Cover
story Eco-spirituality
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff
Its another new frontier. And
once again, U.S. religious women are on it.
Hauling a greenhouse in a donated moving truck and with 200 books
as the nucleus of their library, a trio of women departed for Vermont from St.
Gabriels Monastery, Clarks Summit, Pa., June 1. Their hope is to
create a new contemplative order whose charism is healing and protecting the
earth.
The earth-life spiritual foundation being attempted by Passionist
Srs. Gail [Wocelo] and Rita Ordakowski and lay associate
Bernadette Bostwick is one of the more dramatic manifestations of a growing
interest among women religious in environmental spirituality. And its austere
beginnings are not unlike efforts of U.S. sisters in earlier centuries whose
work took them to uncharted terrain on the frontiers of the new
continent.
The only other new foundation in this decade by American women
religious is the 1991 New York City-founded Sisters of Life, whose 45 sisters
share a charism to protect human life and advance a sense of the
sacredness of all human life.
The effort by the Passionists has triple roots, explained
[Wocelo] by phone as she waited for the moving truck to arrive.
Primary are the writings and inspiration of fellow Passionist, noted geologian
and theologian of the cosmos, Fr. Thomas Berry.
[Wocelo] first heard Berry speak in the 1980s when
she was in the novitiate. I knew then my commitment in religious life
would be in that direction -- bringing spirituality into the cosmology,
situating spirituality in the larger context, she said.
Two other sources of encouragement, she said, are the
all-important support of her own Passionist community at St. Gabriels,
and the energy being created by Sisters of Earth, an informal network of women
religious dedicated to environmental spirituality in its many forms.
Such activities can leave religious open to critics sniping at
them for being New Age.
New Age? It is a new age, retorts Mary Lou Dolan of
the Sisters of St. Joseph, an early instigator of Sisters of Earth. Ask
critics to define what they mean, and what they come up with is not what this
is all about.
In terms of the Catholic sacramental view of the
world, said Dolan, and in terms of the book of scripture as book of
nature kind of thing, this is quite traditional. Whats less
traditional but moving toward greater recognition as part of the
Catholic/Christian spiritual heritage is what people like
[Wocelo] and Dolan are doing. Dolan directs the 1997-founded
Master of Arts in Earth Literacy program at the Providence Sisters St.
Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana.
Weve 25 [students] now and room for more, Dolan
said. This fall a priest is coming from the Philippines to attempt to pursue
the program full-time that, Dolan estimates, will take him about 18 months.
Most students have full-time jobs and stretch the studies and
internships over three years.
Our students are committed the moment they walk in the
door, Dolan said. Two-thirds of the program is required course work, the
rest is internships -- anything from organic gardening to working in a nature
center.
Dolan has her eye toward 2001 when the new nonresidential
programs first MAs graduate.
Semesters are five months; cost is $300 a credit.
Names like St. Gabriels, like Berry
and Genesis Farm, are common touchstones for the 250-plus nuns
loosely connected to [Wocelo] through the Sisters of Earth (dues,
$5 a year). The monastery, where [Wocelo] created Homecomings:
Center for Ecology and Contemplation, a retreat center, was the site of Sisters
of Earths first national gathering -- 50 people in 1994. Attractions at
St. Gabriels included its vegetarian cooking and the centers
hermitage built of straw bales. It was at the St. Gabriels meeting that
Sisters of Earth first discussed the idea of a new womens foundation that
blended the spiritual with the cosmological and environmental.
The decision made at that time was to not create a new foundation
among themselves, but to work through their congregations toward new
environmental-spiritual awareness and programs. And to see where those efforts
led.
The Passionists new expression in Vermont is a
first in anchoring the work in a traditional institutional way. Genesis Farm,
in Blairstown, N.J., is an organic farm and spirituality center created by
Dominican Sr. Miriam MacGillis. Her work includes re-opening Christian
mysteries, re-visioning the vowed life and land issues.
In conjunction with St. Thomas University in Miami, Genesis Farm
offers a certificate in ecology and spirituality, which is frequently a
starting point for people -- such as Sr. Suzanne Golas, who earned a
certificate last year -- taking on the eco-spirituality challenge.
