[Oe List ...] A Little New Year's Gift

[Ruth H. Gilbert]

Gordon,

What fun these photos are. I do wonder if we could collect a couple from a
large number of people and put together an interesting montage of our past!

 

By the way - Happy Anniversary! 50 really is a milestone.

 

Also, have fun with the Litibu Community. We are sorry not to be there this
year. Would love to see some of your photos from your time there, if you
take some.

Ruth

 

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of gharper1 at mindspring.com
Sent: Friday, January 01, 2010 12:06 AM
To: Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: [Oe List ...] A Little New Year's Gift

 

A Warm New Year's Greeting to Everyone --

Roxana and I are privileged to be celebrating the event this year with the
community of Order colleagues here in Litibu, Mexico.  

In marking our 50th Anniversary this past year, we put together a slide show
for our kids of selected scenes along the way.  In order to do this, I quite
insanely decided that I should review all the snapshots and slides tucked
away in what turned out to be an incredible number of boxes and albums in
our closets.  In doing so, I inadvertently discovered a treasure that I
didn't know existed and that I'd like to share with you.

As I think back over the decade from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, I
can recall very little picture taking inside either Base or Kemper or our
religous houses.  (Let me know if I'm wrong, and you have such.)  We
faithfully documented at least some aspects of our work in other ways, but
capturing moments or events of our daily life with a camera was simply not
part of our culture.  We weren't about calling attention to ourselves, and
we wanted the world's attention to be focused on what others accomplished.
We were to be the invisible catalysts in the mix.  

To have gone about snapping pictures of our work in the centrums or during
Collegia would have seemed quite frivolous, unmissional, perhaps even
suspicious.  I can only savor the image of what our responses (and
especially Joe's) would have been had I, for example, ever stepped out of
place during Daily Office to take a picture of it--even if I didn't ask
everyone to smile!

So, if some of our memories of our common life may have dimmed over the
years, or we've even begun to wonder if perhaps some of it was a dream, I
offer you the gift of four moments in time, in color and with many of us
perfectly recognizable.  They took my breath away when I discovered them.  I
hope you have a similar experience as we start this new year.  

Here they are, on the Repository --

http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Main/InYr1976HumanDevelopmentProjec
ts

Gordon

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