[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?
Bill Parker
bparker175 at cox.net
Sat Jul 7 21:03:21 PDT 2012
Before we get too deep in our entanglements with global disaster and what God is and is not going to do about it, it might be helpful to put some concretion to the dilemna.
We need 19 million barrels of oil every morning at 6:00 just to maintain what 300 million people need to live through that day and then we need another 19 million barrels by 6 am the next morning and on and on it goes until it climbs to 20 million. That is just the USA. The whole world has to have 83 million barrels every morning at 6 am.
Take a look around you. Everything you see in your office, bedroom, kitchen, transportation, your entire house is petroleum based or dependent upon some portion of those barrels. Hospitals, schools, all technology equipments, communications, food supply...I could go on, but these things are not going to change significantly, they can't change. Sure, they can be reduced some, maybe eventually a lot, but there will not be a significant change.
Why? Because we have not finished the structural revolution. The climate situation is a product of the breakdown of the social reality we live in. The economic, political, and cultural realities are unsustainable and long before the climate change destroys the earth's population, the economic, political, and cultural dimensions (those parts we can do something about) will destroy it first. We may think big oil keeps anyone from addressing the climate situation, but we are the ones fueling big oil. We may think Walmart killed small towns but small towns abandoned local shops and spent their money in Walmart.
My point is that the world needs a body of people who 1) embraces the possibility of radical change; 2) unites the forces of transformation; 3) works toward local empowerment; 4) prepares the emerging generation of leaders; 5) reveals the deepest aspects of being human within faith traditions, religious or not; 7) focuses on critical points of non-cooperation and non-violent opposition; 8) utilizes a process of constant strategy development, or we might say "evergreening development".
This body of people would have many faces, you know, like the Seven Faces of Dr. Lao. Many faces, one people. This is another way of saying that what needs to be done, needs to be done, regardless of whether humankind will survive or not. On a personal level, isn't it a little like saying I am going to die no matter what I do so it doesn't matter what I do. I believe that given a healthy social process, we could dramatically change course and stop adding to the disaster and simultaneously develop effective adaptation efforts to reduce the impact of what we cannot stop.
So, who are these people going to be? Who is going to make up the human community that is networked to get this done? It may need to have many faces in each of the processes. Like a local face, a University face, an inter-faith face, a leadership face, a church face, and economic alternative face, a public education face, a public health face, or a human reformation face, and finally, a climate response face! I think of Gilles' work a couple of years ago on the guild, but focused, radicalized, strategic, firm in commitment for a viable human future!
Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: George Holcombe
To: Colleague Dialogue
Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2012 6:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?
Sometimes being realistic is more than skeptical. Jim's mention of climate change for me certainly is a game changer regarding the right question. Climate scientist are not that rosy about the future, and with the greatest polluters ignoring the data it does not hold much promise. Jean Watts' husband, Bob, could probably give us more data here. The increase in heat, shifting seasons, intensity of storms, rising seas and all the things our media does not cover, e.g. South Sea Islanders seeking to migrate to New Zealand and Australia because they are losing ground month by month, even here in our garden we have insects that were confined to the South of us now showing up. The intensity of Monsoon seasons which is destroying top soil among other things, that our colleague, Rupert Barnes, used to trace around the world in the 80's and 90's, the expanding population and the shortage of water, the list goes on and on. I understand that Climatologists are concerned about the CO2 in sea waters, where it is and what it's doing, and rising acidity.
I remember we had an illustration about the guy being chased by the bear and falling into the well clinging to a rope that a rat is gnawing away. With Theology and Philosophy being outflanked by Science disciplines, I begin to wonder if the "meaning of life" issues we enjoy tossing around is any longer at the heart of the issue. Are we left with preparing for future extinction, whatever that looks like, or attempting to rectify the damages we've done to mother earth in hopes she changes her mind. Do we really have a wider range of options or questions?
