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<div class="MsoNormal"><b>An Ecumene in Saipan<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I was ordained clergy with the United Methodist Church
(“United” got added at the General Conference 1968 in Dallas, Texas where I
ushered) for thirty years, though only five of that spent attending to a local
Church and parish, the last one being the English language worship service of
the Immanuel KMC that related to a UMC conference in the Hawaii District and
the Annual Conference of Southern California.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Most of my ordained life was spent with an ecumenical group
that promoted and demonstrated human development in villages and communities
around the world regardless of their religious affiliation. We had Hindus in India’s Maharashtra by the
Deccan plateau; we lived with the non-reserved locals called <i>Metis, </i>the mixed blood whose parents
cohabited with European trappers in North America; and doffed the “salaam” with
the Muslims in Malaysia.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">My ordination was hardly noticeable other than the
methodical way of my expenditure in the various assignments I took, but that
came more as a choice rather than with the profession.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">After three years in Saipan as a Methodist cleric way out of
episcopal supervision, the local congregation’s support was evidently untenable;
the congregation was one of the small 60% of the denomination that depended on
the support of the 40% larger ones. My
predecessor also institutionally separated from the graciousness of the Korean host,
a product of arrogance, I decided to a strained self-support structure that
ignored authentic faith and practice.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Disregard the previous paragraph. It was not material, more like whining than
anything else. For those who grew up
under the influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Jewish affirmation
that the Way Life Is (YHWH) is the way life is, is deep, and regardless of how Saipan’s
IUMC came, not unlike the countless stories in the Old Testament, life as it is
given can be lived.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The New Testament added the caveat, witnessed to by the
example of Jesus of Nazareth who we labeled with the title of the Jewish
Messiah and Greek Christ, that life is nothing but expenditure. Our lives are not for saving as it was for
spending, spent to the last drop even when it leads to a Cross! So I led the United Methodists in that
direction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The above messages from the Old and the New Testaments when
taken at what they say rather than as object of adulation and idolatry, grab
the <i>angst</i> of any existential creature
of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. In the “Lord and Master” metaphor of the Medieval
Ages conveniently adulated one for accomplishments, or blame another for
failures but in the process, we lose Moses to Hollywood’s Cecil de Mille and
Charlton Heston, and Jesus to the cute angels of the heavenly realm in the
chapel.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">NASA’s probes of outer space accidentally provided us with
an authentic icon for our time, the earthrise, and instead of quibbling whether
my description of deity in the sky was more sovereign or accurate than anyone
else’s, we looked at the Earth and the creatures in it, and guess who we end up
looking at? You and I, humanity, and the
planet Earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The Greeks called the inhabited world, <i>Ecumene,</i> appropriated by the Christian Church as the area of one’s
discipleship and expenditure. My
colleagues of the Interior Mythos Journeys group focus on the experience with
and against the Ultimate Reality, no longer upward looking but directed to the
edges of the extremes of human experiences. Still, Ultimate Reality could not shake shades
of the God-talk, and the illusion the later held remained the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">My responsibility is to accept the given-ness of my
existence, and heeding statistical probability, I decided that 86 years of
existence was my due. My genetics favors
longevity but the lungs got terribly nicotine-clouded a while back so I chopped
a decade off my life expectancy, and buckled down to being solely responsible
for the time I chose, alive till 2031.
