All, I am not trying to solve the "human predicament" related to the two listservs. I would love to stay in touch with everyone, but I think there is a virtue in focus, so I will only be on the OE listserv going forward. The reason I am writing it to invite those of you on the Dialogue listserv who are not on the OE listserv to join that listserv so I can stay in touch with you that way. Here's the email I sent to the OE listserv this morning. If you are interested in this ongoing "dialogue," don't leave the Dialogue listserv, but if you are not on it, join the OE listserv. A conversation with John and Lynda Cock and the Progress on my proposals Dear all, I had nice dinner with John and Lynda Cock last night. There's no doubt about it, but those of us who were in the Order share a deep common bond that goes on just like family bonds. Our shared history enabled deep sharing. I presented the idea that the period 1965-75 was the deeply creative period of Order/EI life, that the important ideas and concepts came from that period. John divided it into knowing, doing and being, and said the knowing and being were developed in that period and doing was the focus after that continuing through today. It seems clear to me that our "methods" meaning our facilitation methods are in history. It also seems clear that the doing whether as you all did it after I left in 1975 or as others may do it in the future will carry on. There will be people working on human development and some will use our methods. What remains important to me is our being and knowing. This is what I feel may not carry on. It's something we recognize and feel in the presence of each other and don't recognize and feel in the presence of others, or at least we feel it in a very different way. It's a shared interior space. Those of us in the Order in 1965-75 (and perhaps after though I have no first hand experience of it) know that we were part of something fantastic. A mighty flame of spirit and vision burned within us. We had within us a "motivity" that will never go away. And we had all those sayings and concepts we sometime hammered each other with that were critical to our being. And we had the Christian story, heritage and symbols which were very much a part of our interior reality. I don't think that can be captured with archives or numbers. The interior part can only be captured through stories. This is why I have called on people to write stories on "the way we were" or "who we were". They can be anecdotes that capture just one memorable moment, like the excitement felt at preparing for a doing the grand ball or in a moment in Fifth City Pre-School or the night of the MLK riots. The response, to say the least has been underwhelming, but I'm not going to let this die. Our second generation is already reaching retirement in some cases and what about the third generation and others? These are stories that need to be told. I thought I had Betty Pesek's book on *The Circle of Life*. Maybe this covers this, I need to get a copy . . . but intuitively I don't think so. We have a grand story and grand stories to tell. We were a part of something fantastic despite its faults. I don't want to justify it, I just want the story(ies) to be told. On the knowing side, I'm not that interested in the content that may be time bound. What I am interested in is the principles that formed us--the ones that related to out being, our power and our motivity--ideas of corporateness, being under assignment, living missional lives, etc. This is what I want to pass on to my children, grandchildren and others. Again the response has been underwhelming to say the least, but I'm not giving up. And the book called "RS-1" that I proposed? Gene Marshall I gather is working to put a version of RS-1 back in to the stream of things. Here I'm thinking about something else. I'm thinking about how did we come to understand God, Christ. Holy Spirit and Church in both its contentless and contentful (being related to the Christian tradition) aspects. I want to tell the story of RS-1, though this one might involve more concepts than the first two. So folks, you aren't dead yet, but you're close. Let's tell the story of this amazing body of people and reality of which we were a part. -- __________________________________________________ Herman F. Greene 2516 Winningham Road Chapel Hill, NC 27516 919-942-4358 (ph & fax) hfgreenenc@gmail.com