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Egypt Question
by Priscilla Wilson 18 Aug '13

18 Aug '13

This is really a question for Wayne Nelson...I assume he knows more about this than anyone. Do you have any news from Bayad and surrounding villages? Are our colleagues involved? in peril? ok? Do you know any thing? It is all so frightening...and questionable if Egypt can get their act together. Priscilla Wilson TeamTech Press 913-432-2107 Pris(a)TeamTechPress.com www.TeamTechPress.com

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request for models and resources
by David Dunn 17 Aug '13

17 Aug '13

Hello colleagues. I'm about the take on responsibility for setting up a "small Christian community" project at Church of the Holy Family in Aurora. In the broad, it sounds like an effort at creating ecclesiola groups or house churches or home-based study groups, etc. Do you have recommendations for models from our common memory, mentors in our colleague network with related experience, or relevant resources you or others have used in local church work? I'm bringing this project and these questions to the sojourn week in Chicago in September for a little focused digging, research, and re-appropriating our experience. Feedback? David --- David Dunn 740 S Alton Way 9B Denver, CO 80247 720-314-5991 dmdunn1(a)gmail.com

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Re: [Oe List ...] OE Digest, Vol 17, Issue 20
by Suzann Eisenberg Murray 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

Hello David, I have been honored to be a part of this list serv for the last few years. I send my best to you and ask that you remove me from the list. Peace and grace. Suzann ------------------------------------------ Suzann Eisenberg Murray Dendros Group, LLC 413 Wacouta Street, Suite 400 St. Paul, Minnesota 55106 Mobile: 612-210-6898 ------------------------------------------- Helping and Inspiring People Who Want to Do Good Work Well Sent from my iPad On Aug 16, 2013, at 8:09 PM, oe-request(a)lists.wedgeblade.net wrote: > Send OE mailing list submissions to > oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > oe-request(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > oe-owner(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of OE digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. request for models and resources (David Dunn) > 2. Re: request for models and resources (Shelley Hahn) > 3. Re: request for models and resources (Ken Fisher) > 4. Re: request for models and resources (Marilyn Crocker) > 5. map of Pangea with current international borders (Susan Fertig) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 11:54:40 -0600 > From: David Dunn <dmdunn1(a)gmail.com> > To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Subject: [Oe List ...] request for models and resources > Message-ID: <F2CA66E1-58E6-467A-9E07-77E6FD1DB741(a)gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Hello colleagues. > > I'm about the take on responsibility for setting up a "small Christian community" project at Church of the Holy Family in Aurora. In the broad, it sounds like an effort at creating ecclesiola groups or house churches or home-based study groups, etc. > > Do you have recommendations for models from our common memory, mentors in our colleague network with related experience, or relevant resources you or others have used in local church work? > > I'm bringing this project and these questions to the sojourn week in Chicago in September for a little focused digging, research, and re-appropriating our experience. > > Feedback? > > David > > > --- > > > > > David Dunn > 740 S Alton Way 9B > Denver, CO 80247 > 720-314-5991 > dmdunn1(a)gmail.com > >

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map of Pangea with current international borders
by Susan Fertig 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

Someone sent me this within a bunch of maps... Susan Susan Fertig-Dykes (personal email account) The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:1 ESV

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Conversation with Janice
by LAURELCG＠aol.com 15 Aug '13

