Friday, April 01, 2011

Ecumenical Ministries

I'm feeling like the chief clerk of EMO these days, not that they have such a position. That's Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, my old boss, and sponsor of Bishop Tutu's visit.

Today, I was in somewhat Methodist circles, explaining to Bob (Fuller) that I'd met Alex through this esoteric Buddhist cult called FNB, which of course is a stretch. It's a national organization.

Our lunch as at the Cuban place on 28th and Glisan, a first for all three of us. Mom left voice mail from her airplane seat: off to WDC again. We'd all been to Burma (me just for a couple days as I recall, on home leave), two of us to Bhutan. I wore a sharks & dolphins T-shirt under a free pile Nike jacket, which become too hot as the weather brightened and warmed.

After lunch I dropped a trailer with cooking gear w/ Jay @ SDW (Episcopalian) before visiting the Daime House (which WW had unceremoniously dubbed the Voodoo House, in a rather parochial snub piece).

Lets be fair though, I really was learning about some esoteric Buddhist stuff in the park, like from a computerist guitarist who'd been sharing the other night (and not someone ordained).

This was an important API, this part of "the matrix" (rDzogs-chen).

That's when I wrote to Quakers (Los Amigos):

That's one reason I think an FNB binder might be cool: we get such exotic people coming through all the time.

I enjoy the ecumenical opportunities that this work fosters.

Learned more about Newar Buddhism and Palden Lhamo today, at the serving.

I borrowed Forest of Visions: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Spirituality, and the Santo Daime Tradition, by Alex Polari De Alverga (translated from Portuguese by Rosana Workman). I think I'll take it by Lyrik for conversational value.

Speaking of which, I had a meetup with Jody, the former owner. I named Fine Grind Productions after her coffee shop, now Lyrik.

I've also borrowed Complexity: A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell. Melanie is teaching at PSU this semester. She harkens back to SFI (Santa Fe Institute) and is part of the dynamical systems clique, along with her mentors, Douglas Hofstadter, and Stu Kauffman, the latter one of our ISEPP lecturers.