Society of the Harmonious Current
| Charitable lay order of the Melusinian Faith | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Type | Lay devotional and charitable society |
| Faith | Melusinian Faith |
| Currents | Gydron (generosity) and Furtio (love) |
| Purpose | Care of the poor, the sick, and the newcomer |
| Organization | |
| Governance | Self-governing chapters under the local Water Steward |
| Membership | Open to the faithful who take on its discipline |
| History | |
| Origin | Era of the Church of Caputia (before 30.XV.1668 AN) |
| Continued in | the Melusinian Faith of the diaspora |
| One of the water-named lay orders of the Melusinian Faith | |
The Society of the Harmonious Current is the charitable lay order of the Melusinian Faith, the devotional society through which the faith carries out its care of the poor, the sick, and the newcomer. It is the faith's active order of charity, and Melusinians reckon it to the currents of generosity and love, Gydron and Furtio, among the Five Currents by which they order the good life. Its members are drawn from the ordinary faithful rather than the clergy, and its chapters govern themselves under the eye of the local Water Steward, the priest of a Melusinian congregation.
The Society belongs to the water-named lay orders that grew up around the Church of Caputia, the established church of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia, and outlived that kingdom to continue in the stateless Melusinian Faith of the Caputian and Hammish diasporas. Through the long scattering that followed the fall of Caputia it was one of the lay orders that carried the faith into towns without clergy of their own, and much of the everyday charity of the Melusinian Faith is done through it. In 1758 AN its members worked the relief points opened during Operation Salt Meridian on the Soccsksargen coast.
Purpose and the currents
The Society exists to do the work of charity that Melusinian ethics ask of every congregation. The faith holds that its people must keep the poor and take in the stranger, duties it likens to the tending of a herd, and much of that work is carried out through the lay orders rather than the clergy. Where the contemplative Order of the Serene Pools keeps the temples and prays the hours of washing, the Society of the Harmonious Current is the active order, running the charities of the faith and the daily care of those in need.
Melusinians assign their lay orders to the Five Currents, the moral virtues the faith inherited from the older religions of Hamland and keeps under the quiet names of the gods they once were. The Society is reckoned to two of them together, Gydron's current of generosity and Furtio's current of love, the same Furtio whose inclusive love the faith reads as the root of its doctrine of Divine Fluidity. Its charity is understood as generosity and love made to flow outward, in the image of water that the faith uses to explain all the currents, and it holds with the rest of the faith that no one should be left outside the water, as no creature of the sea is turned away from it. Like the other orders it keeps a lesser day of its own beside the great feasts, a quiet observance on which its chapters gather.
Organization and membership
The Society is a company of the laity, not of the clergy, and stands within the Ripple Assembly, the body of the lay faithful that takes a real part in the governance of the Melusinian Faith. Membership is open to any of the faithful who will take on the society's discipline, and its chapters govern themselves under the oversight of the Water Steward of the congregation to which they are attached. It has no head of its own in the manner of the Matriarch of New Zalae or the clergy, and answers within each place to the ordinary structures of the faith.
The order is spread wherever the Melusinian diaspora has settled, in the Region of New Caputia and the Isles of Caputia of Nouvelle Alexandrie, and among the Caputian and Hammish communities of Natopia, Ransenar, Constancia, and the Keltian Green. Because it is built from self-governing chapters rather than a single central body, it has been able to take root in small and scattered communities across the diaspora.
History
The Society belongs to the lay life of the Church of Caputia, the established church of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia created by the Church of Caputia Act of 1654 AN, among whose lay organizations it is recorded alongside the Order of the Serene Pools and the Congregation of the Calm Waters. In the kingdom era its work of charity was carried on beside a settled clergy and a crown-endowed church.
The kingdom dissolved on 30.XV.1668 AN under the White Plague, and the Caputian people scattered across Micras, carrying the faith with them into a stateless diaspora. The Melusinians became a church of refugees, and in the long scattering that followed it was the lay orders, the Society of the Harmonious Current among them, that kept the religion alive where the church itself was thin, gathering the faithful for prayer and carrying the faith's charity into towns that had neither bishop nor temple until a settled clergy could be raised among them. When the diaspora church reorganized itself at the Synod of St. Melusine in 1745 AN, giving the faith the water-themed offices it uses today, the lay orders kept their place in the life of a religion that had learned to live without a state.
Operation Salt Meridian
In IX.1758 AN the Society took part in the humanitarian relief that opened during Operation Salt Meridian, the New Alexandrian occupation of the Soccsksargen coast the Confederation of the Phineonesian Nations was abandoning. When the Isles of Caputia Marine Infantry Brigade came ashore at four Soccsksargen harbors on 12.IX, the Melusinian Faith came ashore with the marines, and members of the Society joined the food distribution and water-purification points that opened at the harbors beside the engineers.[1]
The Society's members served under the authority of Matriarch Séraphine de la Mer rather than the Government, alongside a Tide Ambassador she sent with each landing party, and when a church mission moving with an occupying force drew questions in the Cortes and among secular groups, the faith answered that its charity was owed to all who had remained, of whatever religion.
Place among the lay orders
The Society of the Harmonious Current is one of several devotional societies through which the Melusinian laity give shape to their faith, each with a water in its name and a work of its own, and each reckoned to one of the Five Currents. Beside the Society, which holds the joined currents of Gydron and Furtio, stands the contemplative Order of the Serene Pools, counted to Uita's current of wisdom in its keeping of the temples and its prayer of the hours of washing, and the Congregation of the Calm Waters. With them the burial and mourning societies keep Sawra's current of piety in their vigil of the Returning Tide over the dead, and the guilds of a single trade take Heross's current of bravery and a Melusinian patron. Among them the Society is marked out as the active order of charity, and much of the everyday religious life of a Melusinian, outside the great feasts, is lived within one or another of these companies.
See also
- Melusinian Faith
- The Sacred Herd
- Order of the Serene Pools
- Matriarch of New Zalae
- Interfaith Dialogue Council
- Operation Salt Meridian
