Did you read that blog entry last December about monasterygreetings.com, the company that sells gifts from various monasteries? A cleveland.com reporter has gone off and inteviewed Will Keller, the fellow who runs that company. The resulting article is here: Mail-order treats carefully made by religious orders.
Posted on April 9, 2003 03:40 AM. Filed under: religion."People often have a skewed misunderstanding of religious communities," says Keller, whose own outward demeanor is placid and reflective. "Some of us see such places as dark and deprived, but there's a lot of joy in spiritual life, and a lot of these things reflect that. Those who produce them are honoring God and his gifts. These wonderful foods and fragrances are the beauty of creation."
Keller lifts a jar of Trappist Preserves from a shelf in his warehouse in the Shorebank Enterprise Center in Cleveland's Glenville area. "The Trappists honor God through their prayer and work. And they are only interested in selling enough preserves to support themselves - they don't want to set any sales records or build an empire."
Continued survival is crucial to the mission of such religious orders. Thus they follow the rules of St. Benedict, a monk who lived from about 480 to 543 and set forth guidelines for a pious life.
"Basically, it requires them to support themselves through their own work," Keller says of the Benedictine rules that address most aspects of the organization and management of a religious life.
Food became common currency, he explains, because while on one level it represents sheer physical survival, it ultimately holds such universal appeal as edible art.
"Monasteries were isolated and cloistered; they had to raise all of their own food. So they had farms and raised livestock, and practiced crafts so they didn't have to go to market," Keller says, describing monastic life as "something of a medieval biosphere." [continue]