The view from rural Cumbria

How does it feel to be living in the heart of the countryside and trying to put EarthAbbey principles into practice. Here is an inspiring vision from Cumbria for a prayer/centred rural community working the land.

We are delighted to hear from Rob aka ReedMace about his own vision and practice in Stapleton, North Cumbria. He is clear that Christian community in rural areas needs re-imagining and proposes a ‘minster’ type of model.

Here is a summary:

The issues

• Collapse of the Victorian mission of the church in the countryside
• Current agricultural practices are unsustainable
• Our relationship with the land has been reduced to the mechanical and utilitarian - and the romantic
• Rural economies have collapsed
• The indigenous population is ageing
• Farmers have one of the highest suicide rates in the country.

The Vision

The community would be a prayer-grounded, land-based Christian Church, under the Bishop, that links prayer, including the daily offices, with working with the land, and could become a life-sustaining centre for the surrounding rural communities and parishes.

It would operate an alternative economy, meeting people’s needs by offering manual work, food and accommodation, as well as the opportunity to learn new skills and practical rural crafts.

It would utilise renewable energy from low-technologies, grow food sustainably, treat its own sewage and recycle its own wastes.

It would be a gathering place for eating, music, fellowship and spiritual learning for those with responsibilities in the surrounding churches, and anyone else interested.

The Practice so far

In April 2009 we were temporarily loaned a 7-acre field in which to grow food sustainability. Using the principles of permaculture and biodynamic farming we are attempting to establish a forest garden experimenting with both common and unusual perennial plants for food and other uses within a sustainable ecosystem. We have planted around 300 hardwood saplings to develop a woodland and shelter belt. We are also experimenting with growing different types of bulk crop (wheat, oats, barley, and beans) without ploughing or fertilising using the ideas of the Japanese farmer Fukuoka. We are growing over a thousand vegetables without digging by planting through a mulch of cardboard and farm manure using dibbers. Prayer is said every day in the local parish church as part of the development of the house of prayer.

The full text
A Vision For A Rural Minster or “House of Prayer”
There is a desperate need for a new way of being Church, especially in the rural context in the UK. Current agricultural practices are unsustainable without massive subsidies of money and fossil energy: it takes, on average, 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce each calorie of food on our plates. Our relationship with the land has been reduced to the mechanical and utilitarian on the one hand, and the romantic on the other, both of which are fundamentally flawed. Rural economies have collapsed: my nearest shop is 10 miles away – a round trip of 20 miles. Public transport is non-existent: I cannot get to my local shop or GP without driving, or a full day’s brisk walk. The indigenous population is ageing: the average age of farmers in my area is over 60. Mechanisation and the drive for economic efficiency mean farmers often work alone or with a single farm hand, leading to isolation: farmers have one of the highest suicide rates in the country. Young people are leaving the countryside because any work available is hard, with very long hours, highly stressed, with no prospects, for very little pay, and the housing is unaffordable: who can blame them? New people moving into the area, who drive the housing market, are professional middle classes, few of whom have any practical rural skills. In addition to all this, the rural church is shrinking: Sunday congregations rarely exceed 20, with the average age being in the mid to late sixties. The Victorian model of mission – each parish with its own church and vicar – has collapsed: there are many instances in my diocese (Carlisle) where the parish priest has to look after 7 or more parish churches. And of what relevance is the Church anyway?

Out of this milieu of local, national, and global issues is growing a vision for a different way of being Church in the world – a way that seeks to address all of these issues and offers hope for the future based on the imperative of the whole gospel: the idea that human beings were created by God out of the soil, and breathed into by his Spirit in order for us to be God’s presence in creation and offer creation’s praise back to God. This is what Adam lost and what Christ came to restore: sin is nothing other than the severing of the cosmos from God through our own idolatry.

