[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] The Order and Oaxtapec

Sat Jun 24 19:13:19 PDT 2017

George, thanks for telling the incredible tale of your journey with the Order.  It was truly real and uplifting and redeeming.  And it reminded me of what an incredible bunch of people I have been blessed to be a part of lo these many years!
Carleton Stock
St. Louis

-----Original Message-----
From: zbarley via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
To: George Holcombe <geowanda1 at me.com>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>; ICA/OE List Serves <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Sat, Jun 24, 2017 4:29 pm
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] The Order and Oaxtapec

George

Thanks so much for sharing your story. Where we went and who we continued to be are indeed as much a part of the Order as our times together.  I can't imagine anyone who's life wasn't radically changed even if only by new methods of understanding and engagement in daily life.

Zoe 

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone

-------- Original message --------
From: George Holcombe via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> 
Date: 06/24/2017  5:03 PM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: ICA/OE List Serves <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>, ICA/OE List Serves <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> 
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] The Order and Oaxtapec 

As Lingo used to say everyone in the Order has their own story and take on it. I’ve appreciated the replies to Epps email and his thoughts. Mine is slightly different, though I can identify with much that has been said. We came to the Order from Louisiana. We had been working with Civil Rights, helped start a project in South Baton Rouge that was one of the first Poverty Programs to get funded and took OE courses and participated in the New Orleans cadre. The turning point came for us when our Bishop decided to assign us to a church in North Louisiana where part of the leadership were officers in the KKK and we didn’t exactly hit it off with them. In fact they had a file on us. We were focused on finding ways to empower people who were on the outside. So we went to Chicago, principly for the learning of and participation in 5th City. That did not immediately come true but eventually got to work in 5th City.  Learned a lot from George West and so many others. Then assigned to Asia, Mowanjum, stateside in Uptown and then back to Asia for a number of projects.  We departed from the order in 1980, intending to return, but we were broke and extended family needs were needing to be addressed.  We pulled our daughter out of the student house upon learning of the abuse there. By the time we were able to return, the order had changed and appeared to us not to be doing anything more than we were at the time.  I was not enthused by our turning away from the human development projects and the turn to the corporations. I had appreciated the work done on the LENS, the NRM and the Social Process and benefited from them all. In the meantime we were sought out by Bishop in the Philippines to help out in a new Seminary, village development and Peace with Justice work in the Philippines through the GBGM. We worked there for several years. We were asked by GBGM to coordinate Mission work in Asia and returned to the US in 2000.  All this while our Order experience was at the base of what we did.  Through all this I did learn that their was not a general acceptance of the hard work and time it took to train and assist a village into practicing the methods.  Folks were more looking for their own success.  And this even short changed some of our endeavors in the Order, but particularly so in the denomination.  I do appreciate that where the methods got a footing good things happened and people grew much beyond what many thought possible.  I remember being in Manila in the 1990’s when a knock came at the door and there stood a fellow from Taiwan.  We didn’t at first make the connection but he was from Hai Ou. Someone had told him where we were. He had been a young man when ICA was there. He had learned from the Prawn project and had built a business establishing fish and prawn farms in Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. He wanted to thank us. Even to this day folks who were kids then find us on Facebook and email (how I don’t know). A couple of kids from Kwangyan Il are now US citizens living in Illinois. Some didn’t have good water or electricity back in the day and now they’re using computers. We have much to be thankful for and our colleagueship with what ever negatives you want to throw at it, has been sustaining and meaningful. I doubt that any of us can really account for the impact the Order has had on so many.  The creative lives of those that peopled the Order continue to amaze me.

George Holcombe
geowanda1 at me.com

"Whatever the problem, community is the answer.  There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about."  Margaret Wheatley

On Jun 22, 2017, at 5:58 PM, Jean Long via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

jean long -
John & Robyn - As in Neihbor's  "church as the sensitive and responsive ones in each organization" I continue to look for and love the church as they search for a way to care for the growing suffering of neighbor and globe.

I remember Joe saying when the time comes when there is no longer a common mission- go home.  It is only our passion for an agreed upon way to alleviate human suffering that allows us to accept each others' warts and bruises and sons of bitchedness and work together day after day in profound forgiveness.

That had begun to happen in Denver before the house was sold out from under us by some sons of bitchedness and we became the caring community in dispersion.

The Order is alive and well in the persons of our ICA staff people.  They hunger for the spirit dimension that they sense in us old Orderly people.  And they go after it in our Archives.  They found Brian Stanfield's  Courage to Care with its end of chapter reflections and use it now as the spirit intro for many of their meetings with the 77Neighborhoods and the agency folks.

Bless Tim Wegner, MIke Tippett, John Cock who maintain our structural connectedness -  and our master ITs, Wendell Rafior, Doug Druckenmiller, Steve Eddiger - who lives in intentional community on the seventh floor - and all the rest of us working with the Global Archives who have sweat blood and underwritten the creation of the ICA Global Archives through which to make our methods available to those who may be searching for them as resources with which to deal with the suffering of these times.

You will be getting info soon about the Week of October 8-13 when the Archives Sojourn week will host three tracks - 1. The Celebration of the Band of the 24; 2. The ongoing work and unveiling of the Archives Website; and 3. Tagging committee whose task it will be to, after identifying the communities we interact with, list the tags (labels) that they might use to find our documents.  Right now we have 2000 scanned and ready to drop into the website, but without relevant tags after their document name on a spreadsheet in the database, they will probably never connect to "The New Religious Mode" - or as I see it "The New Mode of the Religious".  We are having the joyous task of calling many of you who were in the projects to make you aware of this wonderful week of celebration and giving our methods to the future.  

