May 13—NEW GLOUCESTER — The soft whisk-whisk of straw brooms brushing across the walls and beams of the meetinghouse filled the room as three volunteers worked quietly. Undeterred by the gloom of a cold, rainy day, they moved reverently around the room, brushing away the dust that settled over winter.
There’s nowhere else Jackie Pike would have wanted to spend the day.
“This place has a certain peace about it all the time,” said Pike, who drove three hours from Brooksville for the annual spring workday at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village.
Twice a year, friends of the Shakers show up by the dozens to volunteer — in the spring to prepare the village and museum to open for the season, and again in the fall to put it to bed for winter. Friends come from across the Northeast — and sometimes across the country — to dust and wash windows, pack dried herbs, prepare the garden for a new season and clean up winter debris on the hillside property.
Many of them have been coming for decades, drawn by their love of the place, the people and the joy they find in a community where worship and work are deeply intertwined. They united to embody the motto of Mother Ann Lee, the founding leader of the Shakers: “Put your hands to work and give your hearts to God.”
“This is a real true example of them having that willing spirit to come and help out. They bring kind of an infectious positivity to the community,” said Brother Arnold Hadd, who speaks on behalf of the Shakers. “We deeply appreciate it because we couldn’t afford to hire people to come in and do the work and we can’t do it ourselves.”
Being surrounded by friends felt even more significant this year for those who live and work at the Shaker Village. Last month, they were notified they would lose nearly $1.5 million in federal funding they were counting on to restore the historic herb house and do other work to preserve the village.
The loss of the grants was devastating, but the dedication friends have shown to supporting the project, and the Shakers themselves, has been heartwarming, Hadd said.
This year’s spring work day looked a little different than usual because of the rain. The outdoor work was rescheduled to May 17, but the work will still be done in time for the museum and shop to open on Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday, volunteers cleaned several buildings, packed herbs to sell in the shop, and cleaned the barn and organized donations for an old-fashioned barn sale on June 14.
“For us, this is a fantastic way to get everyone together to work shoulder to shoulder,” said Jamie Ribisi-Braley, the village office manager and a board member of Friends of the Shakers, a nonprofit started in 1974 to support the community. “The opportunity to all be together and work in community is what the whole village is about.”
WORKING FOR THE FUTURE
The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing — more commonly known as the Shakers for the ecstatic bodily agitation that was once part of worship — was founded in Manchester, England, in 1747. It was brought to the U.S. in 1774 by Mother Ann Lee, who received a revelation directing her to establish a Shaker church in America.
Shakers established 18 communities in New England, New York, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia and Florida. After reaching a peak of 500 members in the decade leading up the Civil War, the number of Shakers dwindled over time and communities closed.
Sabbathday Lake, which dates to 1783, is now the only active Shaker community in the world. In recent years, it has been home to Brother Arnold and Sister June Carpenter. A third member recently joined the community.
The Sabbathday Lake Shakers first opened a museum and library in 1931. It became a roadside attraction for vacationers traveling along Route 26 and was expanded into unused buildings as interest in the Shakers grew in the 1960s. The village received National Historic Landmark status in the 1970s and the museum and research library were organized as a nonprofit two years later.
The Shakers still depend on revenue from visitors — from paid tours and sales in the gift shop, which includes herbs grown in the garden — to sustain the village. Brother Arnold is cautiously optimistic it will be a good year despite predictions that tourism will be down. But the Shakers are also planning for the long-term sustainability of the community through a multi-million-dollar plan that includes restoring the original herb house and transforming it into a cultural center.
The herb house project is well underway, but suffered a blow recently when the Trump administration canceled a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project lost nearly $187,000 of a $750,000 grant, plus another $1.2 million from a congressional grant through the U.S. Department of Agricultural Rural Development fund.
Shaker Village Director Michael Graham said they’re still figuring out how to complete the project. Being surrounded by support during the work day “makes all the difference in the world right now,” he said.
“The outpouring of support is more and more critical as times change, and especially right now, when we have to adjust our gaze from the horizon to things a little bit closer to home,” he said. “It’s wonderful when we begin to look around and see friendly faces and people who, like us, are determined that this place continues. It’s really the antidote for the sting of the pain that we feel.”
‘A SENSE OF BEING HOME’
The heady scent of herbs — parsley, dill, thyme and others grown in the garden and dried in the attic — and sounds of animated chatter spilled out of the Sisters’ Shop, the building Shaker women once used for sewing, weaving, mending and washing.
In the herb room, a dozen people crowded around work tables to measure herb blends into small tins. Volunteer Bonnie Falkner of Yarmouth has been coming here since the 1970s and now teaches workshops at the village.
“It’s a very special place. It’s wonderful to see it being preserved for the future,” she said. “There aren’t many places like this.”
When Shakers arrived at Sabbathday Lake in 1783, their first act as a community was to build the meetinghouse for public worship. One outsider, a passerby named Mr. Carpenter, joined them to help build the meetinghouse and “not a spare word was spoken,” Graham said.
“Most of that building was constructed in absolute, reverent silence,” he said.
Dale Graham’s first task on Saturday’s workday was to bring a group of volunteers to the meetinghouse, where she went over all the work that needed to be done. Tours of the village start in this building, which is used to interpret the earliest eras of Shaker history from the 1740s to 1860s.
Dale Graham has been volunteering at the village for 30 years. When her son, Michael Graham, started working there, he turned his parents into a work crew, she said. She enjoys “the fellowship centered around the Shakers” and has made friends from across the country.
The volunteers cleaning the first floor included Michael Pare, who drove up from Rhode Island. A self-described history buff, he discovered the Shaker Village a decade ago and was drawn in by the “sense of peace, calm and fellowship.”
“Just driving down the road, there’s a sense of being home,” he said.
On the second floor of the meetinghouse, Dale Graham and Suzanne Prinz carefully dusted the trim, railings, artifacts and windowsills.
“When I clean here and I’m on my own, I like to think about the Shakers walking up these stairs,” Dale Graham said.
Prinz, of Old Orchard Beach, grew up in Portland and remembers coming to Shaker Village as a child with her mother for Christmas fairs and other events. When they turned onto Shaker Road, she said she always felt peaceful and knew she was in a special place.
“I feel like I’m in a sacred place today,” she said. “It’s like the Shakers who came before us are here guiding us.”
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