George Walters Collegium on The Diaspora

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Jan Ulangca's Notes on the talk:

(George begins by saying that this is a talk for those with some history, though others are welcome to listen. Janice understood this as "I'm not gonna try to de-jargonize this or try to make it plain for the whole world - it's tricky enough to talk about all this without that translation!")

Re Care, Courage, Creativity: Care has to do with the Indicative (Janice says "which I understand as 'what's really there', as opposed to 'what I wish were there' ".) Courage is Nothing to lose, or Audaciousness (Janice adds "as an operating style") Creativity has to do with the Imperative - it's the flip side of the Indicative. The Imperative requires corporateness and discipline if creativity is to be molded into something effective - if forms are to make it real.

Illumination is required, to deal with the contradiction. What illumination is about is exposing the Indicative so that the Imperative can arise.

We have the being-ness - we don't have to create it. What we don't know is the shape it needs to take. I thought about calling it New Order, New Guild - but decided to call it the New Thingamajig - because we don't know what it will be.

MARKS OF THE NEW THINGAMAJIG (TMJ) - It's got to be Global. - Covenanted. - It's like a Guild - but more of a Virtual Community. - There will be a Common Vision - an over-arching and driving awareness of what we're all about. The last image like this that captured me was de Chardin's "Our task is to build the earth." But that image is too small - we have to include the whole universe. Only as we're able to align what we're about, with what the universe is about - with what we used to call "The activity of God" is about - with what the endlessness of the creative process is about - (will we have a vision big enough). This includes the indellible fact that we would all like to forget: that we all will pass away. - This TMJ needs a framework. Perhaps it will look like a retreat center. I never liked the idea of "retreating" - but this would be "retreat in order to attack". A way to reframe - refocus - re-think-through - so we're able to answer the next big question coming up, in order to charge the next windmill effectively. - This TMJ has to have strategic focus - can't just be shotgun stuff. Though there may be a shotgun aspect to it at times - fire and see who screams because one of the pellets hit them. - This TMJ sings New Songs and has New Poetry, but hasn't forgotten the Old Songs and Old Poetry. It's constantly creating new rationales, but it hasn't forgotten Plato and Aristotle or the great fathers of the church. It has roots and tentacles. - It has some kind of corporate office when it gathers. (Maybe), "Well, here we are. What do you think we should do?" (George asks for a response from the group, and they say together: "We don't know - what do YOU think?") In a time of a kind of question-mark - that's a damned good little corporate office. - What we DO know is that this TMJ is not about ready, shoot, aim. We've learned to manipulate contradictions, proposals, (methods) and we've gotten so good at it that we can make them come out any way we want. We've got to get beyond that - and that's gonna take work. I suspect it's gonna take a lot of silence. - Its members have a locally-grounded personal practice. - Its members are grounded in action at the local level, addressing real human contradictions. - These will be people that understand that this ranges from your parakete to the universe. You don't leave your parakete out, you just put it in context.

So what's the next 30 years? I don't have a clue.

-- GordonHarper - 25 Oct 2007