Meet Our Interns!

We are delighted to be joined by three interns this summer, who will live alongside the Community at Melrose/Bluestone Farm, participate in worship and farmwork, and learn about the new cosmology as part of their spiritual development and discernment.  Their presence is a gift to the Community, and we ask you all to keep these talented young women in your prayers as they share in our life and our work this summer.

We asked Rachel, Claire, and Emily to describe what brought them to pursue this internship, and what they hope this time will offer them.  Here's what they had to say:

Rachel Kitch:

I have spent the last two months talking to everyone I know about how excited I am to be working at Bluestone Farm with the Community of the Holy Spirit this summer.  Because of my infectious enthusiasm combined with the unique nature of the internship program at CHS, all of my friends are also talking nonstop about my summer with “bees and nuns.”  When a priest in my diocese mentioned Bluestone and Suzanne’s internship program, things fit together beautifully.  After an incredibly overwhelming junior year split between Buenos Aires, Argentina and Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, I found myself craving some quiet space for contemplation.  Moreover, I was give the chance to spend the week before and after my internship at Sewanee University contextualizing my work in Brewster in light of finding of vocation and listening to callings, through the Lilly Summer Discernment Institute.  I am so excited to be a part of a community that sets aside time for the Sacred as part of its daily routine.  I am also looking forward to getting my hands into the dirt.

I have always thought that Nature was one of the clearest manifestations of God’s presence.  I miss having a garden as part of my life now that I live most of the year in student dorms.  And as a Religion Studies major, I know that what we eat is often closely related to what we believe.  Religious tradition seems, to me, to be infused with food.  But I have never personally encountered a community like the Community of the Holy Spirit at Bluestone, where stewardship of God’s creation, food production and preparation, and prayer are so closely linked. 

As soon as I heard about this internship I began reading.  Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle changed the way I thought about food.  I had spent little time thinking about where my food came from and who was involved in getting potatoes onto my dinner plate.  But those potatoes are an opportunity to make choices.  Am I putting chemicals into the ground or not?  Am I supporting fair wage for farmers?  Am I fueling my local school system or Exxon and BP?  I know my faith compels me to act.

What draws me to the Brewster community and their exploration of new cosmology, is how they bring God into our day to day lives.  Beyond setting aside time to pray and rest in silence, daily necessities, like eating become their own form of prayer.  Meals become testaments to our role as stewards of the Earth.  Gardening becomes confirmation of our faith that God will provide.  Vegetables become signs of the wonder that is Creation.  I look forward to sharing in a community that blurs boundaries between what is sacred and what is profane.  I look forward to dirt under my fingernails and learning about beekeeping.  I feel a profound sense of how integral this summer will be to my journey as a steward of creation and a woman of faith.

Claire West:

I was born and raised with the slugs and the trees in rural western Washington, and will probably always call Seattle home.  After attending high school on Orcas Island, where I was first introduced to ideas of permaculture and sustainability, I went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree from the Community and Environmental Planning program at the University of Washington.

This was an experiment of sorts in democratic education and learning in community. While the goal was a focus in environmental studies, the program taught me equally if not more about group process and social systems, and was the beginning of my (ongoing) foray into the vast fields of ‘ambiguity’ and ‘process.’ During this time I also earned a certification in restoration ecology, going out and getting dirty to bridge urban spaces and natural systems.

Leaning on the social science aspects of my studies, my work experience has been largely with AmeriCorps and VISTA national service. Working in places like a New York City high school, a regional food banking agency, and as a nonprofit program administrator, I came to better understand the design behind systems of poverty and oppression. I have spent my time since trying to figure out how to make a living without perpetuating those systems. Most recently I have been working in a café and, seasonally, at nursery and garden shop. I also volunteer with hunger and homelessness-related outreach ministries at my home church, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. Outside of that, I love to ride my bike, eat and bake pie, do the occasional political rabble-rousing, and hang out with my two-year-old nephew Elijah.

I am thrilled to be spending the summer at Bluestone Farm! Ever since my first retreat with the Sisters in 2006, I have been smitten with the joy, creativity and love that abound in this place. Seemingly disparate themes in my life come together and are embodied here, and I hope to discover some of what Parker Palmer calls ‘a hidden wholeness.’  I am eager to study creation spirituality, learn to make sauerkraut, raise critters and food, and live in community. I am grateful for this opportunity to take a prayerful time-out, living into the rhythms of religious life and working with some women with whom it’s safe to listen to and act on the Holy Spirit’s calling. (Well, as safe as that ever is.)  Unless the Still Small Voice says otherwise, I plan to begin study in the Masters of Divinity program at Union Theological Seminary in the fall.

Emily Apatov:

As a recipient of the opportunity to spend some time as an intern at Bluestone Farm, I want to express my great excitement about spending time in Brewster with my sisters in Christ of the Community of the Holy Spirit this summer.

I am a second year graduate student in the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Public Policy, where I am specializing in Public Sector Financial Management (namely, budgeting).  When I return to school in the fall, I will begin my second year as Resident Director of the University's Christian Studies Residence, an ecumenical living-learning program run by UMD's Episcopal/Anglican Campus Ministry.  As the daughter of an officer in the Army Nurse Corps, I have lived all throughout the United States; my childhood was spent principally in Texas, Maryland and on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu.  I earned my B.A. degree in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2006.

One of my greatest interests, and the activity in which I invest the greatest share of my quite-limited free time, is faith-based community organizing in College Park, Md, the city where I live. These words of Henry Drummond, a Christian author born in Scotland in the late 18th century, shaped and well-express how I understand my vocation as a Christian as it relates to my study of public policy: "You wish, you say, to be a religious man (sic).  Well, be one. There is your city; begin."  He continues, "But what are you to believe? Believe in your city.  What else?  In Jesus Christ. What about Him?  That He wants to make your city better; that that is what He would be doing if He lived there."

Between my school work and community involvement, I am now discerning how God would have me to live out the call I received in baptism.  For about the past two years, I have felt strongly attracted and often
captivated by a desire to serve God as part of the religious sisterhood of our Anglican Communion, a desire that hasn't abated but has only continued growing stronger.  I believe in our Episcopal Church, and I couldn't conceive of a higher calling than discipleship through poverty, chastity and obedience as a way to show forth God's love in the world.

Thus, in accordance with my prayers and with my pastor's counsels, I am coming to Bluestone Farm this summer to explore a possible call to a religious vocation.  If you're inclined to, please pray that I--and
others who may be discerning a call to vocation in our Episcopal Church--would be given the courage to say 'yes' if this is what God holds in God's plan for us, or for the courage to accept with peace that the Good Lord has something else in mind for us.