Individual Writings

We began the Junaluska Gathering with introductions, opening words and drawings.

We read out the greetings we got from Joe Slicker.

Then George Walters led us in a thirty minute individual writing exercise. There were three main questions for us to think about, with an optional fourth:

What is calling you forth (the contradiction)?

Who else do you work with?

What are they expecting of you?

What is the form we are trying to invent?

It was a great exercise. After we wrote, we read a few of these. We shared the questions with those on the Springboard listserv and invited them to contribute their thoughts. Those who shared theirs are collected below.

We'd love to hear from the rest of you. Try this, answer the questions for yourself, then write. Write as quickly as you can, and add it to these.

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My answer to the question: “what gets me up and going every day?”

Assumptions: Like in the order, Marianna and I operate as a missional family team. We seek to engage, what for us, is the contradiction of our day. We have chosen to focus on two Whistle Points: “Inclusive Myth & Knowledge Access.”

The Contradiction:

Perhaps to remember and honor that “Symbol is Key” we could state the central contradiction of our day as:

Our economic, cultural and political stories and structures promote, enhance, and reward economic, cultural and political imperialism rather than creating structures, stories, life styles and spiritualities that support an earth based (global) community. Until there is a re-formulation of the predominate symbol, education, and life style systems from its human centered world view to a sustainable earth based worldview there will be no lasting and authentic change.

(Perhaps something like a universal 5th city model based of re-formulating the Political, Economic and Cultural (education-symbol-style) structures directed toward changing our human based world view into an earth based world view.)

It is, as Thomas Berry so eloquently put it, “the historical mission of out time is to reinvent the human at the species level with cultural reflections within the community of life systems in a time-developmental context by means of story and shared dreams.”

The engagement:

We work with and within the Jubilee Community (www.jubileecommunity.org) a faith based community whose focus is “celebrating life”. We have worked with and within the city of Asheville and Buncombe County to establish a Public Access TV Station which opened in 2006. We work with neighborhoods to create their collective vision. We have the privilege of working with a group of church leaders that include Jubilants, Methodist, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Unitarians, Unity, Jewish Rabies, and Wiccans. We work with ICA Greensboro and local trainers to hold ToP workshops in Asheville.

Believe me, this is what gets me up and going every day.

-- Bill Bailey

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What is calling you forth? The imperative to participate in tikkun olam; to contribute my life to building a more fair, humane, and peaceful society; to live a useful life, that translates the gifts I am given into things of practical and actual use; to live as authentically as I can out of my principles and learning; to respond to actual needs identified by people in need, and eschew the impulse to invent needs out of my own desire to be needed.

Who else do you work with? My colleagues at ICAI and other organizations, my partner, my parents, my sister, my brother, my friends

What are they expecting of you? Commitment, aptitude, patience, humility, excellence

The Form I am interested in helping to ensure that the institutions that have emerged from the OE legacy are dynamic and successful, so that the ICA approach can have ever wider and deeper impact in a world that needs comprehensive human development as urgently as ever.

Sarah Miller Director of Development and Communications The Institute of Cultural Affairs International 555 Rene-Levesque Boulevard West Suite 500 Montreal, Quebec Canada H2Z 1B1 Tel 514.875.7111 Fax 514.287.9687

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What is the form we are trying to invent?

A body to help sustain key human movements that are crucial to the evolution of our total Earth community: by addressing their personal vocational intensification and their commitment to an ongoing, profound journey community; through consultation and the broadcast of profound events, methods, and published or virtual writings.

What is calling you forth?

Compulsion to fashion, form, enlist, engage, and sustain a new secular order that cares for the earth community, including humans.

Who else do you work with?

With wife, Lynda, through Transcribe Books www.transcribebooks.com, our publishing company; through Journey Reflection, our daily blog and e-mail listserv www.reJourney.blogspot.com; through the Cock family (especially our two sons’ families with six grandchildren); through Resurgence Publishing Corp. as an officer; through membership in the Center for Ecozoic Studies; through membership in ICAI; through the New Monk project.

