Episcopal Church Foundation Vital Practices

Even though life at the Good Earth Farm has a lot of unique variables, everyone can relate to the challenges of discipleship amidst an often chaotic world. A large part of the mission of the Common Friars, our newly emerging religious order, and the Good Earth Farm is to ask the question how we transform our lives around discipleship, not as fisherman, not as farmers, not as workers, but as disciples. We are asked not to impose our will, but to listen for the Spirit. We are asked to listen and follow. For us, our rule of life is both central to our identity and to the discipline of listening. Our rule, far from imposing factory or office like codes, holds us together when the tides of tranquil and dire threaten to sweep us away. I would like to share sections of our rule as an example of how ten people in Athens, Ohio are attempting to live committed lives of discipleship. Sections of the rule are italicized and photos are by photojournalist Samantha Goresh.

Prayer
It is still dark at 6:30 am when we ask “Lord open our lips”. Morning Prayer is in the room that serves as our library and office. It was once a fancy visiting room with bay windows and a fireplace. Now we roll out of bed and find our way to a chair. Liturgy literally wakes us up. When we are done, our day together begins. Someone departs to do the chores of milking and feeding, others eat or read or write until our meeting at 8:00 am. 

Prayer also ends our work day. Evening prayer is often the most difficult. At 6:30 am the world is still. At 6:30 pm you might be in the middle of work or starting to arrange dinner plans. It is hard to carve out this time to pray. Committing to set times of prayer means that you pause to listen, pause to remember the presence of God, pause to remember that you live in God’s economy, not of scarcity, but of abundance.

Our daily prayer life should form us to see God in all things. Our set times of prayer should draw us into prayerful work and interaction. Our corporate prayer life should be a gift that we share freely to those who want to join us.

Work
After Morning Prayer, chores, and breakfast our day begins at 8:00 am with a brief morning meeting. Meetings are a key part of our work and must not be overlooked. Living communally means that you are able to get a tremendous amount done in a short amount of time; it also means that discord is always lurking. Meetings are often dull and tiresome, but it can be our most important work. During the work meeting, we review our priorities and figure out who is going to do what. From 8:00 am to 1:00 pm we work together to accomplish the agreed upon priorities. When our workday resumes at 3:00 pm, we work independently on individual projects or responsibilities. By splitting these work periods we attempt to balance collective work with individual work. 

Our work is extremely varied. We produce thousands of pounds from the gardens each year. We feed between 40-60 people a week. We organize roughly 20 volunteers a week. We build new infrastructure on the farm. We take care of all of our cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, and bees. We give tours, visit churches, speak at conferences, publish a quarterly, and the list goes on. 

Each day we have the opportunity to seek, see, and serve God. All of our work must be done in the spirit of holiness knowing full well we will continue to fail. The work set before us is varied: from weeding the garden to greeting the stranger. With all work we must bring the desire to find God. Holy work means finding a pace that is measured. Holy work means being present with the task set before us no matter how tedious, strenuous, or cerebral. Holy work means incorporating plenty of rest into the day. 

We place a special importance on the work that brings us a greater connection to Creation and the marginalized. We wish to be a sign for the dignity of work and the reverent use of resources. We wish to balance the roles and responsibilities that uplift the common good while respecting the individuals need for creativity and autonomy. We wish to be signs of peace while working side by side.

Our work is about reconnection. Our work is about being living fully and whole. It is easy to separate physical work from spiritual work. Our work is to be signs of this forgotten connection. It means that we will learn to grow and cook food. It means that we will design and build. It means that we will make art and live deeply in prayer. It means that we will hammer and preach and be quiet.

Meals
We always serve lunch at 1:00 pm and feed anyone who has stopped by or come to volunteer. It seems that our large table is almost always full and on Saturdays we usually have to set up several more. We take a great deal of pride in cooking feast-like meals from the produce and meat we have raised on the farm. The motto for the farm is “sharing the joy of food for all who hunger” and lunch is a great opportunity to do just that. 

Christ did not leave us to remember him in spirit alone but in the physical, in creation; in the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. There is nothing more common than eating. People eat to sustain the body. Food is at the heart of common life. While the Eucharist is the special food of the Church, we look forward to every meal as a moment of encounter with the risen Christ. The Eucharist causes us to ask daily questions of how, what, and whom we eat with at our breakfast, lunch, and dinner tables. The meals we prepare and eat during the day are a witness to how the Eucharist has transformed us. Food is best eaten in the company of others. Strangers can become friends when you eat with them. When those we love, the hungry, strangers, perceived enemies gather around the common table, the Kingdom of God becomes plainly visible. As the Church becomes companions with the triune God and each other through the Eucharist, we hope we may become better companions with our brothers, sisters, friends, and strangers in our daily meals. 

Rest
Rest is an important and scheduled part of each day here on the farm. After lunch we have a siesta from 2:00 to 3:00 pm each day. We often joke that we are the laziest farmers in the U.S. There is no doubt that taking a disciplined period of rest is counter-cultural and a difficult practice to grow accustomed to. When there is always work to be done, which is a palpable feeling on a farm, rest is not easy. Most of my farm experiences before starting the Good Earth Farm lived up to the typical image of the hard working, never resting farmer. However, our goal here is not to be good farmers, our goal is to be disciples that are signs for the Kingdom of God. Rest is an important part of being that sign.

The Eucharist
We celebrate Communion each Sunday at church and Tuesday evenings on the farm. The Eucharist is our central act and model for all our work as we attempt to continually transform and be transformed by the Eucharist. It is the act of reliving the Christian story, receiving the body and blood of Christ, and remembering the incarnation. It pushes us to merge the material with spiritual and see all things as holy. That understanding means we have a great deal of work to do, most importantly with deepening own capacity to love.

Like the disciples, we come to the Eucharist saying, “This teaching is hard.” The Eucharist is mysterious and takes imagination. In it God is taking an ordinary people and forming them into the body of Christ with something as common as food and drink. In the rhythm of taking the Eucharist, we come to also proclaim, “To whom could we go?” Jesus is the bread of life. We understand that it takes imagination to realize that God has given us far too much rather than not enough. It takes imagination to open our hearts to receive God’s overflowing gifts instead of assuming his gifts are scarce. We hope by continually and willingly receiving Christ’s taken, blessed, broken, and shared body and blood we would recognize our very lives as gifts. We receive and we learn this by offering back every possession, every responsibility, every relationship; our whole lives, to God in the Eucharist, they become transformed; taken, blessed, broken, and shared to the rest of the world as signs of God’s friendship and love. The Eucharist is our common mission.

Listening and Following
In the past two essays I have mentioned the difficulty of the farm’s collective discernment. My next easy will focus on the difficulty of organizations modeling discipleship. However let me conclude with what will apply to both. Our rule is just one example. It by no means is a perfect model, and we by no means live perfectly into our highest beliefs. To re-center one’s life around discipleship does not mean quitting your job and becoming a lazy farmer. It does mean commitment, risk, and accountability. And while we can live as committed disciples everywhere, commitment, risk, and accountability do not come easy anywhere. Listening and following means constantly walking to the unknown, always choosing the path of greater vulnerability. Of course we will fail, but do we have the discipline to continue trying?

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