Nuns With a New Creed: Environmentalism

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/nuns-with-a-new-creed-environmentalism/280608/


Genesis Farm, in Blairstown, New Jersey (Angela Evancie)

Every woman in this story is confoundingly non-descript. Short hair, often grey. Conservative dress. Unmarried; soft-spoken. Most are well into their seventies, and all will tell you that their way of life is dying out. They will also tell you, with surprising conviction, that the world is in peril.

They are Roman Catholic sisters, from a variety of orders—Dominican, Mercy, Passionist—but don’t think Whoopie Goldberg or a young Sally Field. While many of their aged peers are living out their days in quiet convents, these women are digging gardens and offsetting carbon. They’re as well-versed in solar and geothermal technology as they are in the Gospels of Luke and John, and some wear Carhartts and work boots like they’re habits. At the heart of the women’s action is a belief that the changing climate and world demand a new kind of vocation – that Ave Marias won't cut it anymore, but maybe clean energy will. Called Green Sisters, or Sisters of Earth, they are pushing the bounds of their tradition toward a new, and deeply spiritual, kind of environmentalism.

“The Judeo-Christian tradition is so beautiful, and it has such wisdom, but it doesn’t have a lot to say about fracking,” Miriam MacGillis, a Dominican sister in her mid-seventies, told me. We were eating lunch at Genesis Farm, an earth literacy center in Blairstown, New Jersey that MacGillis founded in 1980. Our mesclun mix and roasted squash came from fields just across the road where, in 1982, MacGillis launched one of the first Community Supported Agriculture programs in the country. “There’s some wisdom in the Scriptures, like how you treat your neighbor, and being kind and compassionate,” she continued. “But they took for granted that the earth was there to be their resource.” In this regard, MacGillis is part of a growing movement of Christians assessing the applicability of Biblical teachings to the climate movement, though some—like evangelical environmentalists—see in the Bible not a disregard for the planet, but a direct mandate for protecting it. Nearby, MacGillis’s Prius sat parked behind her small straw-bale home, which is in turn set behind a much larger solar array.

There were other hybrid vehicles on the premises. Earlier that day, the leadership team from Slow Foods USA had caravanned from their New York offices to Blairstown to hold their annual retreat. They were a young group—not one of them looked older than 35—and of a generation for which devotion to a life of prayer is about as likely a career option as becoming a chimney sweep or milkman. During a tour of the kitchen gardens, orchards and fields, Josh Viertel, then the organization’s president, told me he had been surprised to learn that Genesis Farm was run by a Roman Catholic sister. “I thought it was far out,” he said. “Most of the people I know doing work like this are opposed to things like organized religion.”

[pscot]

1. k&r

[mopinko]

2. we have a monastery of benedictine nuns around the corner from me.

they ran a high school for many years, but just closed it. but forever these women have been involved in their community, in the peace movement, and grew most of their own food. they own a huge piece of property. i hope that they expand it now that they don't have students to tend to.

suspect this only happens in women only orders.

[PamW]

3. The Sisters of Perpetual Motion??

[xchrom]

4. I do believe they would appreciate that