A Time to Rest

I feel the obligation to write a few words down despite the lack of time to do so.  Our founders, Suzanne and Brayton, came to their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary several days ago and only today did we have time to celebrate.  This seems to be the norm around here, to get something done today means it will get done three days from now.  We are busy and we work hard.  All of us new and experienced are balancing many ideas, events, people and tasks so much so that when we have a few moments peace we don't know what to do with it.  To catch my breath always means shirking some other responsibility.  I have barely checked my email or Americorps in days - something I had been doing hourly before.  In general the days are so busy that we cannot help but get along with one another and find reason to smile and laugh through it all. We all realize that this will be over in just a few weeks and then we will have the graces of time and solitude.

The task of relating the essence of our time here can only be summed up with our general response to the colleges we have been visiting, which is, you have to be here to understand.  This is not a place where the poor come or the hungry.  Only on occasion do the troubled stop by and in general it is professors, bishops, writers and the elite who find their way down the dark and narrow road.  Yes, people in their darkest or most pressured moments have had their spirit eased by the Shanleys and their community but this is not what overwhelms the idea behind this homestead.  This is a place for me - for us.  We are weak and weary not from the work alone but from the changes being made to our hearts.  Non-violence and anarchy are topics and beliefs held by all of us but in general these are not the reasons we have come.  We come from backgrounds of education and elitism, rich lifestyles and solitude - what we are seeking is not to be the better man or woman, but to be humbled by the undereducated and lowly, impoverished and lonely.  Solidarity is on our minds.  We laugh at the people who don't understand why we have come and what this place is.  But the joke is always on us.  So we go out into the world and remember what it is like to smell the public transportation and greasy food.  It does not turn us off but it does make us miss our home in the woods.

More Photos

Brayton, Suzanne and Nathan

Click these pictures to see the whole panorama!

Five towns lie underneath this Reservoir, America's largest.

Ellen and Me

Our picnic celebrating the Shanley's 36th anniversary.

rarely a picture of the complete Ellen.

Someone just left this on the beach!

Brayton being generally the man.

Yoga poses.

The Egyptian is not a pose.

An old car part from one of the old towns drown under the reservoir.

Pictures

Teresa Lewis

Please take a moment of silence for Teresa Lewis who is being executed as I write this line - it is senseless.

Coffee and Tea and Satisfaction

I'll tell it straight up - being here is fabulous, not because every moment is filled with ice cream and tickles, but because laughing and crying, work and play, community and solitude are all done with perfect measure.  For every extreme that might drain my spirit there is an equal resistance that brings everything into harmony.  It is not so much the things that we do but the things we become privy to in small moments - even the abstract to some degree. Even today when I was about to get exhausted from work Suzanne stopped me and said, "Do you want to hear a good poem?'  And it was a good poem indeed - it was about the inward worth and potential of a person. Who can be worn from work with a spirit like that?  I do not look forward to the weekend or a time of rest rather I look forward to tomorrow and I look forward to the next task.  For every hour we work over there is another hour of required silence and meditation.  The work we do is often hard or high caliber but we do it and ask for more like it was a bag of sweet treats coming dangerously near the end.  Though always one of us is assigned to a particular meal the rest of us chip in to help with the preparations and cleanup.  (It's often easier to cook than to not cook on account of this.)  

Tony, our month long volunteer, bravely going into BC territory.

I experience so much throughout the day that wish to relate to you all but so copious are the good things that I forget by evening when I write things down.  I'm slowly forgetting the tastes of the other side too.  I do not miss my cigarettes, I do not miss my carnivorous diet and I do not long for money.  Only when I come to small breaks of silence and realize nobody is in the room do I begin to hurt for things.  I then miss my friends and the cities and all the possessions that come along with it.  These times are few and demons of necessity rather than plague.  Being here is a reminder that perhaps I can be who I wish to be.  Here I can be good.  I am here to believe in people again. As of yet I can't - I only go through the motions of what it means to trust and believe in the good of the whole.  It is inconceivable, however, that in a reasonable time I won't have to fake it - I will, as my friend says, turn forced joy into real joy.  It is good to be of some worth again.  Just in this days activities I have been a musician and singer, in media relations, a filmographer, farmer, cook, advertiser and newly learned driver of manual transmission. (Brayton and Suzanne finally approved of my skill to drive stick alone!) I am proud to be of use but also to know that I need to community I am apart of.  No one of us, co-founder, intern or volunteer goes unnoticed or unneeded.  We are sparrows and much more.  Harass a wren's plot.  This no longer applies.  

