EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Eight, Number Six September/October 1999 THE FIRST ECOZOIC MONASTERY BEING ESTABLISHED The time has come when the single greatest service that women religious could make to the larger destinies of the human, the Christian and the earth Community would be the recovery of our human and Christian intimacy with all those wonderful participants in the Universe of being. Fr. Thomas Berry, 1994 This summer three members of the Community of Passionist Nuns, Sr. Gail Worcelo, Sr. Rita Ordakowski and Associate Bernadette Bostwick, left their home at St. Gabriel's Monastery, Clarks Summit PA, to begin their mission of establishing a New Foundation, an Ecozoic Monastery in the Green Mountains of Vermont. The group is currently looking for land for the monastery. The term ecozoic refers to a new mode of human-Earth relations, one in which the human and the natural world go into the future as a Single Sacred Community. Their integrated vision includes: Liturgy and celebration that flow out of a participation in the grandeur and pathos of Earth; Prayer situated within the seasonal cyclical rhythms of nature; prayer at the traditional monastic holy hours of dawn and dusk; A chapel built with natural materials from within the bioregion, including in its design the Universe Story and the Christian Story; Encouragement of the necessary return of Contemplatives to the land; A vegetarian diet that considers the broader implications of eating - understanding that eating takes place in the world, and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used; A kitchen rooted in the garden; growing food organically to feed the community and guests; A Community Supported Garden that cultivates an understanding of the vital relationships that connect people, food, soil and health; A Monastery Tea House that offers hospitality, education and encouragement of local community celebrations and cultivation of the arts; Community understood as the entire Sacred Community of air, water, soil and the more than human world; our architecture, space, and resources organized in that context; The monastery as part of an Eco-Village design. For more information write Sr. Gail Worcelo, C.P., PO Box 146, Weston, VT 05161; email srgail@together.net Home     Table of Contents