Welcome to the Agape Community! The Agape Community, located on 32 acres of woodland in Central Massachusetts, is a spiritual community, Catholic in identity and ecumenical and interfaith in outreach, committed to sustainable living and an engaged practice of nonviolence. Our community features a straw-bale house with solar energy, compost privy and "veggie" car run on recycled vegetable oil. We welcome volunteers throughout the summer for long or short periods of time. Read more

Sabbatical 2008

Monday, January 14 2008 @ 05:01 PM PST Contributed by: webmaster Views:: 246 Suzanne and Brayton will take all of the superabundant graces of the last 25 years and celebrate them by taking a Sabbatical. Agape will lie dormant, basking in the graces of God from January 1st 2008 until September 1, 2008. Please pray for us during this year of rest and discernment. Perhaps this prayer will be our only communication over the next ten months. For us, the power of this contemplative time without the demands and joys of ongoing hospitality and regular Agape programs, will afford us the lavish opportunity to keep you all deep in our hearts and prayers. As the God of Love wills – we will see you all again September 1st – replenished, re-committed and ready to serve for another 25 years! “Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence. …Your community also needs your creative absence. …You might need certain things that the community cannot provide. For these you may have to go elsewhere from time to time. This does not mean that you are selfish, abnormal, or unfit for community life. It means that your way of being present to your people necessitates personal nurturing of a special kind. Do not be afraid to ask for these things. Doing so allows you to be faithful to your vocation and to feel safe. It is a service to those for whom you want to be a source of hope and life-giving presence.” Henri J. M. Nouwen; The Inner Voice of Love

Annual St. Francis Day - A Tribute to Daniel Berrigan

Annual St. Francis Day Gathering and Celebration A Tribute to Daniel Berrrigan, S.J. SAVE THE DATE! Saturday, October 4, 2008 Rain or Shine! Father Daniel J. Berrigan, S.J., has lived his life as a militant servant of the Christian faith. He will read his poetry at our gathering this year. Michael True, professor emeritus of English at Assumption College, will introduce and provide a retrospective on the life and times of Father Berrigan. Plus: Japanese Flute by Robert Jonas, tributes to Dan Berrigan by long-time friends, Youth Forum on Non-Violence, liturgy, song, comeraderie, celebration, and more... Dan-merton Dan-profile2 The young Dan Berrigan with Brother Thomas Merton Arrested For more information, contact event coordinator and Agape mission council member John Paul Marosy at (508) 852-6322 Agape Community, 2062 Greenwich Rd, Ware, MA www.agapecommunity.org 0 comments Post a comment

Mourning the Death of Thomas Patrick Lewis

The Worcester Catholic Worker communities will host a Memorial Mass and celebration of Tom on May 4th, one month after his passing, at the Mustard Seed on Piedmont Street. We are still working out the details but want to do this one up real grand- lots of music, a procession. perhaps, from his art exhibit on Park Ave to the Piedmont neighborhood he loved, and of course lots of Tom stories. Program to begin at 2:00 pm. Mass at 3:00 pm. Father Bernie Gilgun is our celebrant. This is a preliminary announcement. More details later. I know many of you are eager to contribute to this commemorative. 0 comments Post a comment

St. Francis Day 2007 at Agape!

Come to Agape?s 25th Anniversary featuring... Arun Gandhi, Grandson of The Mahatma (co-founder of the M.K. Gandhi Center for Nonviolence, Rochester, NY) October 6, 2007, beginning Promtpty at 10 am Bring a brown bag lunch and dish to share The day will include walks on Agape?s 34 acres of land in the Quabbin Watershed, meditation, meeting with old friends. Music, featuring Robert Jonas on the Japanese Flute College Panel with students from area colleges reflecting on the meaning of nonviolence in their lives in the midst of a culture of violence. 24 comments Most Recent Post: 03/28 08:18AM by test04172

Annual Agape Almost Summer Work Day?Wood Gathering, Splitting Stacking.. Can you help?

LATE SPRING, EARLY SUMMER VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!!!!!! SAT. JUNE 9TH & SAT. JUNE 16TH 10 am - 5pm --pot-luck. Bring instruments, poetry and friends. Join a Green Community, dedicated to nonviolence, with organic gardening, veggie car, straw bale house, compost toilet, solar energy. INTERNSHIPS OPEN. LAST YEAR, FOUR COLLEGE-AGE INTERNS INITIATED AN ENERGY FAST FROM ALL FOSSIL FUELS IN THE COMMUNITY. WE ARE HOPING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE TO ASSIST US IN OUR: 0 comments Post a comment

Annual Celebration and Discussion - Spirituality and the Arts

Agape Community Hardwick, MA Saturday, May 26, 2007 An intimate evening in St. Francis House at Agape, celebrating the Divine Imagination with readings by Gilbertville poet Richard W. Bachtold from his latest collection, Poems of the Sacred Unknown. Also, other writers, musicians, and artists will share their inspirational creations. Please join us for a unique time of renewal, contemplation, and celebration with your own poetry, instruments and music. All are welcome to attend and participate in the dialogue as listeners and visitors, or to share their own artistic gifts. Refreshments. Contact Agape at 413-967-9369 for more information. peace@agapecommunity.org 2062 Greenwich Rd., Ware, MA 01082 0 comments Post a comment

