Outreach no. 199

              OUTREACH UTREACH the newsletter of aake anke 7 egg egl 57ei&aaea etuifo etU dao daa ifo ot sfrictaat saeverc e i&deweva& ueutcutccm mtywatu MARCUS BACH founder no 0 199 THE LETTER dear friend of the fellowship As I 1 view the world through the kaleidoscope of our changing times I 1 often wonder whatever happened to the ten commandments are they still viable and will they play any role in the increasing power play between nations the coming of the olympics to the city of the angels the multibilliondollar multi billion dollar race for the presidency the launching of a new generation of satellites and the colossal plans for the first colonization of outer space the ten commandments locked in my memory is the legend that the ten commandments came to america with the pilgrim fathers represented cornerstones in the building buildin builtin g of a democracy formed the basis of our religious structure and were truly looked upon as gods clarion voice in our nations progress and growth was this an over oer oven romanticization rdmanticization and why does the question keep haunting me with a strange sense of something lost and an ever stranger feeling of ironic humor that god is in the picture and that he still is in control is an unconquerable rationale from orwells bleak prediction that this may be the time for armageddon to the persistent dream of a millenium millennium of peace I 1 can never rid myself of the conviction that god by whatever name or title is still in his heaven and something is still right with the world perhaps it is ALL right and some of our misgivings are merely phantoms but again I 1 am tantalized by the query whatever happened to the ten commandments I 1 think of this seriously as I 1 am sure you do and I 1 am wondering whether you ever reflect on how you learned these commanding words so universally decreed how you even as 1 I often lose them in the shuffle and how you try to live them my private workshop polls taken in freewheeling liberal thinking churched and unchurched audiences convince me that not more than two in a thousand between the ages of twenty and sixty can get up on their feet in public and recite the ten commandments in their proper sequence if at all they are as much at sea as jonah was in the belly of the whale the average would be considerably improved among the fundamentalist christians jews pente costals costalas co stals latter day saints salnis adventists biblical literalists and a scattering of catholics roman and eastern alike I 1 called several catholic authorities on the west coast and was rewarded with a variety of opinions the commandments are taught in our parochial schools said a monsignor no polls have ever been taken on the subject a priest surmised we are not interested in memory buffs said a jesuit to be honest with myself I 1 reflected on my 6 own wn stand in the matter of recall response and reverence for the decalogue of divine order I 1 decided it would be unfair for me to voice an