Religious Scholar

I visited the Ephrata Cloisters in Pennsylvania recently. A curious place, not cloisters as we typically think of them: square arrangements of columns with formal gardens and fountains in the center. Rather, the Ephrata site, part of the National Register of Historic Places, is a series of old and reconstructed barn-like buildings on a sloping green rolling down to Cocalico Creek. The site evolved out of the teachings of dissident German preacher Conrad Beissel  (1691-1768), the youngest sibling in an orphaned family who discovered an inner pathway to God after working with Pietists and other mystics outside of the established church.

We may not agree with the more severe tenets of Beissel’s teachings—celibacy,  eating one meal a day, avoiding comfort and vanity—but even these strictures have a universal ring to them.  Reformers and passionate believers of all religions, at their most extreme, follow similar lifestyles. Just look at Cambodian monks or Greek Orthodox nuns or Indian shamans.  Some individuals feel called to renounce the world in order to more fully embrace the divine. Most traditions, including the various German sects which once flourished in Pennsylvania and Ohio, also supported more realistic approaches to developing and living the spiritual life, such as the rural lifestyle of the married Householders who contributed to the Ephrata Cloisters and made possible the hard but holy life of the 80 Protestant monastics who lived there.

The monks and nuns are long gone from the Cloisters. Today, it is a charming museum that tells us much about an important time in our nation’s history, but also it reminds us that while sects may come and go, spirituality is eternal. One can sit quietly in the old timber chapel and feel the setting sun melt into one’s bones, or kneel in the herb garden and breathe in the natural fragrances of lavender, sage, and horehound. These are holy moments, too, and do not require that we sleep only a few hours at a time with a stone pillow beneath our heads nor eat a few turnips and greens and call it dinner.  Despite its “state park” aura, the Cloisters is a holy place for those who would find peace and meaning in a troubled world.

www.Ephratacloister.org