[Oe List ...] talking on being an order

[John Cock]

David, Dick, Karen, Tim, and Jeanette, thank you for daring to articulate that our caring GSF ("global servant force," if I remember correctly) become more aware of itself, even more self-conscious in its form. 

We are slowly evolving movemental order forms of our global affiliation of O:E, EI, and ICA: 

corporate missions (e.g., CR Circles); 

meetings and reunions; 

ICAI and all its national ICA affiliates (with many web pages); 

two general list serves (and thousands of individual e-mails); 

EarthRise reflection list serve; 

The Directory; 

OE/EI/ICA Wedgeblade Repository online (new -- and do we need to take up a collection to make it faster?); 

Resurgence Publishing; 

etc. 

-- made up of facilitators; spirit guides; trainers; model builders; writers; artists; meditators; day-laborers; "retirees"; etc. A rather phenomenal gaggle of spirit folk (even giants) in the growing and ongoing spirit movement.

Peace and grace,

John Cock


-----Original Message-----
From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of David Dunn
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 4:16 AM
To: OE Community
Subject: [Oe List ...] a talking paper on being an order of secular religious in 2006

SURRENDER

As they say, ³sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn¹t.² As we used to say, sometimes grace strikes and sometimes it doesn¹t. I find myself saying, ³The wind has perturbed the waters and I¹m ready to pick up my tired pallet and walk.²

Half way through my 64th year, I walked with Jesus along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I have thought about Jesus for many years. I have even addressed him in prayer. But I have never spent so much as a moment at his side like I did late one afternoon just about two months ago.

The occasion for the encounter was a visit with a young man who sees me in my new role of spiritual director. I sometimes ask him to begin our session with a sort of dialogue prayer. That afternoon, after he prayed, I prayed, and then he remained silent just long enough for me to have to decide whether I was going to be uncomfortable and impatient, or whether I was going to surrender to the moment. I chose surrender and found myself walking at Jesus¹ side.

I was startled, deeply moved, and aware that something of mysterious significance had just happened. Surrender to the moment was a surprising opening to a deep well of Holy Mystery.

My young companion offered his concluding prayer, I returned to this world, and we proceeded with our session.

Just for the record, I have also been blessed recently to spend time with another fisherman, Thich Nhat Hanh, by way of the dharma talks given by Larry Ward with Peggy Rowe, under the aegis of David McCleskey and Pat Webb and their Prairie Wind Sangha in Oklahoma City. I mention this as a way of acknowledging that I am surrounded by blessings in a myriad of forms and a flood of inflections. If Buddhist mindfulness practices had been my path, or praying five times a day with a Muslim faith community, I would be reporting a walk on another shore with quite another savior than the itinerant Jewish holy man of Galilee.

Fast forward.

A couple of weeks ago, Burna and I saw a stunning movie, ŒWater,¹ the story by Indian writer and director Deepa Mehta, set in pre-independence India. A new law graduate is smitten with a beautiful 20-something widow, Kalyani, kept against her will as a prostitute in a so-called Œwidows¹ house.¹ She risks imagining her own freedom, he promises to spirit her away, and suddenly she discovers that she has unwittingly stepped into an impossible situation from which she cannot escape. When she surrenders her life, others, including the young lawyer, discover their own power to do surprising things with their lives.

One person¹s surrender radically alters other persons¹ images of possibility.

What about the spirit journey, the journey to the center, the journey to the east, the journey to Ixtlan? What is the nature and experience of surrender to the way life is, to one¹s life work, to one¹s essential being?

We used to speak about moving from a time of knowing, to a time of doing, to a time of being, as if this was the necessary historical path of a spirit movement or the natural course of an individual¹s life journey. I formed an image of Œbeing¹ as a sort of retirement from doing; ŒPhase 4¹ of my life would be a time of just being without the disciplines of knowing or the expenditures of doing. I believe that we unwittingly fell into a vast misunderstanding and did ourselves a great disservice when we imaged Œbeing¹ as a phase in the development of an organization, or the climax of an historical drama, or the culminating period in a life-long spirit journey.

Whatever value there might have been in understanding being as the intensification of knowing and doing, there is a complementary understanding of equal value, i.e., knowing and doing are the expression of our being. Who we are shapes the knowledge we create and the tasks we undertake. The nature of our being determines the kind of energy that flows through us; not surrendering to our essence means to some degree obstructing the energy that flows into and animates our lives. If I do not look into the matter of who I am, and discern the essence of the creation I am invited to become, I am neither cooperating with the Creator nor allowing Creation to come into its fullness through me. If I do not decide to be myself‹call this the SK corollary--I will to some degree remain ungrounded in the power that posited me.

There is a serious wrinkle in this narrative. My gratitude for the Benedictine Program I completed last year raised a serious vocational question for me: Is my calling in history to become a Benedictine oblate, i.e., one of the laypersons who Œoffer¹ themselves, whatever their life circumstances, to a monastic community and pledge to live out that community¹s practices and teachings for the sake of its mission in the world. When I considered joining an oblate study group in Denver attached to Benet Hill Monastery in Colorado Springs, the nature of my calling became clear. I¹m not a Benedictine oblate; I¹m a member of the Order Ecumenical.
To put the matter in a nutshell, over the last nearly 40 years, it has become clear that being the Order Ecumenical is the essence of who I am. It took an RS-1 and going on four decades to come to this clarity about the nature of who I am.

