Fr. Phillip Thomas OCD visited the community frequently.
Kathy Nelson, Linda Dominguez, Rick Morra, (Ellen Weiss), Fr. Phillip, Clair Drehmel
Secular Order Discalced Carmelites
Raleigh, North Carolina 1990
The year 1990 was a year of growth and change. Again the community had two days of recollection and hosted a Seminar at UNC-CH. The topic of the Seminar was “An Introduction to St. John of the Cross”. It was presented by Fr. Regis and Fr. Steven Payne. To prepare for and supplement the Seminar Fr. Regis gave a series of presentations on the foundations of spirituality and began a systematic study of the Spiritual Canticle.
In the Spring the community held the first elections. Because the group was still small it was decided that only two councilors would be elected. Since Sandra was the only fully professed member Fr. Regis appointed her President. A nominating committee named two candidates, Kathy Smith and Margaret Ager. As there were no additional nominations the two were declared the councilors without an actual election. Shortly thereafter Margaret withdrew from the community and Susan Satterwhite was appointed to the council in her place.
Fr. Phillip Thomas OCD visited the community frequently.
Kathy Nelson, Linda Dominguez, Rick Morra, (Ellen Weiss), Fr. Phillip, Clair
Drehmel
A new format was decided upon for the meetings due to the increasing membership and the various needs of the members. Fr. Regis first gave a presentation (on the Spiritual Canticle) to the entire group. Then the Aspirants met with Kathy Smith and the Candidates in formation met with Sandra Malkovsky for formation in separate rooms. After the classes everyone met in the church for mental prayer followed by the Office. At Fr. Regis' suggestion the group started closing the Office with the singing of the Salve. Tapes were passed out so people could learn the melody at home.
By the end of the year a formal two-year program for the candidates was put in place. The community decided to use the two-year program developed in Washington DC by Peggy Wilkinson. The community was very happy and excited about the new format for the meeting. In addition Fr. Regis started bringing questions for discussions to accompany his presentations. The community would break up in small groups to discuss the questions then regroup and share the responses.
The practice of individuals giving short talks on the Rule was continued. This was so popular that a plan was put into place to record these presentations since many members wanted a permanent record of them. However, it quickly became clear that few were willing to volunteer to speak knowing that their presentation would be recorded so that idea was dropped. Even so, no one volunteered again to speak on the Rule.
In July the community's practice of spiritually "adopting" seminarians of the Diocese was started. There were only six seminarians in the diocese in 1990.
During this year Fr. Regis moved from Hinton to Washington DC where he was elected Prior. He wanted to continue his visits to Raleigh and asked that the meeting day be changed from the third Sunday to the fourth Sunday of the month. That proved to be a mistake as he found he could never get away the fourth weekend so the meetings were changed again and moved to the first Sunday of the month.
On November 4th Myra Gettys became the first member to take the Definitive Promise.
Seven new members were received in 1990: Ingrid Amara, Richard Morra, Larry Orzell, Neil Currie, Claire Drehmel, Kathy Nelson and Regina Zierdt. Larry Orzell moved to Norway soon after and Peggy Verkon moved to New York. Tom Coonan left the community to become an Aspirant in the First Order. The membership at the end of the year was seventeen.
November 4, 1990 on a Day of Recollection in Sanford
Neil Currie, Kathy Nelson, Claire Drehmel and Regina Zierdt received the
Scapular
from Fr. Regis Jordan OCD with Kathy Smith Director of Aspirants
As an aside, the concordance project which brought Fr. Regis to North Carolina continued slowly in the background as Fr. Regis and David Malkovsky consulted on the projects during Father's visits. As an off shoot to that project David put together a computer Bulletin Board named ZZBBS, the Zelo Zelatus Bulletin Board. It contained the complete works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese's Story of a Soul. It ran a couple of hours a day on David's computer. This was an attempt to introduce ICS to the computer age.