[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Order annuity

Fri Apr 24 15:11:37 EDT 2009

Dear colleagues of the Ring -
I think there are a majority of us who still wear the ring - which still
grounds our covenant to be the Order until death.  As I have met some of you
over the years I have seen this is true.
I was 48 in 1988, still living in the religious  house in Denver.  Paula's
formula is what I remember as we were given the opportunity to join the
annuity plan or take a buyout.  The determining factor that I remember is
that you had to still be lliving under assignment - although there was no
assignment commission.  I had asked Denver if I could move there from
Brussels and got an OK.  At 65 I began to receive 71.00 a month - and will
rec eive that for 10 years.  If I had been in on the formula I think I would
have made the assignment rationale retroactive to 1984.  As  you can see,
the amount anyone would have gotten would have been small - but the
symbolism of an annuity payment from the O:E has been important to me.
With respect,
Jean Long in Denver where the snow is still falling!!

2009/4/24 RICHARD HOWIE <rhowie3 at verizon.net>

> Ellen Howie (continuing to wear my Order ring) here: Our family was FT
> Order in 1975/76 assigned to Philadelphia and Baltimore.
> For years I had a small life insurance policy whose beneficiary was the
> Institute.  It became clear that I would pay much more into it than the
> policy would be worth at my death, thus did Gary Drown recommend that it be
> cashed in, which I did, and the monies went to Carol Pierce who at the time
> was helping to handle the funds to benefit Order colleagues.
> Our family is fortunate because Dick receives a pension because he worked
> 28 years for USAirways;  we both receive Social Security.
> Love to all, Grace & Peace,
> Ellen
>  On Apr 23, 2009, at 10:41 PM, Nancy Lanphear wrote:
>
> Dear Marilyn,
>
> I so appreciate you for your perspective in the midst of this issue having
> many challenges.  Thank you for speaking.  We, too, wear our silver rings
> knowing that we are the Order forever.
>
> With love to you and Joe,
>
> Nancy
>
> 2009/4/23 Marilyn R Crocker <marilyncrocker at juno.com>
>
>>  Dear David,
>>
>>
>> With you, Joe and I have wondered how, with what criteria, and when the
>> decisions about the annuity were made, since when we travelled to Oaxtapec
>> in November of 1988, we still understood ourselves to be the Order.  After
>> 20 years in the OE at that point, we, like you, were somehow “factored out”
>> and received nothing from the Order annuity.
>>
>>
>> There is a plethora of documentation to support our “entitlement”to the
>> Order annuity, but when Joe was told after repeated conversations with Carol
>> Pierce, that somehow, we were “no longer considered on the assignment chart
>> as of November 1988,” I urged Joe to “just forget it.”  This happened
>> after our having risked much in continuing to provide self support over the
>> years to the OE as the Orlando “outpost” to the turbulently changing Primary
>> Unit configurations, to which we had been annexed in at least 4 different
>> entities in fewer years -- Jamaica, Atlanta, Houston, and finally Chicago
>> --often with fledgling priorship.
>>
>>
>> I was reminded of the passage in Scripture that suggests there comes a
>> time when one is not being heard that it is time to “shake the dust off
>> one’s feet” and just move ahead into the future. And that is what we have
>> tried to do.
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately for us now, but not for the OE then, Joe and I withdrew all
>> of our personal funds, including my teachers retirement account, when the
>> Move 222 was initiated in the late '60s.  This was just before we and
>> David McCleskey left to conduct a teaching trek through SEAPAC and later, in
>> August, were assigned as faculty for the first ITI in Singapore.  At that
>> time we trusted so fully in our corporate mission and willingly gave all
>> for it.  Furthermore, we believed that “retirement” was not a category
>> that had meaning for our future; we envisioned unfolding engagement in
>> ministry into the sunset.
>>
>>
>> David, I think our colleagues who made decisions about how to “parcel out”
>> the OE funds, did so the best they could, given who they were and what they
>> had to work with.  Clearly, they did not hold all the values I,
>> personally, would have hoped.  Nor were the outcomes of their decisions
>> equitable at all.  I think it would be helpful for all of us to get clear
>> about what was the "complex formula" that was used to determine equity, and
>> how it could have possibly excluded many who should have benefited, and been
>> ensured the care that we all professed to one another would be available.
>>
>>
>> I admire that you have had the courage to place this unresolved issue on
>> the collegium table, so that the community can hear it, and “sit with it.”
>> I trust those who made the stark decisions about calling the Order out of
>> being in 1988, clearly without a community consensus, might think about
>> “what they might have wrought."
>>
>>
>> I am guessing that you, like Joe and me, are the remnants who still wear
>> the “ring”, because we have, indeed, never “left” the Order.
>>
>>
>> With gratitude and abiding affection,
>>
>>
>> Marilyn
>>
>> On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:58:35 -0600 David Dunn <dmdunn1 at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>  On Apr 22, 2009, at 4:41 PM, McCabe, Diann A wrote:
>>
>> Around the meetings in 1986 and 1988 when OE as a structure was ended, the
>> small remaining amounts in order funds were distributed based on a
>> complicated formula.
>>
>>
>> It has been one of the great sadnesses of the last 25 years that I have
>> somehow not been able to participate in that symbol of membership in the
>> order I never left.
>>
>> How might we symbolize the gift and the blessing of perpetual vows?
>>
>> David
>>
>>   ---
>> David Dunn
>> dmdunn1 at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Marilyn R. Crocker, Ed.D
>> Crocker & Associates, Inc.
>> 123 Sanborn Road
>> West Newfield, ME 04095
>> (207) 793-3711
>>
>>
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