[Oe List ...] Some thoughts about the future

[Herman Greene]

Excellent Jann,

ESI is something in which various organizations can collaborate without
losing their identity.

On the issue of a new teaching force, a new EI (either Ecumenical Institute
around John Cock's redefinition of ecumenical) or an Ecozoic Institute
drawing on Thomas Berry's understanding of that term but not making it a
Thomas Berry institute) is something that I am probably in a strong
minority in thinking about. The gist of the idea is that OE would turn over
to a new generation an understanding of pedagogy around a new core
curriculum. As I see it that would be a curriculum developed in the
collaboration that ESI is, but there is also the possibility that some
group would take it on as a project and there would be nothing wrong with
that effort becoming organized.

As I was going through materials yesterday from OE, I came across two
article by Bill Parker on the new pedagogy. We are thinking along the same
lines. They are both presented below and I can send them as attachments to
anyone who asks for them.

In one Bill makes this salient point: "The circumstances of our environment
can no longer use facilitation as the awakenment tool at first. We are
living in a time in which a “new pedagogy” must come into being; not
facilitation of everyone’s mixed up and confused thinking."

In the other Bill makes this point: "None of us as individuals woke up
until someone awakened us personally. Only then did we grasp that we could
be a skilled pedagogue awakening and training thousands in a new pedagogy
for the sake of awakening the world to a new way of being human. "

I too look forward to substantive dialogue around this.

See articles below.

Herman

Colleagues,

Speaking of the New Pedagogy, which implies a new pedagogue, perhaps the
obvious needs to be pointed out. Here are some thoughts about the emerging
shape of the New Pedagogy as seen through the presence of the new
pedagogue.

The New Pedagogy is remarkably different from anything we have ever done in
our past because the pedagogue is completely different from the pedagogue
of the past, even if the pedagogues are the same person. The pedagogue of
the 60’s was not global, in spite of one’s self story, nor had the
pedagogue of the 60’s spent 30 years living the Dark Night of the Soul. The
60’s pedagogue had no understanding of the terrain and topography of the
other world in the midst of this world, the Kingdom of God, I believe Jesus
called it. The old pedagogue had no first hand knowledge of what the
pedagogy of the oppressed was nor how it worked in every land of the planet
until they went there and did it. The old pedagogue had no clue as to how
to be sustained in a solitary and self-sufficient life. The pedagogue of
the 60’s was naïve about the world and about the consequences of not being
responsible globally, theologically, or economically, as the human
condition and the condition of the planet reveal so clearly today. The
Pedagogue of the 60’s saw ecumenism insofar as the Christian community was
concerned and not as a vehicle for global peace and diversity through
interaction of an inter-faith community.

The pedagogy of the past was but a prelude to the pedagogy we are now
putting together. The pedagogue of the past was but a spiritual shadow of
the pedagogues you have become today. But we must shake off our stylistic
compromises and our preferred prejudices we acquired in order to be
imminently presentable to our chosen markets, if we are to build the earth.
We cannot keep doing what we have been doing, we cannot simply wrap our
arms around everything everyone is doing and say that is it, we must
courageously embrace a new role, take a new risk, embrace an open future,
address the global contradiction and see to it that what needs to be done
is getting done.

None of us as individuals woke up until someone awakened us personally.
Only then did we grasp that we could be a skilled pedagogue awakening and
training thousands in a new pedagogy for the sake of awakening the world to
a new way of being human.  We live in urgent times now and our time is
short.  If we are going to move on this moment, now is the time to move.
There is no doubt we have been prepared by the fire of life for this. The
only question is who will.

There is no new pedagogy nor new pedagogue without embodying that which is
being disclosed in the style of the pedagogy. RSI changed our lives because
the pedagogues were living their pedagogy! That reality was the
methodology. We, too, are called to be that embodiment regardless of
whether we say yes or no to what history is asking us to do.

With profound respect, take care for there is little time and so much to
do.

Grace and Peace be unto you.

Bill

Given at the People of the Order Gathering

July 14, 15, 2010

By Bill Parker



THE NEW ORDER WITNESS



It was remarkable to see the twenty or thirty people of the Order come to Ok
lahoma and participate in the Symposium with OCU faculty and OIKOS student
scholars. The gathering was like nothing else and that special, unique relat
ionship among the People of the Order was manifest again.