George Holcombe
14900 Yellowleaf Tr.
Austin, TX 78728
Mobile 512/252-2756
geowanda at earthlink.net
Hope appeareth, but it is not your Hope—you do not have anything to do with it. It just appeareth. It comes as a stranger, as an alien—it just appeareth! You do not even know why you hope. How in the world could you hope when there is absolutely nothing to justify any hope? ~Joseph W. Mathews
On Jul 7, 2012, at 12:17 PM, R Williams wrote:
Jim and Jim,
I find myself wanting to be realistic without being skeptical and thinking that the situation is hopeless. Jim W., you mention Walter Brueggemann's book The Prophetic Imagination. Brueggemann suggests, as I understand what he is saying, that the task of the ancient prophets was to imagine a future that was an alternative to the dominant cultural reality of the time, and to narrate that alternative in such a way that the people would participate in its emergence. By "imagination" he meant the ability to discern what YHWH was bringing into being.
In the sequel, called The Practice of Prophetic Imagination, Brueggemann says the following:
Can YHWH create, yet again, a new history for Israel, after the old history has come to a dismal end? Here we are at the deepest theological question of biblical faith--is the God of faith contained within and informed by what the world knows to be possible? Or is it within the capacity of God to create a newness that defies the categories of the "possible" that are commonly and reasonably accepted in the world?
He then refers Karl Barth's second volume of Church Dogmatics.
Karl Barth...faces the issue of what is "real" and what is "possible..." Barth's insistence that the issue of "possibility" must not claim to precede the question of "reality'" is crucial. And because God is free, much is possible with God that would not otherwise be possible.
Brueggemann continues:
It is useful to recognize, in our own context, that when faith is contained within modern rationality, there is a rejection of the God who can "do the impossible." The present casting of that rejection concerns "an interventionist God" who violates our notion of the possible... The question left...is a question about the freedom of God that we seek to ponder without any recourse to crude supernaturalism.
By "crude supernaturalism" Brueggemann is pointing to something like uttering magical prayers for a person to be cured of an illness, or a town to be saved from violent weather, etc. with the expectation that God will intervene in a spontaneous, spasmodic instant to the immediate situation and prayers will be answered. He does not, however, dismiss the idea that God is an interventionist. What he does suggest is that, rather than spontaneous, God is an active player in human history and is continuously intervening in every "now," in the midst of which all things are always being made new. He concludes:
In each new articulation, Israel must ask again in wonderment if God, in God's freedom, can push beyond ordinary "possibility" to the "impossible..." The tradition of faith continues to be dazzled by specific memories, in narrative form, of instances in which the "impossibility of God" has overridden the "possibility" of human wisdom...that exhibit God's faithful power beyond our expectation or explanation.
Thus the role of the prophet is to discern the "possible impossibility" (my words) that is emerging in the midst of the death of the old, "narrate" it in a compelling fashion, and participate in "bring(ing) it to reality as it desires." (Martin Buber's phrase.) So to bring this back to where we started, perhaps the question in all of this, and perhaps a timeless one at that, is "What is the newness that is seeking to emerge in our time and, what story shall we tell about it, and what is required of us to participate in having it emerge?"
Randy
"Listen to what is emerging from yourself to the course of being in the world; not to be supported by it, but to bring it to reality as it desires."
-Martin Buber (adapted)
From: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>
To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Friday, July 6, 2012 8:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?
Wow. Thanks, Jim. Someone on this list recommended Prophetic Imagination by Walter Bruggemann, and I found it as an ebook and downloaded and read it. He is very much in line with your perspective, and points to the experience of the prophets and their role and function as what we need. Since reading it, I have been saying to myself, we are moving into a prophetic moment.
Jim Wiegel
"The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." Abraham Lincoln
401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401
+1 623-363-3277 skype: jfredwiegel
jfwiegel at yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com
Upcoming public course opportunities:
ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012
ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012
The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012
Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012
See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details.
