[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] What is the right question these days?

[Ken Gillgren]

Wow, this has been an incredible conversation, with echoes that reach 
back to my First Great Awakening, when three questions were posed: Who 
am I? What do I? How be I? followed by intensive, continuous 
bottom-dropping-out experiences that made what I thought was my concrete 
life question at the time (conscientious objection or ministerial 
vocation) seem, if not trivial, then a little beside the point of a 
deeper issue.

And somehow I ended up in the Order during that odd, in-between moment 
when the Quest for the Historical Jesus, Luke and Psalm conversations, 
scrubbing grave plots, The Way of the Pilgrim, The Journey to the East 
(dang, I knew I shouldn't have given up on playing the violin!), fasting 
and canonical hours (I was Methodist, for god's sake!), somehow made 
perfect sense alongside Global Research Assemblies (social process 
triangles to the ninth level) and Councils with people rising up to be 
accountable for Yellow Knife, among other far corners I never expected 
to see (but ultimately came pretty close).

And of course, the fine wind, a wedgeblade inserted into time, with 
preschool children living in the Universe and Dancing to Life (or 
Bending History, which seemed somehow logically and satisfyingly 
interchangeable with Dancing to Life). And "we are the music makers, we 
are the builders of dreams; we are the earthbuilders and movers it 
seems" With our own somewhat stilted mythologies around the Bureaucratic 
Cog (FIRE the one who fails), the Underground Revolutionary (SHOOT the 
one who fails), and the Trans-establishment Self (RECONSTRUCT THE 
CONTEXT around the one who fails).

And strangely, the answer that now comes to my mind in response to why 
I'm here, what I'm doing, and how I'm being is all "for the greater 
glory of G-O-D," and this from someone who long ago left behind Sunday 
services and any formal religious practice, and with full consciousness 
of all the political, economic, and cultural baggage this phrase 
entails. At the same time, I've witnessed how this language still 
animates and inspires profound community service in the most impossible 
situations (think: African American churches in, for example, Rainier 
Beach).

The Journey is the context, with its quest for an ever-widening 
consciousness and participation in Wholeness. The Kingdom has always 
arrived and is always coming in power (honest, this unnerves me to throw 
around this language willy nilly, but I somehow blame RS-I for the fact 
that it makes any sense to me at any level).

So whatever the question or calling that quickens the current action of 
my soul, lies a deeper affiliation with a Wholeness (beyond my 
imagining) that is being birthed and against an illusory fragmentation 
(around ego, tribe, or ideology) which may come clothed in a reasonable 
justification or accommodation for "what's possible."

More about the flow than prematurely measured outcomes, more about the 
dance than bending history.

Oops, now this is feeling more like the Earthrise witness that I've been 
meaning to offer, although still far short of what I feel I want to say.

I am so profoundly grateful to have stood at the side of a people whose 
very presence, for a moment in time (that continues to this day), 
interrupts historical forces at the most personal level and invites "no 
one special" to an unexpected calling (preschool teacher, healthcare 
worker, fund raiser, Town Meeting orchestrator, business facilitator, 
yes, even mayor of the city of Indiahoma) as a pivot point for an 
emerging Wholeness, already present and coming in power.

Ok, I kind of got wound up there; what was the question again?

Thanks to all of you for all you have been and done, for all you 
continue to be and do, until "the end of Time."

Ken Gillgren
Milwaukee Metro, Amarillo, Indiahoma, Minto, Selawik Spud, Anchorage, 
Medan, Seoul, Cheong Ju, Tokyo, Seattle.


On 7/2/2012 11:32 AM, John Cock wrote:
> I appreciate what you've said, Wayne.
>
> 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.
>
> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dialogue-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net
> [mailto:dialogue-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Wayne Nelson
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2012 12:19 PM
> To: Colleague Dialogue
> Subject: [Dialogue] What is the right question these days?
>
>
> I am wondering 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.
>
>
> \\/
> - - - - - - - - - - Wayne Nelson
> wnelson at ica-associates.ca
> O - 416-691-2316
> M - 647-229-6910
>
>
>
>
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