15 Aug '13

Beloved Community, All day yesterday, I allowed myself to be in denial of Janice's departure. I never met her in person, but we had been in dialogue since she let us all know of her lymphoma diagnosis on May 11. I went through my e-mail files this morning, looking again at the wonder of her last few weeks. Her birthday greeting to Marge, on June 1, is especially poignant, knowing as we now do, the wonderful gift that went with it: "Dear Marge, When I think of you I think of sparkle, and fun, and always welcoming hospitality. Oh yes - and the most dedicated, determined work ethic when you decide something is necessary! Better not get in your way - people, discouragements, or "that's impossibles"! You have cared for your family with such love and insight - then you have reached out to extend that care to your colleagues and people in the communities you have served. Just a few of the many reasons you inspire us. Happy, happy 85th birthday. Gee, we're glad we have known you! Let's see - at least several hundred people from all around the world would love to be at your celebration. Have a wonderful time. And Paula, thanks for honoring this terrific woman. With much affection, Janice Ulangca" I sent her a copy of my book, and cried this morning as I read her response, written hurriedly amid her still-active life of service, on June 6. "Jann, This is a packed day - routine followup med appt 1:45 - need to organize my list of questions to ask before that. Tonite will do 5-minute intro of honoree for community award - 200 people there - so focus energy there. BUT have to say a quick word that your book is incredibly helpful. Am reading a chapter or 2 a day. We will have a lot to talk about. Your poetry is magnificent!" On July 17, she wrote the following to the listserve: "Where I am these days: In the midst of chemo treatments for lymphoma cancer, energy is only available in small amounts. So it's measured out carefully, for important things. Today I turned 78 - and so after lunch with friends and a long nap, made a careful decision to sample Jack Gilles' account. "Maybe just this part ... And this part ... Hey - can't I invest an hour today?! Wouldn't it be great to do this on my birthday (instead of dishes that wait)?" So I did, and it was great. I was captivated and my own memories, current life, and even new decisions made clearer, out of a richer context. So thank you, Jack. And thank you, Michael May, for all you are doing to illuminate our inner stories about our lives. It is important that encounter with these lives be made available. Janice Ulangca" And that same day she wrote this to me: "Dear Jann, One of these weeks I will call - and set up a time when we can talk. Much to share, I think. I just run out of energy so fast - and every little thing takes some. Which normally I haven't given a thought to. Just know that I have MUCH appreciated your book, and the you revealed therein. Healing things - appts., meds, rests - practical things - bills paid, groceries bought, easy cooking, minimal cleaning done. Staying in contact with local friends/colleagues who want it, give me rides, etc. Then one project I'm keeping rolling - see attached. But am still looking forward much to talking with you. Janice" I'm sorry I didn't save the attachment. It was a church-related project. Perhaps someone else can tell us about it. We both listened to the Shift Network broadcast, "The New Scientific Revolution." Here's our conversation about it: Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2013 4:12 PM Subject: Scientific Revolution session Janice, Did you enjoy this session? I thought it was quite powerful and I may just sign up for the course it was out to sell. I had already signed up for the session when you put it on the listserve, but was gratified that you did. When Ken Wilbur was speaking of Carol Gilligan's level of Universal Care, the image of EI/ICA's poster of the Iron Man with "All the Earth Belongs to All the People" came to mind. It's hard to believe now that we didn't include the biosphere, but I suppose that's the way the unfolding of evolution works. I hope you're feeling well. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Blessings, Jann McGuire In response, she sent her notes on the session, and I made comments on her response in red: In a message dated 7/20/2013 4:50:41 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, aulangca(a)stny.rr.com writes: "After some food and rest: Hi Jann, Yes I did enjoy this. I process best when I take notes, so I did get 4 pages. The 7 sessions of Laszlo's course sound good - mind-expanding for sure. Haven't decided yet whether to sign up. Feel I must be careful - many things want/need to do, learn about. Am still scheduled to have treatment related injections through 1st week of Sept. But this is foundational, so maybe ... Images that stick with me: Ervin Laszlo: The universe as a cosmic internet! Connecting everything. (Before the internet, don't think we could have imagined any force/entity connecting everything. But now we take that possibility for granted - global connection instantly among people. Can we expand that to include all? Every part of nature, beings of every size . .. )" I wonder how he spells it. I believe Ken Wilber spells it Kosmos when he's speaking of more-than-physical cosmos. "Duane Elgin: working with Joseph Campbell who saw "a life force, moving through everything" - and Duane mentions David Bohm's phrase "a unified whole in flowing movement." Domination doesn't work - dancing with the force does. (Wow!) The Universe has a moral fabric built into it - toward creativity, caring, connectedness. The Cosmic Internet evokes a Living - not a dead - Universe. We are learning to live in a Living Universe! Will ponder how that is different from living in a world with older images of an active God in our lives. That has been too often a way to ask for special privileges - even to help us dominate." I think I resonated more strongly with Duane Elgin than anyone else today, although they're all great. I love to think of NASA having paid psychics. "Riane's focus on relationship systems, from family (how children learn what is possible, what not possible) to politics and economics." Relational Dynamics made me think of the social process triangles. I want to go back and read "The Partnership Way" again. "Barbara's mention of "points of light around the globe as individuals wake up - can they be - are they being - all connected at once?" The word involution grabbed my attention. I do think I'm experiencing it. "Ken Wilbur's 5 kinds of perspectives made my head swim. Any one of them could take an hour to give examples from. He's phenomenally analytical. Have bumped into his levels of spiritual understanding before - found them to be brilliant yet somehow detached. ... I'm with you in finding his mention of Carol Gilligan's examples of the 4th level of care to be meaningful. Well, enough for now. Now need to make a couple of phone calls. Last scheduled chemo this Tues. all day. Will go to my meaningful church tomorrow, use Mon. for errands to prepare for doing nothing 5 days after Tues." I'll be thinking of you as you go through this last round. You won't be doing nothing. You'll be healing. "Thanks for starting a good reflection. Enjoyed it! Janice" That was our last conversation. We never did get to have our phone conversation about our lymphoma experiences. I don't know the cause of death, but I doubt it was lymphoma, which responds to chemotherapy better than any other cancer. The treatment is quite debilitating to the immune and other systems. I appreciate the good fight that Janice fought. Truly, she rests in peace. In my e-mail search, I also found beautiful poetry below she sent in December: Its prophetic tone gave me chills. How beautiful her spirit is. What a privilege to have her as a friend/teacher/mentor. Love and blessings In a message dated 12/14/2012 7:46:14 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, aulangca(a)stny.rr.com writes: "To my friends and many teachers/mentors in the ICA community - I continue learn so much from you! Profound gratitude and wishes for a splendid, radiant season. Janice Ulangca Advent: A coming into being 3rd definition, Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary A Conversation with Advent O Advent I think you are my favorite Of all the seasons in the church year Because you ask that I wake up, be vigilant, And open to some startling surprise, some wonder That never has existed ‘til today. Advent, beyond the rush, the noisy fun, the customary words, There is a vast and tender silence And I will meet you there. At first it may seem boring to be still But slowly in the quietness there will be A radiance, a peace, a profound care. Advent, I will dare to bring you this year’s pain The darkness, failures and the broken plans. Perhaps in the stillness With patience and expectancy They may gently be exchanged For healing and for hope . . . And it will not be fake To welcome Joy. JU 2012