Last year, high in the Adirondacks, her Genesis Farm experience
completed, Golas dipped her hand into the narrow stream that is the headwaters
of the Hudson. It was a baptism of sorts for Golas. After six years as
president of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, she has embarked on a new life
dominated by two major efforts.
She has founded WaterSpirit, an environmental-spirituality
learning program with outreach to local parishes and the public. Sessions are
at the orders Long Branch, N.J., Stella Maris Retreat Center.
And in a new role for her community, Golas is its nongovernmental
organization representative to the United Nations, focusing on environmental
issues.
She and MacGillis were in the Adirondacks as part of their
exploratory pilgrimage along the lengths of both the Hudson and the Delaware
rivers.
As an indication of the range of Sisters of Earth members
activities, consider the completely different environmental tack taken by
member Dominican Sr. Mary Ellen Leciejewski (pronounced lech-ee-es-key) at
Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Calif.
There she ensures that unused surgical scissors, or sterile
containers that once held bandages and instruments for surgery, are placed on
the shelves of the hospitals free store, DominAgain.
Pre-school teachers shop at DominAgain for containers
in which to keep school supplies; painters stop in to collect old scrubs to use
as drop cloths. People pick up scrub brushes -- used once before they
operate by surgeons with already clean hands, said Leciejewski with a
laugh, to use on their pets, or massage their feet. All goods are
cleared by the hospitals infection control group as untainted.
But this isnt the extent of Leciejewskis environmental
focus. She is environmental program coordinator for 35 other hospitals in the
Catholic Healthcare West group. In Santa Maria, Calif., the Franciscan
Sisters Marian Medical Center calls its store Francis-Can.
Her recent video: Common Ground: Women Religious Healing the Earth,
is now beginning to circulate among like-minded sisters.
Meanwhile, Fr. Berry, whose work is key to understanding much of
the motive behind women religious healing the earth, gives encouragement to
efforts like the new Vermont development.
Gail [Wocelo] is a very clear thinker,
said Berry, now 85 and in retirement in Greensboro, N.C., his boyhood home.
She knows how to plan, he said by telephone from the small
apartment fashioned into the top half of a stable on his brothers farm,
and she has a consistency in what she sets out to do.
I think it will certainly be seen, he added,
that she has the example of Miriam MacGillis [Genesis Farm] for what she
plans to do.
For [Wocelo] and her companions in Vermont --
the diocese of Vermont has welcomed us, she said -- monastic life
will be the key to each day. Were committed to praying, meditating
at the traditional holy hours of dawn and dusk. Those are cosmological hours,
too, she added merrily.
Until they have established their own spiritual regimen, the women
will twice daily join the monks of Weston Priory, five miles away, for the
monks 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. public worship. Once the trios search for
land is successful, well do organic or biodynamic gardening and
offer community supported agriculture, [Wocelo] said.
Wed like to have our architecture be coherent with the
landscape -- use renewable materials such as straw bales and solar panels -- to
have a monastic community with its orientation toward protection of the earth.
Its all very exciting, she said.
Back in North Carolina, Berry offers a modest view of his own work
and its reverberations. Ive managed to make a decent amount of
noise. He has a new book due out in the fall, The Great Work
(Random House).
It is concerned, he said, with the change thats needed in
the human community to move from being a disastrous and destructive presence on
the earth to one that is a benign or creative presence. Thats the work
Sisters of Earth have undertaken.
And Berrys new book will probably be the first addition to
the Vermont farmhouse library.
CONTACTS |
Sr. Mary Lou Dolan at 812-535-5160 or
e-mail: elm@smwc.edu Sr. Mary Ellen
Leciejeweski at 831-462-7674 or e-mail: leciejewski@aol.com
Sr. Helen Gohres at 608-788-5100 (day)
Sr. Miriam MacGillis at 908-362-6735 (day)
Sr. Suzanne Golas at 732-229-0602 or e-mail:
unsw@bellatlantic.net Sister of Earth: Sr.
Kathy Erard at 202-462-2591 or e-mail: kerard@tc3net.com
Global Education Associates, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite
1848, New York NY 10015 Phone: 212-870-3290 Fax: 212-870-2729 E-mail:
gea475@igc.apc.org |
National Catholic Reporter, July 30, 1999
[corrected 08/13/1999]
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