I began writing my "memoirs" in August of 2009, at 72 years of age. I retired from our business Participation Works, at age 70, except for Linda coaxing me out to help her on an occasional facilitation gig, or a TFM or TSP course. This was until she had trained up two or three people she could team up with. I had been attending a weekly writing group for several years and finally decided to start posting vignettes from my life on my blog. So I now have six years of one to three pages of episodes. The Spirit Movement and Order years (1967-1979) revealed that I had pretty much missed the decade of the 70s. I can hardly recognize any of the music that came out of that period. The next six years I was "in recovery" from life in the Order. The years from 1985 to 1998 were consumed with our founding and growing the FOOD FOR ALL organization, then merging it with another nonprofit organization. So here I have just published the "final" episode of what I have called the FOOD FOR ALL ERA. Although I have shared all of my blog posts with my writing group and a group of friends I call "My Blogger Groupies," and more recently on Facebook and Google Groups, this is the first time I have shared any of my writing with this list-serve. My reason for writing this now is that I have been reflecting on the legacy of FOOD FOR ALL, which we would never have attempted had it not been for the "education" we received while involved with EI/ICA/Order Ecumenical. The methods we learned were present in everything we did in our grassroots education programs, volunteer programs, working with staff, even our Board of Directors who learned to make decisions by consensus. Community forums were implemented in the Think Tanks on Hunger we conducted, and we adopted the Sharing Approaches that Work model in working with funded agencies and our grant boards. What I have come to realize is that the legacy of FOOD FOR ALL, which I have written in my latest blog entry, is also the legacy of EI/ICA/The Order. As I have followed from afar what so many of you are doing, I am amazed and humbled. You are all part of the legacy. I am in awe at the work of ICAs in so many of the countries of the world. And the ToP Trainers Network, though its potential is still to be fully realized, has made a huge difference in the field of facilitation. And just the work I hear of so many of you are doing, on poverty issues, homelessness, environmental concerns and climate change, and many more. Linda and I are proud to be a part of this great legacy of Those Who Care. You can find my latest entry, FOOD FOR ALL ERA 22: "You're Welcome" on my blog at <http://www.mellowmilan.blogspot.com> www.mellowmilan.blogspot.com. Milan Hamilton aka Mellowmilan 80 North Center Street Redlands, CA 92373-8116 Phone/Fax: (909) 793-4482 E-mail: mellowmilan@verizon.net Mellow Milan's Musings Blog: www.mellowmilan.blogspot.com <http://www.mellowmilan.blogspot.com> Mellow Milan's Blog2: www.mellowmilansite.wordpress.com <http://www.mellowmilansite.wordpress.com>
