[Oe List ...] An Amazing Two Days at ICA Chicago-Telling Our Story & The Global Archives

Sun Sep 30 19:28:29 PDT 2012

Attached is an "echo in the hallway" in a Zhongguo setting.  The window of opportunity is teaching Oral English.  The three beats to assist students to describe noticings, express feelings, articulate thoughts, and formulate plans, is their reflection on their own life.  Then we move to a method that begins with listening (a life method, now commercially being taken advantage of by Pimsler), and an image of society (the social process).  

OE is an elective where students expect to while the time away.  Their welcome leaves them wondering what they had gotten into, and after 16-weeks, they are still figuring out what hit them!

Great visit, Herman, and the reflection is lighting up all bulbs.

j'aime la vie

-----Original Message-----
From: Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com>
To: 'Order Ecumenical Community' <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Mon, Oct 1, 2012 6:40 am
Subject: [Oe List ...] An Amazing Two Days at ICA Chicago-Telling Our Story & The Global Archives

I spent what for me were an amazing two days in Chicago last Thursday andFriday. I went because Jack and Judy Gilles were working on the Global Archivesand were going to leave this morning, September 30. It was the only time I couldget to see them. 

I am finding a yearning to tell our story and bring some ofit forward. More particularly I miss working with people who were formed out ofthe same fire as I was. I work with activists, truly “Those Who Care,”but something is missing for me. It’s primarily an interior aspect—that“die on the march” aspect, that “live the mystery”aspect, that “the past is approved and the future is open (to be created)”aspect, that “we can get anything down that is necessary” aspect,that “we can drop everything and focus . . . and sacrifice” aspect,”that “we can leave all our possessions behind” if need be aspect.

One could argue that the Marines also create this kind ofinterior steel and discipline, but it is different. (Actually the Marines mightexcel in honor of country and even willingness to die, but it is stilldifferent.)

I have only experienced this in the Order. I know this hasmade me much of what I am and I have a yearning to pass it on to others,especially as I realize my own age, 67, and see so many colleagues passingaway.

So while a part of me thinks its silly for grownups to befiling all the town meeting 76 event folders (and all the work that goes intothat), another part of me also claws back to recover that past . . . for thefuture.

What we were as the Order has passed away (I mean in termsof being able to re-create it as it was again), and all of those magnificentmoments and events we created have passed away. Yet there is an echo in thehallway that will not stop.

I will go into this more later, but what past it is that Iwant to pass on is difficult to grasp. Is it the Order, RSI, EI, ICA, EI and ICA, all beforeJoe died (or in my case before 1975 when I left the Order), all up to todayincluding the recent history of ICA?I have some ideas, but they are not important for this email. All that’simportant now is that I was drawn back to Chicagoto discuss, primarily with Jack, how the spirit transformation part of who wewere then (and inside are now) can be transmitted to the future as we whoexperienced this grow older and older and pass away.

The “we” I am talking about is those of us whocarry a memory back of 50-55 years (other may have a different time span) whenit seems to me the really creative breakthroughs occurred. I’m at theyounger end of those who experienced that as adults (I was 21 when I joined theOrder in 1967). Now some may have joined in 1972 or later and still have “gottenit,” but what I am talking about is something that was gotten or it wasnot, back then. 

So we are a dying cohort and the question has arisen for mewhether there is something we still need to do together? My answer is I thinkthat if there is something that we still need to do together it is to transmitthat legacy as a living legacy for present and future generations. Part of thisis transmitting facts, part the interior narrative, but most of all it istransmitting the timeless spiritual reality we came to know and which hasshaped our lives but this is not easy because it is not a simple thing. It’smuch more than just coming out of an RS-1, or any other short even, inspired 

I had many important moments of understanding this past weekin Chicago and felt tremendous gratitude for what Marge Philbrook and colleagueshave done on the archives, and for the work Jack has done in thinking throughhow this can be a living legacy. I

In brief Jack and those who workshopped with him, realizedthat its not just a matter of preserving the past by putting facts in filecabinets and waiting for someone to want it, but it is giving people a way ofunderstanding what’s in the collection (Jack uses the term “curation”like a museum curator) and applying that material to the cutting edge issues ofour time. What I especially appreciated though was the attached chart in threeformats, because it gave me a way to grasp the entirety of what it is that wewere/are/may need in some fashion to pass on. 

In a certain sense the attached chart overwhelms me becauseI thought there were a few key things like “contextual ethics” andthe RS-1 dynamic and a few other things that might “really need to be”passed on . . .  just a few key things. But now I see it was “all of it”—agiant spiritual event and happening that unfolded over many years and took manyforms all of which were a single event. To recreate this would requirethousands of people in summer assemblies and a new order and that is not goingto happen. Yet I think there is something we can do and need to do and which noone else can do.

So, in conclusion, I believe there is something we stillneed to do together and that is to pass on a living legacy. By distinguishinglegacy from living legacy I meant this: “Legacy” is preserving thepast for its own sake. “Living legacy” is recovering the past sothat it might continue to transform the future.

The attached Accessions chart is just a beginning. I knowthat Jack would like to receive your suggestions.

More soon,

Herman

_____________________________________________
Herman Greene
2516  Winningham Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-929-4116 (h)
919-624-0579 (c)
919-942-4358 (f)
Skype: hgreene-nc
hfgreene at mindspring.com 

_______________________________________________
OE mailing list
OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120930/eb009f28/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OE_Imaginal_map.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 455949 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120930/eb009f28/attachment-0002.pdf>