What are they expecting of you?

Daily meditation; creativity; writing; publications; editing; daily blogs; image research; supplemental financial support; attendance; collegiality; love; nurture; and care.

-- John Cock

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WHAT IS CALLING ME FORTH?

a. Half a dozen colleagues ranging from former ICA staff members, local volunteers, fellow members of the Spiritual Direction Colorado committee on which I serve, and my spiritual director‹all people who strike me as vocated, touched by the Mystery-at-work-in-the-world, but without names for what they experience or a movement with which to identify.

b. Boulding¹s insights about images and messages, Kierkegaard¹s insight about the self as a relationship, Ignatius Loyola¹s insights about imagination and movements as the basis for exploring one¹s relationship with the Mysterious Power, and my discovery of Jesus as a partner-in-mission and a faithful friend. Everything that I experience or think lights up my life as a relationship with Spirit.

c. Two women and the young adults at church who are clearly very, very thirsty for a chance to ground the symbols of faith in life experience rather than intellectual concepts.

d. The gap between the church and the world and a vision of an order of secular religious.

e. The more I do design and publishing, the more I am drawn to beauty and clarity. The more I strive for beauty and clarity in my work and the world, the more I am shoved and drawn, heart-first, to teaching and writing about spirit and the religious life.

WHO ELSE DO YOU WORK WITH?

a. Spiritual Direction Colorado (promoting awareness of the spiritual journey and spiritual companioning: web site and desktop publishing).

b. Institute for Consensus Action (ICA Denver-partner with ICA USA--desktop publishing and technical support; ToP mentor trainer)

c. International Consultants and Associates (editing, design and desktop publishing re HIV/AIDS work in Africa, etc.).

d. Process Consulting Company, Moscow (editing and project support related to program evaluation in the Former Soviet Union).

e. U.S. clients (editing and editorial consultation, writing, graphic design, desktop publishing).

f. M. Susan Brown (poetry for librettos for a Denver-area composer of sacred music).

WHAT ARE THEY EXPECTING OF ME?

Concise, clear English; collaborative style, depth listening, probing for unexpressed insight; translating dreams into concrete reality; Elegant design, craftsmanship with a generous heart; provocative questions and insights that enter uncharted territory.

WHAT IS THE FORM WE ARE COLLECTIVELY MOLDING?

A collaborative, grassroots OE panchayat; a non-sectarian order of secular religious; a network of soul companions and spirit mentors.

David Dunn

www.mirrorcommunication.com david at mirrorcommunication.com 720-314-5991 Skype: dmirror

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There are three groups of people I work with that currently make a significant claim on my life. Each of these points to a contradiction I have felt called upon to address in some way, shape or fashion. One of these is a faith based peace action task force in my local congregation in Seattle. The second is a group of people from the Northwest (U.S.) who want to become more skilled facilitators and trainers of the Technology of Participation. The third is the body of long standing colleagues represented by the faces seated around this table today here in North Carolina.

What is it in these arenas that's got to be addressed—and why do I suppose that I'm one of those tapped to do so? Not easy questions to answer. What I know is that the search for nonviolent forms of conflict resolution was one of the earliest conscious pursuits in my life, and that it has been something that never quite left me. When my country began moving toward launching a war a few years ago, I felt an urgency to be among those offering resistance and alternatives, however inadequate both might seem. The theological and philosophical assumptions that support our propensity for and ongoing use of violence have to be confronted afresh in our time.

The second might be seen as another way of talking about the first: how are people to live and work—authentically and effectively—in community? The question has been at the heart of much of my work with the Ecumenical Institute and the Institute of Cultural Affairs over the past forty years. During that time, the world's need for enabling concepts and methods for community building has not diminished. A great deal of my working life has been devoted to applying such tools in a wide diversity of settings and attempting to train others in their use, from village people to public and private sector leaders. I fleetingly entertained the idea that once I “retired” from the ICA staff a few years ago, I could put this activity behind me, but I find that in fact I cannot.

