[Oe List ...] Following up on my earlier "bomb"

Thu Jul 24 18:16:06 PDT 2025

Thank you, Ed. 🙏

On Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 4:55 PM Ed Feldmanis <edfeldmanis at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just simply want to tell you thank you for your courage.
>
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 2:55 PM Mary Combs via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you, Shelley, for your sharing and willingness to be vulnerable in
>> expression of your truth. My heart goes out to you for your courage and for
>> that suffering. I have only just joined this list and am so grateful to see
>> this kind of healing interaction taking place. The OE was life changing for
>> me and my family, before, during and after. My dad and mom, Braxton & Marge
>> Combs, were students of Joseph Matthews at SMU/Perkins in Dallas and he
>> visited us many times in California where they moved for their ministry. We
>> were in 5th City in the summer of ‘67, lived in Religious House in San
>> Francisco in the early 70’s, my parents lived in the Paris House while I
>> was in (the first?) Student House in ‘73-74. We left and my parents went
>> back to work in the local church in California. Talk about culture shock!
>> Later, to try to make some sense of it, I attended Academy in Chicago and
>> did a paper on the progress in 5th City for college. My husband attended
>> Academy in Belgium in ‘83. More recently, I was (luckily- thanks Julianne!)
>> found on FB and joined that group list in time to join the 2G reunion in
>> Bloomington. I just got David’s book and am enjoying starting to read
>> it. Connecting with all of you feels like opening a special gift I
>> didn’t realize I needed. So many rich memories! So much to process.
>> What I know for sure is this: Our OE founders and leaders and our
>> parent’s who joined created a vision for the future that was(is) so
>> profound and radical and, just the fact they did so, that’s still super
>> hopeful for me, especially considering where our world is now. It is still
>> relevant and worthy of celebrating, but the deep sharing and healing from
>> within that must also continue. The story is still being written!
>> Big Love to all,
>> Mary Combs
>> Aptos, CA
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Jul 23, 2025, at 10:41 AM, Shelley Hahn via OE <
>> oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> It’s been a few weeks since I dropped a bomb on one of the threads here.
>> It wasn’t my intention to just go silent.  Immediately after my post my
>> attention was snatched by a flooded basement, two sick pets, and the need
>> for some changes in my Mom’s care. (All is fine on all fronts now.)  After
>> that there had been so much rich conversation and dialogue that I felt
>> overwhelmed at the prospect of responding in an articulate and meaningful
>> way; I got paralyzed.  Karen Snyder broke through my paralysis when she
>> contacted me last week to talk about a witness I gave in 1983 (I was 22)
>> about Celebration 10, a Student House reunion/gathering.  After talking
>> with Karen I decided I just need to write SOMETHING, even if I don’t have
>> all my thoughts and feelings sorted out.  I have no illusions that I can
>> tell my whole story in one piece of writing. (Marsha spent months writing
>> her reflections; I think David Marshall spent 20ish (?) years writing “Iron
>> Boy.”)    Today, my only intention is to write from my heart, to tell some
>> pieces of my experience, my truth.  Bear with me if I ramble a bit; if I
>> let my inner critic get too involved, I’ll never post anything. 😊  So …
>> in no particular order:
>>
>>
>>
>> ~ Starting with the bomb I dropped a few weeks back … I was sexually
>> molested by the first prior in the house I was assigned to when I was in 7
>> th grade.  I think that person left the Order not too long after that,
>> and I am almost certain he has died by now.  I pushed that experience and
>> the memories down for many years and finally faced them when I was in my
>> late 20s.  Therapy and conversations with the people closest to me helped
>> me process, heal and move forward.  Even so, as with any powerful life
>> experience, the experience shapes one, becomes part of one’s fiber, woven
>> in.  The experience does not define me.  It also cannot un-happen.
>>
>>
>>
>> ~ I live with an interesting paradox at my center.  Unlike many of my 2nd
>> Generation peers, I have never wished I had a different life than I had
>> growing up.  I have many very fond memories from my life in the Order,
>> which started when I was 3 years old.  I have always been grateful for the
>> many gifts that came with that life: community; a big extended family with
>> scores of extra brothers and sisters and lifelong friendships; a global
>> perspective; a trained intellect; a profound understanding of and care
>> about the injustices in the world.  There are many others.  At the same
>> time, there is just as much that makes me sad and angry.  I could start
>> right there—emotions.  The Order was intellectually brilliant … and largely
>> devoid of heart and compassion.  Love is not just a structural approach; it
