4th Annual Weekend Retreat:

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

I send you all prayers and blessings for newness of life that not only begins each year, but each new day! While our church calendar begins the new year with anticipation for the nativity of Christ in Advent, we who follow the Gregorian calendar in the western world are conditioned to the New Year being in January. So, it is a season where we find new beginnings.

Fraternal greetings, sisters and brothers! I'm Br. Dick Gray, aka Masseo, the Fellowship Coordinator for the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans.

My task is to facilitate face-to-face contact among OEF members, postulants, inquirers and guests in the several roughly-defined regions of our little Order. Our Website and mailing list are vehicles through which we establish initial contact and maintain a virtual fellowship, but an online presence is not enough to make a real community. Even phone conversations don't do the trick. That's why we work so hard to make regional meetings happen.

If I had to sum up the single most important spiritual lesson I have been taught, and, I confess, continue to try and remember, it is to pay attention! We say that to our children as a principal in learning, but we forget it as we grow older. Or, we learn to pay attention to distractions and worldly matters, dazzled by the "shiny things."

Grace and peace!

We are delighted to have you visit our web site. Here you will find basic information about who we are — enough information, we hope, to give you an accurate sense of the spirit of our Order and purpose as followers of Christ after the examples of Francis and Clare of Assisi.

The Order of Ecumenical Franciscans is a body of Christians who maintain a devotion to Sts. Francis and Clare and their interpretation of the gospel life. We are a diverse group — male and female, single and partnered/married, clergy and laity, liberal and conservative, straight and gay — with varied abilities and disabilities. Our members' church affiliations include free churches and mainline Protestant denominations, as well as Anglican and Catholic communions.