Posted 96 days ago

Vision for a Celtic Community

by Christine Sine

A few weeks ago we held an exciting meeting at the Mustard Seed House. Our Mustard Seed team gathered with our Celtic Project team to discuss possibilities for moving forward towards the development of a facility on Camano Island that could both model and teach sustainable living and sustainable faith practices. It is our desire to design and construct a residential monastic village in which both land use and structures achieve a high level of environmental sustainability and make possible sustainable lifestyles for those who live long term at the site.

Those of you who have journeyed with Mustard Seed Associates over a number of years know that our dream has always been to establish two communities – one a small urban community in Seattle, the other a larger rural community – both of which can model something of God’s kingdom values and principles. Participants in these communities will share a rhythm of life that entwines regular spiritual practices with work and creativity.

This idea of being part of a community that shares a rule of life as an expression of our faith, which is at the core of who we are in Mustard Seed Associates, is not new. It can be traced back to the beginning of Christianity. Early Christians believed that God comes to us in community – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – a perfect harmony of relationship. They reasoned that since the essential nature of God is love, and because it is impossible to practice love in isolation, God the Trinity must be a model of perfect community.

The Mustard Seed House in Seattle already provides a place for people to gather as community to discuss issues facing individuals, churches and our world in the volatile and turbulent future into which we are moving. The addition of the Camano community will enable us to better serve the global MSA community by providing a larger place to gather and creating innovative new models of life, faith and community to address these challenges.

We believe that this community will become the birthing place for imaginative expressions of God’s new world in arts, design, innovation and social entrepreneurship. We expect that this will lead to the development of new resources to equip all of us to live and serve God more effectively in the future.

We also plan to design a three month, community-based, educational process to enable students to explore a broad range of Christian prayer traditions and sustainable living practices to help shape their own models of sustainable life and faith. We are in the beginning stages of negotiations with Christian educational and sustainability organizations that are potential partners in this endeavor.

Our vision for the facility on Camano Island is still growing and, in the process we are already building community, not one of structures or even of place, but of relationships and shared lives. We are very grateful for the incredible work done by our architect David Vandervort who has journeyed with us since 1995, and our whole Celtic project team.

• 1991 – Tom held the first annual Celtic prayer retreat on the island at Camano Island State Park.
• 1996 – an acre of land on the property was cleared and a well was dug.
• 2004 – the first Celtic prayer retreat was held on the property and first prayer trail was established.
  
  Participants helped reclaim the land by demolishing the dirt bike track and clearing away the huge piles of broken bottles and dumped garbage.
  
  For the first time, a number of us camped on the land Friday and Saturday night.
  
  Because of our desire to connect the retreat to the land, at this first retreat we built an altar and surrounding booth from branches we collected. We then decorated it with leaves, seeds and other offerings gathered from the property. This was the beginning of a wonderful tradition which over the years has resulted in the building of a sturdy altar that we decorate each year with leaves, seeds, branches and fruit gathered from around us.
  
  * 2007 – The annual Celtic retreat has always been a kid friendly event but in 2007, with the help of Robin Stearns, we incorporated a more formal children’s program into the Saturday program.
  
  Under the leadership of Doug and Rocio Woods, cleared an area for a cathedral amongst the trees. This provided an outdoor chapel and sacred space separate from the general clearing.
  
  
• 2009 – Doug and Rocio built an octagonal gazebo for the clearing that inspired us all with future possibilities. They have both put in long hours clearing nettles and expanding the usable areas. We hope that this year we will be able to construct a small permanent structure as another milestone in the development of this vision.
  
  
  Painted permanent signs for some of the trails.
  
  Began early morning bike ride around the island inspired by Tom Norwood, another of our faithful long-term volunteers and friends.
  
  

• 2010 – Our retreat this year will be over the weekend of August 14-15. Along with our regular schedule We hope to construct a small permanent structure as another milestone in the development of this vision.
  

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  Community comes in many forms, as we are discovering in this exciting journey together. We do not need to live together in residential communities in order to orient our lives around God’s vision and purposes. However, to become the people God intends us to be we do need to foster a sense of shared spirituality and commitment. God is indeed building community and it is awe-inspiring to be a part of it.

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