront the actual Mystery that will not go away and call that Mystery
“God.” He also explores the various tragedies which characterize most Christian
religion. He makes clear again and again how our religion is alienated from the actual
living of our lives. And he shares his breakthroughs on how we can proceed in
constructing a meaningful and relevant contemporary Christian spirituality. This book
makes a good study resource for small groups, and it can be read in small portions for a
daily solitary reflection.
The Transparent Event
Post-Modern Christ Images
John Cock
tranScribe books: 2001 Second Edition
The core of this book makes it plain to us that everyone has some image of Jesus, of
what he means to us, and of what it means, or does not mean, to call him “the Christ.”
In this sense Christology is a pattern of thought for every human being. Cock
constructs exercises that enable the reader to discover what his or her current
“Christology” might actually be. In Section Two, Cock summarizes how a list of
renowned theologians think about this topic. Then in Section Three: “The Dynamics of
the Christ Event,” he republishes the amazing essay by Joe Mathews, “The Christ of
History,” and spends the next chapter discussing it. He then writes a chapter on “The
Christ Event in Life and Art” in which he shows how the dynamics of the transforming
Christ event appear in ordinary secular art and thus in our everyday lives. In one
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illustration in this chapter, he walks us through the Christ event in the life of Mountain
Rivera in the movie, Requiem for a Heavyweight. Moving from the turning point
contained in this gem, Cock goes on to explore further his own Christology and share
other gems that might be helpful to the reader. In the end Cock returns the reader to
the challenge to work through his or her very own Christology.
Our Universal Spirit Journey
Reflection and Verse for Creation’s Sake
John Cock
transScribe books: 2002
This book, completed under the emotional shadow of the September 2001 attack on the
World Trade Center, attempts to develop an inter-religious language for the central
experiences of profound humanness expressed in the key symbols of the Christian
tradition. Cock takes up the challenge of the “secular religious” – the search for a
language of awe that we can share in common among historic religious traditions and
outside those traditions. In order to meet this challenge, he focuses on the word
“Spirit” which has been as troublesome for most of us as the word “God.” In order to
invite secular people into the conversation about the meaning of “Spirit,” Cock uses a
mixture of poetry, aphorism, and essay to show how Spirit is revealed in the ordinary
experiences of everyday life. This book can be useful for anyone interested in interreligious
dialogue and in the renewal of traditional theological language.
The Courage to Lead
Transform Self, Transform Society
by Brian Stanfield
New Society Publishers: 2000
Second Edition, iUniverse: 2012
Also Available from: ica-usa.org or ica-associates.ca
The premise of this book is that to transform society, we first need to transform
ourselves. The book includes a history of the Christian Faith and Life Community, the
Ecumenical Institute, the Order:Ecumenical, and the Institute of Cultural Affairs – as
well as a summary of these sixty-years of amazing in-depth research and practical
experience by this network of people. The book is presently a bestseller on the
iUniverse bookstore site, having sold 9500 hard copies. And at least 1500 persons have
been in Courage to Lead study groups. The recent editing of this latest edition has made
the book even more accessible. Under the four headings of Relation to Life, Self,
World, and Society, 12 stances of an effective leader are laid out: everyday care,
disciplined lucidity, continual affirmation, secular depth, self-reflectiveness, radical
vocatedness, historical involvement, comprehensive perspective, inclusive
responsibility, social pioneer, transestablishment style, and signal presence. While often
autobiographical, the lives being shared illuminate all our lives. This book is for the
thousands of us who have participated in this 60-year journey, and it is also for all
“Those Who Care” who have found themselves called to lead.
Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus
His Revolutionary View of Reality & His Transcendent Significance for Faith
John Baggett
William B. Eerdmans: 2008
A whole new library of scholarly work on the historical Jesus has been produced over
the last three decades, much of it historically and exegetically rich but almost all of it
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theologically thin. In Seeing Through the Eyes of Jesus, John Baggett addresses this
problem, showing how the painstaking historical and archaeological work these
scholars have performed can help us clear from our minds our obsolete images of
Jesus. Baggett devotes the first part of the book to a highly readable and insightful
“biography” of Jesus informed by this scholarship. In the second part of the book, he
argues in detail that we must also clear away obsolete images of God and world as well
in order to hear the full impact of the address of Jesus' life to our own. In both parts
Baggett uses the device of seeing through the eyes of Jesus, which means placing our
own lives within his life and thus rendering all these topics fully existential in their
meanings for the reader.
