[Dialogue] Final Meaning witness

[Richard Alton]

I just found this piece going through my files: I was Louise Singleton and
her late husband John's Local Church prior and later worked a decade with
her on the ICA USA's African ICAs HIV/AIDS work. A little long for a
witness but what happens to one who spends a month working on final
meanings on the Southside of Chicago. Amazing what we asked of people! Dick

THE GROUND SHIFTS UNDER MY FEET

SOUTH HOUSE ON BLUE ISLAND AVENUE, CHICAGO

I am not sure what I expected when John and I and three others from
Montview Presbyterian Church drove to Chicago to attend the Summer Research
Assembly at the Ecumenical Institute (EI). It was July, 1971; John and I
left four children eleven to three in the care of the Denver Religious
House at 1741 Gaylord Street, a big old house that was the home and office
of those who worked for the Ecumenical Institute in Denver. John, Paul
Hamilton and Don Elliott planned to return to Denver after a short time,
but Freda, Don’s wife, and I intended to stay four weeks. I had never been
to Chicago and my children would spend those four weeks in a Religious
House. I knew essentially nothing about this organization or what I would
be doing. What could I have been thinking?

The Kent State Massacre had shocked the world on May 4, 1970. The New York
Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers in mid-June, 1971. Protests
against the Viet Nam War were strident. I had missed the up-endedness of
the 60’s – the rebellion against authority, free-form lifestyle, rejection
of materialism, and discontented individualism. I had four children in the
60’s and to say that I was busy, distracted, and disconnected from the
larger world is to understate the coziness of my cocoon. I ran into Betty
Friedan and the Feminine Mystique in 1968 when I was pregnant with Will. I
got a glimpse of how my wife and mother role had been meticulously nurtured
into me in my Southern upbringing. Yes, I had gone to Boston to business
school and happily worked for Polaroid for three years, but still I had no
idea that I would want a career, work of my own in the world. I did not
feel much responsibility for the world beyond my family and close community.

John and I had encountered the Ecumenical Institute at a weekend seminar
called RS-1 – Religious Studies I. Its intention was to confront unexamined
religious literalism with an intellectual and experiential grounding that
had powerful ramifications for how you lived your life. The course focused
on four major symbols of the Christian faith – God, Christ, Holy Spirit,
and Church. It used writings of four 20th century theologians, Rudolph
Bultman, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and R. Richard Niebuhr to blow
open these well worn church concepts and the words that name them, and
ground them in ordinary human experience. It sought to demythologize them
and re-symbolize them again. To me, who had grown up in the unquestioned
and unquestioning environment of the southern Presbyterian Church, this was
radical and exciting stuff. The calling was to live an intentional life of
service – not to some reduced god, but to the whole world. This was not a
Jesus Loves You, Y’all Come kind of theology; it was insistent demand. Stop
worrying about yourself and your soul. Get out there and bring new life to
the world. Live your life. I had no idea what a month in Chicago would
bring; I was clear there was an interesting world beyond my kitchen sink,
and my unexamined life role.

We arrived in Chicago at the Ecumenical Institute offices located in an old
seminary on West Congress Parkway in the middle of a poor black, angry,
rioting community. We were instructed not go on the street – not because we
might come to harm, but because there might be an incident which would
damage EI’s work in 5th City, a community the Institute was working with to
offer paths to change and a sense of hope where very little existed.

The first shock was that those of us from Denver were split up and assigned
to three different locations. A thousand people were expected to attend, so
other buildings were co-opted. John and I were sent to a four story wooden
building, an abandoned hotel with rooms around a central shaft on Blue
Island Parkway. I have no idea where in Chicago it is because I only left
the building to go to assemblies of the whole body once a week and I never
walked outside the building. John was assigned to a men’s dorm and I was
assigned to a women’s dorm on the 4th floor built around the four-story
atrium.

