The Fourth Order is an integrated spiritual community, whose companions are from diverse faiths traditions and maintain practice within their own faith systems; or they are not affiliated with religious traditions at all . Together we practice a living unity and experience the great mystery, oneness and compassion of God.

The Fourth Order does not represent any particular religion or denomination. Words to describe us might be multifaith or interfaith or transfaith. We call ourselves by all these names as we continue to discern our community calling.

The prefix trans means on the other side of, above and beyond, across. In this context our multifaith community seeks to go together beyond the differences of our faiths to the source of the experience of compassion, accompaniment and presence at the heart of all faiths. This is our form of service to the world.

Transfaith practice occurs when wisdom and understanding learned through the multifaith experience are drawn on by community members to enhance the practice of radical awareness of God's presence within ourselves, in others and in all creation.

Francis founded his life on a radical relationship to the life and teachings of Jesus. He experienced the Jesus of the Gospels as the fulfillment of Wisdom. In a famous moment from his life, he publicly stripped himself naked of the social clothing and conventional wisdom that demanded he distort or minimize divine love. He returned this old clothing to his human father.

We of the Fourth Order acknowledge that a tribalism of exclusion has frequently dominated many faith systems. Conversion has often meant becoming acculturated or institutionalized in a politic of religion.

We affirm that the Spirit of life blows where it will and that nothing can contain or stop it. We affirm and respect the presence of that Spirit in all creation and in one another. Under this charism of Francis and Clare, companions of the Fourth Order, no matter what their faith, take off that social and institutional clothing which demands certain kinds of religious affiliation in order to receive the grace of God. We return it to its human fathers. We must be as bold as Francis was bold and we must live our lives with the same honesty.

Practicing presence, the awareness of the essence shining out of all that is, leads us to a wild love here among us in the precious now.

The fine art of knowing nothing defies the easy answer. Although we may have been deeply schooled in faith systems and spiritual practices and keep these practices, we have come to understand that these are but the training ground, just as suffering is a training ground. The beauty of these fall away before the beauty of the Gracious Mystery. We lean with naked intent on the cloud of unknowing that rests between us and that gracious mystery. This is not an anything goes attitude. Nor is it ignorance. It is a discipline which is both our poverty and our joy.

These two practices: the practice of being present and a not knowing naked intent toward the Great Mystery are the Fourth Order. The Fourth Order exists only when these things exist. The Fourth Order is those attitudes of being, and the mysterious third that arises when we practice those attitudes.

If people gathered in the name of the Fourth Order and spoke with great learning and eloquence of the nature of the divine and attempted to convince and to lead others toward their beautiful understandings, saying this is the true way; then in those circumstances the Fourth Order would not exist.

You may ask, “If that is true would the Fourth Order exist in one who practiced presense and not knowing unconsciously with no knowledge of God?” Yes, even if there was a woman who possessed no faith or knowledge of faith and she practiced those things, she leaned on the unknown mystery and was truly present to herself, the earth and creatures around her, the Fourth Order would exist. Perhaps this woman is most blessed for she is not driven by ego or self consciousness.

How can words ever touch the meaning of the humble attitude of not knowing and the mystery of presence? To understand you must read the spaces between the words like you might listen to the silence between two notes. Our interfaith community is founded on that silence.

Francis, himself, gives our multifaith community guidance in the earlier rule, speaking these words to his friars about living among people of other beliefs.

“Let any brother who desires go among the Saracens and other nonbelievers...One way is to not engage in arguments or disputes, but to be subject to every human creature for God's sake, and to simply acknowledge that they (the friars) are Christian."

No matter what faith we come from as we approach multifaith life, these enlightened words surely give us guidance. These words are for those that are secure in the foundation of their own spirituality and have the need only to embrace the other.