>> is also a human emotion (and I’m not just talking about romantic love).
>> From my perspective, emotion wasn’t just ignored it was considered weak,
>> wrong, unhelpful … put down and squelched.  What a loss for all of us.  And
>> to return to one of the central pieces of recent discussion … in my
>> opinion, separating families and not TRULY caring for children and youth
>> was a HUGE mistake.  I’ve always felt my parents’ love and I’ve always
>> loved them powerfully, and when my father died I was devastated to realize
>> how few actual memories I had of time with him before my parents moved to
>> Bloomington when I was 43 and he was 73.  Would there have been hard times
>> and “bad” memories if we’d been together all those years?  Of course!  That
>> doesn't change that I was denied years of connection with my parents.  How
>> sad that at some point the decision was made to take “family” out of
>> “family order.”  There’s a lot more I could say about good and bad, pro and
>> con, but it’s more than I am up to at the moment.  Perhaps the main point I
>> want to make is that acknowledging mistakes doesn’t mean there was no good,
>> no value.  I am a product of all of it.
>>
>>
>>
>> ~ Back to my appreciation of our community:  I have ALWAYS been so
>> grateful for my Order family.  I have wonderful memories of SO many of
>> you!  I remember the Marshalls and Hahns all going out for dinner in our VW
>> beetle (yes, there were 10 of us!) one family night.  The Barleys took me
>> in as family and cared for me exquisitely for three months when I was in 4
>> th grade when my parents first went to England.  The Wainwrights and
>> Baileys were my family in Santa Monica, the Averys and Bonnells (before
>> Clare was even a Bonnell 😊) in England.  Alfrieda Wilkins was my
>> guardian when I was in high school and did a stellar job in a difficult
>> role—big sister, friend, mentor.  Martha Laird was assigned to oversee our
>> youth cluster at Kemper when I was 16 or 17 and we all adored her (she got
>> off easy with a fairly responsible bunch 😊).  Bob Rafos was my
>> surrogate dad when I was 18 and largely lost.  Seeing so many of your faces
>> and hearing your words during my father’s Zoom memorial service was the
>> greatest gift I could have received at that painful time. I could go on and
>> on.  I am SO GRATEFUL for this bunch of human beings.  Get ready for the
>> emotion:  I have real love for so many of you.  This is my truth just as
>> much as the truth that I was molested as a child.
>>
>>
>>
>> ~ And I have to address this separately:  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my 2nd
>> Generation family.  I have a weekly breakfast with Tamara McClelland and
>> Jane St. John.  Yesterday as we walked to our favorite haunt, Jane said,
>> “WE are the greatest gift we got from the Order.”  “We” meaning all of us
>> who grew up in the Order, in all of the different iterations and phases,
>> with all the attendant joys and pains.  She is right.  The love and
>> connection we share with one another is big and intense and powerful.
>> Three weeks ago my husband and I drove to Chicago for a get together with
>> Mark & Cari (Boivin) Jewell, Pat (Boivin) and Tom Price, David Allan and
>> his wife, Susan, Chris Boivin, and Sharon Rafos.  Chris & I realized we
>> hadn’t seen each other in 35 years.  It didn’t matter.  >From the instant
>> that we all greeted each other it was as if not a week had passed.  We
>> support each other.  We get each other.  We celebrate each other.  We
>> listen to each other.  Our reunions are fantastic. Big love.  And I want to
>> say as carefully and gently as I can:  a big part of why we are so tight is
>> that we get each other’s pain. Many of my peers say we came out as well as
>> we did in spite of the Order, not because of it.  Speaking for myself, I
>> believe it’s a mix.  But I think I can guarantee that none of us feel that
>> the ends justify the means when it comes to the mistakes that were made
>> with regard to how we were raised.
>>
>>
>>
>> That’s about as much as I have energy for right now.  I mentioned that
>> Karen Snyder contacted me about a witness I did in 1983.  Wow!  Karen asked
>> for my permission to share that piece from the archives.  On reflection, I
>> don’t want to share that without also taking time to do a re-write from my
>> 64-year-old perspective.  Perhaps you’ll be seeing that in the
>> not-too-distant future.
>>
>>
>>
>> A number of you reached out to me after my very short post a few weeks
>> back.  Please forgive me for not responding to you individually sooner.  I
>> do intend to get back to each of you soon, now that my heart and mind have
>> settled a bit.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks to everyone for being out there.  Thank you for “listening.”
>> Thank you for being part of an important dialogue
>>
>>
>>
>> With love and respect,
>>
>> Shelley Hahn
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OE mailing list
>> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
>> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OE mailing list
>> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
>> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20250724/9a6f1fee/attachment.htm>