Journey of Awakening – 47: A Memorable Town

New Year week 1978. Somehow, call it Linda’s miraculous recovery or sheer determination, our family, me, Linda, Eric, and Troy who was in our Student House in Chicago, all were in one place for about a week in Boston. We decided to take a family one day trip to Cape Cod, stopping at Plymouth Rock on the way.

We drove all the way to Provincetown   Cape Cod from Above

January was definitely not the time to visit Cape Cod. And we were disappointed that we could not actually stand on Plymouth Rock which was several feet below us with a fence surrounding its enclosure. Troy’s only comment was “Is that it?”

That was the extent of our family holiday before I headed back out on the Town Meeting circuit.

By the time I joined the team we were moving our base of operations to Richmond, Virginia. Assignments were a little saner for the two weeks we were in Virginia. We had more volunteers so could go out in teams of two. We had a couple of us stay back in Richmond phoning to set up the meetings and appointments so the rest of us could concentrate on scheduling and conducting the forums.

My Colleague Burna Dunn in front of Richmond ICA House

I remember one foray I and another volunteer made all the way out to the point where Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee connect. A little town nestled in a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The name is lost to memory. Let’s call it Jonesville.

Many of the small mountain towns in SW Virginia were “Company Towns”

The only issue that seemed to be on the mind of the town leaders as we discussed scheduling their Town Meeting was that they were really disappointed that they could not get the participation of the black folks in the community in town affairs. I am sure they were well-intentioned sentiments. I couldn’t help wondering whether they realized how deep were the scars of more than two hundred years of slavery and being treated as less than human. We knew that whatever issues a town expressed on the surface, it was most difficult for the citizens to see with clarity the underlying contradictions that kept them from addressing their real situations.

Of course, one Town Meeting would not resolve all of the community issues. But we were often amazed at how much could be accomplished when people came together, left their entrenched beliefs at the door, and used appropriate methods aimed at building consensus.

I sometimes wonder if that little Virginia mountain town ever got it together.

Journey of Awakening – 46: Snowed in – in Harrisburg, PA

December 1977 - Working my way toward western Pennsylvania on the Town Meeting circuit. Our team of ten volunteers was to meet up in Harrisburg, the capitol of Pennsylvania, at the home of Ellen and Dick Howie, who were expecting to put us up for a couple of nights.

The snow flurries began the week before Christmas. By the time we arrived in Harrisburg most of the highways east and north all the way to upstate New York and as far as Boston were closed. The blizzard of ’77 was upon the eastern states with all its fury.

             Harrisburg                            Boston

Linda and Eric were stuck in Boston and I was stuck in Harrisburg. Airports were closing and even the trains were not running. So our colleagues, the Howies, were stuck with ten of us, sleeping in their living and dining room for about a week. We made due, huddling around the fireplace, singing Town Meeting songs and Christmas carols, played lots of chess and card games, and tried not to wear out our welcome. A couple of days before the New Year I was able to get a train and made it back to Boston in time to greet 1978 and find Linda with a bad case of flu. As I remember I had to walk through the as yet unplowed streets from Copley Plaza station to our house, dragging my bag through the snow. But it was good to be home.

The streets were not cleared for another eight days, which was fine because we were both recovering from sickness and Town Meeting travel. Eric, who was in fourth grade, had to take care of both of his parents. And he did so without complaining.

When I returned to Pennsylvania in the middle of January, the snow was no longer an impediment and the roads were clear. So back on the Town Meeting circuit.

The only additional memory I have of my time in Harrisburg was driving by these huge cooling towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear power generating station, unaware that in just one year this would be the scene of the worst nuclear disaster in our nation’s history and the occasion for major changes in the world’s nuclear power industry.

The Meltdown

It always amazes me how the day-to-day focus on what is in front of us as our particular piece of the human adventure allows us to go on in the midst of impending world-altering events. Another sign of how little control we actually have over the world—or over our own lives.

Journey of Awakening – 45: December Surprise

Thanksgiving 1977 was spent in the ICA’s New York Regional House on the lower east side of Manhattan preparing for the next phase of the Town Meeting campaign. Our campaign team, which we named our “Strike Force” (a term stolen from our reading of the famous Chinese general Sun Tzu), had the ominous task of completing community forums throughout the eastern states. We were intent on conquering the eastern seaboard before Spring. After a weekend of celebration and planning Linda and Eric, Nancy Trask, and Tom Reemtsma were all sent back to hold down the Boston House and Region. I was assigned to go with the 15 or 20 volunteers making up the Strike Force.

