The Golden Pathways CD

--From the Introduction:

Let me introduce myself. I am Lyn Mathews Edwards.

Forty years have gone by since the beginning in 1956 at the University of Texas in Austin where, over a period of six years, seven couples bonded together to move to Chicago to become the corporate faculty of the Ecumenical Institute under the leadership of my husband Joseph Mathews. Ten years of serving and being served by the community known as Fifth City allowed three major strategies to evolve: contextual re-education, structural reformulation, and spirit transformation. The application of these three strategies resulted in many diverse programs. All of them may be broadly held by the creation of curricula and methods to illuminate and demonstrate the New Religious Mode and New Social Vehicle.

It is with great joy that, on behalf of the Advisory Board of the Global Archives Project, this CD-Rom is presented to the Institute of Cultural Affairs. It is for the use of the 21 ICA locations around the world and for all who are related to and participate in the historical task of exercising spirit and practical care for the world as it is met locally.

The archives of the EI/OE/ICA/ located in Chicago are but one of many collections. They are unique in that they hold full documentation of the work done in the Global Research Assemblies, the Global Academy and the personal files of Joseph Mathews. It has taken almost four years to order, computerize and document the expended time and energy stored in 144 five-drawer file cabinets. The first product: The Global Archives Catalog was completed in 1995.

At the December 1995 gathering of a group of colleagues interested in the future of the archives, it was decided to take the nextstep: the creation of the CD-ROM. Nine months and let me digress. Forty years and nine months are time intervals that, metaphorically speaking, are profoundly grounded. Nine months of becoming technologically informed and competent; many hours of hard work by staff and volunteers; weeks of being in the desert alongside of weeks of dwelling in the Promised Land; times of "profound" fun, make it possible to present a CD-ROM that contains, in small measure, the history of Those Who Care. At the second gathering of colleagues interested in the archives held in June 1996, a new name was chosen to signify moving into the future - ICA CentrePointes. Research and interchange will represent the continuation of sharing the learnings, methods and exercises held in the archives globally and to pioneer the creation of models and programs for a new world era. It is hoped that this CD-ROM will be an item that holds for you forty years of glorious memories and the promise of an equally glorious future.

Access the Golden Pathways Collection: http://www.wedgeblade.net/gold_path/gold.htm

-- GordonHarper - 27 May 2009