The third of these groups is in some ways the most difficult to talk about. The Order Ecumenical was my primary community for something like twenty-three years. It ended its structural life in 1988. It would seem that, while retaining a sense of deep colleagueship and in some cases even friendship with people from that community, I ought to have been able to move on and indeed off in other directions. And yet, as I came to visualize the next—and perhaps final—active expenditure phase of my own life, the need to be in dialogue and exploration with that community has intensified rather than attenuated. Starting the Repository and being engaged with the Springboard initiative have been claims from which I could not have turned away if I'd wanted to. It's not yet altogether clear to me, but I have a strong sense that the future is somehow extending an invitation to us that goes well beyond the individual roles that we've all been playing and will continue to play.

What are people expecting of me in these groups? The first two groups look to me to be a kind of mentor, guide, coach and enabler of their journeys in these arenas. I was the prime mover in forming these groups and continue to be seen as providing leadership, wisdom, strategic thinking and spirit for them. This is not a role that I always relish playing—indeed, sometimes I quite resent it. Still, I'm also aware that I depend on the demands these groups make of me in order to sustain the aliveness of my own spirit. My colleagues in these groups want to go deep. They want their spirits to be pushed, their minds and capacities to be stretched. They want to feel the challenge of something more radical than protests or just getting along with one another, something beyond learning some valuable techniques or ending the madness of a current war. They want to feel brushed by the winds of the profound—in some cases they want to be swept up by those winds and carried who knows where. And I, who know that desire as well as they, both resent and give thanks for finding myself in the position where I have to respond, however ineptly, to what they seek

As for my old colleagues of the Order, the League, the Invisible College—what I believe they expect of me is to remain a participant in the struggle, to speak from my grounding in what I understand the way life is, to contribute my limited perspective to discerning where the Spirit is choosing to blow today and to be available for what may come. It is no less than what I expect of them.

The last question seems to me one of the things that we all expect of one another: to be about the creation of new forms for our thinking, acting and being. Only as we try out the untested and the unforeseeable do we act at all responsibly on behalf of those who care and those who have not yet become aware of their care. Sometimes I think I have glimmers of some of these new forms the world cries out for; at other times, I'm sure I don't have a clue. No matter—the claim is laid, and we all know it.

-- Gordon Harper, ToP Facilitators Northwest, Seattle, WA

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The Call and the Response

I am overwhelmed with the extensiveness of the task before us. The little corner of that task I engage in from day to day is but a small part of all of that which must be done. The forms that are needed for all that must be done mystify me and I cannot fathom how they might come to be. Old forms, while informative and filled with rich clues to what is called for, must be transformed. New forms, appropriate to the age and the places where we engage.

At the same time I am heartened by all that goes on around me. In a trade show recently I was impressed with the many solutions various inventors, entrepreneurs, founders of little companies, had brought to the market place to address the major challenges of security, environment, technology, etc. Their almost evangelistic zeal for what they were doing is exciting and I realize there is no lack of creativity, imagination, and energy involved in this task. But then I at the same time I am aware of how fragmented and disconnected all this creativity is and how economic competition is making their ideas and products compete with each other and cloud the vision of the greater need and good in the maritime world.

I am trained to see this and respond to it. So I found a change in my sales pitch for my own product suddenly bubbling out of my mouth. I started talking with them about collaboration and how we might integrate various products together to create a yet greater and more powerful result. I even took two competitors to talk with each other about the different strengths of each of their products and how I could offer them a third alternative to put their products together. I don't know if anything will come of it because of the bitter economic rivalry in the marketplace they have, but for a moment they were both shaking their heads "Yes".

Who am I in this world where I work from day to day that in the midst of this real world of social disparity, economic inequity, political turmoil and planetary ecological crisis?