The building looked like a firetrap. My room containing bunk beds for six,
opened on a hall at the top of this open shaft. I was out on the
falling-off-the-wall back porch in tears because there was no way that a
responsible mother of four would put herself in such danger. And I was
beginning to understand about assignment: it equaled obedience. Charles
Moore came along and asked what the problem was. I let him have it – the
danger, the negligence, etc, etc. He listened quietly and said wait. In a
few minutes he was back with a new room assignment. John and I were
assigned together to a small room off the porch on the second floor above
the kitchen. I learned later it was his and Pat’s room. Living in a room
with five other women would not have been easy, but I might have been less
lonely than returning every evening to this small room off the second floor
porch, above the kitchen and facing the tenements behind.

John stayed for a week and returned to Denver. I knew no one – no one to
help make sense of the strange, continuously objectionable expectations in
which the rules of engagement were different than any I had ever
encountered. The Ecumenical Institute was a family secular order of people
who had decided to live a life of radical service. Those who decided to
join the Order Ecumenical lived by the ancient monastic vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience. Poverty meant receiving a stipend equal to the
poverty level wherever one worked. In India, that could be $10 a month.
Some people worked outside and their income supported those who staffed the
work of the Institute. Chastity had to do with the Kierkegaardian idea of
willing one thing. Your life was about the immediate work and intention of
the larger group. Obedience was about accepting assignment. These three
disciplines – seriously observed – came to me continuously as a shock and
an affront. And yet, all these extremely bright, well-organized, compelling
people had agreed to live like this. And seemed to think it the most
important thing they had every done. And the most important thing I might
do.

The task for the month was to create the New Social Vehicle. EI expected
nothing less than to participate in transforming the world. Huge white
banners hanging across the front of the assembly hall read,

All the past belongs to all the people.
All the wisdom belongs to all the people. All the goods belong to all the
people.
All the decisions belong to all the people.

I wondered if this would show up in my FBI file although it seemed unlikely
I had an FBI file. It had not been so long since the days of the McCarthy
Hearings; I could believe association with this organization might be
hazardous. I also felt an underlying implication that my usual role of wife
and mother was inadequate: I needed to commit myself to renewing the local
church and helping to re-create the institutions of society to care for all.

The day began with Daily Office at 6 am. Wake up call was someone with a
gong outside the door shouting Praise the Lord Christ is Risen, to which we
were to respond, He is risen indeed as we rolled joyfully out of bed. I was
assigned to a working group of about thirty people, which would be home
base for the four weeks. We met morning and afternoon, breakfast, lunch and
dinner. The Research Assembly of a thousand people gathered staff from all
over the country and a few from overseas, plus volunteers and new recruits
like us. The purpose of the summer’s research was to figure out what was
needed to transform civil society and create the practical programs that
those under assignment would implement in the coming year to help bring
that about. During the working year those under assignment would apply the
thinking and programmatic actions wherever they were assigned, and come
back the next summer for another assembly to assess what worked and create
the organization’s work for the following year. It was a kind of practical
research. It was an astounding operation, better seen from a bird’s eye
view than from a hard chair in a working group in the steamy summer heat of
Chicago. My bottom developed blisters.

The task for that summer assembly was to define the dynamics that occur in
any society. It would be used as a tool for understanding and analyzing
what the tyrannizing and collapsing social forces were in current realities
that need to be corrected. When economic, political, and cultural dynamics
are in balance, the New Social Vehicle could emerge. Staff had read 1000
edge books over the last year, trying to discern what was happening in
communities in the chaotic time of the ‘60’s and beginning of the ‘70’s.
[image: page3image3330531104]

Typical of ICA methodology, the task for the third of the assembly meeting
at South House was to define the Cultural Commonality in The Social Process
triangles. The other two locations would describe Economic and Political
Commonalities. Those in south House were asked to figure out what
concretely was meant and went on in Communal Wisdom, Communal Styles and
Communal Symbols? My working group was assigned Final Meanings under
Communal Wisdom. This task required a great deal of brainstorming,
discussion, and corporate writing. It is difficult to explain and define
the very medium in which you live and operate. As someone said, does a fish
know what water is? Corporate writing was a new experience. Three or four
people work together to write, getting their wisdom on paper in a process
of suggestion and negotiation which can be both long and infuriatingly
difficult, particularly if you are defining something called Final
Meanings. The day’s work was sent to Room E where leadership decided what
the next step would be the following day. This was an evolving process.