We have come a great distance together and alone. Who we were as a community
of people marked a reality still having a major impact on people’s lives. If
you don’t believe me, ask Jim Wheeler, who just bore witness in the Wheeler
Declaration and in what he just now shared with us. We were a community tran
sparently grounded in the faith tradition of the Church. Our mission to the
world took us deeply into the great tradition of the Christian faith. Everyt
hing we said, thought and did was carefully understood to be building on the
great tradition of the faith. We probed deeply into the historical church be
fore we

decided to move directly into the world and demonstrate what the Church look
ed like in mission on behalf of all.



Our mission to the world took us to places where we all discovered something
far more was required of us, something new; something capable of sustaining a
pluriform community in mission. We could no longer function as a transparent
ly grounded community of the Christian tradition: we were diverse, and yet
we needed new myths, rites, and symbols, as well as a practical corporate di
scipline.



In this turning point, we moved to a secular discipline based upon the most
common denominator: “Those who care”. We encountered a fork in the road and
we took this one and became the Institute of Cultural Affairs. Now, I am not
criticizing our decision. It was exactly what we needed to have done, as pai
nful as that turned out to be. What we did sustained the movement and demons
trated an entirely new, radical

and effective method for sustainable human development the world over. But f
or us, the Order, over time, over a stretch of a decade, the foundation of o
ur spirit life was experienced as cloudy, or shallow. Yet we could not go ba
ck. We had become global, spiritually global, and we had gone beyond the Chr
istian faith tradition to a pluriform tradition, or no tradition.



*T**HE NEW TIMES*

Eboo Patel, in his book *Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the
Struggle for the Soul of a* *Generation*, says the divisions in the world to
day are in inter-faith relationships. But, the divisions are not between C
hristian and Muslim, or Muslims and Jews, or Hindu and Christian. The line
that divides all faiths is between the Religious Totalitarians and the Relig
ious Pluriformists within all faith traditions.

The Religious Totalitarians isolate themselves and think of themselves as su
perior, or even cultivate hate toward those who look or believe differently
from themselves. While the Religious Pluriformists embrace diversity of fai
th, culture and practice, and seek peace and community by working together t
oward a

better world. That is the global division that threatens everything the hum
an community has worked to achieve.



The remarkable fact in this division is that Religious Totalitarians have f
or decades invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the careful training,
mentoring, and encouraging of the rising generations about what it means to
be human. They have nurtured the younger generations ever so carefully in ra
cial or religious hatred and the accompanying self-righteousness as a true p
icture of reality. They have built and staffed Universities, High Schools, M
iddle Schools, Elementary Schools, and even day care to groom more toward th
at way of seeing reality. They have training camps to get them prepared for
the “holy” struggle.



While this is going on, during the same decades, the Religious Pluriformists
have invested practically zero in the special nurturing formation and develo
pment of the rising generations toward the desirability and *necessity* of a
world of pluriformity and diversity.


 Patel walks us through the known terrorists and the violent groups developi
ng rapidly in this country and around the world during the past few years.
He points out that it is the young who are committing the terrorist’s acts,
as they give their lives to it. They are hardly old enough to know what they
are doing but the older men behind them are mentoring them in what their fai
th tradition means, pushing them toward notions of superiority, hatred of di
fferences of other people, violence and acts of terrorism. All the while the
men behind these young people are providing assurances that their violent ac
ts are pure, necessary, and are the will of God. They assure the rising gene
ration that these beliefs, attitudes, and actions are the fulfillment of the
ir lives, climaxed by dying for the struggle.



The time is now for all those wanting a culture of peace, diversity and pl
uriformity to make a bold

decision. We have come to a historic moment in our life where we are facing
another fork in the road. Jim

Wheeler, the author of the Wheeler Declaration, says when the Order came to
that fork in the road in

1970-1971 it chose the ICA, the secular option; it left the other fork, the
Ecumenical Institute fork,

because of the difficulties its Christian tradition created in the diverse s
ituations in which we were located. He adds, however, that the unrealized op
portunities never go away. *T**hey only remain in the unconscious* *until ci
rcumstances call them forth as a necessity and that is precisely where we ar
e today.*



We had that possibility in 1970-1971, because we understood ourselves to be
living out of a New Religious Mode, to become the global, interfaith Ecumeni
cal Institute but we chose not to and for very good reasons. We had to go t
hrough that which we went through, where the bottom fell out from under us,
and we were shattered over time, and ultimately called ourselves out of bei
ng as an Order in 1988. We were not prepared to move forward as the Ecumenic
al Institute in a global, interfaith way and had we

done so at that time, we would have become just another Religious Totalitari
an community. God saved us from that.