I am in fact a nobody, at the bottom of the economic market share which everyone uses to measure success. And yet, "wonder of wonders" as JAS says, In the last 90 days with no sales, I have been asked to convene a group of industry leaders, to present at two speaking engagements, to be on a team for a year long best practices studies in my industry (and actually get paid to do it).

What I have decided to be, whether or not money follows, is an honest voice for what must be done. Yesterday a salesman who is helping me market my product called me and started trying to sell my product to me - "It is not a matter of whether what you say needs to be done, George, but when. It must be done!" At that point I realized the battle was won, not in the fact that it was complete, but that a virtual stranger had recognized and was now evangelizing his awareness of his own awakenment".

So now I am about awakenment all over again, something I thought I was through with; And I am about formation of relationships, something that I thought I was through with; And permeating an industry with a new view of their reality - even though I am the least of them; And that is what they are expecting of me, and they are in turn are emulating as they respond to me.

But this is not my full life. I have discovered and allied myself with others who have discovered this too. They too are doing and discovering the same things in their industries, organizations and work. And we will spend much time together enabling each other to formulate strategic ways to align forces, engage forces, empower forces, and journey forces to replace us on the long march, not doing the content of what we have done but act in the spirit of that we have done, ever mindful of the change in the global and universal landscape as the centuries evolve.

M. George Walters, President

Harbour Mastery Inc.

www.Harbourmastery.com

M.George.Walters at verizon.net

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THE TASK (Contradiction?) Based on the conversation of today and thinking leading up to it, the task, yet, is to be the sensitive and responsive part of society and, one might add to care for and grow that sensitive and responsive part.

A bit like the East German movie we saw, "The Lives of Others", it ain't easy bein' the sensitive and responsive part, certainly not long enough to truly change something. If you get too knowing and scientific about it (even if you are trying to grow it), you wipe out, or repress the turmoil involved. On the other hand, if you get too fascinated or interested in it, give too much affirmation or support, you get sex, drugs and rock n roll. From the sensitive, responsive side, it is precisely the pressure of what is going on that is the ground of sensitive, responsive innovation.

Yet, at the same time, (and I have this as a quote) -- the drama and power of this s/r activity is precisely because it has to be genuinely inventive and at the same time reach a market, like a movie for success. This is the social dynamic of change, the philosophy of revolution that is evolving here . . . economics is a dynamic = no stability, but gaining competency, connection and wealth to move forward, politics is a dynamic, culture is a dynamic, ecology is a dynamic

What is calling you forth? I get out of bed in the morning for the chance to do something that day that somehow participates in the great drama unfolding about me -- my house, my patch of ground, the universe of my connection electronically, some organization, some training, some great thought.

Who else do you work with? Partners in Participation and the Community of Practice in the Southwest connected with it Judy and the kids and the grandkids and the relatives and their lives and connections Community of Practice in the Southwest The Set of my connected clients The ToP Trainers The Network of ICA's around the world This order diaspora Whoever is around me

What are they expecting of you? (now) capture their stories somehow, put them in a story?? deliver facilitation services, and training bring my being to some enlivenment in theirs Meet them as human beings with greatness and deliver some additional greatness that certifiably helps the situation (= is worth paying for)

then (my, my, my, my)

FORM (What is the form we are trying to invent? We are trying to invent a form that gives full mythic weight to what we are involved in as a species, each of us, and that releases our mystery, depth and greatness

I am looking across the room at the old LENS quotes, hand written on posters, that Marianna Bailey brought (I guess she has kept them all these years . . . We anticipate more or less clearly our entire future at every moment We have arrived at an historical vantage point where the wasteland ends and human wholeness and fulfillment begins At the edge of history, the future is blowing wildly in our faces, sometimes brightening the air and sometimes blinding us The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and to build the earth What appears to be a breaking down of civilization may be simply the breaking up of old forms by life itself.