Now, to be entirely candid, this has put me in a quandary. How do I know that? How can I demonstrate that, to myself and to others, who, knowing that I am who I am, might find encouragement to become who they are? If I am the Order Ecumenical, what is it necessary to know, and know that I know, so that I can help others know what is life giving to them as well? And what am I called to do that is uniquely what the world and its creator requires of me as the Order Ecumenical? How can I be true to who I am if I am not knowing the knowing and doing the doing of the Order Ecumenical? The absence of houses and incorporation papers has not removed the Order Ecumenical from history.

And this, of course, is what put the subject of surrender on my mind. If my essence is Œbeing an order¹ and my particular contribution to Being takes the form of being a secular religious in the form of the Order Ecumenical, am I going to sit uncomfortably with that knowing or am I going to surrender to it and see who I meet on the shore of the Sea of Galilee? Or, de-mythologized, what would it look like to walk the walk of the OE and to talk the talk of the OE? And if I knew the doing and did the knowing of the OE, with whom would I find myself in relationship?

I am persuaded, of course, that these are not just personal questions. There is clearly an ŒUs¹ in history, and so there are questions for ŒUs¹ as well.
As we approach the completion of our individual lives, the question of surrender is front and center. (I am mindful of beloved Brother Brian¹s surrender; may he live in eternal gratitude for the wonder of his new
assignment.) How many of us are essentially the Order Ecumenical and what does it look like to surrender to the reality of being part of a living body with a charism and a calling? It no longer suffices for me to be the Order Ecumenical and to find it necessary to add the awkward caveat to my story:
³I¹m a secular religious and a member of the Order Ecumenical, but the OE doesn¹t exist any more, except that it has a terribly rich virtual common life, and a profound sense of connection and mission, and a lively intellectual history that is being carefully and systematically recorded and published, andŠ²

The writers, the community builders, the social commentators, the faith community leaders, the facilitators, the managers, the educators, the journalists, etc., etc. all raise for me the question of what to do with this immense light that we¹ve been given and that has been shining in our lives all of these years. I long to come out of the closet (with apologies to those for whom this has painful associations) without setting myself up as a kook or a fraud with grandiose but hollow claims of membership in a memory. I long to stand in front of a group of people who have come to a workshop or seminar I¹m offering and to be able to say not only, ³This order¹s life experience is the source of this insight² but also, ³This is the direction our order is taking.² It¹s been my experience that there are people all around me who are dying to hear from a person of spiritual integrity even just a half of what I have forgotten over the last 40 years.

I am coming closer to a bottom line. What are we about? How will we know it?
Who will be able to see our creation and contribution to this world and its sources and make a decision about whether to identify with it and add to it?
I am nearly persuaded that we are entering a dark age during which the memory of authentic religion and depth spirituality needs to be carried forward in the lives of people who are grounded in the kind of unique experience we have shared. And if by the grace of God and the effectiveness of the forces of light we avoid a new dark age, we will still be confronted by the grueling birth of the ecological age in which much of humanity will be coming to terms with limits to growth, affluence, consumption, freedom, and a host of other presumed luxuries that will be rapidly changing if not outright disappearing in the face of the demand to create sustainable planetary systems, values, and life styles.

So here are the fundamental matters with which I am wrestling at my core.
What will it look like to publicly associate ourselves with the body of wisdom and practices that is the core gift of the Order Ecumenical? What new energies and perspectives need to be invested in the already lively task of rearticulating our common memory? Who wants to explore what it means to build collegial relationships with the movements of progressive religious, spiritual, and social organizations that are emerging today? Who is willing to say to the world, ³If you are on a spirit journey, or if you want to begin your journey anew, I invite you to make use of my life experience as your mentor and guide?²

And then, finally, there is the matter of symbols.

Who has wished to pin a small Congolese Cross on a sweater or lapel? Who would like to invent a new rule of life for a common something that doesn¹t yet exist? Who has wished to work up the courage to put an ³OE² after his or her name as a sign of being a member of a real body that grounds one in both historical experience and future promise?

These are not rhetorical questions. We have sown and cultivated. We have reaped and winnowed. We have lain fallow and received refreshment. Now‹or so it seems to me‹it is time to see what new green shoots are offering themselves to the sun. In a world of genocide, terrorism, famine, environmental destruction, profound discrimination, and HIV/AIDS; in a world of intimate global relationships, explosive knowledge creation, and ingenious social innovation; in this amazing world, I wish to carry my bucket alongside the colleagues who came from and gave themselves to India, Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, North and South America, and Europe as the Order Ecumenical and the institutes to which it gave birth. I have more in common with me these brothers and sisters, who are not me, than any of my next-door neighbors. The history that we share is the tip of the iceberg of what makes us an historical reality, and the common reality that we share but have not named or celebrated is quite possibly the salvation of our planet and the key to its future.

David Dunn icadunn at igc.org Denver



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