September 10th, 1995

Walt continues to talk about what God means to him. War had a major impact on his views… His mother raising him with a constant “no” on his forehead, being surrounded with people who only said “yes,” struggling with the opportunities of his anonymity, closer ties to his Jewish roommate than others who were evangelical Christians… All of that resulted in real thinking about what God meant… What does it mean to be in the world (sociological) but not of it (theological) – these must be in tension with each other… Being able to have respectful discussion and debate is so critical but so hard… Faith is about both the individual and the collective… Man always demands to define what it means to be faithful (rules)... The first step toward freedom is recognizing what is predetermined by history and tradition and culture and the next step is to rise above it…

September 2nd, 1995

George asks Walt to start talking about “god” and what that means to him, which he assumes is not what it means to others. A concept of god, for Walt, that doesn’t touch the real world is meaningless… there is no way life is by chance – it has meaning… What is the source of meaning? Walt explores changes in the source of meaning over time and cultures… We only know about god through what god has chosen to reveal… Man cannot describe god… Everything comes from belief…..it’s like life – you cannot prove it you can only believe… Institutional religion has taken the grace of god away from the world… Rules become the sacred. 

Walt ends with a very personal story about how pride played a role in his relationship with his wife and what he learned about himself through that episode.

July 16th, 1995

Walt asks George about what is driving him right now… they talk about the value about having something that pushes them forward… changes for Walt since he cannot be as physical as he was before his heart attack… being comfortable is not what drives Walt-the opposite… his physical focus has moved from building to long walks that he uses to think about people and things that should be fine-even if he needs to get others to do it… thinking without action is bullshit but so is action without thinking… discussion about the launching of Hilltop Neighborhood House and turning leadership over to others-hoping that they will continue to be responsive to beat down people… significant talking about how do we live differently that encourages citizenship (shared living, new approaches to education)...truth is not “the facts”-- they are always in tension… he must walk with all people who are striving for freedom but also be upfront with asking questions and raising lessons of history.

June 11th, 1995

In a free-wheeling conversation, Walt and George start by blasting the movie “Bridges of Madison County” as a warped view of love… Walt talks about how the self-focus of “being all you can be” (the US army’s slogan from 1980-2001 and omni-present in popular culture in the 1990s) is being used to pacify society… Love has to be acted out or it is bullshit… Love is responsibility and openness… When Walt told Jacques Ellul that there is a lot of chaos out there Ellul responded – “there isn’t enough” (Jaques Ellul is a 20th century French philosopher and his works were foundational to Walt’s thinking. Walt spent a week with Ellul in 1976)… We don’t like change in society when that is what we need… whatever we – “the first world” – tries to do with the poor, we must take a look at ourselves first (using unconditional wealth sharing as the basis for Project Neighbors as an example), which is very hard for people… The poor cannot make it without help but that help cannot have conditions imposed, and while there must be self-determination and a commitment to working together in a process, we also must work through true respect for everyone… There need to be real conversations, with respect, but there are no strings attached… There is value in making change where we live and not simply ceding that responsibility to the government. Towards the end, the conversation turned towards a more global conversation on the “production sphere” as the new “sacred,” the “New World Order,” producing endless garbage (plastic toys, etc) in order to survive, and it is destroying individuality and the environment at the same time… We should champion the “non-productive world” and that won’t be easy.

May 29th, 1995

"The only way you destroy the power of money, is to give it away, with no strings attached."

George starts the conversation by talking about family, and how lucky we are to have an extended family in Valpo. Walt talked about what his thinking was when he moved with his family into the middle of Chicago in 1965 for four years. He was driven to go, and he had to figure out how to maximize the experience for them… "Living service has to be real. It can't be idealism. I hate idealism" … demythologizing the family means that all children are my children.. the responsibility of the family is to support its members to survive and live in the real world… what is the new family and who determines that.. the importance of connections in the world in making family richer.. .we need to understand that our grandchildren will need to invent the new family, but they are going to need to think about it hard  nd must be steeped in the real world and not be isolated and be willing to reject the trajectories of the new world order. 

