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

[Herman Greene]

I know from talking with Jack at some lengths that we are in agreement on
the spirit of what this is about.

The issue though is not about the Order but about what kind of mission
might be calling something into being which needs to draw on our legacy. In
Catholic circles there are teaching orders, preaching orders, serving
orders and contemplative orders. We were a teaching order and became a
serving order. I'm primarily raising the issue of raising up pedagogy
around the ESI initiative, out of that may come some corporate structure
but it has to come out of the mission not "from" the Oder.

Jack really believes the guilds are important. To me this is again forming
structures to make change happen. I don't meant to cut out dialogue about
the guild, certainly anyone may pursue it or any group may pursue it. I'm
primarily concerned about developing and teaching a curriculum to
values-based organizations about the "Great Transition" and about how to be
a global citizen in the planetary phase of human development.

Jack just sent me the highly productive work he has done on the "Life
Process" which is a set of three trianlges, one of which is the social
process, another is the human process (or self) and the third is the
ecological process. At bottom this is what the curriculum would need to
cover, but how to do it is a challenge.

To follow the thread I am on would require some background reading, most of
which I have accumulated. Which is not to say that I would not have to do
background reading on the thread you have followed.

This is pedagogy directed not at, as Bill says the Christian church, but at
religious, spiritual and secular values-based organization (VBOs). The
curriculum would have to be developed, presumably in collaboration with
non-EI/ICA groups that are involved in ESI, though it would also perhaps be
wise to have a group that specifically focuses on this within our lineage.
Collaborations don't just happen, the member groups have to bring something
to the table so we would need to prepare what we bring to the table.

It is fulfilling in our time what EI would have done in our time if it had
come into being now. The structures and forms of doing this will be
different though than what we had in EI. There is no template it would have
to come into being. Any "order" "ritual" or "corporate" aspect of this
would simply be for the mission.

To go back to a point I made earlier, I am raising this because I don't
know of any group that was able to do through teaching (pedagogy) what EI
was able to do. We are the resource that is needed and we can pass this on
drawing on the experience, wisdom and learning we have gained over the
years to a new time and to a new generation in the remaining years of our
lives.