I was totally disconnected from home, seeming to forget my children for
days at a time; I was trying to survive and to contribute; my days were
contained as if on an unknown island. There were no computers, cell phones,
newspapers or even telephones for general use. Someone reported the news of
the day at breakfast. There was a quiet time after lunch when I took my
journal and incense to an assigned place and thought deep thoughts. Singing
and Psalm conversations were intended to keep spirits up and intention
focused on the task. There were regular reporting dynamics with a weekly
assembly of the entire gathering and some planned activities or
“discontinuity.” Singing by the whole body when they gathered 1000 strong
in assembly was without accompaniment – and earthmoving. The primary songs
I remember were the hymns For I Know Whom I have Believed, Amazing Grace,
The Lord of the Dance, and Why O Lord, Hast Thou Quite Forsaken Me, Those
Who Wait on the Lord, and secular songs like Blue Skies and I Don’t Know
Why I Love You Like I Do. People wrote visionary words to popular tunes
such as On a Clear Day and the Sound of Silence.

The nuts and bolts of the assembly were directed by staff and carried out
by participants as assigned – to the kitchen, cleaning, print shop, and
typing. John worked in the boiler room in the grungy basement. To load coal
into the boiler, it was necessary to load it into a wheelbarrow and push
the wheelbarrow up a six- inch plank to reach the boiler. One night on
breakfast prep, I broke 300 eggs to prepare scrambled eggs. I was
instructed to break them two at a time – one in each hand; breakfast prep
was just beginning. Showers and toilet facilities were barely adequate and
tended to verge on collapse. Documents were printed at the print shop and
then collated by laying out stacks of each page in order and the entire
body of people passed by in a line assembling their document – usually
while singing.

I anticipated that Bill Hudson, who had left the Order and was a minister
at Montview Church, would arrive for the second two weeks. He had gotten me
into this, and maybe he could help me understand why it was important for
me to be there. I was in a school gymnasium as part of a typing crew on
Friday night

when the phone rang. I heard the person who answered say that it was too
bad that someone had died. I found out that Bill had had a heart attack and
died the day before. He would not be coming to Chicago, to South House.
Bill had left the Order; people did not leave the Order. No one knew at
that point how the Order should deal with an ex-Order member who died, so
his death was mostly ignored: he had left the Order; he had refused to live
his life. I am not overly given to tears, but I think that summer I cried
about every day.

I still do not know why I did not go home. I expect a few people thought up
a good reason why they were required to be someplace else. My prior (as in
the head of a monastery), the leader of my working group was that same
Charles Moore who rescued us from the back porch. It is hard to describe
Charles. Like many other people in the Order, he was a preacher who decided
that this was a far more interesting and significant thing to do with his
life than working in the desert of the local parish. He lived in the depth
of the spirit – close to the Dark Night of the Soul. And he could make you
believe you belonged there too. I could not imagine telling him this work
was not important and I would not be part of it. That’s what a prior is:
they keep you pointed in the direction you choose for your life, willing
one thing and being obedient. I had chosen to be there. When Summer ’71
ended, Paul Hamilton’s son Cap, and I drove home from Chicago to Denver. We
talked all night, and by the time we drove in I-70 out of Limon into the
Denver morning, I understood a lot more about what had happened to me. I
could think about it and not just respond emotionally. I would not just go
home, pick up my abandoned children, and return to life as usual. I
understood that I had now assumed Care for the World – a burden that would
never leave me.