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Re: [Oe List ...] Resolving OE and Dialogue listservs and two proposals
by David Walters 15 Aug '13

15 Aug '13

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Resolving OE and Dialogue listservs and two proposals
by Herman Greene 15 Aug '13

15 Aug '13

Thanks for all the good comments on the purposes of the two listserves. I am going to opt for OE only. I like OE because I like to say in touch of my old colleagues, which Shelley Hahn correctly stated are more like family than colleagues. I also like to reflect on our common memory and experiences from OE days. I feel somewhat at a loss on all that went on through ICA since I left the Order in 1975 (after 8 years with the Order), but through these listserves, and various events I have attended since 2000 I have gained familiarity with that great work. In any event, if you want to reach me on the listserves send the message on the OE listserve. I proposed a grand project last time I wrote, and I'd like to pull it off the table. No need to refer back to it, just consider (from my side) these ideas. 1. I am coming to the conclusion that our work as a corporate body, as an Order, is done and cannot be revived. We were what we were and we did a lot and caused some damage. We were who we were. What I believe we can and should do is preserve the mystique and learning of that community for future generations. This has already happened through the archive project and the books that George and John and others have put out. Further there is a collection of stories about our lives and work. And we had the conference in Washington, DC. Jim Wiegel did the videos. Michael May is collecting wisdom stories. What I continue to be interested in is a compilation of essays on the key ideas that guided us. For example, "Comprehensive, intentional and futuric (and archaic)" "the indicative is the imperative" "contextual ethics" and so many more. I can see small essays on a number of concepts put together in collection as a book or books and online. I think some of these essays may have to include a critique of the concepts and some would need to discuss how their meaning might apply today. I suppose the essays would have to begin with what the concepts meant for us "at that time." I can't pass on my order experience to my sons but I would like for them to have the benefit of the understandings that guided us and still guide me in my thinking and work. On reflection though, I would also like for them to have some understanding of who we were as an order. My oldest son who left the order at two simply says, "My parents were in a cult." I can see another collection of essays on "the way we were." Though I think there were many weaknesses in who we were I also think we were a great thing, a great force for good, a creative advance. I would like to have my sons know about that too So I guess ideally I would like two books, one on the operating wisdoms of the Order/EI and the other on our stories of our life in the Order/EI (and if I am not mentioning ICA it is only because I left at that time but would want to include that part of the history as well). Now I can't stop because I had another thought. I would like for my sons to have some understanding of RS1 and how it relates to the Christian symbols. I can see a book titled "RS-1" I would be willing to be part of a team for collecting, editing and publishing these works. If we get these out, the ideas will be available for others to develop in the future. 2. The second proposal is simply an opening to individuals who would be interested in participating in the Ethics and Spirituality Initative for Sustainable Development and possibly developing a curriculum on the changes needed going forward, kind of a CS1 for our day. I'm not longer thinking of those as involving our remnant corporate body, but something that some of you may have an interest in. Here's a 3 minute video that gives you some introduction to this. http://youtu.be/tyh7clso0Kc I can send additional information to those who contact me about this. Now, for completeness, I have another thought. Any of you who have not done so who wish to receive the e-zine of my nonprofit, the Center for Ecozoic Societies, please let me know and I'll put you on the list. Herman -- __________________________________________________ Herman F. Greene 2516 Winningham Road Chapel Hill, NC 27516 919-942-4358 (ph & fax) hfgreenenc(a)gmail.com