So we are trying to create the affirmative equivalent of the raging grannies --- some presence that mythically and actually would have people stand in their full greatness and do what needs to be done. There is more scope for adventure in the next decade or two, if we but wake up, than has been for a long time -- Affairs are soul sized . . .

-- Jim Wiegel

401 North Beverly Way

Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401

+1 623-936-8671 +1 623-363-3277 jfwiegel at yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com

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What is calling you forth?

I am unwilling to spend my life producing commodities for a poverty-perpetuating market.

I want to find ways to move away from 1 monolithic voice, and open channels for other voices/truths to be heard worldwide (real participation, requires enabling from dominant groups & key players)

I want to help, not hurt others without pretending to have the ‘right’ answers.

I know that what I do has a global impact; it’s my responsibility to treat the earth and its people with respect, not just in my attitude, but in the way I live my life and work I do.

I believe that development can work without being a colonial venture. Privilege can be used to enable communities to move ahead with their own goals/visions, provide resources & open doors without the religious/political/cultural/economic agenda. I can be a part of this process by knowing my abilities & doing what is needed.

Katie Burke Office Manager The Institute of Cultural Affairs International 555 Rene-Levesque Boulevard West Suite 500 Montreal, Quebec Canada H2Z 1B1 Tel 514.875.7111 Fax 514.287.9687

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The task that is calling me: Telling the new story of who we (humans) are in relation to the total Earth Community. This is a task that I believe is necessary to shift the current paradigm that is so prevalent in our economic, political and social structures.

Who else do you work with: I work with the Jubilee Nurture Team that is currently working on a new curriculum for children, youth and adults Nurture program. We are also networking with other Creation Spirituality Communities for age appropriate resources. I will be calling on order colleagues for their wisdom on imaginal education and curriculum building.

What is expected of me? I am expected to keep the process moving and to continue the work that I am currently doing with adult Nurture classes.

-- Marianna Bailey

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The call is to love god and neighbor as I take responsibility for myself. I think that is the task. That is also the accountability.

But ' what'? is doing that to me is your question.

I am being asked to stop being so busy, to calm down a little bit, find out how much I need to be at rest, and then maybe begin to heal, by working through the ongoing contradictions of my own life, such as mean-spiritedness, confusion over where to actually channel my energy to relieve somebody's suffering, and indecision over with whom I, actually, will be willing to work.

I find myself hesitantly working with two guys i reside with in this Mindfulness Practice Center of Atlanta, a former Order Ecumenical Religious House. We are engaged in hosting weekly events. I am associated with the core community of the Order of Interbeing inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh and a local Buddhist sangha. I sometimes teach with a group of psychosynthesis colleagues where I focus again and again on the wisdom of loving unconditionally and forgiving consistently. I serve on two local boards and on two national boards. I have hope for and inherent solidity with, but no current membership in, the christian church. I include my family, ex-spouse, children and grandchildren and friends in all of the above as much as possible.

I'm sure god expects me to be like Jonah and keep getting vomited up in some place where I am supposed to be, however deeply resisting, . As for everyone else, a supportive friend and family member, a social relic of the 1960's, a christian and a buddhist, a colleagially trained teacher, an access to financial resources, a racist resistor, and a passionate lover, I wish.

The forms being created are in kaleidoscopic motion and practically formless, subject to the willingness to participate in them. In the human heart, form may take the shape of glimpses of one's own and of other's holiness when one has been touched by the sources of life and has had the capacity to respond. This is not an invention, but a renewal. A smile for the addicted diseased self deceived beligerent ignorant fear-filled greedily craving of our time is but a formal entrance into engagement in transforming the suffering of ourselves and others. Other sustained engagement in healing the political impolitic, the economic disorder, the cultural cutoffness from nature, however personally grounding and meaningful, is also revealing of its fleeting impact and effect. Yet, our 'yes' and our 'no' needs to be given deliberately and concretely.