Any questions, call me at 720-633-5008.  Only costs, your time, air/carfair and board and room - $30/single, $45/double on the 8th floor - $10/day food.  After rooms go, hotel rooms and friends/relatives guest rooms.

The Order is, indeed, alive and well and doing our damdest to get our methods into the future.  

To you all I can say, Grace and Peace.,

Jean Long
Global Archives
Chicago

On Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 2:07 AM, John & Robyn Hutchinson via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Dear John and Dharma and all,
So well said. To this day we are part of the spirit movement – the  order ecumenical – the crimson line - and always will be. We are grateful that this spirit dynamic could never be called out of being, and is still so alive today.

When we speak about this with others, who are not part of this particular order – occasionally – they do understand what that means. There are so many people today, who are part of this wider spirit movement. All this is what energizes us to keep at ‘the mission’ until we can no more.

Dharma, the question that JWM asked me (John) 50 years ago was: DO YOU LOVE THE CHURCH? (repeated 3 x) The question and  answer is no different today (albeit the words are secular), and we see people asking and answering that question in so many practical secular ways, undergirded by spirit – the invisible/visible order we are a part of – standing between the no longer and the not yet. The new 40 year timeline has started again with profound new questions and responses to be created.
Grace and Peace, John 

PS John and Dharma, this seems like the beginning of a good secular-religious article for Winds and Waves on medium.com!!!??? Robyn

From: OE [mailto:oe-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Dharmalingam Vinasithamby via OE
Sent: Friday, 16 June 2017 10:14 AM
To: Catherine Welch; John Epps; Order Ecumenical Community; Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] The Order and Oaxtapec

Thank you John for initiating this fabulous discussion that I have long wanted to have. Yes, no one can call this community out of being. It was not man-made but by spirit. Only the grave after the inevitable greying will put an end to us. 

The Order was an overwhelming part of my identity. It is still there but in the background. Now it is those whom I meet or work with face to face who are my community. As we say, change begins in the local. But there are moments when I am at a meeting - either at my workplace or with a community group - when I look at the people around the table and think "This is a community, a profound reality, but it is not aware of itself." We were not like that because we had learnt a discipline. We knew what was happening and had the language to discuss it. So that is where part of our non-ending mission is.

I remember three things that JWM said. We had a 40-year task and when it was done, we would call ourselves out of being. Another was that when we met, we would expect the other to expect me to be plugging away at that one task that I had decided was important. And finally, he said when he died and went to heaven, he would stand outside waiting for us to show up.

One question I have John and others who know. What do you remember that JWM said that you feel relates to the time after our 40-year task?

regards

Dharma  

On Friday, 16 June 2017, 2:35, Catherine Welch via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Thank you, John, for articulating the “life after Oaxtapec” so well. 

Catherine Welch

From: John Epps via OE 

Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2017 3:57 PM

To: Order Ecumenical Community 

Subject: [Oe List ...] The Order and Oaxtapec

It has long been claimed that at the Oaxtapec gathering, the Order was called out of being. That assertion has long troubled me, and it seems time to clear the air.

IMHO, the statement is both sociologically and theologically inaccurate. A more accurate formulation of what happened in Mexico was that we went from a structured to a dispersed form. Something was definitely dissolved at Oaxtapec, but it was not the Order, only a particular form of the Order.

On the sociological side, there is still a lively “we” that once went under the name “Order Ecumenical.” This list-serve and the archives workshops represent some manifestations, but more significant are the personal collegial relationships that persist despite great demographic, cultural, and geographic differences. “We” continue to communicate and to celebrate the life milestones of each other. 

“We” continue to engage in the mission of catalyzing and caring for those who care – in multiple sectors and with far greater impact than a single organization could have managed. Some examples include the ToP Network, the IAF, ICA community development work in India, Nepal, Australia, and South America, and environmental preservation efforts in the USA. “We” have published a good number of books making insights available to a wide audience. Colleagues could fill out the list. 

Theologically, the Order is a historical dynamic that we’ve been privileged to participate in. It is not something we can disband, even if we wanted to. Just as Niebuhr described the Church as the “sensitive and responsive ones…” that takes many forms, so also is the Order composed of those awakened and catalytic ones who care for those who care. The notion that some of us could dissolve that dynamic confuses the form from the content (the baby from the bathwater to use a less abstract metaphor). I’ve come (reluctantly) to see that we were led to dissolve a particular structure so that the historical dynamic might continue in an enhanced fashion. 

Why does this matter? Is it simply a verbal difference having little to do with anything except the neurosis of an old theologian? 

It matters because thinking that there is no longer an Order prevents us from wrestling with pertinent questions: How can we remain in touch with the Profound Mystery? How can we continue to access our common insights? What rites and celebrations are appropriate to a dispersed body? How can we account to each other and support each other? How can we stay on the religious and secular edge? What (if any) forms are appropriate for the global and diverse participants in this historical dynamic? In a time when hatred and fear of differences is so rampant, what new experiments might make a difference? What might we learn from Journey to the East?

Collegial comments, clarifications, corrections, and additions are most welcome.

Thanks for reading this.

John Epps

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