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8/15/13, Spong: On Building a Christianity without Security or Creeds
by Ellie Stock 15 Aug '13

15 Aug '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR On Building a Christianity without Security or Creeds One of my readers, Henry Gael Michaels, has shared with me an anonymous story on the meaning of God with which I open this column. It also reveals, I believe, what is wrong with all theology. I am grateful for this gift. This is his story. The mystic was back from the desert. “Tell us,” the people said, “What is God like?” The mystic wondered just how he could ever tell them what he had experienced in his heart while in the desert. Can God ever be put into words? He finally decided that in response he would give them a formula that was so convoluted and literally impossible, so inaccurate and so inadequate that their only choice would be to do as he had done and go into the desert to experience God for themselves. Alas, however, that is not what his hearers did. Instead they seized upon his formula, turning it into a sacred text or an infallible doctrine. Then they imposed it onto others as a creed or a set of holy beliefs. They even proclaimed that it was necessary to hold it, if one wants to be saved. They began to persecute and to kill those who would not consent to this formula. They went to enormous efforts and great costs to spread this formula to foreign lands. Some even gave their lives for this cause. The mystic was sad. “It might have been better,” he said, “if I had said nothing!” “Perhaps,” Henry Gael Michaels concluded in his letter to me, “This is why Jesus never wrote anything down.” It seems to me that this story articulates the problem that modern religious men and women have with organized religion and theology. Religion has adopted theological formulas based on two things: First, there is an experience of God, which people come to believe is both real and authentic, which makes them aware of transcendence. This experience is life changing, seemingly unrepeatable and certainly stretching to those having the experience. It leads to new dimensions of life and to new understandings. All religion, along with all theology, is born in such a primary experience. The second thing involved in religion and theology is, however, the compelling need to explain that experience to another. That is the moment when the experience is inevitably put into human words. The experience and the wordy explanation are never the same. If the experience is true, it is timeless, external and transformative! The explanation, however, is always time bound, time warped and finite. Every explanation freezes the experience in the vocabulary of the explainer. The explanation reflects the world view of the explainer, the explainer’s level of knowledge and the explainer’s time in history. There is no such thing as an eternal explanation. As time moves on, the destiny of every explanation is to become increasingly foreign to its audience, increasingly irrelevant to its time and finally to be dismissed or ignored as no longer appropriate to its world. If people begin to identify the experience with its explanation, the experience will die when the explanation dies. That is the law “of the Medes and the Persians,” and that is also the reality of human history. Now look at modern Christianity. Jesus was a first century experience in which people came to believe that they had encountered the transcendent reality that they called God. The New Testament was a first century attempt to explain that experience. There is no doubt that in the Jesus experience, lives were transformed. People, who at the time of Jesus’ arrest, had forsaken him and fled in fear, somehow came back together after his death and were empowered with a new courage. Previously fearful ones were now ready to die for the reality of an experience they could no longer deny. Even though these people had been raised inside a strict Jewish code, their “Jesus” experience forced them to expand that code so dramatically that the singularity of God was compromised and they could no longer see God apart from Jesus, nor could they see Jesus apart from God. Their understanding of God was thus modified and changed for ever. In time, this new understanding forced them to adopt a new holy day on which to celebrate this experience. That was when the first day of the week began to be observed and a new form of worship, based on the Passover meal, but expanded into something new that they called “The Eucharist,” came into being. That sacramental meal was said to mark the fact that Jesus “was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” The New Testament was thus the written attempt by the followers of Jesus to capture the power of their Jesus experience in words. Inevitably, they were the words of the first century. Can we keep our hold on their experiences by literalizing their words today? Of course not! We cannot twist our minds into first century pretzels and think of God in the same way that they did. God cannot be to a post-Galilean, post-Newtonian world a being who lives above the sky, and who once entered the earth by causing a baby to be conceived in the womb of a virgin. Our minds and hearts are not drawn to the picture of a miracle-worker, who possessed such supernatural power that he could expand the food supply, heal the sick, banish the demons of epilepsy and mental illnesses, and even transcend the limits of death before he returned to God’s heavenly home by ascending into the sky of a three-tiered universe to a realm from whence this Jesus supposedly had originally come. That explanation may have fit the world of the first century quite well. Today, however, that understanding of Jesus sounds strange, foreign, dated, and mythological. Space age people cannot imagine such a heavenly being. The explanation of the New Testament may well point to truth, but the first century words they had at their disposal, can never capture the reality of that experience for all time. Explanations no matter how ancient, revered or sacred always die. No explanation is