We headed for Philadelphia, which was our base for the first two weeks of December. I was immediately dispatched to cover southeastern Pennsylvania. So I began my next solitary journey on a cloudy December day with only a highway map and a story to tell. Highway 30 took me to Downington, Coatesville, Lancaster, York, New Oxford, Hanover, and on the second or third day out on my circuit, I came upon a highway sign that gave me a little shiver and caused me to pull the car over to the side of the road: “Gettysburg 10 miles.”

I had of course memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, as most of my generation did, while still in grade school. And I had always felt this connection to Abraham Lincoln, the log cabin lawyer who rose to the highest office in the land and then was tragically taken down just as the war over which he presided to save the Union was finally over. Carl Sandberg’s Lincoln was my Lincoln. So I decided to take the afternoon off and spend it at the Gettysburg battlefield. It was an eerie experience for me. There was not a soul at the museum center. I literally was able to walk around the battleground undisturbed. I could almost hear the cannon and rifle fire and the yells of the soldiers as they charged up one hill after another and the screams of the wounded and dying men as they lay waiting to die or be picked up and taken to a field hospital. I stayed there until dusk, in a contemplative state, not wanting to leave.

I don’t recall much about how many towns were scheduled for Town Meetings during the two weeks working out of Philadelphia. But I will never forget the afternoon spent at Gettysburg.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Journey of Awakening – 44: Leaving Maine

Mainers have a saying that goes something like “no matter how many years you stay away you’ll always come back.” I think it has something to do with the sense of ‘place’, the feeling of ‘coming home.’ I’ve had that feeling about a few of the places I’ve lived. Occasionally I have a bit of nostalgia about the old North Side where I grew up in Minneapolis, a real neighborhood.

  Plymouth Avenue & Morgan Avenue Businesses             Home at 915 Morgan

Lincoln, Nebraska, where I lived for seven years and where our kids were in grade school holds fond memories of family and friends.

Me and Rob at home       Gordon & Claudine Scott                Trinity UCC

San Francisco represents a time of re-emerging as a human being after a period of spiritual aridity.

The San Francisco ICA House           No Caption Needed      Now Six Bucks to ride?

And Maine. It is difficult to capture in words the feeling of being at home I experienced while travelling from town to town in that state.

There is that nagging truism about not being able to go home again. And my experience bears that out. Each time I’ve returned to any of those places that saying comes to me not in word or emotion but as experiential fact. Nonetheless, the sense of ‘home’ comes up and I have to ask myself: “What is that?”

This week I had the urge to type Ellis Bliss’ name into the Google search box and the first post that came up was her obituary. Ellis died this past September and her memorial was held in October at her old UCC church in Portland. Memories came up: The time she dropped the lobster for dinner into the pot before the water was boiling and we watched the poor creature jump out on the floor; how she was always there to welcome me ‘home’ after a long cold drive; how she would beam as she talked about her kids; her devotion to Harry who was always a big dreamer and social activist; and welcoming me back after 20 years of no contact even though I had two colleagues with me for an overnight stay.

                 Me and Ellis in 1996                      34 Bay Road in South Portland, Maine

I left Maine behind that cold November in 1977. And it was true that nothing was the same when I returned years later. But I guess the lesson for me about coming home was that even though I left Maine, Maine never left me, just as all the places I mentioned earlier remain with me, though I left them long ago.

Whenever I forget that ‘home’ is just another concept that I can get hung up on, that sense of ‘being home’ comes up to remind me that I am never not at home.

Well, I thought I was through with Maine. Apparently Maine was not yet through with me but I would have wander around the eastern United States for a few months before that discovery.

Journey of Awakening – 43: Maine Turns Gold

                  There was dancing and singing I was told

                   In the Great Hall when Maine went gold

                   Champaign flowing for young and old

                  What I remember – It was damn cold!