--- On Fri, 7/6/12, Jim Baumbach <wtw0bl at new.rr.com> wrote:
From: Jim Baumbach <wtw0bl at new.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?
To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Date: Friday, July 6, 2012, 4:55 PM
Certainly Boulding was aware of some of the ominous crises and saw within them a potential for extinction of our human species. But several other crises are also pending including global warming (environmental change), unending wars, physical and chemical pollution, droughts and starvation, declining water sources, etc. My question was not intended to be supercilious but as a thought regarding how fragile our own current existence is. Measured in a geologic time frame, the total presence of human life is so minuscule as to be in all probability essentially zero. Yet within that time frame, human beings have been able to so threaten their own existence that one can hardly imagine any other life form as suicidal. Despite all of the dire scientific projections I, for one, am unable to stop doing exactly what I, and many like me, have been doing for decades and centuries--consuming the Earth's resources in unsustainable amounts. And now the populations of China and India are also anticipating doing what I am doing! I don't see anything changing so profoundly that we will reverse our present course. There are, of course, many band aid-type remedies such as alternative energy sources but these only prolong this process. Is it possible to change human nature to such an extent that we, in Biblical tradition when Jonah proclaimed disaster to Nineveh: "...Then tidings reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he made proclamation and published through Nineveh, "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them cry mightily to God; yea, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands." (Jonah 3:3-8 RSV), actually change our habits? Without this dramatic turn-around possibly our question will be: "How do we prepare all human life to face the inevitable extinction of our species?" Jim Baumbach
On 7/6/2012 3:56 PM, James Wiegel wrote:
I was just reminded of an old, old, friend, Kenneth Boulding, and a chapter from his book, The Meaning of the Twentieth Century -- The Great Transition, published in 1964. He described this "great transition" thusly:
The Great Transition (1964)
The twentieth century might be described as the crucial central period in the third great transition in the state of mankind. The first great transition was from the paleolithic to the neolithic about ten thousand years ago, which was characterized by the invention of agriculture, the domestication of animals, and the development of a settled life in villages. The second great transition, sometimes called the urban revolution, about five thousand years ago, was characterized by the development of political power and the centralization of the food surplus from agriculture in cities. This is the transition from neolithic agriculture to civilizations. What is underway now is a third great transition, in which civilization is passing away and a new order of society altogether, which I have sometimes called post-civilized but which perhaps deserves the name of the Developed Society, is coming into being. The twentieth century is the crucial midstage of this transition which will determine very largely whether it will be made successful or not.
HERE ARE SOME PARAGRAPHS FROM THE FINAL CHAPTER. I FOUND THEM ON THE GOLDEN PATHWAYS:
The fact of the great transition is not in dispute. Almost anyone in middle life today has simply to look back to his own childhood, or still more to the days of his grandparents, to realize that we are living in a world in which there is an enormous rate of change. If anyone in an advanced society today were to suddenly thrust back into the world of only a hundred years ago, he would feel utterly alien and strange. A considerable part of his vocabulary would be meaningless to the people around him. He would find it hard to adapt to the inconveniences and to the restricted life which would have to lead. He would feel indeed in an alien society.
....................................................
I, therefore, have no hesitation in recommending the attitude toward the great transition which I have described as critical acceptance. There may be times when we wish nostalgically that it had never started, for then at least the danger that the evolutionary experiment in this part of the universe would be terminated would be more remote. Now that the transition is under way, however, there is no going back on it. We must learn to use its enormous potential for good rather than for evil, and we must learn to diminish and eventually eliminate the dangers which are inherent in it. If I had to sum up the situation in a sentence I would say that the situation has arisen because of the development of certain methods of reality testing applied to our images of nature. If we are to ride out the transition successfully we must apply these or similar methods for reality testing to our images of man and his society.