May 21st, 1995

This episode focuses on the changes in Walt’s job to first taking on the creation of the Youth Leadership Training Program at VU in the early 1960s to going to work for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod to create a national organization called the Prince of Peace Volunteers (referred to as “POPV” throughout the episode), headquartered in Chicago. He moved his family into the city in 1965 and took on the creation of this program, which brought young people into both US cities and into several countries around the world. The next four years were characterized by increasing tension with the church, both the synod leadership and the local parish pastor in Chicago, culminating in a heresy trial. Walt describes in detail the conflicts between the institutional conviction that this should be a traditional missionary program but the priority was, rather, engagement with the communities being served. The opposition to the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement were also becoming focus areas. Despite the fights with the church, POPV resulted in lifelong relationships with young people involved in the program and brought Walt into direct relationships in Chicago, which would guide the next phase of his life, both in Chicago and Valpo.

April 30th, 1995

George starts by raising his concern about recent news from Walt’s doctor that he has a progressing heart disease and the urgency to keep going on this project…“freedom” to him is couched in what his limits are and death is one of  those limits. A major focus of this episode is the betrayal of “the church” in dealing with an individual (him) who has confronted the total and sacred conformity of the church… the history of the impact of the church and the university as he took on the issues of race and calling into question of the “new world order…” Being “colorblind” is not real….he talks about the days of VBA (precursor to Project Neighbors) and the multitude of ways that helping black and brown people move to Valpo rocked the town and church and impacted Walt and his family… Everything is now about making nice gestures on race without impacting the real control of the powers that be… everything in the church (broadly speaking, many religions) now is us and them and good and evil… the starting point is to figure out where the individual is at in challenging the control… He talks about the centrality of relationships in truly dealing with race or any difference—how do you really get to have the depth of relationships with people who are different… He attributes depression and war and “church” as being responsible for making his choices in life inevitable and relationships (a Jewish sailor, a Black college roommate) as being pivotal.

April 9th, 1995

Episode 5 starts soon after Walt’s second heart attack and as Project Neighbors are starting to create Hilltop Neighborhood House (a daycare center that would serve the poorest in Valpo and established with a retired University prof, Ed Senne, taking on the role of Director and the University selling a former rat lab to be used as the facility). He and George struggle at first to figure out where to start but then get into a far-reaching conversation that covers such issues as….the problem of the sacredness (a concept that will be discussed near the end of the episode as well) today of consumerism and “standard of living” over humanness and the tension between the two that should be, but is not, talked about……the importance—and rarity—of real repentance (brought to mind by Robert MacNamara’s public apology for what he did in as Secretary of Defense leading the Vietnam War) and how life would be so different if there was more of that…about the danger of basing man making judgements on the literal “Gods will” (on such things as homosexuality, divorce) when the important lesson of Christianity is to serve your neighbor……the danger of the growth of specialization in breaking apart building relationships and addressing complex problems in the world……what does it mean for a person to truly be a person—"being over doing.”

February 12th, 1995

Walt talks about the early years at Valparaiso University… his football career… role as a chaperone to all frat parties… stories related to meeting Loie and the three weeks between their initial meeting and asking her to marry him.. receiving notice to report for the Korean War (after years in World War II) the day after he asked Loie to marry him… he believes that the only reason that he wasn’t fired at VU was because he coached a winning football team, and he went back to war… his year in Korea was the beginning of heavy reading for him (Kierkegaard, Luther, etc) for someone who was never an “intellectual”… hilarious description of his wedding (“I had never been to a wedding before”) on June 6th (D-Day) so he would always remember it… .transition from coaching at VU to moving to Chicago and the growing sense of who he should be spending time listening to (not the powers that be).. he alluded to the concerns that he had in making the transitions that he did as it related to his family and the importance of those experiences.

February 12th, 1995

Walt opens this episode by talking about how he ended up at Springfield College due to the GI bill (when there would have been no other way for him to go) and his time there as he sought to become a football coach… his schooling supplemented with a job at a prep school coaching… talked about how he tried to get across what he wanted to say while still not failing… he had a major car accident and was in a coma for weeks… talked about how he ended up as a coach at Valparaiso University and the first attempts that he made to rework the approach to the game there, an approach that caused some discomfort at the University… he talked some about the importance to him about not needing credit and recognition.