Will I, will we, be willing to accept the decision to be at peace with doing the best we can?? And then to get on with it?

My gratitude to all of you there and for the personal contributions it has taken to bring the opportunity for a corporate consciousness of a common journey to manifest itself on this weekend.

Grace and Peace,

Charles Lingo

the eleventh hour of sunday december 2, 2007

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THE TASK (Contradiction?)

Contradiction is a high military budget and low social service budget. Woops, money is never the problem. Must be the mindset that allowed this to happen.

What is calling you forth?

The homeless dragging a black bag with all their earthly possessions, the war deaths and refuges, the sinking polar bears, violence in homes, schools and communities, drug users in jail instead of rehab.

Who else do you work with?

Peace activists, Dept of Peace committee, social action groups, The Partnership for Peace and Justice

What are they expecting of you?

Leadership, spirit and energy, and hope

FORM (What is the form we are trying to invent?

Something to alert and energize the masses and give them a way to act and express their passion.

-- Phyllis Hockley

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Greetings to all friends of the Way!

1. The Calling Forth

The Great Flaring Forth propels me forth. Innocent suffering calls me forth. Joy and ecstasy propel me forth. A vision of a world that works for eveyone calls me forth. The hound of heaven propels me forth.

2. Allies

The Social Artistry Community (Jean Houston and Jan Sanders) The UN Community (Shabbir Cheema and Monica Sharma) The ICAI Community (Lambert Okrah and Sarah Miller) The IC&A Community (Dick Alton and Bruce Williams) The Abbey North Community (John and Thea Patterson) The Family Community (mother, brothers, sisters, sons, cousins) The Divine Couple Community (Bonnie Myotai Treace and Kwan Yin)

3. Expectations

You expect me to be a good man, to be compassionate, to be understanding, to be my being, to do my doing, to know my knowing, to help reinvent societies that provide opportunities for every being to realize her/his full potential, to care for the Earth, to celebrate the Endless Mystery and to expect you to be your being in its fullness.

4. Form

Form is emptiness Emptiness is form Form is fullness Form is function A network of networks of networks An invisible servant force The Thousand Armed Kwan Yin Bodhisattva

-- Rob Work

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The question from the Springboard group was, "What's laying a claim on us personally regarding the future?" and it's a good question that deserves serious consideration. First answers are usually the most reliable in terms of revealing ones inner consciousness, but I have to admit that not much came to mind.

Of course I could name the numerous clients that are literally badgering us to facilitate for them and to teach them facilitation skills. Something is clearly going on that has not gone on before. Is it really getting through that the role of facilitation is important if groups are to work together successfully? Somehow that particular trend is welcome and something I've worked on for many years. But these days it doesn't ring my bells. Ann is handling that with skill and panache, and I am more than willing to help and to participate where possible. It's fun to facilitate and to see groups come alive. I seem at this moment, however, to be in the mode of "handing over" this particular mission.

Then I could name the online graduate courses I am teaching. There is plenty to do there, both in the sense of learning and teaching. And, of course, using the computer to do increasingly complex tasks is fun. "Meeting" students places me in touch with a huge variety of personalities and life-events without having to actually meet people f-2-f. Courses need tweaking and polishing to get them "right" and students need a bit of personal guidance from time to time that I find gratifying to provide.? It's good work and it makes a contribution. Still, the bells don't ring.

Writing is still a hobby that I enjoy. The last thing I wrote that was pretty good was a witness in June entitled "Sometimes a Hug" about confronting (my) death. There are now 8 bound volumes of my writings in KL that need to be sorted by topic and put into publishable form. But since they are more like journal entries and reflections on experiences, it's hard to see any publishable value. Going through them would be a great memory trip, but I don't yet see their futuric thrust. My interior glockenspiel remains undisturbed.

