[Oe List ...] Yes and . . .
Bishop Isobel
isobeljimbish at optusnet.com.au
Sat Dec 22 12:27:15 PST 2012
Thank you Jim, and thank you Joan Chittister..
yes, my, my, my. Thank you Joe Slicker..
Isobel Bishop.
On 23/12/2012, at 1:31 AM, James Wiegel wrote:
> Gordon and all . . .
>
> Yes, and, aren't we blessed ones . . .
>
> Born, like Gordon and others indicate,
> From such a different far off womb or culture or time
> To still feel and appreciate the warmth,
> The nurture that birthed and growed us up
> Not sugar coating (too much) the reality
> Of what we were born into
>
> And yet to have been so blessed
> To have chosen / been chosen / launched onto
> This immense journey
> Into such a different era
> Remember The Snout?
>
> As Joe Slicker says, sometimes,
> My, my, my, my.
>
> Jim Wiegel
> Jfwiegel at yahoo.com
>
> Joan Chittister “Christmas is not for children. It is for those who
> refuse to give up and grow old, for those to whom life comes newly
> and with purpose each and every day, for those who can let
> yesterday go so that life can be full of new possibility always,
> for those who are agitated with newness whatever their age.”
>
> Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities:
> ToP Facilitation Methods: Feb 12-13, 2013, May 21-22, 2013, Sep
> 17-18, 2013
> ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012
> The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday (1-4 pm) of the
> month
> 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 Dec 18, 2012, at 21:37, Ken Fisher <hkf232 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Thank you, Doris. Thank you, Gordon.
>>
>> I love my 'cowboy' hats, be they Resistol-Texan or Akubra-Australian.
>>
>> I was once a big fan of Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, the Cisco
>> Kid, Have Gun Will Travel and The Rifleman.
>>
>> Later it was Peter Gunn!
>>
>> Time for a change.
>>
>> Ken
>>
>>
>>
>> Who would want to miss and episode?
>>
>>
>> On 2012-12-18, at 11:05 PM, Doris Hahn wrote:
>>
>> We all grew up in a gun culture if we grew up in the U.S.A. (note
>> Gordon's manner of speaking: "It's essential if we're to have a
>> real shot at changing the images...." Earlier this evening I
>> watched a Newshour interview with five or six people from Newtown
>> who were meeting to decide how to respond to this latest horror,
>> and one of them said something about "what we are shooting
>> for...." It's small, but it's real and deeply imbedded; maybe we
>> could say, "symbolic."
>>
>> About 27 years ago, while I was visiting my mother, I decided to
>> oil my old 410 shotgun (given to me by my dad on the occasion of
>> my 11th birthday). Other family members wandered about the kitchen
>> where I was sitting, and someone asked what I was going to do with
>> the gun. My young nephew immediately answered, "shoot people," to
>> which I quickly replied, "not people -- birds." My nephew
>> responded with a pain-filled frown, "Why would you kill a bird?!"
>>
>> It was probably about 1956 that I last shot that gun. In 2004,
>> just before moving to Indiana, I took it to a local gun shop and
>> sold it.
>>
>> I believe the conversation has opened up again, and surely we can
>> do our part in helping it to move along. I will be exceedingly
>> happy if Feinstein can get her bill passed, and having the
>> president do something radical would be helpful, but I think
>> Gordon is right about what our job is, at least for now.
>>
>> Doris Hahn
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 4:52 AM, Gordon Harper
>> <gharper1 at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Since I'm part of this problem and hopelessly complicit in
>> sustaining it, I'll start with a little confession. Like many of
>> us, I grew up in a gun culture, in my case as a Wisconsin farm
>> boy. I loved the various rifles and handguns I accumulated over
>> those early years, and I continued to sharpen my target shooting
>> through college and graduate school and even as a young professor
>> (never really had the heart for hunting). I was (full disclosure)
>> a member of the NRA starting in high school, so that I could get
>> my cases of 22 ammo for a pittance. (I dropped my membership
>> while in college, when the organization started to morph into the
>> right wing entity that we see today.)
>>
>> When our family joined the symbolic order and moved to the West
>> Side, I got rid of everything except for a special treasure, my
>> Ruger Single Six (replica Colt six-gun) with its beautiful
>> rosewood grips and fancy Mexican fast draw holster. Lane Erskine
>> and I used to enjoy sharing our fascination with our handguns'
>> workmanship. Unlike Lane, who was given to packing heat as he
>> moved about in 5th City, I kept mine unloaded and in a locked case
>> in our room.
>>
>> After a few months, however, I became concerned that even with
>> those safeguards, in our community, with the kids having easy
>> access to everyone's rooms, it was too much of a risk. With great
>> sadness, I took my beloved revolver and holster to a gun shop in
>> Wisconsin and sold them, thus ending my gun ownership phase. When
>> it came time, a few years later, to decide which of my siblings
>> would inherit our father's firearms, I chose not to participate in
>> the distribution.