When we, the corporate we, the ICA, came up with the idea for the Town Meeting 76 campaign to orchestrate 5000 local community forums, one in each county of the United States, some of us housed in the eight story office building in Chicago which was the ICA’s international headquarters and training center, devised this method of tracking our progress. Since there was no way of completing all of the 5000 forums in the actual bicentennial year, we gave ourselves four years to finish. A huge map of the U.S. was found and mounted on one wall in what we affectionately named the Great Hall. It was a room large enough to hold up to 1000 bodies and where we held our large assemblies in the summer. The map was printed with every county line showing. So when a Town Meeting was scheduled someone would color in that county with a yellow marker, which in our creative minds was pure gold. And when all the counties in a state were colored in, a celebration was held, not just in Chicago, but in each of the campaign headquarters around the country.

It happened in Maine one foggy day in early November 1977. The last of Maine’s 16 counties was scheduled. Thanksgiving was not that far away. Somehow the citizens of Maine had come through. We were to conduct about 10 of the forums on the same Saturday. The logistical genius of our mostly volunteer organization always amazed me. On the ordained Saturday, about 20 of us arrived in South Portland at the Harry and Ellis Bliss home to be sent out, two by two, to conduct the all day forums. After singing Harry’s favorite, When New England Wakes up Singing, we caravanned out to the Maine Turnpike and headed off to our assigned towns.

Small Towns in Maine – The Real Main Street of America         

People actually came and participated! It was a great day! The sun was shining. We were on top of the world. And I – I felt good. I felt like a conqueror. Like a hero. It was the last time that year I would get to have that feeling. But it was all good!

At the end of the day we all straggled back in to South Portland to tell our amazing stories to one another. And we sang. And we drank toasts. And we even danced. Life was wonderful. We phoned in to our colleagues in New York, Hartford, and Chicago.

And Maine was gold!

Journey of Awakening – 42: The Time Nobody Came (Almost)

Some smart ICA colleague or colleagues discovered, as they tramped around the vast open spaces of Montana or Wyoming or Utah calling on townspeople that a town meeting did not have to be an all day affair but could be accomplished in an evening, in about three-and-a-half hours, and without the quality or productivity suffering. In Maine this proved a little difficult because people did not like to get out much after dark. We were aiming toward one Saturday in November when we would send teams of two out to each town we could schedule on that one day.

      Maine Street, Rockland, Maine    Court House, Rockland, Maine

But we did happen to call on a Methodist Minister in the coastal town of Rockland who believed that people in his town would not come to an all-day forum. He somehow convinced us that he single-handedly could host the meeting in his church’s fellowship hall and that he would do all the contacting, inviting and publicizing to ensure a good attendance. I should have trusted my gut instinct and our years of experience working with local church clergy, who were notorious for promising to take on tasks and not following through. They would often double, triple, even quadruple-schedule meetings to attend and then pop in and out for half an hour in each one. Not that their intentions were other than honorable. It must have been the “all-things-to-all-people” image that they were caught in. I had some empathy, having been in their position at one time.

Rev. Wesley was a fine and enthusiastic young man. We scheduled the meeting for two weeks later and left the details in his willing hands, after giving him as much orientation and sample flyers and promotional materials as we could in a short visit. I phoned him the week before and he assured me all would be ready for a well-attended and productive evening. We always assigned a team of two to facilitate the forums. I and a young woman who was an ICA volunteer arrived the afternoon of the town meeting to find that, indeed, the Rev. Wesley had distributed flyers in the community, published an announcement in the Rockland paper, personally invited the town leaders, arranged the tables and chairs in the hall in the format as we had instructed, and had even provided a spread of refreshments along with coffee and tea. All was in readiness.

Aldersgate United Methodist Church, Rockland, Maine

The hour of the meeting came. The three of us sat in anticipation of the arrival of the citizenry. People often straggle in at such community meetings. But there are always a few who are on time for everything. I thought that surely at least some of Rev. Wesley’s flock would show up, to show support for him if for no other reason. A half-hour passed, then 45 minutes, finally an hour. The realization came slowly but surely. No one else was coming. It had long been a doctrine of our group that whoever showed up for any endeavor was exactly those who were needed for its accomplishment.

