1/6/2021 0 Comments January 06th, 2021We moved to Ipswich in 1993. The primary impetus for the move was Catherine’s lifelong dream of having a horse. She also wished to live a more rural life connected to nature. We found a property with several acres that we could afford. Catherine decided to a wait an entire year before choosing where to place the vegetable and flower gardens. She wanted to get to know the land, and listen to it through the four seasons, before changing or adding anything. We decided to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for one year. A CSA works as follows: a group of shareholders pays a fee upfront so that the farmer has enough money to do the major work of tilling, planting, etc. Different CSA’s invite the shareholders to participate in all sorts of ways so they feel part of it all. Catherine’s Polish and Irish family had been gardeners and farmers for generations so it was in her blood. This was all new to me. We saw an ad for a CSA located at a place called Cuvilly School. We knew virtually nothing about Cuvilly at the time. It turned out that in addition to the CSA, Cuvilly was also a pre-school for very young children. It focused on sustainability, utilizing a farm and its animals, and a natural setting, as part of the children’s education. It also turned out that Cuvilly (more formally, The Cuvilly Arts and Earth Center), was a ministry of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a Catholic order, founded in France in 1804 by Sister Julie Billiart. Th name Cuvilly is the name of the town in France where Sister Julie was born. Specifically, Cuvilly was dedicated to modeling ecological sustainability through programs in education, agriculture and the arts. Cuvilly had started in the 1980s when a visionary Sister, Pat Rolinger, was granted permission to start a summer school program in the dairy barn on the Notre Dame Sisters large property in Ipswich. During the growing and harvesting seasons, Catherine and I got to know and deeply appreciate Sister Pat for who she was and what she had already accomplished. She loved and rescued animals of all sorts and so did we. We already had dogs, cats, horses, chickens and ducks and more were in our future plans. One day, I asked Sister Pat if I might be able to be of service to Cuvilly in some way. She told me that she had been slowly working on the story of the founding of Cuvilly and it needed both editing and improvement. I liked writing and told her I would do my best. During the process, I got to know her even better. When the project was over, she asked if I would like to be on the Board for Cuvilly. I had never been on a board before and I thought that my experience running a business and my training as a lawyer might be useful. She thought I would be a good addition and I stayed on the board for the next six years, three of them as chairperson. Other than one other woman, the board consisted exclusively of Sisters of Notre Dame. Most had been teachers, professors and administrators. It was my first time getting to know women who had dedicated their lives to a Catholic religious life. In addition to learning about the challenges and opportunities of being on a board, I got to know these remarkably vibrant and thoughtful women. To a person, they were deeply concerned and committed to improving social and environmental conditions. At the time, I did not realize that simply being with this group would subtlety influence my choice to become Catholic several years later. Perhaps the most far-reaching gift from Sister Pat was that she introduced me to the work of Thomas Berry. On just a few occasions in my life, a book has entered my consciousness so deeply that it transformed my understanding. His book, written with Brian Swimme, The Universe Story, did this for me. The book is a scientific presentation of the universe from its mysterious “flaring forth” until now, presented as a narrative, unfolding story. The writing is both clear and eloquent and it rang true for me. I had studied Gurdjieff’s “Ray of Creation” for many years and this book helped me truly see where I fit in this most extraordinary story. Thomas Berry was an original. He was a priest in the Passionate order who started as a cultural historian and became what he termed an “eco-theologian”. That Sister Pat and the other Sisters, and even more significantly Thomas Berry were in the Catholic tradition both perplexed and opened up the Catholic story for me. How could these open-minded and open-hearted people, who clearly saw where humans and all other beings were actually situated in the narrative of the universe, “believe” in the Catholic, biblical story. How did the contradictions between science and story (myth) work for them? My understanding of what it means for me to be Catholic was born from this fire. I needed to ponder. Please see www.cuvilly.org for more info and wonderful photos.
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