Living a Harmless Life

By Brayton Shanley Most of us watch war from the sidelines. Of the billions of humans who have lived over hundreds of thousands of years, a vast majority has never been directly engaged in taking another?s life. Some of these bystanders are serious observers, as warfare is, after all, a dark fascination, a kill or be killed drama that runs the entire course of history. Poems have been written and endless movies have been watched chronicling the great battles of history?s great wars. Tolstoy, a veteran of the military, wrote: ?War has always interested me, not war in the sense of maneuvers devised by great generals, but the reality of war, the actual killing?and under the influence of what feelings one soldier kills another.? If we keep the power of observation going, we can also ask just what creates the climate that makes war so consistently possible and who puts the soldiers up to the killing that so struck Tolstoy. The ?good wars? in history were fought to protect the homeland. Yet, even those who thought they fought nobly had a curious word for their experience. Hell. This metaphor depicts the worst living nightmare of pain one could have in life. But in hell or out, fight and protect we must, and war continued to march through history. read more (2,502 words) 22 comments Most Recent Post: 11/02 04:00PM by test04172

Traversing the Devil?s Terrain

by Suzanne Belote Shanley For years, I have grappled with a personal, overpowering sense of the presence of evil in George Bush, taking my cues, in part from Jesus? castigating of the devil as ?The Father of Lies. ?? and a ?murderer from the start.? I have come to regard George Bush as one ?possessed? by the Father of lies. (John 8:44). Recent writing on Bush?s ?delusional state,? ?bunker mentality?, ?living in denial,? have reinforced this perception, broadening it to the inevitable ?Hitler? in the ?bunker? parallels, with all of the attendant traps--stereotyping, scapegoating, globalizing. Yet, much of what I perceive in George Bush for six years of hearing, observing and being viscerally repulsed by him, convinces me of the existence in Bush of a force field of evil. Satan and his legions are palpable presences in Scripture, Satan having ?entered? Judas at the Last Supper and earned Jesus? ominous denunciation as betrayer of the Son of Man: ?Better for that man if he had never been born.? (Matt. 26:24) Bush, the ?uniter,? in reality, is a betrayer, a liar, and it seems we must take the actuality of possession by demonic forces seriously as do acclaimed experts on the presence of evil in the human soul and psyche. Alice Miller, Hannah Arendt, James Gilligan, and Dostoyevsky, to mention a few writers, have all analyzed the murderous instincts that erupt in the human heart--in Hitler?s case, related to extreme abuse as a child, an accurate prognosticator of acts of extreme atrocity in adulthood. Bush?s evil war in Iraq, with its bloody massacres, (ordinary syntax shrivels in view of the real carnage) is, in a Christian sense, clearly a betrayal of The Son of Man, whose crucifixion enshrines the nonviolent heart of Christ for all eternity. Trying to guard my own deepest nonviolent instincts as I absorb the diabolical fall-out of Bush?s Presidency of Lies, to preserve my own too frequently hate-filled heart, I have to remind myself that Bush, like Hitler, like me, is not excluded from God?s mercy. read more (1,807 words) 0 comments Post a comment

Will Peace Ever Come to Palestine?

Will Peace Ever Come to Palestine? Interview with Skip Schiel, Photojournalist and Quaker On His Most Recent Trip to Palestine Agape: Skip, what have been your experiences in Palestine? Skip: Starting in 2003, I have made three trips on average three months apiece, the first with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the others on my own affiliations with Birzeit University and the American Friends Service Committee. I offered my photography in exchange for hospitality. My themes were water (hydro politics), nonviolent resistance to the occupation, the condition of Palestinian youth and their political roles. A side issue is my relationship to Quakers and the Quaker school in Palestine. Agape: How do Palestinians see their plight these days? Skip: There is a lot of frustration and despair that more people aren?t responding to their plight. There isn?t a whole lot of Palestinian resistance struggle going on that I saw or as much activism as there was during the first Intifada from 1987-93. The morale seems low because of lack of attention and the viciousness of the Israeli occupation. Then there is this perennial problem of different Arab groups trying to work together. read more (1,795 words) 2 comments Most Recent Post: 11/02 03:22PM by test04172

Guantanamo

by Phoebe Knopf The Seventh Station (Read at Agape?s Annual Good Friday Stations of the Cross, 2007) I imagine that by the time Jesus fell a second time, after having been physically and psychologically tortured all night, he was probably beginning to feel numb. The seasoned hope that over the years he had grown adroit at maintaining was, in the face of these relentless waves of trauma, beginning to slip over the horizon, out of view. So it must be now with the nearly 400 men illegally detained and tortured at Guantanamo, and the thousands in detainment at other gulags maintained by U.S. forces around the world. The many men and boys who have disappeared into the abyss of indefinite detention must be suffering an eclipse of their tortured hope and consequent numbness seventh station suffering extended indefinitely. The profound suffering of innocent detainees can be prayerfully comprehended in the light of Isaiah's Song of the Suffering Servant. The despised and rejected servant foreshadows Jesus. (Is. 52:13-15; 53:1-12) Both Jesus and the Servant exemplify the scandal of unjust suffering borne by marginalized people, innocent and wrongly condemned. Both Jesus and the Servant are obedient to God in the way they accept suffering, and thus their suffering has a redemptive effect on others and is gloriously rewarded by God. read more (1,212 words) 20 comments Most Recent Post: 11/02 04:02PM by test04172