The Shortest Way Home
A contemplative Path to God
Wesley Lachman
O Street Publishing: 2008
Lachman, like many of us in recent decades, has been gripped by the power of
meditation/contemplation as a method of accelerating our Spirit journey into the
depths of our being. In the first eight chapters he shows us how contemplative work is
a valid quest for truth and how the contemplative heritage of Christianity is a strong
heritage along with the teachings from Hinduism and Buddhism that are making such
inroads in the awareness of so many of us. In chapter nine Lachman shows us how
contemplative wisdom illuminates the meaning of key Christian terms like “God,”
“Christ,” and “Holy Spirit.” The way he contrasts Holy Spirit with the ego’s humanly
created “story of I” is most illuminating. Here is a line that might stand as a summary of
the book: “Freed from the myopia caused by living within our own story of I, we begin
to appreciate the strange, wondrous people and things around us, as if for the first
time.” Lachmann illustrates how true compassion or Spirit love is a given part of our
being that bubbles to the surface of our living when the old stories of I are put in their
place. Freedom, too, is what we have left when stories of I no longer dominate. This
short book can be read again and again and still be a challenge.
Beyond Power
Simone Weil and the Notion of Authority
Desmond Avery
Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield: 2008
This is an immaculately scholarly and profoundly existential book. In terms of those
two criteria, its equal cannot be found among all the other great books produced by
descendants of the Joe Mathews breakthrough. Beyond Power is an illuminating
combination of Avery’s mastery of the Joe Mathews’ heritage and his thorough
dialogue with a truly great philosophical and religious writer. In philosophical and
sociological depth, Simone Weil is the equal of more well known figures like Simone de
Beauvoir and Susan K. Langer. T. S. Eliot and Albert Camus acknowledged her as one
of the great writers of their century. Avery reveals her value for Christian renewal, has
mastered her story and writings, and has made her available to us in an accessible style.
A Jew by birth, Weil forged for herself a radical Christian practice in the Roman
Catholic style. Her decision not to be baptized had to do with her realization of the
contradiction between an honest mystical faith and the misuses of Christian institutional
power. This book is not an easy read, but not because of a cryptic style on the part of
Avery or Weil. It is challenging because of the profound nature of the insights being
shared. She has raised issues that are still living-edge topics. We can profit from
reading this book, every page of it.
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The Enigma of Consciousness
A Philosophy of Profound Humanness & Religion
Gene Marshall
To be available in paperback in late 2012 or 2013
An advanced draft of this book can be downloaded now from:
http://www.RealisticLiving.org/PDF/Enigma/
In Part One of this book, a philosophy of truth is laid out in an accessible manner,
honoring the scientific approach to truth, but making clear that the contemplative
approach to truth is also crucial and absolutely essential for an exploration of profound
humanness and religion. Part Two uses the contemplative approach to truth to
examine and theorize about the basic enigma of consciousness as it appears in the
human species. In Part Three, profound humanness or Spirit is explored, described, and
shown to be a given within human existence. In Part Four, “religion” is redefined for
our time (a New Religious Mode) and various practices that characterize the meaning of
“religion” are described. Using the category of “Primal Metaphors” rather than Joe
Mathews’ “Ur-Images,” Part Five explores the vast diversity of religious expression on
this planet. Part Six deals with “doing,” “historical engagement,” or “responsible
action” that derives from the states of Being outlined in Part Three. This is an ambitious
thought project, bringing to further clarity breakthroughs that Joe Mathews intuited
but did not live to finish fleshing out.
Jacob’s Dream
A Christian Inquiry into Spirit Realization
Gene Marshall
iUniverse: 2008
Part One of this book is about the discovery of soul or the essence of being human.