In a report called “The Rural Church: Towards 2000” published over 20 years ago by the Rural Theology Association, Rev’d Anthony Hodgson advocated, in the context of rural ministry in the Church of England, the establishment of open Christian communities, under the auspices of the bishop, with one or more priests and others in residence, based around a farm, sharing daily prayer. Such a community would work sustainably with the land, offer hospitality, and be a centre of theological and ecological learning and a place of permacultural research. It would operate an alternative economy, meeting people’s needs by offering manual work, food and accommodation, as well as the opportunity to learn new skills and practical rural crafts (eg weaving, felt-making, basketry, green-woodworking, hedge-laying, coppicing, etc). It would utilise renewable energy from low-technologies (wind, water, wood, solar but not PV), grow food sustainably, treat its own sewage and recycle its own wastes. It would be a gathering place for eating, music, fellowship and spiritual learning for those with responsibilities in the surrounding churches, and anyone else interested. In this way a prayer-grounded, land-based Christian community, that links prayer with working with the land, could become a life-sustaining centre for the surrounding rural communities and parishes. Income could be generated from hospitality and the sale of excess food and craft products. That, in a nut-shell, is the vision.

This idea is not new. It was practised in the north and west of Britain, and in Ireland, during the fifth to ninth centuries and beyond, and was known as a “minster”. There is evidence of an early Christian monastic community at Bewcastle, about 6 miles from where I am located, during the seventh and eighth centuries, that would have lived a life of shared prayer throughout each day and worked on the land. We know that St Cuthbert used to visit this area on his pilgrimages across the north of England, and there is abundant evidence from place names and holy sites that various Christian communities have existed in this area over the centuries.

With this in mind, my family and I have given up our stipend to make an attempt at realising such a vision in this part of north Cumbria. Working closely with the Bishop of Carlisle and the local parish priest, who also share the vision, and with the help of a local parishioner and landowner, we have endeavoured to make a start.

In April 2009 we were temporarily loaned a 7-acre field in which to grow food sustainability. Using the principles of permaculture and biodynamic farming we are attempting to establish a forest garden experimenting with both common and unusual perennial plants for food and other uses within a sustainable ecosystem. We have planted around 300 hardwood saplings to develop a woodland and shelter belt. We are also experimenting with growing different types of bulk crop (wheat, oats, barley, and beans) without ploughing or fertilising using the ideas of the Japanese farmer Fukuoka. We are growing over a thousand vegetables without digging by planting through a mulch of cardboard and farm manure using dibbers. Prayer is said every day in the local parish church as part of the development of the house of prayer.

Of course there are many difficulties to be overcome, not least of which is the pressing need for a farm on which to base the minster or house of prayer, along with the necessary finances, and the right people. But is seems to me that this vision, inspired by our Christian ancestors, is one of the few with a serious integrity that offers a coherent hope for the future.
Rev’d Rob Brown
Stapleton, January 2010

Your comments.

Rock on.
EUAS are rooting for you.

Wow! Tony Hodgson is a good friend and inspiration to me too. I hope you and your vision have survived the snow. I’m part of the embryonic Borders group. Maybe we should visit you sometime.

Really inspired by you vision - I think it would be great to have an urban group linked up to something like this

Thank you for the comments. The weather has taken its toll and few of the vegetables have survived. We are at the experimental stage and still learning, but one of the positive results is that some of the vegetables have come through a month under snow in reasonably good shape. In particular Pak Choi, Chinese Cabbage (Nikko) and Green Kurly Kale. We’ll have to wait and see if any of the brassicas are able to produce any food, but they have suffered a major setback with the weather.

I would be happy to meet up/link up, although to make any environmental sense such a link would have to be local.

A few folk from Borders would like to visit you. Mondays are easiest for us, if that suits you.  A car is the only practical option, but you are at the “right” end of Cumbria and no great distance for us to drive.

You can contact us via http://www.bee-active.org/ to suggest a date for us to visit.

Meanwhile we plan to do lots of gardenning!

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It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place.

I have given up our stipend to make an attempt at realising such a vision in this part of north Cumbria.