timeless, not even the explanations contained in the gospels. None can, therefore, be eternal. By the time the fourth century arrived in Christian history, Christians began to turn their first century New Testament explanations into creeds that were couched in the words that reflected the common assumptions of fourth century Greek-speaking people. That world thought in terms of dualism. By this I mean that they saw a strict division between heaven and earth, between the human and the divine, between the body and the soul and even between the flesh and the spirit. Dualistic concepts therefore permeated the language of the fourth century creeds and began to shape Christian understanding. The word “Incarnation,” for example, which literally means “to enter the flesh of,” became a doctrine designed to explain the way Jesus was to be understood. Next, Jesus was transformed into being the second person of the Holy Trinity. The human Jesus began to fade from view and a religious system that neither Paul nor the gospel writers would have ever recognized came into being. It was this theological system that poured anti-Semitism into the blood stream of the Christian West, producing such things as the expulsion from or the ghettoization of the Jews in every Christian nation of Europe. That killing violence finally exploded in the genocidal horror of the Holocaust in which 6,000,000 people died as the victims of religion gone mad. It was this system that also expressed itself in the Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries that sought to kill the infidel Muslims. These fourth century creeds also gave birth to heresy hunts, religious wars and the Inquisition. It takes enormous energy to keep dying explanations viable. By the time the 13th century arrived, we turned these dated theological explanations into liturgies and repeated them in worship. Far more than most people recognize, the worship services in all Christian churches were born in 13th century understandings and practices. In that era, human life was denigrated and devalued. So Christian worship began to proclaim that we were “born in sin,” that we were “miserable offenders” and that we were not worthy to “gather up the crumbs under the divine table.” In our hymns we began to call ourselves “wretches” and “worms.” Life became something to be escaped, not something to be lived. We proclaimed a God who was all-seeing, one “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid” and thus a God before whom we quaked in fear and were compelled constantly to beg for mercy. Perhaps that is why worship seems so strange, so unpleasant, so boring to people in the 21st century. That is not our understanding of life. Can we Christians escape, or at least relativize, our explanations from the past without losing in the process the power of the experiences which caused the explanations in the first place? That is the perennial question that both religion and theology asks. The clear answer is that if one literalizes any explanation of an experience, that experience becomes mortal and it is doomed to die. Truth is thus never served by static religious or theological explanations. This means that the Bible cannot be taken literally unless one wants the Bible to die. That means that orthodoxy can never be defined in creeds or doctrines unless one wants orthodoxy to die. This means that liturgical forms must always be changing, they can never be set in stone unless one wants all liturgies to become irrelevant. So religion as we now know and practice it is doomed. Once it is literalized, its destiny is only to create fundamentalists who will exact enormous energy from us in order to protect the religious formulas of the past and when they fail at this task, as they are destined to, they will produce secular humanists who can no longer live with integrity in those religious definitions of antiquity and so they will abandon all religion. The Church Alumni Association will be the fastest growing organization in the heretofore Christian world. That is where we are. What can we do about it? That will be my topic next week. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Zolika Heath from Ocala, Florida, writes: Question: The Trinity: How did this doctrine evolve? Is it polytheistic? Father, Son and Spirit are in scripture but is "Trinity?" Answer: Dear Zolika, Your question is a very good one. I doubt that Jesus was a Trinitarian; I am quite certain that Paul was not. The Trinity is a human definition of God, and since the human mind could never fully embrace the mystery and wonder of God, to literalize a human definition of God borders on the absurd. For human beings to worship their own creation is the essence of idolatry. The Trinity is a definition not of God, but of the human experience of the divine and is, therefore, an attempt to make rational sense out of that human experience. We experience God as other, beyond anything that our minds can grasp. This is what we mean when we say God is Father – the Ground of all being. We experience God as an inward presence, so deep within us that we cannot name the reality we know is there. That is what we mean when we say God is Spirit, ineffable, life-giving, inward and real. We experience God in the life of others. Sometimes to lesser degrees, sometimes to what seems like a total degree. This is what we mean when we call Jesus “the son,” and why we frame doctrines like “the Incarnation.” Our experience was and is that in Jesus we saw the presence of God flowing through his human life. Is that who God is? No, but that is what our experience of God is and so we claim it. The Trinity is not a definition of God; it is an experience into which we live. Thanks for asking, ~John Shelby Spong Announcements We are pleased to announce the new Bishop Spong Website in Spanish! Click Here for a bulletin with all the links and information. Please share this with your Spanish speaking friends! Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at johnshelbyspong.com. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 708 Broadway Suite 105 Tacoma, WA 98402 Add us to your address book