There are groups that are important, worthy, and a joy to work with: IAF, the Denver ICA team, and the KL conference committee. I've played a helpful (minor) role in 2 of the three. But even the best of groups has dynamics that bring out the "been there, done that" interior response. Somehow the prospect of getting seriously involved in making things happen effectively in a group keeps my chimes thoroughly muffled.

I have been able in the past to discern the "mood of the times" with some accuracy, and that's a role I don't mind continuing. But analysis is not strategy and what to do with the insights that emerge is not something about which I have much expertise. But here are a few insights: Authentic spirituality comes in the midst of intensified knowing and doing. Any other approach is off target. We've often said that the great gift of the OE was doing theology first -- knowing the religious basis on which everything else must be built. We first built a complex mental model and then did a series of social demonstrations. And throughout those efforts, continual reflection on the spirit yielded wonders.

So maybe one task of Springboard now is clarification of current theology. The times are not now the 60s. And the immediate issue may not be the existential one, though that's what will eventually have to be addressed. But suppose we're back to a time of ontology. Suppose the insights of quantum physics and string theory have so disrupted the common worldview that even the idea "God" is unintelligible. It's more likely that the technology springing from physics has created the change rather than the actual theoretical physics about which most of us remain blissfully unaware. There's also this younger generation and their technological expertise that embodies a new type of consciousness. One presenter at the IAF Europe conference mentioned that his son often had nine interactive screens open at the same time on his computer and was carrying out interactions with each of the nine simultaneously. That's a type of consciousness that is more foreign to my way of thinking than the mindsets of Malaysians. It's not just chaos theory and fancy physics that's creating the new context: it's technology that is providing a new consciousness.

People aren't against religion; they're more like Tony Blair's press secretary's response when asked about Tony's church habits: "We're not into God." If you base it on church attendance, you could also say I'm "not into God," at least in the ways of organized religion. But I am deeply committed to the proposition that life is 2-dimensional, and at the dimension of depth reside those realities spoken of in religious poetry. Looking at the perversions that fundamentalists have inflicted on religion in the past decade, it is no wonder that sensitive and responsive people often give religion a miss. But that's to view life as one-dimensional. As Niebuhr once said, life has two dimensions, and whenever either one is negated, something goes seriously wrong. Maybe the starting point for our work on theology might be "Towards a New Otherworldliness" from H. Richard Niebuhr's 1942 article. But we mustn't simply use it to justify our own work on the Other World. That may still serve as a springboard, but it's a bit too subjective; we need to get at its ontological basis. Maybe there is a way to talk about the two dimensions of life without getting into the "supernatural." It would be momentous (literally) to produce a world view that was scientifically credible and accounted for the dimension of depth that religious poetry expresses. Tillich never quite accomplished that, though he tried. Maybe we could give it a go. Then we have a chance to address lives, i.e. to expose the existential gap between reality and ourselves.

There seems to be a faint jingling in the distance. Anyone else hear it?

Now here are a few thoughts about bells. What rings my bells is not necessarily the primary value to determine how I spend my time. For me the bells indicate an emerging concern that I would like to pursue, but it is not necessarily a priority unless it is related to practical needs. So the identification of primary societal contradictions at a deep level may be the task before us now that will disclose the necessary deeds.

--John Epps 3 December 2007

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THE TASK (Contradiction?)

What is calling you forth?

-within my nation, concern about establishing common ground and moving beyond entrenched narrow positions that are disrespectful of others; -finding practical ways to embody the same in local communities so that a sense of victimization is overcome; I am struck with how fatalism at different levels is a form of victimization; -creation of new mythology appropriate for our times; -the environment and the legacy our generation is bestowing upon those who will follow;

Who else do you work with?

Professionally: -my major client as a free lance consultant is an international development/management group called GRM; -the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University where I am an adjunct faculty member; -the Leadership Practice with Public Allies providing training with volunteers and host agencies of VISTA, AmeriCorps, and other organizations funded by the US's national service program;

Social: -my condo association in Chicago that keeps me thoroughly grounded in the mundane realities and struggles of creating and sustaining community; -the communidad ecologicas in Mexico.