There is in the world today an "invisible college" of people in many different countries and many different cultures, who have this vision of the nature of the transition through which we are passing and who are determined to devote their lives to contributing toward its successful fulfillment. Membership in this college is consistent with many different philosophical, religious, and political positions. It is a college without a founder and without a president, without buildings and without organization. Its founding members might have included a Jesuit like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a humanist like Aldous Huxley, a writer of science fiction like H. G. Wells, and it might even have given honorary degrees to Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Pope John XXIII, and even Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy. Its living representatives are still a pretty small group of people. I think, however, that it is they who hold the future of the world in their hands or at least in their minds.
For this invisible college I am an unashamed propagandist and I confess without a blush that this book is a tract. Our precious little planet, this blue green cradle of life with its rosy mantle, is in one of the most critical stages of its whole existence. It is in a position of immense danger and immense potentiality. There are no doubt many experiments in evolution going on in different parts of this big universe. But this happens to be my planet and I am very much attached to it, and I am desperately anxious that this particular experiment should be a success. If this be ethnocentrism, then let me be ethnocentric! I am pretty sure, however, that it will not be a success unless something is done. There is danger both of the bang of nuclear detonation and of the whimper of exhausted overpopulation, and either would mean an end of the evolutionary process in these parts. If man were merely capable of destroying himself, one could perhaps bear the thought. One could at least console oneself with the thought of elementary justice, that if man does destroy himself it is his own silly fault. He is captain, however, of a frai1 and delicate vessel, and in the course of destroying himself he might easily destroy the vessel that is, the planet which carries him, with its immense wealth and variety of evolutionary freight and evolutionary potential. This makes the dangers of the transition doubly intolerable, and demands a desperate effort to remove them.
Jim Wiegel
"The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." Abraham Lincoln
401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401
+1 623-363-3277 skype: jfredwiegel
jfwiegel at yahoo.com http://www.partnersinparticipation.com/
Upcoming public course opportunities:
ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012
ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012
The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012
Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012
See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details.
--- On Fri, 7/6/12, R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com> wrote:
From: R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?
To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>, "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Date: Friday, July 6, 2012, 11:30 AM
Jim,
By "peace" I meant something more than the absence of war. I suppose I meant something like "with civility," " with mutual respect," "acknowledging the dignity and worth of all." This may be idealistic but without it I am skeptical that we can continue. The by-product of this kind of peace is sustainability, so my statement may have been a bit redundant.
I agree with Wayne up to a point. I believe there is really one moral issue at a time, but there must be many ways to describe it and thus to articulate the question. With the way issues are so inter-related, it's difficult to talk about one without eventually getting into most of the others, and probably even more difficult to finally boil it down to "the" underlying root/moral issue of the time. I would have to say that the way we articulated it in the 70's as the disparity between the 85/15, or today maybe the 99/1, isn't that far off base for today as well.
One thing I do feel fairly certain about. Whereas in RS-1 days we asked, "Who am I?" "What do I?" and "How be I?"--today I would insist that the question, whatever it is, is not an "I" question, but rather a "we" question.
Randy
"Listen to what is emerging from yourself to the course of being in the world; not to be supported by it, but to bring it to reality as it desires." -Martin Buber (adapted)
From: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>
To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Friday, July 6, 2012 12:33 PM
Subject: [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?
WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS? Over coffee, this morning, i recopied the emails from this thread and tried to narrow down to just the questions that were posed. I think i missed an email that Lee Early was responding to in his message. A couple of reflections: Randy, in yours, i was struggling with the phrase "in peace", wondering, a bit like the word "church" or "religious" what that might point to that would seem true to life vs. sort of an ideal future. Wayne, your response that there may not be "a" question, but many and we each have to figure out our own for ourselves got me to reflecting on the evident complicatedness of things in a systemic or interconnected world. My auto mechanic was explaining to me how to simply fix the health care system in the US, and your comment came up for me, and i said that is a good idea, but i think we are looking too often for simple silver bullet solutions when thngs are actually much more complicated. And that made sense to both of us and moved the conversation on. Jim Baumbach's question put me back on my heels . "How do I get you to change your mind and do what I think is right?" then, when in linking it with Bill Parker's notion that none of this is new, and why haven't we all woken up? Got me thinking, at least on the liberal or progressive side, whether the new religion arising is the religion of human rights . . . Progressives, at least, seem to hold these as sacred and as a moral obligation to be enforced. I could go on, but my eggs are getting cold, and the slice of cantelope from Judy's garden is calling. THE GIST AS I SEE IT Mary Hampton: Enough, all ready, its too good to miss and I am not ready to edit. Good stuff, folks! Ken Gilgren: why am I here? What am I doing? How am I being? What quickens the current action of my soul? what was the question again? Wayne Nelson: What are the pivotal moral issues of our moment? I think there are likely to be several. Of course there are many, many but there are probably some major ones. To reduce it to a single one makes it too abstract and denies the obvious complexity. We all have to name 'the moral issue of our time.' There's not likely to be one for everyone. It's a job we all have to do. Bill Parker: What are the warning signs of the destruction and endangerment of the entire human community? Then ask, what is the underlying question to be addressed and how it can be addressed. Why are people not being awakened to the clear, obvious truth of our crisis? Secondly, what methods must we develop or employ to radically reveal this all encompassing truth? John Cock: My take: If it does not have something like "on behalf of a transformed Earth community" in the statement, it is the WRONG right question, moral issue, or vocation. Lee Early: "Who is Tiger Woods?", What is his mission? Can we re-answer the second question? Mission, social pioneer, church, college, league, crimson line and movement? The answer to the question of mission will carry the first of who. (At least here in the West.) Sometimes the question of mission changes. Sometimes by chance and sometimes on purpose. What is our mission TODAY? Randy Williams: In reflecting on the dialogue around what is "the question," I realized we really were assuming two questions. How may "we" (all species) live together on this planet in peace, in a way that secures life for future generations? What is the new face, form and mission of the "movement" (the religious, the invisible college, the church with a little"c," ) and what stories, style and symbols will sustain it? Jan Sanders: What are the key images of the future of evolution? Steve Harrington: You had to say it, eh? What does it look like to be the Sensitive & Responsive. To what concerns? where? Karen Bueno: "How do we motivate the sensitive and reponsive ones who understand that the survival of the people of the earth and the earth itself depends on our working together to make that survival possible?" I like the idea of striving for a T-shirt phrase, like "Be one of those who dare to live the future now.", as someone suggested. David Walters: in the midst of a malaise of helplessness and an established / controlling economic and political elite, what can we do to support and help to form the emerging groups and movements (both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement) to be both effective and inclusive? Jack Gilles: Given the stance that "History rides on the back of the religious" that we embodied and lived..... "Who are the 'religious' today, where would you look to find them, what are the marks that tell you so, and what might we share (and how) with them so that they are empowered and connected?". The "we" in the question should refer to "those of us who are scattered" and who will take seriously the answers. Janice Ulangca: In this 50th year of EI/ICA, some of the questions to live with: Considering what we were/are/might be, what is our calling? What are we called to know/do/be? What are some of the important partnerships the future needs? Missed the name: What was Neibhur's line? (and how do you spell his name?) Something about the sensitive and something ones. Nancy Lanphear: What is " MY GREAT WORK (IS) WHERE MY OWN GREAT JOY INTERSECTS WITH EARTH'S GREAT NEED" ....perhaps EARTH could be stretched to all my relations, the universe, life .... Jan and Steve: Considering what we were/are/might be, what is our calling? What are we called to know/do/be? Jan: What are some of the important partnerships the future needs? Jim Baumbach: "How do I get you to change your mind and do what I think is right?" Karen Bueno: "How are we to live together and preserve this planet for the future?" Jim Wiegel Jfwiegel at yahoo.com “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” – Carl Jung Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE at lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
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