Returning to that fork in the road is precisely what is happening today. The
circumstances of our environment can no longer use facilitation as the awake
nment tool at first. We are living in a time in which a “new pedagogy” must
come into being; not facilitation of everyone’s mixed up and confused thinki
ng that yields a sense of hopelessness and cynicism except on a most reduced
scale. We have to cut through all of the popular rubbish and undergrowth to
reach the individual center of people’s lives so they may have the possibili
ty of deciding for themselves what it means to be a human being today, in th
is moment and circumstance. If you don’t see the differences I am pointing
to in facilitation and pedagogy, then you do not understand what I am trying
to say. I may need to find a better way to say this.



*T**HE NEW PEDAGOGY*

This returning to the fork does not mean we return to the old pedagogy and
the old courses, but rather a “new pedagogy” based upon grounding of Christi
an, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, or other faith traditions. Pedagogy is something
we have all got to relearn. We have embraced our role as facilitators for 40
years and we cannot facilitate this awakenment. It requires pedagogy that s
lices through the peripheral to the depths of the human soul. This is the
cutting edge today! This new pedagogy is the awakenment task before us. In
this context, facilitation is our tool kit, our hammer and screwdriver, for
engagement but not our edge for awakenment.



What we have been doing with OIKOS and OCU, Centenary University, and other
associations is getting access to the rising generations, who by way of the
secular and scientific cultural realities, have never been given the possibi
lity of their own faith traditions as grounded in life and having those trad
itions interpret the meaning of their lives. Instead, they swirl around in c
onfusion, trying to interpret and make sense of their faith tradition and i
ts relationship to their lives in particular.



Patel describes himself as being raised in a secular Muslim family in Am
erica. He visited his Islamic family in India: Grandmother, aunts, and other
members of their household. He was aware of knowing he was a member of a fai
th tradition but actually not relating to it very much in real life. After m
any years, during prayer to observe Laylatul Qadr, the night in Ramadan when
the Qur’an was first revealed, on New Year’s Eve, the turn of the millennium
, he had a moment in his life when he was struck with a stark clarity: *he*,
Eboo Patel, was part of the story of Islam, *he* was a part of the story of
pluralism, *he* was part of the story of the spiritual principal of human to
getherness. He saw himself not as a member of a faith tradition but as one
who is a carrier of his faith tradition and a part of the larger story.



*T**HE NEW ORDER*

This is where you can see the 21st Century Spirit Movement. It is a vast, ex
pansive global movement of the spirit. It is diversified and it is already l
ocated in every aspect of human civilization. But, it must be declared! And
we are the ones who can do that and do it on the foundation of our faith tra
ditions, whatever those traditions may be.



So, when we look at our past journey, it is not surprising to see how strong
our growth was when we were standing on a faith tradition reaching back to t
he beginning of time, thousands of years. Then we entered

a decade or so of a new secular faith tradition that went all the way back
to 1970-1971. Now we stand at a crucial vantage point to see that we are abo
ut the transparent grounding of every faith tradition in order to bring the
faith continuum from the beginning of time into the present and future. *Onl
y this will enable* *the care of this world by creating a culture of peace,
economic justice, and planetary sustainability.*



We need to pursue the avenues of accessing the rising generations, to be amo
ng them, to be a grounded presence of knowledge and experience from which th
ey can access the foundations for creating the future. However, before this
can happen, we must corporately work through the current perversions blocki
ng people from having the opportunity to make a decision about what it means
for them to be human.



We have been called to awaken a new generation of pedagogues in the ranks of
the rising generations, and provide the solid, sustaining, historical founda
tions upon which they can provide leadership for the

21st Century Spirit Movement. They will, themselves, become the face of thei
r own faith traditions in caring for the world and shaping the world to come
into a culture of peace and working together.



