Bluestone Farm

We just returned from a visit to Bluestone Farm, the emerging enterprise of the Community of the Holy Spirit.  We visited to see and learn how an established Anglican community is going about reinventing itself.  New seeds are exciting, but it's also inspiring and instructive to see settled gardens plow themselves up to bring forth new fruit.  They have four Sisters there, milking cows and gardening and preserving what they grow.  They also have several companions in residence, three young people and a couple, moving on right now but there for years, who share in daily life and decisions.

We are thinking a lot about the different ways people affiliate to a community.  Traditional religious orders have had members, in vows, people moving toward vows (novices, postulants), and then other "rings" of membership - oblates, close in, with a rule and maybe a vote, maybe a habit, maybe living at the monastery but maybe not; associates, living "secular" lives but praying for the community, giving to it, and following a simpler rule; and maybe some other layers.

I get the need for that.  We don't all want to belong in the same way.

When we began, we said we'd all be Companions, though some would be residential and some would not.  Then we learned that some people don't want that level of commitment.  Some people want looser affiliation, but they still want to belong.  

Now I'm thinking we were on to something before.  We've heard from the Erie Sisters about temporary 

Sisters, who live with them for up to 3 years.  We heard from CHS about people living alongside, some temporarily and others who knows?  So we're thinking about how to be a companion again.

Elizabeth and I are companions in residence.  Our relation is not defined by residence, but living together is important for our formation - it teaches us things that we can never learn alone.  But there might be other ways to be a companion.  Companions in prayer.  Companions on the road.  Temporary companions.  Fellow travelers (whatever that means).  I don't know.

What do you dream of?  What sort of companionship are you hungry for?  Let us know.