[Oe List ...] RS-1 Friday night conversation

Mon Sep 9 15:53:25 PDT 2019

I probably overthought this Randy . . .

RS-1 . . . 

 which I took on US Thanksgiving weekend of 1966, in room B at 3444 West Congress Parkway, (and repeated a number of times including learning how to teach the course — I took a RS-1 Pedagogy course sometime in the spring of 1967) . . .

Shifted my image of how to participate — in life, in the world, with other people —from being a part of the audience to something much more active and responsible — a  pushy, adventurous and thrilling way of being.

Shifted my image of what was happening at my time in history — from a kind of naive uneasiness and upset to an appreciation of the wonder and significance of my time in history — that this was a revolutionary time to be alive

Sharpened my image of my being as a Christian from a lot of bits and pieces of Bible verses and hymns and creeds all generally aimed at having me be a well-behaved person to a sharper, more focused gestalt that gave me images of how of God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Slice of Life, Church showed up in my life and challenged my living — these many pieces that were wandering around in my consciousness came together sharply — and this was all about a deeper consciousness of what life is all about.  I had a kind of picture of what each of these was pointing to in my life — not just something someone told me, but I had had to wrestle with and come up with something.

I also got a broadened image of who might be involved in this — I remember one of the teachers I am not sure who, it might have been Jack Barringer who was talking in what to me was a southern accent, and it made me nervous and a little afraid of what I might have gotten myself into.  Not to mention the funny bowls of cream of wheat that were served along with scrambled eggs and which the person next to me ate by putting salt and pepper on them

What got me was the way it was done — first, the whole setting was designed to communicate — room set up, teacher’s roles, the gong, worship set up, etc.  second the cycle of conversation that raised issues with my life, a lecture that set a context background and then study and a seminar where I /we the participants had to grapple with making sense of something and grounding it in our experience.  Third was the surrounding fabric that reinforced the course in so many ways — from the meal introductions “I have a friend named Socrates who says there are 2 kinds of people in the world — there are pigs and persons . . . Let us be self-conscious persons this weekend” to the study method “Number the paragraphs . .”  All my life I had been told not to write in books . .  The group method, the art forms . . . The little lecture introductions, the role of art, the poems “I was so weary of the world”. I think it was Frank Hilliard who read “How Beastly the Bourgeois is” and he held the book by a corner between thumb and forefinger and at the end of the poem just dropped it like a crumpled bit of trash.  And Mimi Shinn (I think) was the hostess and she was the only one who was nice to me.

With Respect,
Jim Wiegel

> On Sep 6, 2019, at 8:39 AM, Randy Williams <randycw1938 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Jim,
> I think you’re probably correct. What would you say were some of the more important image shifts that occurred in RS-1?
> Randy
> 
>> On Sep 6, 2019, at 10:38 AM, James Wiegel via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>> 
>> I don’t remember the part about arguing with the participants during the Friday dinner conversation.  I got thinking about this because the Archive group was recently reviewing the Imaginal Education collection in the archive website and it occurred to me that I think the RS-1 course was the best and most refined example of imaginal education that we ever came up with . . .
>> 
>> Here is a link to some additional remembrances of RS-1.
>> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUk2c_1SJ0s82ALQvVkg5VLcDiUxrEmrs
>> 
>> 
>> With Respect,
>> Jim Wiegel
>> 
>>> On Sep 6, 2019, at 6:52 AM, Margaret Aiseayew via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I remember telling the group at my first RS-1 that what grounded me in history was that I was an Iowa farm girl.  Whoever was leading tried to argue with me and I argued that they knew nothing about electricity.  (My farmer father had spent evenings wiring houses and as kids my brother and I often went with him.)  My grounding in history has never changed, even as much as most of my other thinking did in response to that event.
>>>  
>>> From: OE [mailto:oe-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jann McGuire via OE
>>> Sent: Thursday, September 5, 2019 6:11 PM
>>> To: Order Ecumenical Community
>>> Cc: Jann McGuire
>>> Subject: [Oe List ...] RS-1 Friday night conversation
>>>  
>>> Jim, I'm neurotic enough to still have my RS-1 file folders. The Friday evening conversation was 1) full name and one thing that grounds in history (I remember not understanding exactly what that meant.)
>>>  
>>> 2) First name and book.
>>>  
>>> 3) First name and movie.
>>>  
>>> 4 ) First name and one pressing concern.
>>>  
>>>  
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