If you remember our first decade, then you know how important our cultic ac
ts were to everything we understood about life. Over time, we lost what we u
nderstood for so many years as “that without which” there is no sustaining
substance. I realized, as I looked into it, that corporately we lost any sen
se of the cultic practices long before 1988. When I did decide, not long ago
, to live out of a spiritual discipline with a continuum of faith going f
arther back than 1971, I looked for the only cultic acts I knew which had co
nnected me to all the past, present and future: the Daily Office and the Com
mon Meal. I wanted to see them for analytical reasons at first: to see their
components, then the phrasing, and how they connected

to time.



The work on spiritual practices and consciousness by Pat Webb and David McCl
eskey of the Silence Foundation and Larry Ward of the Lotus Institute, remin
ded me of the necessity of cultic acts for one’s consciousness, quality of l
ife, and care for the world. I realized that my own practices did not go back
beyond memories prior to 1971. So I decided to review what I once new about
our cultic practices and I found I had forgotten most of it and suspected I
was not alone.



I started searching for a Daily Office in my files, on our various websites,
and in the Golden Pathways CD but I could not find the Daily Office I rememb
ered! I could only find something that had been transcribed into something e
lse and my experience of the change was that someone had taken out the culti
c nature of the Daily Office resulting in what appeared to me as several lev
els of higher abstraction. What I found started with “In the Name of the
Creator. And of the Redeemer. And of the Sustainer. Amen.” This edited versi
on did not strike me as a “cultic act” coming out of all the past, over thou
sands of years. The cultic act I remembered was “In the Name of the Father.
And of the Son, And of the Holy

Spirit. Amen.” That was cultic! How much I had forgotten and I wondered abo
ut others. What do we not understand about a cultic act? It is an act for al
l time: past, present, and future. It is not something we edit to conform to
some pressures of the culture. If we do, we create a different cultic act no
t necessarily connected to the faith tradition.



So, I spent several days pulling my hair out trying to remember every phrase
of the Daily Office and writing it, piece by piece, putting in the cultic la
nguage. As I worked on this I realized the Daily Office became a solitary di
scipline for me which connected me to a tradition going back to the beginni
ng of time. I had a cultic act upon which to again ground my life in my fai
th tradition. I am glad I did that; it has transformed my awareness of my o
wn life and the understanding of the life around me. I look forward to exami
ning the Common Meal as well. As Jim Wheeler said when he quoted from Isaiah
in the Wheeler Declaration: “Look to the Rock from which you were hewn, and
to the quarry from which you were dug.”



We know now that everything we did was in part dedicated to developing skill
ed pedagogues who understood the power of cultic acts. Do you remember all t
hose pedagogy weekends we had, or if it was not a pedagogy weekend it was a
course that needed to be taught? Do you remember how our faculty was struc
tured so that pedagogical training was a co-objective of every course we tau
ght? Think also of the operations of the corporate life of the Religious Hou
ses, all focused on pedagogical development of everyone in the House. That w
as how pedagogical formation happened: we lived it, we took everyone under o
ur wing for the sake of their formation, and it wasn’t just practice, it was
working in the presence of the Order who was grounded in their faith traditi
on and who became the transcendence of that faith tradition to the world.



This is what we have been called to do and it has required all of our past t
o prepare us to say yes and to assume the role. And you know something reall
y neat about this historical moment for us? We don’t have to wait to see
what the ICA decides, or does. Nor do we need to wait to see what Mark Davi
es decides, or OCU, or OIKOS. This is a decision we can make right now, here
in this room, here with these people. We can now leave the old Order Ecumeni
cal behind. We can decide to be a new Order, the same in some ways, but tota
lly transformed by our past life as a Religious/Secular Order and our journe
y through the Dark Night of the Soul. Born anew for a new time, a new age, a
new pedagogy, and a new Order, the Global Inter-Faith Ecumenical Order!



This Order is not to be structured like the past Order but it already is sel
f-sufficient in its covenant to a corporate life and mission. It is an Order
of individuals who know that engagement in a specific daily spiritual discip
line is the basis for everything else. Wherever there are two or more the Or
der will have a corporate celebration weekly or monthly. There shall be a qu
arterly planning council for the global mission, the great work. There shall
be an annual Order Council for the work of accounting and strategic commitme
nts. The Order shall study together such missionally focused work as Eboo P
atel’s book, for example.



Now, I am going to stop and let the rest of you have a chance to tell me how
wrong I am. Thank you


-- 
__________________________________________________
Herman F. Greene
2516 Winningham Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-942-4358 (ph & fax)
hfgreenenc at gmail.com
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