[Oe List ...] David Marshall's IRON BOY Launches Today

[David Marshall]

RS-1 MADE SIMPLE

I have been in the book publishing industry as an author and/or publisher
for about 35 years now, and one of the most interesting and brilliant
developments for me was the rise of the “For Dummies” series in the 1990s.
It offered topics as diverse as the DOS operating system, classical music,
and personal finance. On the face of it, it sounds demeaning, but it tapped
into a truth about the American reading public, that a lot of people wanted
to know more about certain subjects, but they did not want to read the more
extensive books about them in technical language. Kind of similar to
Cliff’s Notes, but more humor and attitude. In a funny way, more of a
children’s book for adults.

Of all the gifts to history from the Ecumenical Institute, and there are
many, I consider the Religious Studies 1 course to be the “Gift of Gifts.”
It certainly was for me.

IRON BOY has am embedded 35-page “RS-1 for Dummies” book inside a book (six
chapters in all following the chronological weekend curriculum), which I
hope will introduce new audiences to the concepts of RS-1 in 35 minutes
with simple language instead of committing the traditional Friday dinner to
Sunday lunch 43-hour commitment of the original RS-1 course, in sometimes
obscure language. I’m not sure how this easy 35-minute, self-directed
learning offering compares to RS-1’s cool group-learning derivations such
as Profound Journey Dialogue (PJD) and Leadership Options.

Together with my early experiences waiting tables on RS-1 courses as a
white-coat-clad kid on Chicago’s West Side in the basement of the Admin
Building, a chapter about the Academy I took at 15 in the Program Center in
Fifth City, and a weekend pedagogy (learned to teach RS-1) session in one
of my Religious Houses—the “Big Idea” messages of RS-1 loom large in IRON
BOY. The boy, pre-teen, and teenager has a healthy amount of skepticism
about the magic of RS-1, especially with all the moaning and groaning he
witnesses from older participants, but the teachings of this seminal course
pervade the subsequent pages of the book.

You might ask whether an 11-year-old, or even a 16-year-old, could be
conscious enough to understand and teach the rather sophisticated concepts
of RS-1. I understand if you do. My own father did not believe humans could
absorb much about religion until they reached consciousness, which he
thought started at around puberty. He even wrote a little book about it.
Nevertheless, I believe this 35-page treatment inside IRON BOY is the most
concise description and easily digestible version of RS-1 ever written,
because it reads like a screenplay, almost all in dialogue, and is
story-driven. People remember stories better than prose.  It’s how I
remember that fateful RS-1 course when I was in 5th grade in the basement
of the chapel in our Order campus in Fifth City in 1967, but the names and
faces have changed to focus on the integrity of the learnings.

Given that each member of the Order Ecumenical Community listserv has their
own take on what RS-1 means to you and how it has influenced your life and
the lives around you, I would be interested in your take on whether my
version resonates with yours. If you don’t read IRON BOY, you can get a
drier non-narrative version of this RS-1 primer on my Marshall Books Blog
post from a few years back: THIS I BELIEVE: Not My Grandfather’s
Christianity (May 2018)
https://marshallbooks.wordpress.com/2018/06/27/this-i-believe-not-my-grandfathers-christianity/

Many thanks in advance for the continuing dialogue.

David Marshall, Moraga, California


On Sat, Jun 21, 2025 at 9:27 AM James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com> wrote:

> David said : “ creating a Family Order was an audacious “Grand
> Experiment” with lofty intentions, that so many Order Adults, including
> himself, were ill equipped emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually
> (jw:  Might also add economically culturally and …) to pull it off,
> especially with regard to caring for the children, and exacerbated by the
> drive to scale the global presence and scope of the mission so quickly
> without sufficiently trained human capacity. “
>
> Currently there is an initiative to work on inner development goals (
> https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/framework/#explore) to complement the
> UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.  I wonder if these give some indication
> of what, looking back, we were lacking….
>
> 2 of my grandkids gave me a book on Nicaragua, Blood of Brothers, and as
> soon as I finish that, I’m sending for your book!!
>
> Deep thanks for all the  conversation
> Jim Wiegel
>
> “…the long work
> of turning their lives
> into a celebration
> is not easy. Come and let us talk“.
>
> The Sunflowers. Mary Oliver
>
> On Jun 19, 2025, at 11:32 AM, David Marshall via OE <
> oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
> creating a Family Order was an audacious “Grand Experiment” with lofty
> intentions, that so many Order Adults, including himself, were ill equipped
> emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually to pull it off, especially
> with regard to caring for the children, and exacerbated by the drive to
> scale the global presence and scope of the mission so quickly without
> sufficiently trained human capacity.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20250621/3c1a9890/attachment.htm>