Shortness or longevity of probability is <i>c’est la vie, </i>and having appropriated <i>j’aime la vie </i>as my <i>nom-de-plume,</i>
I am on to rock-and-roll with the pen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The temporality of the finite is all I’ve got. It is my assigned responsibility, the arena
of my ecumenicity. I would not mind the
company of the Mythos group when it looks this way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">It was fun writing for the dailies, the <i>Saipan Tribune, </i>and the <i>Marianas
Variety. </i>I quit writing for both in
August thinking that being a teacher at one of the private schools was going to
be time consuming. I thought only of teaching
students, be a productive part of a school, and contribute to the evolution of
pedagogy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Ligaments and cartilages in the joints started to freeze
fingers; the leg calves cramped badly and the spondylosis of the cervical
vertebrae bothered again. I quit elementary
school end of September.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I still guide NMC students to learn their English, start
their classes with repeating: “This is the day we have. We can live this day, or throw it away. This is the day we have.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Living on earth is a choice. I’m back to being a Saipan
ecumene.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b>Reflections<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">John
and Lynda Cock, US volunteers, brought their family to Indonesia and other
countries to help catalyze human development among willing local villages and
communities. We first hailed each other as we often crossed paths in
Chicago in the 70s. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Since
2004, they have sent out a daily blog called <i>Journey Reflection—</i>a
few minutes reflection with an image, a noted person’s quote, and dialogue
between “Journer” and guru “Nez”—adding up to 3.8 million reads in some
200 countries and territories since 2004.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Once in
a while, when I send feedback, or an article about to be published in one of
our Saipan dailies, they quote a part of our musing. So a symbiosis has
developed. Their reflections I support, especially their earthrise. Important to me is the word “earthrise” itself
that I chose as the title of my column five days a week in the <i>Marianas
Variety.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">My image of “reflections” is curved arrows pointing back to
where they originated. Pictorially, a
mirror image is a powerful picture of a reflected figure, though of course, the
quality of the mirror affects the quality of the image.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Image is a key. It is
a holding category of our experience, internal response, objective discourse,
and decided deed. Reflection happens on
each and on all before the deed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The sudden change of image in the last US Presidential
election is a good example. AOL and
Google, aided by Safari, get Internet allowed by WiFi from IT&E. Since I write for the <i>Marianas Variety,</i> the paper provides me local and regional news,
but the national and international events are carried by whatever AOL and
Google offers since the AP services that feeds into my paper tends to get stale
by the time it finds ink. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Anyway, the image projected was a stable Hillary about to
break into the misogynist character of the American people. Now, I had not encountered the word
“misogynist” since College but during this election, my friends pointed it out
as one reason Hillary might not make it.
TG, the competition was acting like a buffoon, they averred. That’s the other image – The Donald unable to
control his twitting and his tongue, alienating the women and the people of
color. But he sure had the angry and
frustrated “low income white American male” eating off his hands.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The media, it appears, wanted to keep the reporting
“balanced” without appearing to favor one side against the other. After all, media collectively does not have
an independent mind other than what it discerns to be the will of the
masses. Or, so we thought. The Hillary-Trump election fest suggested
something different, indigenously American media, lively and rambunctious.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Media had its own agenda.
All throughout the campaign, Hillary was projected as a virtue-less
“criminal” capable of deeds to forward a singular political interest. Trump on the other hand might have been an
Albino buffoon but he reflected the mind of a “silent majority” whose
interests, it is said, has been stepped and stumped on since the War in Vietnam
and Civil Rights movement. The voting
reflected such division.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Seven revolutions simultaneously occurred since the 60s by
my count: women, youth, Third World, international business, education,
minorities, and local communities. If
MLK got the Civil Rights focused early on, some of us wanted to educate the
Third World not to grovel under the First World’s table for scraps and
droppings, the youth took placards and stones to further their cause
particularly in the Universities, local village and community participation in
decision making in Town Meetings and Community Forum, “women’s rights as human
rights” was Hillary’s forte, and Trump represented a Wall Street version of
international business.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In the midst of all these came the assault of our image of
home. Heretofore, heaven provided the
escape from the vicissitudes of common existence, and the enlightened religious
groups tried to reform their structures to embody the change that needed to
happen, but the earthrise consciousness pulled us out of looking skyward on
divine benevolence, and looked earthward for the creativity and innovation of
humans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Sheer expenditure out of unadulterated freedom came strong. It does not make humans any more special than
they already are, “winner and free” from conception. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Obviously, reflections do not come on measured steps
one-to-four. It often happens in a flash
without the neat categories of how images are formed, or the nature of the
seven revolutions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In one of the Cock’s <i>Journey
Reflections, </i>they located a photo of the Earth papered by the symbols of
nations on one side, and a NASA picture taken from one of the Apollo missions,
both held up by human hands with the national identities as what people “think”
the Earth is, and the NASA photo as what the Earth “really” is. They said to me in one graphic what I might
write a whole book for, were I to portray the same message.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In our time, to be human is to reflect on being the
earthrise! I chose to be earthbound. That’s all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b>Interior MYTHOS
Journeys (IMJ)<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Michael May and his crew have created a website (<a href="http://www.interiormythos.com">www.interiormythos.com</a>) and the IMJ
that promotes images of images, from the serious mythos flying around every
culture, most in the tradition of Zeus of Olympus, transcendent more than
immanent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Something happened in 1968 when one of the Apollo missions
shot a photo of an image of the Earth rising over the lunarscape, and an
earthrise consciousness was born. Well, it had always been there in human
imagination but this time, a physical turn occurred where the looking was no
longer directed skyward, where the metaphor of Zeus, Deux, Dios prevailed, but
earthward, replaced by the flesh-and-blood reality of the humans, Gaia reborn
into the 20<sup>th</sup> century.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">While the image of the earthrise, according to guru Joseph
Campbell, provided the new mythological icon of our time, the appreciation of
previous mythos has been on-going and had not actually left the metaphor of the
English language though it used the imagery of bygone days when Lords pranced
over their ladies, and Masters ruled over their slaves.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">YHWH that is the Torah’s word for living life “the Way Life
Is”, had a long history of correspondence with the Ra of Egypt that established
patterns with the flooding of the Nile, which then birthed the worship of
Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and justified the claim of Pharaoh that he was first
and there is no equal. YHWH remained the
“IS-ness of reality” in the same way Allah is the “no-thing that cannot be
idolized” but nevertheless, was the inevitable reality that humans have to live
with, enshrined in well decorated mosques.
