SACRAMENTAL, ORGANIC INTENTIONAL LIVING

The above program title is often abbreviated as SOIL lest its length deter young people from aspiring to become interns who share the rhythm and routine of praying and worshipping daily, working in the garden and grounds of the Convent of the Community of St. Mary at Sewanee, Tennessee, and cultivating a life that typifies the balance of the Benedictine Order. 

Visitors often see the interns weeding the Convent garden, planting lavender, and performing as acolytes and readers on the altar at the Convent of St. Mary. The intern program has been in motion for several years, and recently welcomed Eva Bogino from Maryland, a summer intern who will be living at St. Dorothy’s, a small cottage on the grounds of St. Mary, and following the Benedictine model of prayer, work, study, and rest. I understand she has deactivated all social media for the summer! And she’s plucky to come here during our monsoon season at Sewanee.

Long-term interns are usually college graduates who wish to expand their spiritual life and to discern how to use their gifts, interests, and experiences in service to others while living alongside the Sisters. Their tenure lasts from August 15th to mid-May. Summer interns live on the grounds of the Convent of St. Mary for a shorter period — mid-May to early, August — and may be undergraduates or young people who are at least 19 years of age. 

The two young people pictured above, Nathan Bourne and Eileen Schaeffer, were the convent’s first interns and are well remembered for informal hospitality dinners they cooked and served for members of the larger community of Sewanee during their internship. These two young people were outstanding models of the internship program, actively engaging in planting and harvesting lavender at the Convent of St. Mary for Thistle Farms in Nashville (a program that uses lavender in products made by survivors of trafficking, prostitution, and addiction who are healed and empowered during a residency at the farm). 

Although Nathan and Eileen, like succeeding interns, engaged in agricultural pursuits, they also participated in study beyond the Convent and explored ways in which their faith connected with human communities and the natural world. Past newsletters from the Convent of St. Mary describe their work and their devotion to the Intern program. Copies of these newsletters are housed at the Convent of St. Mary. 

Short term interns in the SOIL program (also called The Organic Prayer Internship Program — TOPIP) have been provided with housing and some meals, and long-term interns are offered the same arrangement, as well as a modest weekly stipend. The "long-termers" sometimes work outside the St. Mary Community to make extra money.

Those of us who are associates and other members of the congregation who worship at the Convent of St. Mary love the engagement with these interns who are following their “Rule of Life” or mission: “Spiritual and personal growth and development and vocational discernment guided by the Benedictine model of prayer, work, study, and rest that is rooted in intentional communal living in harmony with the natural world, the Community of St. Mary, and the greater Sewanee Community.”

Prioress Madeleine Mary says she’s looking for new interns, and we who attend services in the Chapel at St. Mary and function as Associates look forward to welcoming these young people. Readers of this blog who know qualifying applicants, please guide them to the application form at the Community of St. Mary website: www.stmaryconventsewanee.org, or write to Prioress Madeleine Mary at the Community of St. Mary, Southern Province, 1100 St. Mary’s Lane, Sewanee, TN 37375. 

Photograph by Prioress Madeleine Mary

ST. BENEDICT’S DAY A DAY LATER

It is the day after St. Benedict’s Feast Day, but we will celebrate it today, and I got up before dawn and dressed to go out to the Convent of the Order of St. Mary. The Sisters have probably been awake for some time, getting the chapel ready for Morning Prayer and Eucharist. Outside, the temps are in the low 70’s, and July heat will soon climb to the high 80’s on the Mountain. I check to see if our herb garden is withering, then censor watering today, praying for rain so that I won’t run up the water bill. I remember my first July here at Sewanee, how we unwittingly watered everything twice a day and received a water bill totaling $247 one month.

I stand in the yard a few minutes, savoring the mountain air and remembering how lonely I was after moving here from New Iberia, Louisiana where I had lived almost 50 years. I discovered the chapel at St. Mary’s Convent the following year (2008) and became an Associate of the Order after months of practicing a Rule similar to St. Benedict’s, which I have tried to follow since that time – his Rule of “Cross, Book, and Plow,” or “Prayer, Study, and Physical Work.” Many Tuesday mornings, I grouse about getting up at 5:30 or sometimes (but not often) at 5, bathing and dressing before 6:45 when I head out for the Convent.

Today, Victoria and I arrived at the Convent at 6:50, bearing gifts of Communion wine, each holding a jug of wine purchased in Monteagle the day before. We walked solemnly through the chapel to the sacristy, a procession that caused the Sisters to smile and say later that we seemed to be declaring, “Let the party begin!”

Roses had been placed behind the altar; sadly, they are no longer being arranged by Sr. Mary Zita who had a stroke a few months ago and is in a wheel chair. When I wrote my book of poetry In A Convent Garden, Sister Mary Zita was the first poem in the book. She always sits in the chair ahead of me, “an imperishable presence/abiding like a newly-given morning…and we wonder where she learned/the art of flower arrangement/that makes the Madonna smile…” Now, the arrangements are smaller, and behind the simple altar only one vase holds a tiny spray of knockout roses.

In the homily today, Sister Madeleine Mary tells us we need to be like St. Benedict – not about his miracles in which he makes water flow from rocks, or reads the minds of others, or makes oil continue to flow from a flask, but about his pursuit of a life of devotion to God, practicing a non-materialistic existence while reverencing everything. Sister asks us to continue to follow the Benedictine Rule, written in the second third of the sixth century, a discipline to which St. Benedict urged his followers to hold fast, despite the political and religious chaos of his time and that is still prevalent in the post-modern world of our time.

