[Oe List ...] Salmon: Where's the glue?

[Bill Salmon]

Colleagues:
    Like most of you I'm frequently awakened to discover I've been thinking about the material out of Junaluska, and there seems to be something missing. So I share this reflection with you and, perhaps, you can set my mind at rest.
    Rev. Joe Buckles (from Kansas) was responsible for my desire to join the Order. One day I visited with Joe in Chicago when everything was run out of our facilities at 5th City. He greeted me warmly and asked what I was doing now. I launched into my best presentation about establishing the Lake Ministries in the State of Kansas, and how deeply involved I was in recreational ministries. 
    Joe looked at me and replied, "Um-m, too bad your work is so reduced. The world needs your spiritual energy rather than just the state of Kansas." I laughed off his spiritual dart, but the truth was too clear to be ignored. Shortly after that both Beverly and I were on our way to the Ordered Life. 
    What was it that held us together? As I remember, one thing was the critique that we were Nothings in history because we made paramount The Great Awakening to live the humane life by creating structures for the Human Factor in Human Development. The point being, we became the nothings so that our secular-religious Christ could be everything. 
    We lived on behalf of those unable to, unwilling to, or in denial about, living the Awakened Life against the day when all the earth would live the awakened life  together.
    For this purpose we used the traditions of the Christian Church as the theological glue to hold us as one. This was grounded in the Daily Office and the Sunday evening Common Meal. 
    Did anything like this get raised at Junaluska?
    Maybe I've been reading too much of "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light." Here is the living embodiment of Transparent Doing done in the midnight of her soul that experienced the entire absence of faith. She stood as the little Dutch Girl with her finger in the dyke holding back the destructive waters of social degradation against the day the Missionaries of Charity would have the structures in place to do what history needed them to do. 
     Maybe this is what our Order is experiencing since 1988? Certainly, this has been a dark night of our corporate soul, but I've lost sight of the transparent awakening event the world is waiting for. 
    The lesson I keep coming back to is the glue that held her together, and that of her sisters/brothers, and that kept her work going was the Eucharist. If, and when, the Order again finds its voice, what will be the Eucharist that sustains it?
    Enlightenment please!
    Bill Salmon
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