Herman

Also


On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Jack Gilles <jackcgilles at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Herman has started a new and profound dialogue. This is indeed what we
> were aiming at with our creation of the Springboard group and list serve
> years ago. There is no doubt that there is a core of us who feel deeply
> about the need to relate together in a proactive role in a number of
> domains. It was the basis of the Springboard that the Order decision so
> many of us participated in transcends any particular manifestation, and
> many of us consider ourselves "Order" until death. I believe, like Herman,
> the existence of a self-conscious Order is something to seriously consider.
> All of us have encountered people who never heard of the ICA/EI/OE but
> would see themselves as part of the "Invisible College", "The League" etc.
> and would find a covenanted body meaningful. The key question is "for what
> end" would it be? I have always liked the name "Order of the Earth" (OE) as
> a holding category and shifts the relationship from religion to Ecology (in
> the most profound sense).
>
> Anyway, I an certain that not everyone on this list serve wants to
> participate in this conversation, but I'll let others suggest at what point
> we would shift to either a newly created list serve, or perhaps better,
> into Google docs. and eventually Google Hangouts. But we need to, at some
> point, begin to move toward some collaborative 'doing', even if that doing
> is some research and/or some corporate writing.
>
> Let the dialogue continue. Thanks Herman, Jann, Jim etc.
>
> Jack
>
> On Jun 24, 2013, at 8:27 AM, Herman Greene <hfgreenenc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
> Oklahoma and participate in the Symposium with OCU faculty and OIKOS stude
> nt scholars. The gathering was like nothing else and that special, unique
> relationship among the People of the Order was manifest again.
>
>
> We have come a great distance together and alone. Who we were as a communi
> ty of people marked a reality still having a major impact on people’s live
> s. 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 comm
> unity transparently grounded in the faith tradition of the Church. Our mis
> sion to the world took us deeply into the great tradition of the Christian
> faith. Everything we said, thought and did was carefully understood to be
> building on the great tradition of the faith. We probed deeply into the hi
> storical church before we
> decided to move directly into the world and demonstrate what the Church lo
> oked like in mission on behalf of all.
>
>
> Our mission to the world took us to places where we all discovered somethi
> ng far more was required of us, something new; something capable of sustai
> ning a pluriform community in mission. We could no longer function as a
> transparently grounded community of the Christian tradition: we were diver
> se, and yet we needed new myths, rites, and symbols, as well as a practica
> l corporate discipline.
>
>
> In this turning point, we moved to a secular discipline based upon the mos
> t 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, Ia
> m not criticizing our decision. It was exactly what we needed to have don
> e, as painful as that turned out to be. What we did sustained the movement
> and demonstrated an entirely new, radical
> and effective method for sustainable human development the world over. But
> for us, the Order, over time, over a stretch of a decade, the foundation
> of our spirit life was experienced as cloudy, or shallow. Yet we could not
> go back. We had become global, spiritually global, and we had gone beyond
> the Christian 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, t
> he Struggle for the Soul of a* *Generation*, says the divisions in the wor
> ld today are in inter-faith relationships. But, the divisions are not betw
> een Christian and Muslim, or Muslims and Jews, or Hindu and Christian. The
> line that divides all faiths is between the Religious Totalitarians and th
> e Religious Pluriformists within all faith traditions.
> The Religious Totalitarians isolate themselves and think of themselves as
> superior, or even cultivate hate toward those who look or believe diff
> erently from themselves. While the Religious Pluriformists embrace diversi
> ty of faith, culture and practice, and seek peace and community by working
> together toward a
> better world. That is the global division that threatens everything the hu
> man community has worked to achieve.
>
>
> The remarkable fact in this division is that Religious Totalitarians have
> for decades invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the careful traini
> ng, mentoring, and encouraging of the rising generations about what it mea
> ns to be human. They have nurtured the younger generations ever so careful
> ly in racial or religious hatred and the accompanying self-righteousness
> as a true picture of reality. They have built and staffed Universities, Hi
> gh Schools, Middle Schools, Elementary Schools, and even day care to groom
> more toward that 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 Pluriformis
> ts have invested practically zero in the special nurturing formation and d
> evelopment of the rising generations toward the desirability and *necessit
> y* of a world of pluriformity and diversity.
>
>
>  Patel walks us through the known terrorists and the violent groups develo
> ping rapidly in this country and around the world during the past few year
> s. 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 wh
> at their faith tradition means, pushing them toward notions of superiority
> , hatred of differences of other people, violence and acts of terrorism.
> All the while the men behind these young people are providing assurances t
> hat their violent acts are pure, necessary, and are the will of God. They
> assure the rising generation that these beliefs, attitudes, and actions are
> the fulfillment of their 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 faci
> ng another fork in the road. Jim
>
> Wheeler, the author of the Wheeler Declaration, says when the Order came t
> o that fork in the road in
>
> 1970-1971 it chose the ICA, the secular option; it left the other fork, th
> e Ecumenical Institute fork,
> because of the difficulties its Christian tradition created in the diverse
> situations in which we were located. He adds, however, that the unrealized
> opportunities never go away. *T**hey only remain in the unconscious* *unti
> l circumstances call them forth as a necessity and that is precisely where
> we are 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 Ec
> umenical Institute but we chose not to and for very good reasons. We had
> to go through that which we went through, where the bottom fell out from u
> nder us, and we were shattered over time, and ultimately called ourselves
> out of being as an Order in 1988. We were not prepared to move forward as
> the Ecumenical Institute in a global, interfaith way and had we
> done so at that time, we would have become just another Religious Totalit
> arian community. God saved us from that.
>
>
> Returning to that fork in the road is precisely what is happening today. T
> he 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 confus
> ed thinking that yields a sense of hopelessness and cynicism except on a m
> ost reduced scale. We have to cut through all of the popular rubbish and u
> ndergrowth to reach the individual center of people’s lives so they may ha
> ve the possibility of deciding for themselves what it means to be a human
> being today, in this moment and circumstance. If you don’t see the diff
> erences I am pointing to in facilitation and pedagogy, then you do not und