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8/12/13, Spong: On Parting - Never to Meet Again - An Experience of Timelessness
by Ellie Stock 13 Aug '13

13 Aug '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR On Parting - Never to Meet Again - An Experience of Timelessness There are some moments in life when the transcendent is expressed inside the mundane; where the eternal seems to enter the passage of time. They are moments, usually unexpected, perhaps not even recognized until later. I had such a moment earlier this year that will not go away and so I have decided to write about it. We invited to dinner a couple who have been our friends for many years, despite the fact that they live on another continent. The conversation at this meal was easy, as it normally is when it comes out of a long history of relatedness. We recalled shared experiences, some of which brought laughter and some of which had been painful, but we are both survivors. It did not occur to me until near the end of this meal and their subsequent departure that this would probably be the last time we would ever have time with this couple. When they drove out of our driveway, my nostalgia turned to a deep sadness, tinged with the positive realization that relationships are what give life its beauty, its meaning and perhaps even its intimation of immortality. So let me introduce you to these friends. We first met Ann and Peter Carnley in their home in Perth, Australia, in the early 1990’s. At that time, he was the Anglican Archbishop of Perth in the Province of Western Australia. Ann was his lovely, no even beautiful, wife and the mother of their fantastic children, who are now grown and are marvelously creative adults. I was on my first foreign book tour with my book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. Most authors on a book tour of Australia tend to limit their exposure to that continent to the eastern part of that country visiting Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. I had, however, also received invitations to speak and to be interviewed by the media in Canberra, Adelaide, Darwin and Perth. So our tour was an extensive one. On our stop in Perth, we were the guests of the Archbishop and his wife. Peter was one of the better-educated Anglican bishops of the world, having studied extensively at Cambridge University in England and having taught theology in Australia prior to being chosen to be a bishop. He was a well-known author and the recipient of a number of honorary doctoral degrees. He was also a brilliant interpreter of the cultural life of Australia. When he was chosen at a relatively young age to be the Archbishop of Perth (the Anglican Church of Australia is divided into the various provinces of the country with Archbishops in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane), he went immediately from being a priest to being an archbishop. As the Archbishop of Perth he was in charge of a territory constituting about a third of Australia’s land mass. Perth is a city of just under four million people. It is near the port city of Fremantle. From where I live when one is in Perth, one is literally half-way round the world. This is symbolized by the fact that 12 midnight in Perth is 12 noon in New York and that summer and winter are exactly reversed. The nearest major city to Perth is Singapore. Perth is famous for the beauty and variety of its wild flowers. To us, however, it was famous primarily because Peter and Ann Carnley lived there. Over the years we made nine trips to Australia and on three of those trips we went to Perth and spent time with the Carnleys. It was always a highlight of the trip. We met some of their friends, including on one occasion the governor general of Western Australia, who eventually would become the governor general of all Australia. That is Australia’s ceremonial head-of-state position; ultimately the representative of the Queen of England. We went to the theatre together in Perth and saw Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, a play about the trial of the witches in Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th century. Miller’s play, published in 1962, was written to counter the hysteria generated by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt carried out during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. Together we watched Australian football, known in that land as “footie,” which is different and rougher than any professional game I have ever seen. We talked about life together, including church life. Both Peter and I sat uneasily on what passed for evangelical religion with its uninformed literal use of the sacred scriptures. My primary audience in Australia was drawn from among those who were alienated from organized religion by this very kind of mindless fundamentalism. Peter, who was later to become the Primate of Australia’s Anglican Church, had to deal with Sydney Anglicans, who reminded me of 18th century Northern Irish, Catholic-hating Protestants, who had migrated to the South Pacific and frozen their faith in time. Sydney’s bishops and clergy were like a group of Ian Paisleys, only now ordained as Anglicans. They made both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson look bright and liberal. Evangelical Christians so often act as if they possess the full truth of God and they can be quite imperialistic. I had confronted this same fundamentalist reality in my career; first