What are they expecting of you?

-creativity to establish and rehearse a big picture context; -a realistic perspective and practical means to move forward within that context without becoming stuck in romantic idealism.

FORM (What is the form we are trying to invent?)

-a virtual "congregation" that is intellectually invigorating, spiritually alive, and a point of reference and accountability for my engagements in the world (i.e., the group to which I understand myself saying "yes and no" or "no and yes").

--Terry Bergdall

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THE TASK (Contradiction?)

* Still, everything which blocks all the goods, all the decisions and all the gifts of humanness being accessible to all * Universal access to the means... * Barriers on all sides (as opposed to bridges) * "Unattended sorrow," that is, what images, mindsets, guilt, grief, shadow side stuff which keeps me and others from opening to possibility * Systems which allow, even promotes acquiring material wealth as the highest good for me and others * Capacity to experience some of us as superior to others

What is calling you forth?

* Coaching and mentoring mixed in with energy healing * Facilitating self organizing people, systems and organizations * Work on consciousness in order that as much energy as possible is available to each of us * Discovering the "Truth about Life" which is what people are living out of as they make their life decisions ( Currently hosting a series on consciousness encouraging participants to ground the levels in David Hawkins book, "Power vs Force" * Doing my first OS with the leaders of a Canadian financial services company with the possibility of real follow-up

Who else do you work with?

* Gail (of course), Larry and Evelyn Philbrook as well as a growing group of facilitators and community of practice people in coaching and mentoring communities, healing communities, Open Space communities, spirit communities * Cynthia Ong from North Borneo who is bridging NYC money for sustainable work in Asia * Dr. An-Chi Liu, the President of the Dharma Drum (International) University who is creating a university out of whole cloth * Facilitators and healers including those I and we have trained * Harrison Owen and others promoting and developing Open Space Training

What are they expecting of you?

* Coaching and mentoring * Creativity * Connections * Stories * Gail's or my presence at events which promise to expand the work

FORM (What is the form we are trying to invent?

* Can't imagine inventing a form, need to see what form is already taking place and find our place in it, i.e., what is needed to make the emerging forms work that we know/can do... * Formless organization (at least appears to be) which meets as "needed" to work on what is changing and where we can put energy to make a difference, also individuals who are trying to make a difference the world needs where we can add a necessary ingredient, am remembering, " Who was that masked man?" * I imagine an ongoing research assembly dynamic with questions to be dropped into our unconscious for work at mind/body/spirit level... --

-- Richard West

ICA Taiwan 3F, # 12, Lane 5, Tien Mou West Road Taipei, Taiwan 111

T) 8862-2871-3150 F) 8862-2871-2870 email) rwestica at ms69.hinet.net skype) rwestica

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THE TASK (Contradiction?)

The pervasiveness of the Empire building mindset that has dominated human civilization since Mesopotamia, on to George Bush, Amerika and the Globalized World.

What is calling you forth?

Paradigm shifting challenge, currently with 6th Grade elementary students who are on their second spurt of brain cell production and are susceptible to the possibility of jarring their consciousness of the dominance of the processes and symbols of Empire into the gracefulness of the "Blue" dot.

Who else do you work with?

Tina Sablan, 26-year old newly elected maverick and non-traditional Legislator in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, Acting Principal Betty Miller of the San Vicente Elementary School, and President of the Association of Commonwealth Teachers, James Rayphand, director of the Northern Marianas Protection and Advocacy Systems, Inc., the folks at the Marianas Islands Nature Alliance group.

What are they expecting of you?

Words of wisdom backed by concrete experience and grounded illustrations on the nature and management of change.

Comprehensive models of viewing self, society and the world.

FORM (What is the form we are trying to invent?

Group of genial subversives with strategic plans to restructure collapsing systems and structures.

Jaime Vergara

Saipan

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