CUTTINGS

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CUTTINGS (I just gave Sam a rhubarb plant for his
47th Birthday)

The comfrey from Martha Dana

Thrives below the back stone wall.

Bees love the modest flowers

And the lavish greenery has

Many healing abilities.

                 Cousin Tom gave me creeping violet

From his rock garden and now it is

Among the stones, above the comfrey.

Lady's mantle swapped with Charlotte

for Hosta Elegans  fights for space

With silvery artemesia

From Stella, a constant gardener,

And the mother of my husband.

Years ago, walking with Virginia,

Before she lost her mind,

I pulled up some nice ivy

From a vacant lot

And trained it to climb.

Yellow iris from Susie's place in Fly Summit

Has survived, unhappy where it is.

Bishop's Weed from Loomis Street

Has taken over by the shed.

I've carried a shovel in the trunk of my car

And dug daylilies and asters from ditches.

Betty Ann and Helen poached

My white jonquils by moonlight

From somebody's front yard.

Rhubarb from Julia French is going crazy

Out on the compost

And Julia herself, well over 90,

Is in a nursing home over near Corning.

I treasure all these cuttings.

And watch for them every Spring,

Knowing exactly where each originated

And when it was planted.

When I'm gone, there'll be no remembering.

The next people

Will never understand rhubarb

And the comfrey will be

Just another weed.

Elinore Standard

From Uptown Dogtown

(written before we moved to Vermont where
there seems to be a healthy rhubarb culture)

THE BEGUINES

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THE BEGUINES

The late 12^th Century was the time of the Crusades and the monastic movement. Greek and Roman writings – science, philosophy, literature - had been translated into Latin.  Scholarship and urban culture throughout western Europe paved a way to an early Renaissance.

For upper class women there were two choices: marriage or the cloister and even the cloister was an expensive proposition. There were few         havens for women and those that existed became more and more under the authority of the male religious hierarchy. The mendicant orders, of which the Beguines were one, came under increasing scrutiny

as their ways of vita apostolica challenged ecclesiastical authority.

The Beguines were a spontaneous women’s movement, not adjunct to any male figure or group. There was no founder, no rule, no one to supervise or regulate the Beguine houses scattered throughout northern Europe. It is hard to describe the history of the movement and nobody is sure how the name came about. They probably began in Liege, but maybe not. Around 1175,  Lambert le Begue, who was a priest of Liege, encouraged women with whom he was associated to “live religiously.” The first prominent woman to be identified as a Beguine was Mary of Oignes (d. 1213) who was a “conversa” of a male Augustinian priory near Nivelles.

The Beguine communities proliferated and some became cities-within-cities with walls and moats, houses and hospitals, churches, streets, and public squares.  A grand mistress and council presided over each group and as time went along, they turned mainly to nursing the sick. The stance of Rome was mixed toward the Beguines. Sometimes their property was confiscated and sometimes they were permitted to pursue their way of life. The Napoleonic Wars and the Reformation took their toll. By 1969, there remained about 13 Beguinages in Belgium and Holland.

The goals of the Beguines were simplicity and freedom. They valued manual labor and promoted the use of the vernacular. Although they lived simply, they did not obligate their members to poverty. They had intense devotion to the Eucharist. They stressed love as a way to divine union. Although scandalized by its greed and corruption, the Beguines did not reject the Church or its teaching.  The Spanish Inquisition had a good, close look at the Beguines who were seen as inflammatory and heretical.

1. The Beguines demonstrated that it was possible for a woman to be dedicated to God without having to join a convent.  Because the Beguines didn’t have any organizational support structure, they were sitting ducks for persecution and co-optation.

Source: Elizabeth T. Knuth “The Beguines”  1992.

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There is an American Beguine Community consisting of married, widowed, and single women who follow various Christian traditions. Some live together in a “beguinage” some live separately. They say in their incarnation of the original Beguines, they aren’t something you join; they’re something you do. Their work is directed mainly toward the needs of women in the workplace. Located in the Bay area, another of their activities has been to introduce individuals, groups and churches to the meditative music and liturgy of Taize.

www.beguine.org