[Oe List ...] Tim Casswell: Synchronicity

[Chagnon at comcast.net]

Tim, old friend, I thank you for sharing with us the journey you have been on and the questions that your journey raises for all of us.  
   I recently visited overnight the New Hampshire convent in which I lived for over 20 years, first as a student boarder at the large Academy, then as a Postulant, Novice, college Freshman, and, for ten years, a teacher.  The congregation of the Presentation of Mary, founded in the midst of the French Revolution by a crippled Anne-Marie Rivier, an incredibly committed, loving, and charismatic women, is dying because its adherence to the old formulas no longer speaks to our time and therefore only rarely does a potential Novice join the elderly nuns whose numbers continue to dwindle drastically.  More personally, of the 13 of us who entered the convent 50 years ago this year, all of us have left except two.  
   You raise questions, most of which I have never pondered in relation to O:E, EI, ICA, nor have I any idea whether I agree with any or all of them from this first reading.  But they need to be raised in open-hearted dialogue.  Thank you--and all those who have and will ponder out loud as we continue to age and further our corporate legacy on our own turf and, through that, around the globe.  Let us trust the dialogue and each other's search for meaningful engagement.  
Lucille Tessier Chagnon
Wilmington, DE