On March 23, my friend Eli and I drove for three hours through “freezing rain” before arriving in Portland, ME. The weekend trip, which occurred on the only three days in which Brown and Wellesley’s spring breaks overlapped, was the result of a long imagined goal of two high school friends going on an adventure before one of them graduated.
The aim of our trip was not to see the beautiful coastline and “asshole breweries” of Maine’s largest city, but to visit the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, around a 40 minute drive northwest of Portland in New Gloucester, ME. We were inspired by an essay in Jordan Kisner’s “Thin Places,” aptly titled “Shakers,” which details Kisner’s brief trip to the last remaining Shaker community. So, we decided to embark on a sort of pilgrimage, reseeking what Kisner already sought.
After one icy drive and one night in a nautical-themed AirBnB, we arrived at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village on March 24.
We had planned to attend Meeting (their Sunday church service), which the website said began at 10 a.m. “sharp”. I was exceedingly tense when we pulled into the parking lot at exactly 9:59 a.m. and stepped out among a handful of identical white barns with no signage. As I marched assertively in what I would soon learn was the wrong direction, a voice yelled out from behind me, “you look lost!” This was Brother Arnold.
Brother Arnold, one of the two remaining Shakers, led us up a narrow wooden staircase and into the Meeting Room, where a handful of people sat on wooden pews that faced towards the center of the room. I sat on the left, with the women, and Eli sat on the right, with the men.
As promised, the service began immediately. Brother Arnold read a psalm, we sang a hymn from various copies of a maroon book titled “Original Shaker Music Volume II,” someone read a bible verse, and then the service opened to the “moving of the Spirit.” In other words, it was a time where anyone could offer a testimonial to the congregation if they felt called to.
Brother Arnold began, discussing the significance of Palm Sunday in relation to the darker themes of Jesus’s impending crucifixion. Sister June, the other remaining shaker, talked about how living like Jesus is an effort that she continues today and will continue for the rest of her life (she is around 85). A woman stood up and spoke about her Jewish upbringing and how Easter week’s associations with antisemitism make her nervous. A man spoke about how he sometimes questions why Christianity is “consummated” by an act as violent as the crucifixion. As he said this, a giant sheet of snow fell off of the roof of the building and crashed onto the ground outside. “I guess He didn’t like that,” the man jokingly said, causing the whole congregation to laugh.
Each testimonial was separated by a hymn, which changed each time and was sung entirely by memory. As we sat in silence waiting for the next testimonial, Brother Arnold turned to Eli and I and said, “I should’ve told you before we started, but you are free to speak if you feel called to. You are not required to, but you are encouraged to! But, you are not required to.”
Presumably to relax the atmosphere in case we wanted to speak, he told a story about how these little kids who used to attend the services regularly were required to give testimonials once a month to encourage public speaking skills; they would stand up and say, “I wish to be good” and sit right back down. “But, the issue was,” Brother Arnold said, “they kept doing it when they got older!” Everyone laughed.
Once the service ended, everyone went downstairs to the dining room to drink coffee and chat. Being the only newcomers and evidently the youngest patrons, Eli and I were the center of conversation.
Among the people attending were New Gloucester locals, two Shaker scholars — one of whom was a retired Brown professor and another who was a member of the Boston Area Shaker Study Group — and the retired professor’s wife. We all sat around one table, drank slightly watery coffee, and discussed my Russian major and Eli’s religion major.
At exactly 12 p.m., “dinner” was served (following, as Eli says, “the breakfast-dinner-supper model”). Like the service, the women and men sat at separate tables in the dining room. We ate the chicken, scalloped onions, peas, cucumbers, rice, gravy and cranberry sauce that Brother Arnold spent all morning cooking. The hearty and perfectly-cooked meal was reminiscent of a Thanksgiving dinner, both in taste and size; He had originally expected more attendees, but they could not make the trek out to Sabbathday Lake due to the storm the night before.
I thought it was an amazing meal that perfectly instilled the home-cooked values that Wellesley Fresh lacks. Eli, who claims to have grown up eating “more seasoned food,” thought it was just alright.
At 1 p.m., we finished our dinner. I helped clear the plates and re-set the table for supper later that evening. While I got up to help purely out of a want to be helpful, Eli commented on the gender dynamics surrounding those who cleaned and prepared the kitchen. There was an inarguable presence of archaic gender norms, if not general archaic beliefs, at Sabbathday Lake. Eli and I wondered where a nonbinary person would sit if they were to attend a service and whether or not Brother Arnold would simply ascribe them a gender. Kisner raises similar skepticisms in her essay when she describes the gender-segregated staircases in the Dwelling House (we technically walked up the one meant for men).
However, the people we met felt very welcoming of modernity. There was much enthusiasm around our studies, lives and curiosity about the Shakers. There were jokes about Cillian Murphy and detailed recountings of jokes heard on Jimmy Kimmel. The only religious talk outside of the service surrounded Shaker history and scholarship. We were only separated by gender during the service and the meal, so I was able to sit next to Eli as we drank our coffee. While pop-culture references do not necessarily equate to gender-inclusive beliefs, it did seem as if the archaic norms that shadowed our time there seemed more of a function of preserving a dying culture than a conservative adherence to gender binaries.
I talked with the professor about the barn renovations happening this summer, and he talked about how they were being done partially in preparation for a time when there is no longer an active Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. With only two Shakers left, talks of cultural preservation seem perpetually on the horizon. However, Brother Arnold says that he will not be the last Shaker, believing in the future existence of Shaker converts who will carry on the religion’s legacy after he has passed.
At 1:30 p.m., Eli and I said our goodbyes, hugged the people we met just hours before, and received a few slices of homemade bread. We then walked back out among the white barns and bright banks of snow to look at the highland cows that live on the property. Then, we got in the car and drove away from Sabbathday Lake, passing the crystallized trees still recovering from the frozen rain the night before.
