And so our work begins

And So Our Work Begins

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence…”    Thich Nhat Hanh

There is a time of year in which people are coming home. College students finish exams, workers head home for Thanksgiving, Christmas or other occasions. Airports are crowded with children of all ages who are on their way back to their families. A few weeks ago, I joined the community of Green Mountain Monastery. Embracing religious life, in this place, I found a “home” for my soul and being. Coming home is one of life’s sweet gifts. Coming home is more than a holiday vacation. 

It reminds me of when I return home to Indonesia to visit my mother, brother and sisters. The spirit of welcome is there and it is such a joy to meet and be together, to share stories and greet one another. As we come together we garden, cook, and clean, recreate and play with the children. 

We are not only playing, we discuss many things about God, the Universe and life. My presence gives joy to them in the spirit of reunion and welcome.

Coming home in the spirit is making a place where  I can embrace the reality of my family, my community, my society and my being as well. I experience coming home, when I accept God’s grace in many forms. 

My community is cultivating love, compassion and the mercy of God in this time of uncertainty after the election in this country. We commit to the practice of energy balancing every morning after our morning prayer. It seems we are trying 24 hours a day and 7 days a week to be a space of balance and coherence for the world by becoming ourselves the wholeness the world so desperately needs.  

We welcome whatever circumstances of life arise with a spirit of gratitude, love and abundance.

We uphold the sacred community of life in all its forms.  We give our lives to the following of Christ and the power of love which he has shown us.  We pledge to go forward as a Single Sacred Community, and see the dwelling place of God everywhere, offering us a deep welcome-

Forests, rivers, fields, animals.....they all say welcome!  You are part of us and we are part of you. 

One family, one single, sacred community! 

Changing Growing and Moving

Living several months here at Green Mountain Monastery, I am one with nature and learning from the Earth Community about change. So many changes to deal with in coming from a very different culture - changes in language, food, customs, new ways of acting and being, very different from what I am used to, from the ways that keep me in my own comfort zone. I am learning to stretch and adapt like all the beings in the natural world.

Nature in all its beauty also has to adapt to constant change. When I arrived from Indonesia at the beginning of April, this land was white and covered with snow. The ground, the leafless trees and the temperature were all so unreal for me, as I come from a tropical country.  When the summer finally arrived, it gave me lots of energy! I began to work in the garden and take care of the life community here on this land. The softness of the soil and rich smell of earth gave me a feeling of aliveness. I looked in wonder at how the landscape went from snowy white to vibrant green!

Change requires patience! Tending to the seedlings and working gently with the baby plants has taught me patience. Weeding too requires patience! The weeding has become part of my meditation and connects me with the deep silence of this land. The sound of the birds in the wind gives me sense of oneness with them.  Harvesting also calls for patience, to wait until the plants are ready and know when to take them from the earth. All through this growing season I have felt so humble to find myself in the middle of the abundant grace of the fruits that mother Earth gives to us. The whole summer has energized me and all of us here. “Gratitude is the memory of heart”.  Fall is upon us now and change is in the air! Leaves are beginning to fall and soon the garden will be put to rest for the winter. It is going to be hard for me to say good bye to the garden and to allow the soil to rest for its winter sleep, as the garden has been so much a part of my experience these months, and it has given so much of itself. I am full of gratitude for this garden. Yet it is really true, everything is changing and moving. There is no such thing as staying fixed.  

We are in the new decade of the 21st century. Living in a world of interconnectedness. Our aim is to bring about the vision of one earth, one world. All – is – one.    We are challenged to be creative and dynamic in bringing about change. We are changing and we are moving...... bringing about something new by witnessing with our lives what we want to proclaim.

We Are Part

Recently I learned the genesis of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si -Praise Be, Care Our Common Home. It began with this incident- Two years ago typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) which took place in the Philippines on November 2013, brought huge damage to the city of Tacloban. Many lives were lost, people went missing and properties were destroyed. This global climate catastrophe, became the inspiration for Pope Francis to do something seriously and address climate change.

In the Encyclical, Pope Francis says simply that if we destroy creation, it will destroy us. This line sounds so similar to what Fr Thomas Berry often said when speaking to groups of people - “We will go into the future as single sacred community, or we will perish in the desert.” I guess Pope Francis was inspired by the writings of Father Thomas Berry, perhaps Thomas Berry was a ghost writer for the encyclical! With these insightful words we are aware of our mission, expressed through our lives of service and dedication for the healing of our planet Earth.

In our daily living we engage in work with care and consciously work the land with our hands, daily praying for the earth. We live our lives simply with the seasons. We know very well what is happening to our planet today. Coming from Indonesia, a third world country, I know my country has the third largest area of rainforest in the world but now more than 70% our forest in Indonesia is being destroyed by logging companies. It is very sad, even then the poor become poorer. Our children have no place to play. Most of them don’t know anymore the big trees in the forest which has become bald, the rivers are polluted, and the meadowlands have become sub divisions, condominiums and malls. Humanity consciously and unconsciously wants to be superior and dominate everything in life. Yet nature is stronger than us humans. Its remind me of Thomas Berry and the story of when he was a child experiencing the meadow across the creek. This experience became the guiding force for his consciousness. “Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; whatever is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good”.

We in many different cultures, with different ways are all part of the meadow. We have the same responsibility in caring for our common home as we move toward the future as a single community. Just like the meadowland not only lilies but also the insects, the water, the sky, everything and everyone, every group of people and community in the community of life participates in the dance of differentiation. We are not alien to each other. We are part of the differentiation, part of the community of life and part of the cosmic universe.