>>
>> I start with this to make the point that what we're dealing with
>> in this gun culture lies very deep in many of us. I've had--and
>> still have--a love affair with the classic American Western film.
>> This is a tradition that exalts the single shootist, who is able
>> to do good and make things right for others precisely because he
>> has at least one sidearm and when necessary uses it well.
>>
>> I see myself mirrored in the fascination of young people today for
>> all the first person shooter games, battlefield adventures and
>> standing one's ground against those hordes of attacking vampires.
>> It's a manifestation of our special culture as Americans, with our
>> frontier tradition and mythology. Which in turn is an aspect of
>> what we sometimes refer to as the concept of American exceptionalism.
>>
>> To deal seriously with gun violence, it seems to me, is to take on
>> the challenge of shifting these profoundly rooted national and
>> personal images and stories of who we are. They are so much a
>> part of us that we hardly ever feel the need to talk about them--
>> they're simply assumed, taken for granted as part of the common
>> ground we share as Americans.
>>
>> We all grieve when events like those of this past week occur, and
>> we feel personal shock and pain when one of them hits close to
>> home. At the same time, at some deep level we also find our way
>> to accepting these occurrences as the tragic but necessary side
>> effects of our special nature as a frontier people and the unique
>> role of our nation in the world.
>>
>> It's like the collateral war damage to innocent people that we've
>> accustomed ourselves to living with. We lament it, and we truly
>> want to keep it to the bare minimum, but we also feel that our
>> historical role requires our paying this cost (a bit of White
>> Man's Burden, redivivus). Theologically, there's a strong
>> connection here with the myth of redemptive violence, which
>> provides a religious rationale for many among us to accept the way
>> things are and for at least part of the deep resistance we
>> encounter to changing the gun laws.
>>
>> I suspect that we will now begin to see some modest changes in
>> access to semi-automatic weapons, some improvements in preventing,
>> spotting and caring for mental illness, maybe even more support
>> for our educational systems. I'm hoping it's also a point in time
>> where we will see, in various formats and venues, the start of the
>> conversation about our national identity and values that we very
>> much need to have.
>>
>> What I find myself looking for are ways to engage our neighbors
>> and ourselves in surfacing and exploring together these largely
>> unquestioned images and stories that so powerfully shape our
>> behavior. What is really special or exceptional about America--
>> the good, the bad and the ugly--relative to what is special and
>> exceptional about any other nation and people? How are we to
>> understand that exceptionalism, and what do we do with it in
>> today's world?
>>
>> Some of us might like to get rid of the whole idea of
>> exceptionalism, but I think in this country, it's there, and we
>> have to engage it. Doing so, it seems to me, is key to that long
>> range and indirect strategy we've been talking about in this
>> conversation. It's essential if we're to have a real shot at
>> changing the images from which we continue to act and from which
>> we and others continue to suffer.
>>
>> Engaging these conversations, I'm afraid, means welcoming and
>> listening deeply to those with whom we strongly disagree--sharing
>> and discussing together what we think the times call us to
>> preserve in our heritage, what to leave behind and what to
>> recreate. If it's to work, it will have to be uncomfortably
>> inclusive, in a big tent, as the Occupy folk like to say.
>>
>> We could begin to start such conversations in our workplaces, our
>> churches, our book groups, our community meetings, at the pub or
>> coffee shop, over dinner with friends, on line, using all these
>> wonderful social media tools. It's something each of us could
>> tackle, if we chose to, without much of an organizational
>> structure. Maybe down the road at some point, . . . .
>>
>> Is this a tactic--and a conversation--we want to be part of?
>>
>> Gordon
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/17/2012 1:45 PM, jlepps at pc.jaring.my wrote:
>>> Colleagues
>>>
>>> I'd like to add one more note to this lively dialogue (which I
>>> hope continues, and perhaps even begins to focus).
>>>
>>> It's obviously the case that a change of heart is required in
>>> this situation. The question becomes how to make that happen, and
>>> I'm reminded of Martin Luther Kings's response to us WASPS who
>>> were opposing desegregation because "we need to have hearts
>>> change to support integration." To paraphrase him, "Laws can't
>>> make you love me, but they may prevent you from killing me."
>>> Strict gun control may be that kind of law. And, IMHO, whatever
>>> will prevent this sort of mass murder is worth doing. Also I've
>>> noticed that hearts are remarkably adaptable to their external
>>> situation.
>>>
>>> In terms of luring the tiger, the question now that she's out of
>>> her lair (sorry Cynthia), what do we do: well perhaps something
>>> initial like forbidding the sale of assault weapons and mass
>>> magazines. That might be able to get some support from tigers.
>>> After all, we endure considerable inconvenience to insure safety
>>> on airplanes,, so perhaps the inconvenience of forbidding access
>>> to these instruments of mass destruction might be a possible
>>> first step.
>>>
>>> I don't believe we'll be able to change tigers into lambs, but
>>> maybe we can help de-fang them!
>>>
>>> John
>>>
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>>
>>
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