I did not join the Order, although I often thought about it. I had a
husband with little interest and four children. And I am not sure I could
have been sufficiently obedient, willing-one-thing, and detached from this
world’s goods to have been a satisfactory member of the Order.

Research and working in local communities was
also changing the organization. At the 1972
Summer Research Assembly, they emerged
from the dark night of the soul and waltzed. I
couldn’t believe the reports of what a fine time
people had. The decision was also made to
make the Turn to the World. The assessment
was made that major change in our time would
not happen through the local church, but through
secular society. Soon after, the Ecumenical
Institute became the Institute of Cultural Affairs,
because major change in the world would come from change in the cultural
dimension of society. Human Development Projects were born and established
on every continent in every time zone where local people learned skills to
“develop” their community – human devopment. As ICA worked in communities
with every religion, the intent was not to convert people but to find the
[image: page5image3331086800]

ICA Meeting, Chicago

transparent life-giving word in their religion. I particularly appreciated
the EI/ICA intention to create and define frameworks to use in thinking
about things. My favorite is Knowing/Doing/Being. Although I wrote many
history exams on the economic, political, and cultural backgrounds of an
issue, how those interacted with each other were not as clear until I
worked with the Social Process Triangles. The Global Grid gives a new way
to imagine the world. And of course, there is Poverty, Chastity, and
Obedience.

Over the years, I volunteered in many activities, beckoned by the
opportunity to work with unusually committed people who could see past the
immediacy of the moment to the possibility of actually changing the world
to one in which people – particularly the poorest of the poor--took hold of
what they wanted for their future and worked to make that happen. The work
opened my life to the world.

John and I were part of a “cadre” at Montview Church, one of four churches
in the Denver/Boulder area involved in the Local Church Experiment to renew
our churches. We were instrumental in hiring Ken Barley who with Zoe had
just left the Order, to replace Bill Hudson. He took the leadership role in
changing Montview from a senior ministry model to a corporate ministry
organization. In 1976, I assisted with town meetings in the nation-wide
Town Meeting Project. It was a massive project--at least one was organized
in every county across the country--as a way to raise the consciousness of
residents to the possibility of new life in their community. In 1978, I
visited development projects in India, Malaysia. and Indonesia while we
were on sabbatical in Oxford, glimpsing first hand for the first time the
enormity, richness, and need of the world. I helped organize local
development projects in Colorado to attend the Global Exhibition of
Development Projects in Bombay in 1984, and spent about four weeks there,
helping to set up the conference, leading a group on a field trip to
northern India, and traveling for a week after the conference ended.

The Order: Ecumenical went out of existence in 1986 and the Institute of
Cultural Affairs (ICA) became a professional non-profit organization
working with organizations and communities in the US and abroad. They
developed, taught, and used facilitation and planning methods called the
Technology of Participation or TOPTM. I joined the ICA Board in 1995,
became president in 1998, and coordinator of the 2000 ICA International
Conference held in Denver at Denver University, attended by 650 people,
one-third of whom came from outside the US.

Forty years ago, the Kemper Insurance Company sold their office building to
ICA for $1.00. An eight-story building at North Sheridan Road and Lawrence
Avenue, it is located in Uptown, north of Chicago downtown, between the
commuter rail and Lake Michigan. Uptown is a low-income area with very
diverse population. The Kemper Building became ICA: USA headquarters and a
center for Uptown community services. There are ICA offices on the sixth
floor, a conference center on the 7th floor and a community and guest rooms
on the 8th floor. The rest of the building is leased to community service
organizations including a health clinic, Chicago Social Services and
various immigrant and other support services. On
[image: page6image3331648272]

