With the arrival of cooler weather and less outdoor work, several of our monks engage in craft work, making items for sale in our Giftshop.
In today’s photo, a brother is making beeswax candles. Other crafts here include goats’ milk soap, as well as cologne, potholders, coasters, knitted scarves and “scrubbies,” table mats and small bowls, both made from yarn wrapped around thin rope, especially cotton laundry line. One brother makes greeting cards from pressed flowers and another is in the process of learning to make rosaries.
What we make here is sold exclusively in our Giftshop, and we often have trouble “keeping up” with the demand. Our day visitors and those on private retreat seem to resonate with items from our monastery workshops. We are pleased with their interest and they can often find a brother tending the Giftshop as well as working on his crafts.
The American Shakers, a religious utopian society that flourished from the late eighteenth century, throughout the nineteenth and to a lesser extent up to the present, are especially associated with their simple but beautiful furniture as well as numerous handicrafts, flowing from their adherence to the saying: “Hands to work and hearts to God.” Of course, this is a very Benedictine trait as well, characterized by us in the motto: ora et labora (prayer and work).
As the great 7th century Anglo Saxon Abbess of Whitby, Saint Hilda, said: “In the handiwork of their craft is their prayer.” We often express the same idea as: made with care and prayer.
May we all glorify God in whatever we do, and “may God bring us all to everlasting life,” as Saint Benedict says in his Rule for monks.
Be assured of our prayers and please keep us in yours. Thank you.
Abbot Christian and the monks
