The tree of life

A few days ago I blipped a photograph of the old Shaker village at Canterbury in New Hampshire. While we were there we bought a Shaker box made of bird's eye maple, as a wedding present for Pete and Vanessa whose wedding we were to attend in Rhode Island. At the end of the wedding celebrations they handed out, as a memento, small wooden plaques engraved with a tree of life, one of the 'spirit drawings' received by the Shakers of old. What a wonderful coincidence!

Pete had engraved the plaques with a laser cutter; I am sure that the Shakers, who were quick to adopt modern technology when it could be put to good and meaningful use, would have approved.

I have used more modern technology to enlarge the small plaque and to place it in the 1792 Meeting House at Canterbury village. The Shakers were celibate and the sisters and brothers lived separately in the village. This is evident in the Meeting House with the replicated seating for the men and women arranged each side of the open area where they performed their ecstatic dances during worship.

As I look around our greatly troubled world I appreciate just how much we have to learn from the Shakers' central tenets of racial and sexual equality, love of neighbour, conservation of resources, and pacifism.