Secular Order Discalced Carmelites
Raleigh, North Carolina 1988
The meetings continued as described above, with Sandra leading the candidate class and the aspirant class until January of 1988 when the community received a special blessing in the form of a visit from Fr. Regis Jordan OCD from Hinton, West Virginia.
Sandra had written to Fr. Regis in December about a possible concordance for the works of St. Teresa of Jesus. Sandra felt the need for such a tool in preparing her presentations for the candidate class and had been told by Fr. Steven Payne OCD that Fr. Regis was working on one.
She heard back from Fr. Regis saying that he had the text of St. Teresa on computer disk but did not have a way to access it as yet. David Malkovsky told Fr. Regis that he could produce a concordance from the text and Fr. Regis wanted to come to North Carolina to see for himself what David could do. Sandra asked Fr. Regis to please come on a weekend when there would be a community meeting and give a talk to the group, and he agreed.
Father Regis came to the January 17 meeting in 1988 in the wake of a North Carolina ice storm. He gave a talk on St. Teresa’s idea of perfection. It was a beautiful talk and all the members loved him. Father agreed to come to North Carolina again and said he would become the Spiritual Assistant for the community. He came up with an idea to try to ensure that all the members had a good grounding in the basics of Carmelite spirituality. He proposed a series of intensive workshops each focusing on one topic in depth, such as St. Teresa. He thought perhaps he could come for a week and have a meeting every night for five nights. He suggested that the community might want to invite non-members to the workshops as a way of spreading Carmelite spirituality in the area. He asked the members to discuss it and come up with a plan.
The members decided that an intensive weekend was better than several weeknights because of the long distances some had to travel. One member suggested doing it at a college during the summer so that people who lived far away could stay inexpensively on campus. Fr. John Durbin, who had expressed interest in trying to help the community when he was at St. Michael had been reassigned to the Newman Center at University of North Carolina at Chapel (UNC-CH). It was suggested that Fr. Durbin be approach to see what assistance he could give us. The first of five “Seminars” was soon scheduled at UNC-CH for July 22-24. Fr. Durbin donated the Newman Center for the weekend and housing was arranged at one of the university dormitories.
While preparing for the July Seminar, three members, Gunda, Sandra, and Tom traveled to Washington DC for the National OCDS Congress held at Trinity College June 2-5. At the Congress, Gunda became the first member of the community to take the Temporary Promise. This was not without incident. During the Congress Gunda became racked with doubts regarding her vocation. At one point she left the group, returned to her room, removed her scapular and went for a walk. While on her walk, in broad daylight, she was accosted by a mad man who said he was going to rape and kill her. Terrified as she was, Gunda said she could feel the mantel of Our Lady come about her, and, as if in a dream, saw policemen approaching. Gunda saw the incident and the rescue as a sign of Our Lady's love and all doubts about entering Her Order were gone.
The July seminar in Chapel Hill was attended by almost eighty people. Fr. Regis and Fr. Albert Tittiger OCD gave a series of five two-hour talks on the life and basic spiritual teachings of St. Teresa of Avila. Among the participants was the famous Jodi Bilinkof a scholar who writes and speaks on "Teresa of Avila and the Avila of Teresa". The weekend was a great success and plans were quickly made to do another one the following year.
Seminar '88
Fr. Albert Tittiger OCD and Fr. Regis Jordan OCD at the Newman Center UNC-CH
In August of 1988 Fr. Philip Thomas OCD visited the community in place of Fr. Regis. Fr Philip was also living in Hinton and he joined Fr. Regis in caring for the Raleigh community. They started offering private spiritual direction for those who wanted it during the meetings. The community started taking up a collection every third month to provide funds for the friars' stipend.
As a result of the seminar two nuns of the Order of St. Joseph of St. Mark started attending the community meetings. They are the only community of this order in the country and have no avenue for spiritual nourishment. Fr. Regis talked with them about their needs at the seminar and agreed to let them attend the community meetings as permanent guests. In return, the nuns invited the community to use their small convent in Sanford to hold a day of recollection on November 13. This turned out to be a wonderful idea and a blessing for both the nuns and the secular community. The community continued to hold a day of recollection once or twice a year for the next eight years until the it outgrew the small convent.
Six people received the scapular in 1988: Kevin Salmon, Mimi Gromek, Linda Dominguez, Ellen Weiss, and Helen Godwin. The total membership was fifteen.