Dana, best cook ever, and, Nathan, laughing at his own jokes.

Ellen, not wanting to be photographed mistakenly though I wouldn't trick her into being shot.

A Few Pictures From the Past Week

Here are a few pictures from the past few days.  We have been exhaustedly busy here and I haven't had time to set down what we've been up to.  But that will come soon enough if not by tonight.

St. Francis House where the interns stay.  My room is the window at the top where the roof comes together.

The living room as you walk through the front door.  The couch where I like to lay out and read in the mornings and evenings.  And the new fireplace to the far right just out of site of the capture.

The kitchen is one of my favorite places.  It's where we all come together and talk whether we're eating or not.  The ceiling currently houses our supply of dried oregano, which I'll be using with my tuna paraphernalia.  This is where I'm sitting currently on my new wireless network!

A view of our garden - I've now learned quite a few of the plant names and how they grow and when they should be harvested.  It's exciting to go out to the garden rather than a 7-eleven for my lunch.

My favorite plant, a pepper.  Something about the slender leaves and clean seed pod.

My room that looks over the garden.

The recently built chapel where we have regular prayer in the mornings and evenings as well as weekly poetry readings from the interns.

The Quabbin Reservoir - me and Dana.

Notes From the Past Few Days

September 13^th

Today has been the first time we begin a full week of work here, and if this start is any sign of things to come we will be alright.  Something about waking up at the crack of dawn on a Monday morning, pulling your clothes on with half shut eyes and stumbling downstairs to sit slightly chilled and solemn in a room full of windows to the paradise outside, makes the worries of all things slip away without notice.   We do not drive an hour to work with disdain for our boss and co-workers, even our work itself.  No, we are getting to know one another in an environment that is secure and revolutionary.  This is something to be proud of, not to shrink from or call names.   Our readings for this morning’s reflection spoke of worth, how when we are loved and in community it doesn’t matter what we deserve it only matters that we are worth being loved.  This place gives me a sensation of worth that has been missing for some time.  Partly, this has to do with having something to work for, because at the end of the day you can relax and read or talk to one another without the feeling of guilt.  But the philosophies that overwhelm Agape give the work a unique flavor.  This was, in part, what the founding members of our constitution pled for.  In these several acres I am not a United States citizen.  Instead I am forced to be a citizen of the people and of an idea.  The people are the ones we use for help, who provide us with local produce, entertainment, advice and manpower.  The idea is that we return all of this back with a mind for peace.  I have not yet reached a wish to stay here for a longer time than my nine month commitment.  I am too stained with crowded streets and premade food.  I will try to make it out of here, maybe to Boston, maybe to Providence about once a month.  I feel I should be stronger and resist the ‘other’ world but I don’t want to change too quickly for my own good.  The words of my friend sway in my mind as a mantra – see through the eyes of people; love them; allow them to love you.  Maybe that’s my ultimate goal.  Regardless, things are great for the moment and that’s all that ever matters.  I might as well know I will be happy forever.

P.S.  Eating tofu for the first time tonight. We’ll see how it goes…

September 13^th (evening)

Dinner was an experience worth remembering.  Tomorrow morning our tour guide and confidant, Kyle, will be leaving us for the real world, so Brayton lit candles around the dinner table in Irish celebration of his time on the farm.  As the five of us ate what has so far been the best and most fulfilling (yes, even the tofu) meal we listened in daze as Brayton told us about the better days of Boston and New York.  The meal came to a close and I just had to relate how the meal affected me on an emotional level.  The whole experience of eating in a country cabin-style house with vegetables we picked just outside the door with candle flame for light was more than surreal – we had in a sense eaten our meal in a museum, but the knowledge that it was real was special to the new interns.  Even Brayton in his plaid shirt fit the mood to a tee.  Afterward we prayed, sang and meditated in the candle light of the chapel.  For once I could sit in silence and let my mind take me to places a good book could never touch.  The lyrics to McCartney’s Mother Nature’s Son came to my mind so I would like to share:

Mother Nature’s Son

Born a poor young country boy, Mother Nature’s son

All day long I’m sitting, singing songs for everyone

Set beside a mountain stream, see her water’s rise

Listen to the pretty sound of music as she flies

Find me in my field of grass, Mother Nature’s son

Swaying daisies sing a lazy song beneath the son

September 14^th

It’s difficult to say anything about my days here without leaning on fact or emotion too much.  For me this experience is radical because I am here living it, with all its quarks and logic, but all I can express is my emotional response to what happens and hope you can feel it too.    Ellen, our third and final long-term intern for this fall/winter/spring drove in this evening in time for dinner and evening prayer.  Of all the business in the back of our minds the one most striking to me is looking at a stranger and knowing you have committed nearly a year to them – not just as a roommate or workmate or friend but all the above.  Instant reactions say the three of us will be good for one another.  Along the way many already plan on coming and going, so this week of gaining and losing new faces will be the norm through much of the winter.  I am secretly afraid of many things, one of them being a fear of relating to the other interns, but as long as I am okay now it doesn’t matter.  As for the aforementioned facts…  I started to relearn how to drive a stick shift on an old volts wagon this afternoon.  Brayton sat beside me and reminded me how it all goes together.  By the end of the week I’ll have it down and be of use to the community in a way I can’t be now.  In exchange for the lesson I showed Brayton how to use his computer/word processor, a task I thought I’d never have to perform, but it’s good to know I am able to return benefit for benefit in some degree.  Tomorrow Suzanne, Nathan and I will be gone all day traveling to various colleges in Massachusetts.  It will be a lesson for us both in how to promote the cause of Agape.  Every piece of responsibility drives me further into the community but taunts the ghost in the back of my mind.  I cannot flee from here – though I do not want to – but knowing my restrictions instinctively sets my mind to wonder.  I wonder if a month or two will change this reaction.  I trust my time here to change me in the right direction.  I want to find my answers here and I want to find them now while I’m still young and have many possibilities.  Only time will tell and these days the time passes quicker and quicker.

September 15^th

I’ll keep this short again as there is little time to spend on the internet, and really little time spend on electricity in general.  I should start with saying that the community is becoming more and more reliant on one another and more forward with our inward thoughts.  Now that Ellen is here as the third musketeer of long term internship we all can settle into each other with a greater sense of community and trust.  I am in danger of saying that I am happy and content already and quite afraid that I might enjoy this along the way.  Only the first week will have past by tomorrow night and we have all been indoctrinated deeply in our habits and work.  Morning prayer will be a flawless system by next week, as will the gardening and various other work.  I even have been learning stick shift (hopefully this weekend I’ll be trusted with city roads).  Today’s experience has been quite different, however, from the norm of farming and clerical work.  Suzanne, co-founder to Agape with Brayton, Nathan and I drove to the outskirts of Boston to speak with two groups.  Our first destination was the Shrine to the Holy Mother of Salette, a community devoted to the apparition of Mary in Salette, France.  Suzanne spoke for an hour about breaking the idols of militarism and promoting not only peace but our October 9^th event on Women and War.  Two women in particular spoke out on their distaste of the issues but Suzanne showed her pacifist nature with flying colors and gave me something to think about in my responses and love for people who disagree with my stand on many life philosophies.  We said goodbye to Father Sullivan who asked us to come and headed to Stone Hill College, a part of the Congregation of Holy Cross, which is the same community that built my college back in South Bend.  It was nice to see the familiar crests and the AVE CRUX SPES UNICA posted along the campus.  There we met students that I grew to envy and admire within only a few hours of conversation.  The services and action committees they are a part of make my small commitment to peace and the environment seem lazy.  These connections I hope to advance.  Someday I might enlist their help or vice versa.  It is their actions that I will go to bed with on this particular day.  I have heard enough about Gandhi and Mother Theresa, the hands and voices of the youth in Massachusetts just might restore my faith in people.  These are the dangers I speak of.  I look forward to working my with our new intern tomorrow as Nathan and I spent the whole day away.  Perhaps I should list who I am among at some point, but people are coming and going regularly, so perhaps I’ll just speak of the long-term help and those local to the area.  I’ll do my best to stop boring you all with the regularity of the house and work.  Only unique or new things, maybe an anecdote here and there if I find it entertaining enough.