In 2010, Isabel Anders, the author of many religious books, who lives here on The Mountain, befriended me, and together we wrote a mystery set in a Benedictine Abbey in Louisiana entitled Chant of Death. It was enhanced by Isabel’s selection of metaphysical quotes and focused on what it means to live a life of holiness fraught with spiritual challenges. Isabel and I’ve often said that the Spirit wrote this fictional account of life in a Benedictine Abbey, and on this observance honoring St. Benedict, I ruminate on the tale we created while enjoying listening to chant and researching the history of the Benedictines.

This morning, we chanted Benedictus es, Domine, Song of the Three Men, Beneditus Dominus Deus, The Song of Zechariah, and sang Studdert-Kennedy’s beautiful morning hymn, “Awake, awake to love and work! The lark is in the sky,/the fields are wet with diamond dew, the worlds awake to cry/ their blessings on the Lord of life, as he goes meekly by…”

Penny, the Convent dog who is a sub-deacon and a regular participant at Communion, got up during the singing and shook her fur in affirmation; Sophie, the Convent cat, stood outside the chapel door waiting for her turn to sit on my chair, where she isn’t supposed to sit because she sends me into allergic paroxysms. The summer interns, two lovely young women, took turns reading from the Old Testament and New Testament, smiling tentatively at each other when one of them read a passage threatening us with being thrown into an abyss if we don’t behave. We were all there, lifting every voice in praise of a good morning, and St. Benedict must have been hovering close by, pleased that we were recognizing his life, which had edified and inspired us.

Someone had prepared for us a feast of bacon, eggs, blueberry muffins, canteloupes, and grapes, and we sat in the refectory in Community, honoring the saint who had brought us together in this thin place. We felt blessed, knowing that “He expects us to speak for Him,/over and over again/as [He did]…in love.”*

*In A Convent Garden

AN ORGANIC PRAYER GARDEN

Ora et Labora

In the Benedictine Rule, physical work is a part of the daily discipline the Religious follow, for St. Benedict, who was touted as the founder of western monasticism, knew that a person couldn’t spend every hour of a day studying and praying. He felt that monks, nuns, brothers, and sisters should perform tasks like baking bread, cleaning up the kitchen, cooking, or working the ground to produce food that would sustain the Order and the needy who came to the doors of the monastery. This work wasn’t isolated from worship and was communal in context. Also, St. Benedict expected the Religious to be good stewards. He believed that a person could find God in work, and if that individual used his hands to carry out a physical task, he’d be involved in the act of praising God. Esther de Waal, renowned author of books about the Benedictine way of life, writes:

 “So that in all things God may be glorified is the common end of all work in the monastery. If the only point of reference is self, then work can easily become all engrossing, sometimes fulfilling, sometimes destructive, but either way is a barrier from God…”

And she tells us that those who followed the Rule approached work in the same way that they approached their possessions for “what we have and what we do belong to the life on loan from God…”

At St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee, where we worship when we sojourn on The Mountain, the Sisters of St. Mary observe the Benedictine Rule in the same manner as St. Benedict’s early followers – praying at prescribed times during the day and studying scripture. And in the realm of work, they cook, preserve food, clean the kitchen, offer hospitality to those from the outside world who worship with them, (as well as to dogs and cats) and raise vegetables and fruit for their table and for the tables of the needy. They have always maintained a garden, and at one time, their work included raising cattle.

Just last week, The Sisters were awarded a grant by the Jessie Ball DuPont Foundation to support a project called the Organic Prayer Project, a joint effort between the Center for Religion and the Environment at the University of the South and the Sisters of St. Mary, Sewanee. Under the direction of Michael Thompson, a Benedictine oblate, the grant will allow the Sisters to expand their vegetable and meditation gardens by providing funds for a well, drip irrigation, and for seeds and plants.

“The grant will allow us to upgrade our kitchen so we will be able to can garden produce on a greater scale and to make a meditation trail/wildlife sanctuary on our property off St. Mary’s Lane,” said Sr. Julian, sister-in-charge of St. Mary’s. In 2013, the Sisters plan to maintain a pasture and a barn, and to provide feed for sheep, alpaca, and, perhaps, goats.

Healthy late summer crop 

“A goal of the Organic Prayer Project is to generate love and respect for God’s creation and to look at ideas such as sustainability and good stewardship of the earth,” Sr. Julian added. “The project will provide hands-on experience for students involved with the Center for Religion and Environment and hopefully for the Episcopal Service Corps. It will also provide opportunities for individuals and groups, such as seminary students, to prayerfully encounter God’s creation. We plan to use the site for formal retreats.” Another goal of the project is to generate income from sale of canned goods, wool/yarn, and cheese.

“We hope to widen our involvement with, and service to, our community of Sewanee and the wider world, and at the same time provide a solid financial structure for the convent,” Sister Julian said.

For those of us who aren’t savvy about organic gardening, the phrase means to improve and maximize the health of the garden soil and to produce healthy plants without using synthetic commercial fertilizers, fungicides, or pesticides.

Congratulations and kudos to the Sisters for obtaining this grant and for making all of us in the post-modern world aware of St. Benedict’s Rule regarding the stewardship of the earth.