a closer look

I saw a hummingbird today. While I was out working in the garden, watering rows of beans, all of a sudden there was this whirring object in front of me making a loud buzzing sound… and I thought it was a bee and almost sprayed the hose at it instinctively before I took a closer look and saw its colorful tiny body and black beady eyes, unreal looking like an animation. It stood in the air staring straight at me for a full five seconds before zooming over to a flower, and then off into the woods. Seeing it, I felt shivers of otherworldly ecstasy.

I have been in this place for a month now. And it’s surprising - the surprise of stopping, the surprise of sunlight, the surprise of an indefinable smell. The surprise as the wind gathers and rustles the semicircle of trees around the land and they all shake so violently it’s hard to believe the leaves don’t all fall down. And the surprise of remembering how we are all moved by so many unseen forces.

For those of you who do not know, I am working and living at the Agape Community in Hardwick, Ma this summer, which is a peace community with a focus on sustainability, established by ecumenical lay Catholics.

I feel like I must do a bad job of describing this place and the work that I’m doing, because after giving a brief description to friends or family, they still seem doubtful about how to reference my job “when you go back to your…. Camp?”… “your farm” …“your thing” …“that place”… “what is it you’re doing?”

I could try again to express the external features of this internship in more detail. The place was founded by a couple who wanted to live in a more holistic way, as peace activists and educators about waste and sustainability. That they grow much of their own food, own a grease car, have solar electricity, have connections with many high school, college, and grad school environmental and spiritual groups who come for workdays or education or retreats. That they host 9 major events throughout the year, one of which they once had Gandhi’s grandson come out to speak at. So the work is a combination of physical, active organic gardening, working with the people who come out, maintaining and building connections, helping with mailings… and so forth, and essentially just learning how a nonprofit community operates.

But beyond all of this, in some ways I feel like I am learning how to really live for the first time. In school, we trace the paths of philosophers with our fingers on a map to know where they have gone, but rarely follow them with our feet. There is too little time for that, too little silence for that.

Here, I’m only a long driveway away from civilization, but it feels like so much more. My first week here, my friend Monika stayed with me to check out the place, and I guess I did a bad job of describing what she should expect, as usual, so on our first day, when we took a walk, she looked at the neighbor’s house and paused in shock.

“Is that a ‘house house’?”

I looked at her, puzzled. “umm…. Yeah. And that’s a ‘car car’.” I said, and then realized that she had thought we were miles from the world of cell phone reception and lawn mowers and televisions. Nope! Just a driveway’s length.

I can’t believe that was over a month ago now. The details are still fresh and vibrant, like a charcoal drawing that I haven’t closed up to smudge in a sketchbook.

I remember the first week I was here, they held a poetry and arts evening here, and before anything had started, Suzanne asked the interns to share a little about our experiences. Which led to the retelling of the “house house” story and other funny moments:

Suzanne said, “Monika, tell them the funny thing that happened earlier today when we were cleaning”

“Oh” she answered, “You mean when Justin almost made me un-marriable?”

At this point in the conversation my mother, who was visiting for the event, turned to me in shock.

But Monika went on to explain that it’s a Croatian superstition that sweeping dirt on a person’s feet gives them bad luck for future marriage.

I’ve learned so much!

And I have so much more to learn. There is so much we never learn just in the conversations we fail to engage in with the people around us.

Since then, I have met recent grads from the Franciscan volunteer corps, new WOOFers, one from France, one coming tomorrow from Italy, the man whose restaurant supplies Brayton and Suzanne with their grease for the car, two high school groups, a retreat group of people from NYC with roots in the Dominican Republic (who made amazing plantains and did karaoke with us and even made me dance!)… and overall, I just have this feeling of being deeply settled and peaceful, of being in a place that my whole heart can respond to without corners of doubt, because the focus here is so practical and so clearly right on target. It feels like time has slowed down when I am here, like most every conversation has real meat in it (metaphorically speaking… they’re actually vegetarians, which is perfect for me).

I feel like my spirituality and creativity has been on passionless autopilot for a long time, feeling like I have less and less to say, to add, that hasn’t been said before…

Like, I’ve said before to people that I decided to become vegetarian for clear reasons when I was ten, but over the years, the convictions wane and all that’s left is the habit of not eating meat. I rarely thought about what led me to that conclusion anymore, the hatred I felt for the Factory Farm system, the cruelty and unhealthiness… At Agape, I feel like the passionate resolve I used to feel about so many things is slowly rising again, that I’m getting back in touch with the roots and the cause, and believing that moving out of all kinds of stagnancy is possible.

YAWN I’m so exhausted but I really want to at least start this so I will move out of the stagnancy of an empty blog! More thoughts to come.