[Dialogue] An invitation in parting from the Dialogue listserv

[Herman Greene]

All,

I am not trying to solve the "human predicament" related to the two
listservs. I would love to stay in touch with everyone, but I think there
is a virtue in focus, so I will only be on the OE listserv going forward.

The reason I am writing it to invite those of you on the Dialogue listserv
who are not on the OE listserv to join that listserv so I can stay in touch
with you that way.

Here's the email I sent to the OE listserv this morning. If you are
interested in this ongoing "dialogue," don't leave the Dialogue listserv,
but if you are not on it, join the OE listserv.

A conversation with John and Lynda Cock and the Progress on my proposals

Dear all,

I had nice dinner with John and Lynda Cock last night. There's no doubt
about it, but those of us who were in the Order share a deep common bond
that goes on just like family bonds. Our shared history enabled deep
sharing.

I presented the idea that the period 1965-75 was the deeply creative period
of Order/EI life, that the important ideas and concepts came from that
period.

John divided it into knowing, doing and being, and said the knowing and
being were developed in that period and doing was the focus after that
continuing through today.

It seems clear to me that our "methods" meaning our facilitation methods
are in history. It also seems clear that the doing whether as you all did
it after I left in 1975 or as others may do it in the future will carry on.
There will be people working on human development and some will use our
methods.

What remains important to me is our being and knowing. This is what I feel
may not carry on. It's something we recognize and feel in the presence of
each other and don't recognize and feel in the presence of others, or at
least we feel it in a very different way. It's a shared interior space.

Those of us in the Order in 1965-75 (and perhaps after though I have no
first hand experience of it) know that we were part of something fantastic.
A mighty flame of spirit and vision burned within us. We had within us a
"motivity" that will never go away. And we had all those sayings and
concepts we sometime hammered each other with that were critical to our
being. And we had the Christian story, heritage and symbols which were very
much a part of our interior reality.

I don't think that can be captured with archives or numbers. The interior
part can only be captured through stories. This is why I have called on
people to write stories on "the way we were" or "who we were". They can be
anecdotes that capture just one memorable moment, like the excitement felt
at preparing for a doing the grand ball or in a moment in Fifth City
Pre-School or the night of the MLK riots. The response, to say the least
has been underwhelming, but I'm not going to let this die. Our second
generation is already reaching retirement in some cases and what about the
third generation and others? These are stories that need to be told. I
thought I had Betty Pesek's book on *The Circle of Life*. Maybe this covers
this, I need to get a copy . . . but intuitively I don't think so. We have
a grand story and grand stories to tell. We were a part of something
fantastic despite its faults. I don't want to justify it, I just want the
story(ies) to be told.

On the knowing side, I'm not that interested in the content that may be
time bound. What I am interested in is the principles that formed us--the
ones that related to out being, our power and our motivity--ideas of
corporateness, being under assignment, living missional lives, etc. This is
what I want to pass on to my children, grandchildren and others. Again the
response has been underwhelming to say the least, but I'm not giving up.

And the book called "RS-1" that I proposed? Gene Marshall I gather is
working to put a version of RS-1 back in to the stream of things. Here I'm
thinking about something else. I'm thinking about how did we come to
understand God, Christ. Holy Spirit and Church in both its contentless and
contentful (being related to the Christian tradition) aspects. I want to
tell the story of RS-1, though this one might involve more concepts than
the first two.

So folks, you aren't dead yet, but you're close. Let's tell the story of
this amazing body of people and reality of which we were a part.
-- 
__________________________________________________
Herman F. Greene
2516 Winningham Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-942-4358 (ph & fax)
hfgreenenc at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20130819/de6eb224/attachment-0004.htm>