Part Two describes the states of profound humanness pulled through the basic
Christian categories of Trust, Love, and Freedom. Using the enneagram typology of
human personalities, Part Three describes the Fall from Spirit authenticity into
personality identifications. Part Four describes the stages of the journey home to our
Spirit authenticity. Part Five explores the solitary, but also profoundly communal,
nature of the Christian life. This book focuses on the fulness of Spirit realization. To
put this in Christian language, it focuses on sanctification rather than justification. With
help from the enneagram heritage as well as from the current planet-wide flourishing
of Eastern religions, this book adds clarity on the fall from our posited authenticity to
our self-created and thereby illusory selfhoods. The capacity of the human species to
create symbols for and models of our reality turns out to be both our glory and power
but also our ability to lose ourselves in illusory facsimiles of the truth about ourselves
and our world. Our journey home to our reality entails becoming disentangled from
this illusion-making creativity and allowing our posited being to flower. Our own
journey and our witness to others requires this kind of clarity.
The Call of the Awe
Rediscovering Christian Profundity in an Interreligious Era
Gene Marshall
iUniverse: 2003
This book was the last of many attempts by the author to pull together the theological
revolution that rankled the Christian churches of the mid 20th Century and inspired so
many of us to teach courses in basic theology to tens of thousands of clergy and laity in
the decades of the nineteen sixties and seventies. Part One of this book moves through
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the basic themes of Christian Heritage: Awe, Spirit, God, History, Jesus, Christ,
Personality, Religion, and the Authority of Authenticity. Part Two is about the
enrichment of interreligious dialogue: (1) The Children of Abraham, Yahweh and Allah,
(2) The Asian Enrichment (especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism), and (3) The
Return to antiquity (the Great Goddess recovery and the manyness of the Divine in
ancient tribal life). All these topics have needed and still need freshening up for the 21st
Century. This book provides some basic summaries and ways to keep moving on these
topics.
Great Paragraphs of Protestant Theology
Gene Marshall
Realistic Living Press: 2005
This spiral-bound booklet focuses on key paragraphs from the writings of Rudolf
Bultmann, H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Each of the nine
chapters of Part Two provides a commentary on paragraphs taken from an essay or
chapter by one of these four authors. The aim is to break open the sometimes cryptic
language used by these authors in order to allow a more thorough grounding in our
lives of these groundbreaking insights. Part One introduces this process of discovery
by exploring three approaches to truth and the relation of these approaches to the three
aspects of the triune experience of God that has characterized Christian heritage. Part
Three explores three types of Unitarianism that have fragmented the triune experience.
Part Three also demonstrates the openendedness of good Trinitarian theology rather
than the sort of dogmatic cocoon or box that orthodox Trinitarian theology has often
constructed.
Biography and Autobiography
Brother Joe: A 20th Century Apostle
James K. Mathews
Resurgence Publishing: 2006
Joe Mathews’ younger brother James became a progressive Bishop in the Methodist
Church, serving first in India and then in Boston. The two brothers were quite close,
assisting one another in important ways. Though less flamboyant than Joe, James was
a solid theologian and a forceful and beloved leader. Perhaps no one was more
qualified to write an intimate and yet objective story of Joe’s life than Jim. Those who
worked with Joe day-to-day in the Order:Ecumenical may have a more detailed view of
some aspects of Joe's creativity, but Jim’s story is a fair one and his skills as a writer
have served us well in giving us a picture of Joe’s complex story in easily
understandable chapters. This book definitely belongs in our mini-library of Spirit
movement books.
Called to Be
A Spirit Odyssey
John Cock
transScribe books: 2000
This spiritual memoir contains the author's careful and passionate reflection on crucial
events and images recalled from his lifetime of inquiry into what it means to be a
human being standing before vast and impenetrable mystery. The Order: Ecumenical
is at the core of the book, both in terms of the amount of pages devoted to it and the
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central role it plays in the author's self-understanding. The pages devoted to explaining
why the author ultimately left a body that had given him a sense of Spirit vocation he
could not find in the congregational church or secular society are worth the price alone.
Spirit colleagues who were in the Order or connected with it will find much to delight in
and much to ponder. And those who were never directly involved in the Order but
who see in it clues to a potential Christian renewal in the third millennium will want to
put this book on their shelf alongside Bishop James K. Mathews' Brother Joe.