September 12th

This weekend has lit my view and understanding of rural Massachusetts.  The shades of fear have faded and the clarity of the wilderness and simple living is a comfort.   The annual St. Francis Day event on Woman and War is only a few weeks away and the work involved until then will be busy and steady.  The three others and I worked in the basement Saturday morning making phone calls, writing letters, and sending fliers to what seems to be and endless supply of contacts.  But working alongside people who care about what they’re doing makes a world of difference and the sync we attained, each with our own strengths, is going to help along the way.  We met several more members of the local town, who were meeting here to discuss future plans for Agape, and then left them to their discussions while Nathan, Dana and I took a hike to the local Reservoir.  It only took an hour to walk the tree crowded trails till we hit the large, deep blue lake, just near enough from shore to shore to make out the other side.  The solace was only defeated by a boat or two and generally we enjoyed the silences as much as we did the conversations.  The work we do during the week I hope will be plenty worth these weekend adventures.  After skipping stones, cracking geodes and getting to know one another we walked back to the house for a brief refresher and walked up to the hermitage which none of us has yet seen.   We talked for an hour or so about our impressions of the area and discussed our concerns about the times we live and brought the session back to the house for an evening of relaxation and humour.  This Sunday morning we all slept in till mid-morning, had our coffee and tea, and drove to the farmers market.  I was told there would be live music and that I should join in on that fun but refused until someone handed me a Martin guitar and I could no longer resist the temptation to play along.  We played for about two hours till my fingers were numb and my thumb about to fall off.  The guys around the circle were middle aged to older and played for the love of song and lyric.  One man, though I have forgotten his name, drove up in his Model A Ford, which he told me he had been driving for fifty years and 500,000 miles, hopped out with a rustic mandolin and bare feet and joined us for a small time.  All he needed was a grain of wheat in his teeth and I would have left convinced that I was in a dream because these things are not real.  Despite all the idiosyncrasies of this place the one familiar thing to me has been the other interns, still sweating the real world just as I am.  I do not think I have been relaxed these two days on account of the familiar though.  I think the reassurance that I can survive, be fed well and prosper despite the difference of perspective is the cause.  I look forward to knowing the people behind the stories here, shedding my city mind and seeing things in a simpler way.  Tomorrow we wake up early for prayer and start again.  Perhaps some more work in the garden or readying the community for our St. Francis Day event.  This time I am ready and not just pushing my body along.  My head is not fully caught up but at least I sense that I am nearer there with every hour. 

September 10th Clearer Thoughts

I only have a moment to type this up because we are expecting our second long term intern in just a few minutes and there is a curfew on the internet. Yikes!  This morning we took a tour of the local area and pull up tomatoes, basil and sprouts from the garden in readiness for the Winter months.  After some clerical work in the office and some help getting meals ready we went out to solemnly protest the war in Afghanistan at a local war memorial in downtown Ware.  Many people smiled, waved or gave us peace signs and only a few suggested their anger in our direction.  I feel as out of place here as I probably should be and that is perfectly fine by me.  I'm glad I have the weekend to let myself sink into the aura of this place.  Otherwise I might have lost control of my patience and done something stupid.  That will not happen. 

My phone is a glorified clock at this point and internet is sparse, so if you want to contact me it's best to just email because I don't know how often I'll have signal. Nine months... here we go.