Rev. Wesley was embarrassed. He began to re-iterate all that he had done to ensure a successful attendance. I was not going to heap more guilt on his already feeling like a failure. I ventured:

“Well, since we came all this way, and there is all this food and drink and we have prepared all the materials, and we have a great process for citizen participation, would you like to be the Town Meeting and we’ll take you through it just as though you were 200 strong?”

T hat was the turning point of the evening. The Rev. Wesley’s eyes lit up. It was as if his body began to levitate. “Why not,” he said. “Let’s do it!”

And we did. We the facilitators went through our little speeches about the New Human and the New Community, and the pioneering qualities of being global citizens working at the local community level. We drew on the history of the country as well as the lessons of the revolutions of our day, the youth, women, civil rights, and the desire of every human to participate and make a difference.

Then we asked and wrote on big flip chart paper: “What are the big challenges facing Rockland right now?” “Oh, young people are leaving after high school because they can’t find jobs.” “And the newspaper is going under so people won’t have access to local issues and events.” “Oh yes, and small fishermen are no longer able to make a living.” After recording the challenges we asked him what the real underlying obstacles to dealing with them were.

Then we posed the question of what practical actions could local citizens take to deal with the obstacles and meet the challenges. “We could start a ‘buy local’ campaign.” “We could have quarterly community meetings to address issues.” “We could work with our fishermen to form a cooperative.” These were all flip-charted and then written in the form of proposals.

Finally, we took the Rev. Wesley through what was known as the ‘Song, Story, Symbol’ workshop. We had him choose a familiar sing-able tune and wrote three verses, then pulled out of his weary brain the highlights of the history of Rockland and wrote a town story following the theme of past, present, and future. Lastly, we got out the colored markers and a big sheet of poster paper and created a new symbol in graphic form.

As we reflected on the evening and how any of the proposals might be actually implemented, my partner who fortunately was a crack typist, completed the document containing the entire evening’s work, and we all went into the church office and ran it off on the mimeograph machine.

And as we were stapling the pages of the copies together, we discussed the follow-up strategy. Rev. Wesley was now on a roll: “I could take this one proposal up with my Rotary Club. And this one the Ministerial Association might be interested in tackling. And the Chamber of Commerce could easily take one this one. And that one I’m sure the Kiwanis Club would like.”

We left Rockland in good hands. I have thought of that meeting many times and of course, told the story on many occasions sitting around the imagined campfire. All of us who were involved in that Town Meeting campaign have our stories. I would like to have known if any of those proposals ever got accomplished and whatever happened to Rev. Wesley.

But the Town Meeting when almost nobody came turned out to be a great and memorable event.

Journey of Awakening – 41: Joe Died This Week

October 1977. I had just returned from my second week in October foray in Maine on the Town Meeting Circuit. The weekly gathering of the TM campaigners was to be in my home base at the Boston Religious House. I was greeted by a somber group including my wife, Linda with:

“Joe died this past week and all the Houses will have a celebration of his life on Sunday!”

Joe Mathews, Dean of the Ecumenical Institute/Institute of Cultural Affairs, formerly on staff at the Christian Faith and Life Community of Austin, Texas, before that on the faculty of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, and prior to that a Chaplain in the United States Army during the Second World War, was a 66 year-old visionary and transformative force in the 20^th Century church renewal movement. The impact of his life went far beyond the confines of the institutional church and the constraints of his Methodist evangelical background. Joe was an iconoclast, a revolutionary thinker, a master teacher, and a plumber of the depths of the human spirit.

Stories of Joe abounded in our Order and among those who encountered him, whether on the seminary or college campuses, in the courses he taught to local church pastors and laymen, or in the many denominational and ecumenical gatherings at which he was invited to speak. There was the time he was to speak to a large gathering of church folk. The time came for his sermon and everyone in the congregation waited for 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then coming to the conclusion that Joe was late, or not coming. At that point a faint voice was heard from behind the pulpit: “Grace be unto you and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!” Joe proceeded to give his entire sermon from the enclosure under the large pulpit.

Another time Joe was speaking to a large assembly of leaders of the church in Seoul, Korea. He was warned by one of his Korean colleagues that Korean Christians were some of the most conservative in the world, and knowing of Joe’s propensity for using profanity in order to shock the people of God out of their lethargy, he cautioned him to be careful in his speech. Joe nodded and then took the podium. Looking out over the congregation and making eye contact with as many as he could, he stood silent for several minutes and then let out a booming expletive as the first word out of his mouth, drawing it out so there could be no mistake which word he was using. And of course it was the “F---“ word.

