Sister Lynne, hoe in hand, working in garden, caring for the earth

Why care for the earth?

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community 1 Comment

Sister Lynne, hoe in hand, working in garden, providing care for the earth. Why care for the earth? Monday morning, while I am working in the garden, a turkey hen appears from behind the compost pile, shepherding two very young chicks across the grass toward the garden. The hen stops and turns back when she sees me, but the chicks continue ahead and take cover under the rhubarb plants. As I walk away trying not to scare them, the mother clucks softly to her chicks and they come running out of the grass and into the woods with her. Tuesday morning I see them again from my office window as they enter the prairie between the monastery and the retreat and guest house.

On other days I watch the appearance of an adolescent cooper’s hawk in various locations around the property—on the electric lines above the road, in an oak tree in the neighborhood. As I stop to gaze at it, it turns its head to size up this stranger surveying it. These are graced moments.

Benedictine spirituality moves us to maintain the grounds at the monastery as a place where guests, retreatants and community members can have these kinds of encounters that foster an awareness of the sacredness of creation of which we are all a part.

Joan Chittister writes in In the Heart of the Temple, “Benedict requires five qualities of the monastic that affect the way the monastic deals with the things of the earth: praise, humility, stewardship, manual labor, and community, each of them designed to enable creation to go on creating.” I am struck by how these five qualities could help the human community as we seek to find a sustainable relationship to the earth.

Praise causes me to stop and appreciate the world in which I live.

Humility teaches me that I am not the center of the universe.

Stewardship challenges me to take an honest account of what I need and be mindful of the needs of others—humans and animals, insects and birds, plants and trees. Stewardship teaches me to tend and care for the earth’s resources and all of life that is so interconnected.

Manual labor brings me into intimate contact with the earth and calls me to contribute to the flourishing of life wherever I find it.

Community reminds me that I cannot and do not do any of this alone. As Joan says, the point of all of this is “to enable creation to go on creating.”

As I see the turkey hen appear shyly out from under a blue spruce and the grass ruffle as the chicks venture out looking for insects, I am grateful to be reminded of the on-going process of creation and our community’s part in it.

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Read other posts in Sister Lynne Smith’s series:  Building community

 

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