September 9th Day Of

Darkness was not a time to have traveled here to Ware, Massachusetts.  The road as we approached became exponentially darker, windier and generally more haunting.  The words, "I'm sure this must be beautiful during the daytime," crept through our lips as a reassurance that we were not in fact going to die at any minute.  Alas, with the grace of a few minutes of battery in our phones and intermittent internet we slowed to the sign that read Agape Community and timidly pulled up the gravel drive.  At no point have I ever felt this much like a city kid until realizing I would be living here for a time.  Kyle, a current resident here, greeted us and led me to a third story room that as a child I would have found to be paradise, and to my dreary eyes, a warm and comforting place to sleep for the night.  The room is about twelve feet square with slanted ceilings on both sides.  A propped window opens up above me on the bed with another overlooking the north of the property.  I could barely see anything tonight but the house is generally cabin-like and quaint and appears to cater to large groups of people given the number of chairs and beds I saw on my walk up the stairs.

I said a quick goodbye to my friends that could have been longer if it lasted a week and walked the two flights to my room where I washed my face and allowed the welling emotion to move forward in my mind.  "I am here for nine months...."  My heart, I will admit with regret, is fearful and anxious.  That being said, my head is looking at my heart and not understanding what is going on.  This is the seclusion I have hoped for and everything from an outside perspective is going quite well.  I will have to wait until morning to let my heart catch up to the reality.  I start to pray but then stop - nothing I want to ask for is something I truly want.  I could say many things about what I think at this point but they would all be changed by morning.  So I rest my judgment for a better time.  It's time I think to put on my headphones and drift away to somewhere else.

Seizing the Last Few Hours

The final twenty-four hours of any life is always the most melancholy. This is, apparently, most true when you know you will miss the people and places you are leaving. Every chair in which you sit and window you peer becomes memorized for use much later when you know you will need the courage and comfort of that moment.  I suppose we all do this - I suppose old men do this when they remember that gas, gum and Coca-cola were all once sold for a nickel.  This time around the pieces I am frantically trying to memorize are more abstract than I could ever hope to remember.  So my memories simply become a hope that I will soon be able to return here and experience things the way they are now.  Though, I have been reminded that I am not merely leaving here but driving through.  

The way the light hits the B of A building on the right gets under my skin like a warm chill.

My fondness for the West is always constructed from the idea that good weather makes all life better.  It is only when I visit the East that I rekindle my life long desire to be here if I must be anywhere at all.  Here there is a sense of belonging that is lost on many places in America.  Here the streets have names with meaning.  Like returning home I come to these cities because it is my origin as an American.  Though this is only my first experience in Providence, the expressions of Boston and New York and other Eastern cities flow through the people with only a nuance of pride that they are not like the people from anywhere else. Perhaps I will join them again before rain turns to snow and sun to cloud.

It's time to pack the green duffel again, only this time I am not anxious to do so.  I'd rather leave my few belongings in the places they currently lie.  But this is not entirely true.  I want to stay here because I'm afraid of jumping in the cold water of Massachusetts.  In the end I'll rather have jumped and warmed to my surroundings quickly than hesitate on the poolside here.  Within a few hours my life will be squeezed into a pill only half my size and reality will set in that I am going somewhere very much unfamiliar.  I have been raised as Christian as anybody - probably more so - but I have missed the Catholic youth train by about twenty years.  I find myself reciting prayers in their Latin origins as if it would make a difference in the end.  I am told by my superiors at Agape they will greet me for morning prayer tomorrow due to my late arrival tonight.  In the few short years I have been Catholic I remember praying liturgy of the hours (divine office) only twice. I have a dueling fear that I am spiritually inadequate for the tasks to come and a realization that I am probably more trained in Catholic history and ideology than most laity.  I know I will be helped from the warm voices that already represent this community and I will be jumping in the cool waters with two others.  Despite the words and feelings I am very much driven to live amongst these people because in many ways they are my people and I to them.  My memories of Bethlehem Farm in West Virginia is enough to remind me that I would give up everything to be taught by people who have been doing this for a long time.  For what seems like a lifetime religion has been the thing that needs to be discussed and understood - for once I hope to be in a place that I can be religious for the sake of it's initial cause, to better ourselves and others through peace and love.  What more did Christ need say than to love your neighbor as yourself.  All life seems to spring from this understanding. Five years have passed since I was handed Deus Caritas Est from the pen of Benedict XVI. Starting tomorrow I will start to put those words to action in a way a mouse moves a mountain. But faith, like so many things I lack, can move mountains. There is much to be learned.