<i>Salaam</i> kept in common.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I joined the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago in 1972 that I
met earlier on a snowy February 1967 on the Westside in a geography the group
delineated as Fifth City, a play on the four sociological make-up of the Metropolis
as consisting of the Inner City, the Center, the Suburban, and the
Exurban. The fifth city cut across all
four, appropriating their gifts and limiting their contradictions. Michael May cut his teeth working with the
group and when it dissipated, started his Indiana-based IMJ operations with
other colleagues that has since decided to take the digitized technology of the
website as its presentation medium. The
graphics are lively.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">It also quotes Joseph Campbell’s conviction that One
Mystery cannot be expressed in words of thoughts and is beyond human concepts
of time and space, but nevertheless, its contemplation connects us individually
and collectively. The encounter is of
utmost value because one encounters the Mystery of the Ultimate Reality.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Ultimate Reality rather than the nature of temporality and
finitude is its focus, and though the website exploration fits our method of
earth-looking rather than sky-gazing, exploits the human creation of MYTHOS, it
is nevertheless, too close to the transcendent God-talk of a previous era to
give comfort to the earthrise that affirms and grounds the wisdom that “there
is no one else coming.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Myth is the discourse, used to reflect the interior journeys
that keeps the discourse on concrete subjects of human and cultural
reflections, and in that, we are colleagues on a similar journey. It is the focus that differs. Methodologically, we go in the sequence of
objective sense, impressionistic feelings, reflective thoughts, and decisional
deeds. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I ran the classic four terms, God-Christ-Spirit-Church in an
October series in this paper. However,
the articles were more of a “farewell” to a previous orientation than a
“welcome” to a new one. Not unlike the
IMJ group, articulating the new reality does not come easy as our metaphors are
indelibly linked to that of a previous era when “deity and divine” were still
up in the sky, and the profound reality of humanness was scorned, muddied in
the earth’s surface. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Still, the IMJ group’s depth study modules follow the four
categories of our familiar. It takes
religious of the up-against-ness called G-O-D, the permission giving reality in
the midst of life, the Christ, the lifestyle of freedom called the Holy Spirit,
and the gathered people who embody a sociological understanding, the Church.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">What is Reality? What
is the Inner Journey? How do I live in
Flow? How do I serve? The IMJ do not
simply build on the wisdom of Judeo-Christianity, it also takes on the
meditative and contemplative ways of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and Islam.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The curriculum of IMJ articulates and explores contemporary
mythic language in the life-lived-in-depth context of the 21<sup>st</sup>
century, the global, quantum scientific and universal reality in which we
live. It delivers the possibility of “authentic
life” for those who chose to spin the myth congruent to reality.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">We might part ways at this fork. I no longer dabble in the Ultimate Reality of
the universe, though the depth intensity of experience may push us further than
what we are used to. I grew up with the
speculative. I now retail simply in the
realm of the temporal and finite.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br>
<div style="clear:both"><i>wangzhimu2031</i>
<div>earthrise consciousness, a gift; earthbound commitment, my choice</div>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!<br>
</i>
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