These are of course just a few of the apocryphal stories that were told among us. I was not there so I am only reporting it as I heard it.

I first met Joe Mathews when I was teaching at the University of Nebraska, Cotner School of Religion. It was 1966. A campus minister friend invited me to attend a lecture sponsored by United Ministries in Higher Education and the campus YMCA. This was, I later learned, part of a speaking tour on college campuses all across the nation, preceding the offering of weekend courses, called Religious Studies I: The Theological Revolution of the Twentieth Century. Joe was an impressive presence and a powerful orator. To be honest, I only remember one line from his lecture that resonated with me and stuck in my mind:

“There is only one absolute! And that is that there is NO absolute!”

Having majored in philosophy and theology this appealed to me as a self-styled seeker after truth. After the lecture I got a taste of the Joe of the apocryphal stories and added a personal one to my collection. My campus minister friend invited me to his campus church office for a conversation with Joe and a handful of pastors and lay leaders. There were two women in the group who were probably in their late sixties. Joe was waxing eloquent and answering questions. One of his favorite descriptive names for the clergy of the time was “little old ladies of both sexes.” He used this term in responding to a question and then, realizing who his audience was, leaned over toward the two ladies and lightly touching one on her hand said: “I mean that in a kindly way.” Joe could be repulsive in one minute and then totally win you over in the next.

Most of the men in our Order and many of the women wanted to be like Joe. Hell, we wanted to BE Joe. So we all adopted his little idiosyncrasies, his teaching style, his mannerisms, even his slight stutter when he seemed to be searching for the right phrase but was really setting you up for a point he was about to drive home. Not that we were all little robotic Joes running around the globe. Joe would not tolerate inauthenticity and did not welcome our devotion. Joe wanted to thrust his one life into history and encourage each of us to do the same in obedience to the one mysterious force that gave each one his/her life and would one day as he put it “stomp you into the earth as a bull pawing the ground.” Joe was a man of his time and a man for all time.

I did not know Joe personally as many in our group did. So I did not come to love the man as I am sure those close to him did, warts and all. I only remember one other encounter with Joe. It was in the middle of the Town Meeting campaign and we were in Chicago for a meeting of campaign leaders. I was asked to give a report on how the California contingent was doing. We were in the “great hall” on the second floor at the Kemper building, so named because this 8-story ancient office building had been a gift to the ICA by Kemper Insurance Company. After my report I walked to the back of the room and had to pass right by Joe. He always sat in the back of the room by the door. Our eyes met for an instant as he looked up just as I approached and his lips curled into the slightest of smiles, sort of half-way between a grimace and a smile actually. I got the distinct feeling that even though I did not know Joe, he knew me. And I knew in that momentary encounter that my life was approved. All of my past screw-ups and all of my attempts to be somebody, the self-perceived victories and defeats, the betrayals, all of it was OK as it was. The approval I had been seeking from some father figure my whole life was freely given. Joe released me from having to go on seeking approval. That was Joe’s gift to me.

But Joe, like all of us, was mortal. He drank too much. He smoked too much. He drove himself far more than he was ever accused of making demands on others. He got cancer. Joe had a back pain while on a trip to India. He went to a friend of ours who was a nurse in New Delhi who advised him to see a doctor as soon as he returned from this trip. Not long after that he got his final diagnosis. He died in his apartment during a meeting of many of the priors of the Order so that many of his friends and colleagues were able to say their farewells. His wife Lyn and sons and his brother Jim, a Methodist bishop in Washington D.C. were with him.

Those of us who were out on the Town Meeting circuits were informed of Joe’s death on that October weekend. We held a memorial service around our dining room table with a meal and communion service, as did those others in Religious Houses in the 50 or so nations that were now part of the Order: Ecumenical, the Ecumenical Institute and the Institute of Cultural Affairs.

Following the weekend we were all sent out to continue our work on the mission of facilitating human community and helping people to see that their lives counted.

And Joe would have had it no other way.

   

Joseph Wesley Mathews—A 20^th Century Phenomenon