in the struggle for inclusion into the life of the church of people of color in the segregated South; later, in the quest for the full equality of women in both the church and the society, and finally on the issue of justice and welcome for gay and lesbian Christians. Peter confronted them in Sydney, where to this day, women are denied ordination and homosexuals are treated as either sick or sinful people. So we had lots in common and battle scars to show for it. On one trip to Perth, Christine and I traveled up the northern coast of Australia and headed east, seeing some magnificent scenery. On another, we went straight east into the heart of Western Australia to the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie, a town that advertises: “We have more brothels than churches.” It is the only place I have ever known where a brothel offers guided tours in the mornings when business is slow, complete with cookies and lemonade at the end. The bishop of Kalgoorlie, Gerald Beaumont, was one of Peter‘s assistants. We had known Gerald and his wife Lyn, who is a doctor, when he was the Anglican priest in Alice Springs and had driven with him to Uluru (Ayers Rock) on a memorable trip. The two of them had been called by Peter to work in Kalgoorlie and they had blessed it with their presence. When Peter retired, he returned to teaching and accepted a position that brought him for one semester a year to the General Theological Seminary in New York City. So we continued to see the Carnleys. On one occasion, he filled in for me as the confirming bishop at one of our churches in the Diocese of Newark. On another occasion, I taught a class for him on the resurrection of Jesus at General Seminary. So, in those days, it did not seem to be so difficult to say goodbye whenever we parted. We could always anticipate meeting again. Not so this last time, Peter was completing his work in New York City and did not plan to teach there again. There is little possibility that we will ever return to Australia at this stage of our lives. In the middle of dinner, this realization began to overwhelm me. I looked at these two special people: Peter tall and stately with an infectious smile; Ann with a face that always exudes love and the kind of caring that reaches deeply into her being. We had been colleagues in our struggles within the Anglican Communion to move this church of ours into life giving stances, especially toward those the church has consistently marginalized. We had both taken our lumps from those who did not share our vision. We had both been sustained and upheld by the love of our wives, who shared in our lives more deeply than most can only imagine. On this occasion, however, they were retiring to their newly-built home well outside Perth. So I began to realize that this would probably be our final encounter. Of course, there is e-mail, Facebook and Christmas cards, but those are not the same. The realization that we would probably never see these two again in person felt very much like enduring a death experience. Suddenly, the end of the meal became emotional. We shared with them our gratitude for what they had meant in our lives. When the time came to say goodbye, we embraced each other a little more firmly and a little longer than would normally have been the case. This embrace had to last for a lifetime. They got into their car and began to pull away. We stood at the door waving until they passed out of view. Christine and I turned and embraced each other. I suspect a tear or two trickled down our cheeks. A part of our life was ending. That relationship would live from now on only in our memories or, as the old song says, “Among my Souvenirs.” Ann must have felt something similar for she wrote afterwards that she was feeling “the terror of Australia’s distance.” Life does not stand still. It is an ever-moving stream that bears all its sons and daughters away. It hurts to have a final parting with those you have loved for so long. If I could change the nature of life, however, I would not do it. I have been enriched by many relationships. Peter and Ann Carnley are two of them. I am more alive today because I know them. Their physical departure from my life will never remove what they have given me. Life is not quite so individualistic as we pretend. Life expands and contracts regularly and always in response to being loved and losing those we love. I often wonder if we are ever really alone. Do we not always transcend our limits when we enter deeply into another’s life? If God is the Source of life, do we not worship God when we live fully? If God is the Source of love do we not worship God when we love wastefully? If God is the Ground of Being, do we not worship God when we have the courage to be all that we can be? Is not this God found in those relationships that enrich our lives, expand our love and give us the power to share our being with another? Is this not what an intimation of immortality is? Thanks Peter! Thanks Ann! You have been something of the life of God to us and when we live in the life of God distance become finite and time enters eternity. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Debbie Medves from North Carolina writes: Question: I need some help regarding the Bible, especially the injunction to “Honor thy Mother and Father." I have read almost every book that Alice Miller, a famed Swiss psychotherapist, has written. She died just last year, but she bravely went against the grain of our culture and her colleagues to expose the damage caused by child abuse. She uses a great variety of historical figures such as Hitler and other dictators, writers and artists in her books to demonstrate her theories of how the repressed child maltreatment manifested itself in their lives. She also does a great analysis of Mel Gibson's refusal to question his father (who did not believe the Holocaust occurred). She is one of many who found that most people repressed the feelings that accompanied abusive treatment at the most vulnerable times of their lives at the hands of their caretakers in the name of socially sanctioned “parenting” and “discipline.” She finds that this abuse leads to crime, violence, addiction, illness and the perpetuation of abuse onto one’s own children (or an entire nation if you are a dictator) if not therapeutically worked through. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta also found huge correlations to illness and addictions with child maltreatment in their “Adverse Childhood Experiences” studies. The new findings by Bruce Perry and Alan Schore (among others) in the neuroscience of trauma are in alignment with this theory also. To think this all starts in “the family!” Even as I write this, I can feel my own deeply-embedded resistance to acknowledging these truths and how honoring and not questioning certain systems is as ingrained in me as my next breath. Miller found the Bible’s “spare the rod, spoil the child,” the scripture story of Abraham’s blind obedience to God and the “honor thy parent” command to encourage the perpetuation of these abuses of children throughout the generations of our culture. The idea of forgiving impedes healing for many adults, damaged in their youth as once again, the injured party must care for the adult instead of self. Why not “Honor thy son and daughter,” Miller asks? I have seen lives hideously damaged and so can readily see this in extreme forms I daily witness. Yet most of us have degrees of damage, less extreme on a continuum-than that which makes it so visible-though it is repressed and we are not aware of it. I ask you to help educate where these biblical references come from as most people cling to them (literally) like barnacles to a sea worn ship. Can you do some scraping? This will help me to do the prevention and intervention work I must do as a school counselor in the “Bible Belt” where children are whipped with belts as a norm as if God desired it. Only decades later will the results become visible in more child abuse, depression, physical and mental illness and sometimes even suicide. With great appreciation for your work and your God-given intelligence. Answer: Dear Debbie, Thank you for your long and informative letter. I have printed it in almost all its entirety because you describe the total scene so well. I thank you for bringing reality to our attention in such a provocative way. I tried to address the themes you raise in a book entitled The Sins of the Scriptures and most specifically in the chapter on the relationship between the text “spare the rod” and child abuse. Even the Christian story is often portrayed in our hymns, liturgies and sermons as the Father God punishing the Son for the sins of the people. The abusive activities perpetrated by the church throughout history including the Flagellants, the Inquisition and the abuse scandal of recent history reveal that this kind of insensitivity and downright cruelty has been a constant in church history and points to a sickness in the soul of Christianity that must be brought to light, exposed and cured. The only thing I would add to your letter as a cautionary note is that there are exceptions to the rule. People have been able to transform their abusive childhood situations and to channel their anger in creative not destructive ways. What usually makes the difference is the intervention into the abused child’s life of a healthy and mature counselor, teacher, godparent, friend or family member. There is no one who cannot make a difference in the life of another. We only have to be open to the opportunity. Keep up your good work. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements We are pleased to announce the new Bishop Spong Website in Spanish! Click Here for a bulletin with all the links and information. Please share this with your Spanish speaking friends! Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at johnshelbyspong.com. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 708 Broadway Suite 105 Tacoma, WA 98402 Add us to your address book

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FW: Picture of Abe and Jan Ulangca
by Dorothea Jewell 12 Aug '13

12 Aug '13

From: Dorothea Jewell [mailto:dj.jewell@comcast.net] Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 2:38 PM To: 'oe-bounce(a)lists.wedgeblade.net' Subject: Picture of Abe and Jan Ulangca I've been sorting photos and found this picture of Abe and Jan that I took at a January 1994 celebration of the ICA Network which evolved into the IAF - International Association of Facilitators. I love the picture and had it out to send to Janice but instead will send it to all of you as we celebrate the lives and contributions of this spirit couple. In gratitude for our community, Dorothea Jewell 227 W Chase Street Macomb IL 61455 309-421-0426 <mailto:dj.jewell@comcast.net> dj.jewell(a)comcast.net

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