Posted 729 days ago

Imagining a Celtic Community for Sustainable Spirituality and Life

By Tom Sine

We seem to be racing headlong into increasingly uncertain times as the costs of food and fuel soar and we hear daily reports of major financial institutions in crisis. In increasingly uncertain times, those of us who are followers of Jesus will need to re-imagine new, more sustainable ways to live and rediscover a spirituality that can see us through troubled times.

We at MSA are seeking to create ways respond to these growing challenges, one of which is designing a new Celtic Monastic Community that would become both a new model of highly sustainable, rural living, and a new model of semi-monastic community deeply grounded in Celtic Christian spirituality that reflects a love of God, of neighbor and of God’s good creation.

This Celtic Community will be constructed on a forty-acre lot on Camano Island, an hour north of Seattle. It will be a rural counterpart to the Mustard Seed House, the urban community associated with MSA. Both communities will share a common ethos, a common commitment to sustainable living and a common Rule of Life.

The Celtic Community will be physically designed to fit into its natural setting and reflect something of the spirit of a seventh-century Celtic monastery. Working with our architect, David Vandervort, we also want to reflect the highest level of concern for sustainable design. We are exploring everything from rammed earth and straw bale construction to solar and wind energy. We plan to plant an orchard, garden and vineyard to provide a high level of food self-sufficiency for the residents.

The people who are a part of this community will seek to create a highly sustainable way of life together with everyone sharing in routines of nurture, harvest, processing and celebration. These monastic community members will also seek to create a more sustainable rhythm of life based around morning and evening prayers, spiritual direction and service to those in the larger community.

At the core of this new monastic community will be a deep commitment to God and to a broad spectrum of Christian spiritual practices, drawing particularly from the beauty and insights of the Celtic Christian tradition. Our intent is for this community not only to be rooted in a rich spirituality and a different rhythm of life, but to also seek to embody something of the values of God’s new world that is already here. In both our urban and rural communities, we want to model a way of life that is simpler and more sustainable, in addition to offering a more celebrative way of life than anything offered by the global mall.

As part of this plan, we want to find some modest ways to serve the world and the followers of Jesus who are searching for both new models of sustainable Christian community and new expressions of spirituality for life in uncertain times. These include:

1. A listening/praying retreat site for those that want to be present to God and God’s good creation with a community that seeks to embody a new way of living
2. An exploratory place for college students and college graduates who want to spend a month or a quarter exploring a broad range of Christian prayer traditions to develop their own spiritual disciplines for life and leadership
3. A learning place for those that want to learn more about creating a more sustainable life focusing on intensive organic gardening, food processing, storage and preparation, plus learning more sustainable, functional arts for life in uncertain times.

1. A creating place for those who want to come together to imagine innovative new ways to be a difference and make a difference in a way that reflects something of that new world that is already here.

Would you be interested in journeying with us as we continue to imagine and design this Celtic Monastic Village? We are looking for interested people to join us on a Celtic Dream Team to help us imagine everything from the physical design of the site, to the community and the programs we offer in spirituality, sustainability and imagining new expressions of God’s new order. If you are interested in becoming a part of the Dream Team, please send us an email with your areas of interest and your contact info and we will get right back to you.

If you will be coming to our Celtic Prayer Retreat on August 9th, we will have our first meeting of the Celtic Dream Team over lunch. If you can’t make it to the retreat, but would like to visit the site at another time, let us know. We hope to conduct ongoing Celtic Dream Team sessions in the fall and beyond that will allow you to walk the land and listen. We seek your prayers for co-conspirators and wisdom for the project team as we seek to design and resource this emerging dream.

It is our hope that the Celtic Community will enable people everywhere to begin to imagine new expressions that are deeply rooted in Christian spirituality and deeply committed to sustainable lifestyles for life in increasingly uncertain times.

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