“Just Checkin’ on Ya”
My Journey of Being a Caregiver for a Loved One
by Jeanette Stanfield, 2009
Available from ica-usa.org or ica-associates.ca
Many of us may face going through the death process with a loved one. Jeanette
Stanfield describes her own walk on that path with unflinching honesty. Her writing is
matter-of-fact, straightforward, and thereby deeply moving. Brian Stanfield was a fivefoot
giant of a man. Jeanette decided soon after she met him that she did not want to
miss sharing her life with this man. The main gift of this book is the attitude with which
Brian and Jeanette face death. Recognizing death as a natural and good part of life, they
handle whatever sorrows and inconveniences it brings with wholehearted creativity,
not blaming or complaining, simply living it to the full.
Social Vision and Life Methods
Bending History: Talks of Joseph W. Mathews,
Vol. II, toward a New Social Vehicle
John Epps
with: James Campbell, James Wiegel, Clarence Mann, Marilyn Crocker, and George Holcombe
Resurgence Publishing: 2011
This book contains some of Joe Mathews best talks, certainly his best talks on the spirit
dimension of envisioning and building a New Social Vehicle. Joe’s interest in social
engagement is part of his religious vision, his insight that the discovery of profound
humanness is also a discovery of the journey of “return” to the real world as a servant,
a servant who understands that in this day and age “all the Earth belongs to all the
people.” This includes all the economic resources, all the political decisions, all the
cultural gifts. For the individual person of any race or sex living in any place on the
planet, the whole story of life on this planet is her or his story and each person is to be
given the opportunity to participate in helping to create that story. This perspective is
an anathema toward an upper class who owns almost half of the economic resources,
makes all the big decisions, and hoards the best information, education, and cultural
wisdom. Structures need to be built that change that topdown pattern, that make
economic, political, and cultural democracy real in a very practical way. Joe was
passionate about steps that could be taken by “Those who Care” way ahead of the
political establishment, way sooner than anything we could vote for. So this book
includes talks on methods of action as well as challenges to Spirit depth and a prophetic
vision of the future. It may be surprising to some readers to see so much
thoughtfulness in the awareness of a mid-20th-Century person that still applies today.
Also the contexts and explanations applied to the various sections of this book by the
editors are excellent.
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The Road from Empire to Eco-Democracy
Gene Marshall
with: Ben Ball, Marsha Buck, Ken Kreutziger, and Alan Richard
iUniverse and Berrett-Koehler: 2011
This book is also about the master picture of a New Social Vehicle, herein called Eco-
Democracy. By “empire” is meant a quality built into the mode of social organization
we have called “civilization.” A core vision of this book is seeing how we are in the
midst of a massive turning in human history that is at least as radical as the turning
from tribal societies to the pattern of civilization. Civilization is ending. Humanity does
not have to end with the end of civilization, but an alternative to civilization has to be
built with considerable haste. The ecological crisis was not as visible to Joe Mathews as
it is to the prophetic voices of the 21st Century. We can now see that our very first
priority is to reconstruct the economic, political, and cultural structures of human life
into compatibility with the real limits and possibilities of planet Earth. Part One of the
book is about ten basic ways that civilized people are waking up to the extent of our
crisis. Part Two and Three are about comprehensively envisioning an alternative
future. Part Four is about the “road” or “way” from our tragic “here” to a viable and
flourishing “there.” Part Four examines the plausibility of finding whistle points and
avalanches of change that can slide toward the unprecedented future we need to have.
It is also about the forces that can envision, occasion, and guide that massive change. It
is about the strategies that can be employed and the roles each of us might take in
lifting our tiny corner of this massive weight. The insights of this committee-written
book have been fought over for four years, and the product has turned out better than
any of the coauthors imagined when they started. We need this book.
The Art of Focused Conversation
100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace
Brian Stanfield
New Society Publishers, 2000
Brian Stanfield and his colleagues pulled together scores of uses of the art form
conversation method pioneered by Joseph W. Mathews. This book focuses on its use in
the workplace, but it is adaptable to any group. If you are interested in community or
involved in any groups, no process is more valuable than this conversation. This book
tells the history of the creation of this method following Mathews' experience as a
chaplain in World War II, explains its purpose and its parts, tells how to lead such a
conversation, and offers 100 sample conversations for specific situations. The purpose
of such a conversation is to allow a group of people to process their experience (to
experience their experience, so to speak) by asking a series of questions in four different
levels: the objective, the reflective, the interpretive, and the decisional. This
conversation gives form to a natural process which (1) grounds us first in the reality of
life, (2) acknowledges the reality of our feelings, (3) looks at meaning based on the first
two steps, not on some abstract idea, and (4) moves us into the future from the wisdom
just discovered. This is a book of practical inspiration.
