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When we bought the land in 1988, only the barn was here. We lived in it for nearly two years while we moved an early pioneer settler’s cabin to the property and rebuilt it as the First House. Our goal was to recreate an eighteenth-century community of single brothers that was located north of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That community was called Christiansbrunn, the Spring of Christian, named for the leader of the brotherhood. Ironically he never came to Pennsylvania, being born in Germany and dying in London at the age of 24. However his brothers believed Christian’s spirit lived again in the waters of what became a sacred spring. By drinking the water, they brought Christian inside them. That spring still exists. |
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That idea, filled with so many possibilities, set us on fire. It was the union of the physical and the spiritual which we had sought for years. We welcomed men to join us but, while many came, none ever worked out and we finally realized we were not meant for a monastic life but were actually hermits. We continue our hermit lives, living in separate dwellings but with a shared spirituality. Our high holy days recognize and celebrate the earth, with the solstices and equinoxes. Our own lives have changed as we have created a family not solely of humans but a broader ideal of living in harmony with the earth and the 63 acres of the Hermitage. William Penn’s vision of an earthly paradise garden where humans and animals live in peace continues to guide us. We realize that all are one and one is all. That unity, in which we are all incarnated spirit, calls us to act in specific ways. |
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“The Peaceable Kingdom” by Quaker artist Edward Hicks is our ideal of living a life of holy work with the planet and its creatures to create a single, unified family. Public domain. |
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