> erstand what I am trying to say. I may need to find a better way to say th
> is.
>
>
>
> *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
> Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, or other faith traditions. Pedagogy is
> something we have all got to relearn. We have embraced our role as facili
> tators for 40 years and we cannot facilitate this awakenment. It requires
> pedagogy that slices through the peripheral to the depths of the human so
> ul. This is the cutting edge today! This new pedagogy is the awakenment t
> ask 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 othe
> r associations is getting access to the rising generations, who by way of
> the secular and scientific cultural realities, have never been given the p
> ossibility of their own faith traditions as grounded in life and having th
> ose traditions interpret the meaning of their lives. Instead, they swirl a
> round in confusion, trying to interpret and make sense of their faith trad
> ition and its 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 oth
> er members of their household. He was aware of knowing he was a member of
> a faith tradition but actually not relating to it very much in real life.
> After many years, during prayer to observe Laylatul Qadr, the night in Ram
> adan when the Qur’an was first revealed, on New Year’s Eve, the turn of th
> e 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 pri
> ncipal of human togetherness. 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,
> expansive global movement of the spirit. It is diversified and it is alrea
> dy located in every aspect of human civilization. But, it must be declare
> d! And we are the ones who can do that and do it on the foundation of our
> faith traditions, whatever those traditions may be.
>
>
> So, when we look at our past journey, it is not surprising to see how stro
> ng our growth was when we were standing on a faith tradition reaching back
> to the 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 a
> bout the transparent grounding of every faith tradition in order to bring
> the faith continuum from the beginning of time into the present and futur
> e. *Only 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 a
> mong them, to be a grounded presence of knowledge and experience from whic
> h they can access the foundations for creating the future. However, before
> this can happen, we must corporately work through the current perversions
> blocking 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 f
> oundations upon which they can provide leadership for the
> 21st Century Spirit Movement. They will, themselves, become the face of th
> eir 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 a
> cts were to everything we understood about life. Over time, we lost what w
> e understood for so many years as “that without which” there is no sustain
> ing substance. I realized, as I looked into it, that corporately we lost a
> ny sense 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 farther back than 1971, I looked for the only cultic acts I knew whi
> ch had connected me to all the past, present and future: the Daily Office
> and the Common 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
> McCleskey of the Silence Foundation and Larry Ward of the Lotus Institute,
> reminded me of the necessity of cultic acts for one’s consciousness, quali
> ty of life, and care for the world. I realized that my own practices did n
> ot go back beyond memories prior to 1971. So I decided to review what I on
> ce new about our cultic practices and I found I had forgotten most of it a
> nd suspected I was not alone.
>
>
> I started searching for a Daily Office in my files, on our various websi
> tes, and in the Golden Pathways CD but I could not find the Daily Office I
> remembered! I could only find something that had been transcribed into som
> ething else and my experience of the change was that someone had taken out
> the cultic nature of the Daily Office resulting in what appeared to me as
> several levels of higher abstraction. What I found started with “In the Na
> me of the Creator. And of the Redeemer. And of the Sustainer. Amen.” This
> edited version did not strike me as a “cultic act” coming out of all the p
> ast, over thousands 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 ab
> out others. What do we not understand about a cultic act? It is an act for
> all time: past, present, and future. It is not something we edit to conf
> orm to some pressures of the culture. If we do, we create a different cult
> ic act not necessarily connected to the faith tradition.
>
>
> So, I spent several days pulling my hair out trying to remember every phra
> se of the Daily Office and writing it, piece by piece, putting in the cult
> ic language. As I worked on this I realized the Daily Office became a soli
> tary discipline for me which connected me to a tradition going back to the
> beginning of time. I had a cultic act upon which to again ground my life in
> my faith tradition. I am glad I did that; it has transformed my awareness
> of my own life and the understanding of the life around me. I look forward to
> examining 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 sk
> illed pedagogues who understood the power of cultic acts. Do you remember
> all those 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 wass
> tructured so that pedagogical training was a co-objective of every course
> we taught? Think also of the operations of the corporate life of the Relig
> ious Houses, all focused on pedagogical development of everyone in the Hou
> se. That was how pedagogical formation happened: we lived it, we took ever
> yone under our wing for the sake of their formation, and it wasn’t just pr
> actice, it was working in the presence of the Order who was grounded in th
> eir faith tradition and who became the transcendence of that faith traditi
> on to the world.
>
>
> This is what we have been called to do and it has required all of our past
> to prepare us to say yes and to assume the role. And you know something re
> ally 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
> Davies 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 Orde
> r Ecumenical behind. We can decide to be a new Order, the same in some way
> s, but totally transformed by our past life as a Religious/Secular Order a
> nd our journey through the Dark Night of the Soul. Born anew for a new tim
> e, a new age, a new pedagogy, and a new Order, the Global Inter-Faith Ecum
> enical Order!
>
>
> This Order is not to be structured like the past Order but it already is s
> elf-sufficient in its covenant to a corporate life and mission. It is an
> Order of individuals who know that engagement in a specific daily spiritu
> al discipline is the basis for everything else. Wherever there are two or
> more the Order will have a corporate celebration weekly or monthly. There
> shall be a quarterly planning council for the global mission, the great w
> ork. There shall be an annual Order Council for the work of accounting and
> strategic commitments. The Order shall study together such missionally foc
> used work as Eboo Patel’s book, for example.
>
>
>
> Now, I am going to stop and let the rest of you have a chance to tell me h
> ow wrong I am. Thank you
>
>
> --
> __________________________________________________
> Herman F. Greene
> 2516 Winningham Road
> Chapel Hill, NC 27516
> 919-942-4358 (ph & fax)
> hfgreenenc at gmail.com
>  _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
>
>


-- 
__________________________________________________
Herman F. Greene
2516 Winningham Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-942-4358 (ph & fax)
hfgreenenc at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20130624/5b31f698/attachment.html>