The Workshop Book
From Individual Creativity to Group Action
Brian Stanfield
New Society Publishers: 2002
This wonderfully practical book is a manual not only on the workshop method but on
consensus process and its facilitation, which essentially is how to enable full
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participation and make meetings fun and meaningful. It is amazing how many
miserable meetings take place without anyone knowing that they could be different if
some basic skills were learned and used. Stanfield tells the history of the consensus
workshop method and its development and its use by the Institute of Cultural Affairs
since the 1960s. He lays out and explains the workshop steps of contexting the group,
brainstorming the ideas, clustering the ideas, naming the clusters, and resolving to
implement the results with a chapter on each of these five steps. He explains the role
and necessary skills of the facilitator, noting that when facilitators are best, people
barely notice them, thinking they did the work themselves. Included in the
responsibility of the facilitator is attention to space, time, mood, and the group itself.
Stanfield discusses each of these as well as potentially difficult situations, most of which
are dealt with by appropriate contexting and methods that focus and enable full
participation.
The Facilitative Way
Leadership that Makes the Difference
Priscilla Wilson
with: Kathleen Harnish and Joel Wright
TeamTech Press: 2003
Since the sixties, probably half a million workshops have taken place world wide, based
on the methods created by The Institute of Cultural Affairs. The Facilitative Way is a
highly motivating and comprehensive rendering of that intellectual capital. As our
times require corporations, government agencies and non-profits to evolve responses
to global transformation, this book provides practical and inspiring approaches to
engage organizational creativity and resolve. Commencing with “Leading is a
Decision, not a Job Description,” there are seven successive, well-illustrated vistas: Make
a Difference, Mobilize Energy, Orchestrate Interactions, Generate Reflection, Ignite
Action, Capture Learning, and What it Takes. Revisiting activities such as setting a
context, cultivating a compelling story, and others flow together to illuminate the
timely role of the facilitative leader.
Concluding Comments
Every specific movement of Spirit rediscovery or of social change has its Old and New
Testament. The writings of H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Rudolf Bultmann, and Søren Kierkegaard are clearly Old Testament to the movement
that Joe Mathews initiated. Other writers and their books may also qualify. Rudolf
Otto’s The Idea of the Holy probably qualifies. Susan K. Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key
and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions may also fill an essential niche.
Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East and Nikos Kazantzakis’ Saviors of God were
determinative literature for Joe and many others. And we cannot omit the works of
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, especially The Brothers Karamazov. Also, Picasso, especially his
“Guernica” painting, has Old Testament standing for this movement. And this list is far
from complete.
The “New Testament” writings for this movement are also larger in number than those
selected above. The talks of Joe Mathews are certainly core, and we believe the
writings listed and reviewed above can each be experienced as important clarifications
in the wake of this pivotal person. These diverse writings, though they may be
somewhat inconsistent with one another, nevertheless each give guidance to whatever
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movement of humanity continues to revere the inspiration that dawned in Joe
Mathews. It does not matter that those of us who knew Joe best also knew his
limitations and failings. The important fact is that this limited person was willing to be
selected by Reality to be an initiator of a vast bending of history. Actually, his life was
only a potential for a vast bending of history. The baton has been passed to those of us
who have taken it or will take it. The “Augustine” who will synthesize our offerings for
the centuries to come may not yet have been born. And he or she may not be born
unless some of us run our laps of this race with sufficient effectiveness. Bending history
is an ongoing bending that in the end requires millions of benders. We have made a
beginning. Still to be realized is that fully effective coming together of a well-ordered
network that calls forth the millions of benders needed to realize the potential we have
glimpsed.
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On Aug 9, 2012, at 2:32 PM, Gwensinger wrote:

> Would it be possible to send this attachment in a different format?
> Thanks-
> Ann

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