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

Sat Apr 25 21:56:38 EDT 2009

Greetings, Randy -

I remember our singing groups with such gratitude.  The harmonies were
almost celestial!!  The community  has lived through the Aweful experience
of not being able to sing as a group - and is now beginning to recover that
wonderful experience again.  If I hadn't lived through it I never would have
believed it could happen.  I sing harmony - but when we went through a time
of disharmony - for the last 25 or so years, I could not hear a harmony to
sing.  Now, altho our voices are blessed with age, the harmonies are
emerging again.  Maybe one of these years we will sit down with a guitar -
Bye, Bye Blackbird sounds like a wonderful start!!   ;}

I have enjoyed your comments and articles shared over the years.
Bless you,
Jean Long in Denver

2009/4/25 R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com>

>   Jean,
>
> Good statement! Thanks for the elaboration.  As we all know, there are many
> institutions, groups, communities, etc. with a meaningful internal life but
> no external mission.  There are others who have both, but assume the
> internal life is merely a utilitarian enablement of the external mission.  I
> myself have been through phases where I have said, "Screw the internal, lets
> just get it done!"
>
> I have come to a point in my life where I recognize it's not either/or but
> both/and.  The internal and external, while inseparably bound together, are
> both means and ends within themselves.  I am grateful to the OE for that
> consciousness.   Thanks to a gift from Terry Bergdall, I too have a Lumumba
> Cross on the wall beside my desk, to constantly remind me of that reality.
>
> Best wishes,
> Randy
>
> PS  Talk about the good times, I would love the opportunity to sit down
> with you, guitar in hand, and hum a few tunes.  How 'bout "Bye Bye
> Blackbird?"
>
> --- On *Fri, 4/24/09, Jean Long <jean.long512 at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> From: Jean Long <jean.long512 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Order annuity
> To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at wedgeblade.net>
> Date: Friday, April 24, 2009, 7:08 PM
>
>
>  Hi Randy -
>
> Let me clarify what I mean by a continued commitment to the Order and the
> Order's mission.  Before I found the Order my life was driven to find an
> effective way to care for the suffering I saw around me and around the
> globe.  The Order, with all of its warts and bruises, became a vehicle
> through which my life could make a difference in alleviating human
> suffering.  When the Order was called out of being, I believe that all of us
> continued to look for ways to care for the world in the most effective ways
> possible.
>
> It was important to me to continue to live a life of poverty - not just of
> detachment, but of actual monetary poverty.  After retiring, I took Paula,
> Nelson and Elaine with me as we visited the villages and people we had the
> privilege of working with in the 70's and 80's.  Our "children" have grown
> and prospered.  In the last two years I have had the honor of enabling the
> first Profound Journey Dialogue here in Denver.  John Cock contributed his
> spirit genius with the support of the caring Lynda..  We built it and they
> have come.  This weekend in Chicago after the 4th Dialogue, supporters will
> meet to decide how to meet the requests for 10 additional events.
>
> I did not have as much to give to the Spirit Project that David and
> Patricia have worked on in the Oklahoma City schools, but their project was
> as important to enabling students and adults to learn to listen to the
> profound dimension of life as the Profound Journey Dialogue is.
>
> I now have $700.00 in my pension fund.  I share this with you in the
> deepest humility and gratitude that this has been where my commitment has
> led me.  We used to talk about being a "fool for Christ".  For me it is a
> very familiar place.
>
> Jean in Denver
>
> 2009/4/24 R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com>
>
>>   The conversation about continuing commitments has been interesting.
>> Some have stated their lifelong commitment to the OE while others have
>> stated their lifelong commitment to the mission.  Is this one and the same
>> thing, or are they different?
>>
>> Randy Williams
>>
>> --- On *Fri, 4/24/09, Jean Long <jean.long512 at gmail.com>* wrote:
>>
>> From: Jean Long <jean.long512 at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Order annuity
>> To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at wedgeblade.net>
>> Date: Friday, April 24, 2009, 2:11 PM
>>
>>
>>
>> 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
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Click to get your online credit check report & score.<http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2142/fc/BLSrjpTIjD1XW1IKF61OphP3SZn0HcrTTNAAg9xVilg3i5oohyLgsbhn0bu/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at wedgeblade.net
> http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at wedgeblade.net
> http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at wedgeblade.net
> http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing listOE at wedgeblade.nethttp://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at wedgeblade.net
> http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing listOE at wedgeblade.nethttp://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at wedgeblade.net
> http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/oe_wedgeblade.net
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20090425/644461ce/attachment-0001.html>