Sunday music from African congregation services fill the 2nd floor.
Particularly during the years I was on the Board, I was there frequently,
staying in a guest room with the bathroom down the hall, eating meals in
the dining room on the 6th floor and listening to the traffic and sirens
that filled the night. I would fly into O’Hare, take the train to Jefferson
and catch the Lawrence Avenue bus that stopped right on the corner of
Sheridan. It was about a half hour ride through neighborhood after
neighborhood, each a different nationality with its own ethnic flavor. That
eye-opening ride was preparation for entering that building and the work
that goes on there. For many ICA people, it is a place to return to, to see
colleagues, work on project, maintain the archives, and touch base. It was
a home I shared with many others. Over the last few years it is being
turned into a green building modeling energy conservation and
sustainability. In 2012 ICA participated in and was an organizing leader in
Chicago’s Accelerate 77, which stands for Accelerating Green Initiatives in
Chicago's 77 Community Areas. The building also has a new name: GreenRise
Building Uptown.

At the ICA International Conference in Denver in 2000, called the
Millennium Connection, there was concern about the threat of HIV/AIDS to
development in Africa. African staff were overwhelmed by their experience
of HIV. People were dying and AIDS was decimating communities. At that
time, the HIV rate in Zimbabwe was 26% and 16.2% in Zambia. Every family
had at least one person sick and dying. In 2001, I joined several
colleagues to develop and implement the African HIV/AIDS Prevention
Initiative. That work called on everything I had learned in public health
and years of ICA and life experience. I had the opportunity to work with
committed colleagues in the US, Canada, and the UK, but most importantly I
worked in Africa with African staff and on the ground with rural villagers.
I experienced the great pleasure of working with colleagues in a common and
significant enterprise.

What had often seemed like living my life in parallel universes finally
came together. In the previous thirty years, I had many friends and
colleagues in Denver who knew of and worked with ICA. Denver had had a
Religious House with ICA staff and many in Montview Church were active or
aware of ICA. But most people in my day-to-day life were not involved. I
often felt ICA was too strange to be understood by my “normal”
establishment friends and family. If you hadn’t been there, how would it
make sense? ICA always claimed that it was not dis-establishment but
trans-establishment – between the no longer and the not yet. I felt my
experience was far outside that of most people, hard to explain, and hard
for friends and family to grasp.

The ICA African HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative was something everyone could
understand and support. Without funding of Denver friends, Montview Church,

and the sponsorship of funds from several Denver and Boulder Rotary Clubs,
we would have had a difficult time launching the Initiative in eight
countries in Africa. Working in eight countries was possible only because
[image: page7image3332124816]

of the network of self-governing country ICA’s with local staff trained to
lead Human Development Projects since the early 70’s. They were local
community revolutionaries in their countries. Assisting those staff to
address HIV prevention and management, as an integral part of their
development work was our goal. This would become my work for the next
decade and beyond.

ICA as an organization is working as a professional non-profit organization
in an establishment world and it is not easy. It has not yet learned to be
a reliable beneficiary of funding organizations. The commitment of those
from the next generation is needed to continue vigorous work as those
involved since the ‘70’s retire and die. It is difficult to inspire young
people to take up poverty, chastity and obedience – but I know from
experience that that is what will be required to move to the New Social
Vehicle, which seems less attainable and more essential with every
newspaper report.

2012 was the 50th anniversary of this organization. Using the social
process triangles, it is clear that the economic process is the tyrannizing
force with the political as ally. The cultural dimension is collapsed,
divided into sides, each unwilling to even talk about common values – those
final meanings. The Occupy Movement had a glimpse of this, but did not know
how to build that new social vehicle. It is the task for the next twenty
years to figure out how to live in community that has changed radically at
every level—local, national and global--since 1971, but still seeks the
same human benefits. I am one of the people who want to make that happen.
The blessings upon my life by my work, my colleagues, and association with
this remarkable organization – this global home – have been beyond measure.

Written as part of a memoir, Between Earth and Sky, self-published in 2015

ICA Global Citizen –1987

-- 
Richard H. T. Alton
One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF)
Green Community Connections
Interfaith Green Network
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton at gmail.com
**Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2021, March *
http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org

Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
Won't you be my neighbor?
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