Today's Citizen
The spirituality of a little hard work
Donna Jacobs, Citizen Special
Published: Monday, July 30, 2007People arrive at Madonna House in Combermere from around the world and wind up pulling their first garden weed (or, once, every single cucumber plant), stirring their first batch of red currant jam, splitting their first cord of wood, shearing their first sheep or making their first wheel of cheese.
Over the years, truck drivers, secretaries, scientists, soldiers, clerks, librarians, high-tech workers, dentists, artists, lawyers, physicians, priests, -- and, once, a disc jockey -- have found their way to the woods beside the Madawaska River, 180 kilometres west of Ottawa.
Talk to some and they say they're drawn by the sense of fellowship, the spiritual nature of menial labour, the idea of self-sufficiency, simple living or the peaceful, productive and prayerful days.
Earlier this month, for example, in one dining room alone, 100 staff and working visitors sat down to a home-grown meal prepared on a wood-heated cookstove: An omelet, salad, boiled eggs and potatoes and apple sauce, served with milk or tea (coffee is reserved for Sundays and feast days).
A tour given by Rev. Robert Wild, who has been with Madonna House for 36 years, includes the preserving room where zucchini will soon dry on racks, where jars of raspberry and strawberry preserves have already captured this year's harvest and where two young women give out samples of superb red currant jam and tangy raspberry juice.
In the basement of another building, a cold room still has a few huge cabbages from last year and plastic pails of pickles. Another building, refrigerated, holds huge wheels of cheese. The small herd of cattle produces enough milk for yogurt and butter, too.
Still another building houses two pottery wheels and a kiln that produce sturdy brown mixing bowls, holy water fonts and handicrafts. Elsewhere, two staff members weave table mats and small rugs from two huge looms with wool fresh off a nearby spinning wheel.
And a huge depot nearby, with its enormous sorting table, receives clothes and household items donated each year by the tonne.
"We live by begging," says Kathy Rodman, who completes the afternoon-long tour. The staff, she explains, relies on the donations; many also go to a centre for use by area residents.
On this intentional embrace of poverty, Cathy Mitchell, director of the training centre, notes simply that people can fill themselves so full of things, such as the latest iPod, "that there's not enough empty space left for God."
Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the Russian baroness who chose a life of poverty among the poor in New York City's Harlem, Toronto and Chicago, founded Madonna House in 1947 with her American journalist-husband, Eddie.
"You touch everything reverently, prayerfully concentratedly," Catherine wrote in one of her nearly 20 books. "Is it going to get to the poor? There must not be a shadow of any desire to take anything for the apostolate, collectively or individually, that we do not need. Eternally, our first concern is for the poor. We are the last."
The famous bookstore's offerings range from paperbacks to first editions and Madonna House publications -- including the Dohertys' books. There's a flea market and a well-known gift shop with staff-produced crafts. Adjoining is a room of donated jewelry, fine china, glassware, rosaries and collectibles that earn hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly for education and food, mainly for Asian and African foreign missions.
