Lynne Smith, an ordained Presbyterian minister and Benedictine sister, joins in the community's work of restoring the prairie lands surrounding it.

When the Sisters of St. Benedict of Madison, Wis. established their monastery in 1954, they were surrounded by pastureland. Today, they are ringed by high-priced homes and recreation developments. But for the small, traditionally Roman Catholic community of women, the changes provided a catalyst which led them to a new commitment to the land and a new venture in ecumenical monasticism.

A decade ago, after a developer approached them with a proposal to build a golf course on their property, the sisters decided they needed to do some planning of their own. "We had consistently said no to the developers on selling any of our land, but we began to realize that the building being done around us had begun to heavily silt in a small glacial lake on our property," says Joanne Kollasch, the community's director of formation and one of its founding members. "We were beginning to lose the wildlife, the deer and the birds. So we began an initiative to reclaim the lake by dredging some of the silt, and also to re-seed the hills with prairie grasses and plants."

The community is now committed to restoring half of their 130 acres of land to pre-settlement prairie, and the reclaiming of 10,000-year-old "Lost Lake" has been officially designated as part of the Lake Mendota Priority Watershed Demonstration Project. "It will look the way it did before the Europeans arrived," says Marykay Bell, director of communications for the monastery's large conference center, and an Episcopalian. "They are planting native wildflowers and grasses and building up an oak savannah. Hospitality is a Benedictine charism, and the restoration of the land is hospitality to the people who come here and to the land itself."

As the sisters continued their visioning process, they were also drawn to embark on a unique ecumenical experiment.

"Since we were doing this planning, we said, let's do some planning for the community," Kollasch says. "We asked, what kind of monastic presence will we take into the next century? The strain of ecumenism was very strong for us, because from 1966 we had an ecumenical retreat and conference center. So we took the next step, which was to invite celibate Christian women of other denominations to form community with us."

A number of women have explored the possibility of membership, and this past June Lynne Smith, an ordained Presbyterian minister, made her first profession of vows, joining Kollasch and Mary David Walgenbach in the core monastic community. (Three other sisters are retired and living elsewhere.)

"Ecumenical work has always been an important part of my own life and ministry, but a lot of ecumenical work is done on the national level, as opposed to actually living it out," Smith says. "This is pretty exciting to me. I don't know of any other monastic community I could join without becoming either Roman Catholic or Episcopalian." Smith maintains membership in the Presbyterian Church and has formed ties with a local Presbyterian congregation.

"Each tradition has its own gifts and strengths, so the women who come will bring those," she believes. "The strength of the Roman Catholic -- and not just Roman Catholic, but the Benedictine tradition -- is liturgy. The Presbyterian heritage is theological reflection and study of the scriptures. What unites us is the Liturgy of the Hours, which is Benedictine. That liturgy was there before there were any splits in the church. We all take turns leading. It is so lifegiving to me -- it's powerful to pray together like that."

Kollasch also stresses that the goal is not to erase distinctions. "We need to help people understand that we're not setting up some new sect, and that traditions do not wash out in an ecumenical community."

But in the day-to-day rhythm of monastic life -- marked by prayer, retreat work, hospitality and care for the earth -- "there is so much more that unites us than divides us," she says. "The question should not be, why are Christians coming together, but why are they separated? We take as normal the separation, but we should take as normal our common baptism.

"Ecumenism finds an easy entry into Benedictine monastic life, because of the values of respect for persons, hospitality and dialogue," Kollasch says. "And Benedictine life is organic. How do you define clearly what is a tree? By the time you get through defining it, you're not interested. There is something of that in the Benedictine psyche. There is a great deal of emphasis on love of poetry, of beauty, of nature. Those things are universal."

St. Benedict's Center has hosted not only Christians of various denominations but Jewish and Buddhist guests as well -- including, once, the Dalai Lama.

"People who live here expect that we will pray with Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Hindus sometimes, on any given day," Kollasch says. "So it is an easy next step to live in community together."

The core community forms the heart of a much larger circle of spiritual kinship. An ecumenical group of men and women called the "Community of St. Benedict" meets regularly for prayer, reflection and mutual support. Benedictines from overseas often live at the monastery while studying in the U.S., and the staff of St. Benedict's Center forms yet another circle of extended community.

"Our co-workers buy into the vision very deeply," Kollasch says. "Our groundskeeper, for instance, is married, but he is a monk in his heart. He's been here a long time, and he subscribes to care of the earth.

"If you put this community of ours in the center you can draw some concentric circles around it, and how porous you make the membrane has to do not only with the community but with how other people identify with that community. I tell people that there are many doors to St. Benedict's.

"The spirit of St. Benedict says, respect people of all backgrounds. Benedict took into his monastery the barbarians who were overrunning Europe, the wealthy as well as the very poor. That tradition of hospitality, to receive each person who comes to the monastery as Christ, gives the framework in which to insert 21st-century dynamics. People still need acceptance. When they come to the monastery, we don't ask them to pass a test on their beliefs. They are looking for something in this place, so we invite them in and hope they find it. There is dialogue in which we and the guests learn and are blessed."

St. Benedict's regularly offers a program called T.I.M.E. -- Together in Monastic Experience. Participants spend three to six days sharing in the life of the community. Each day begins and ends with silent centering prayer. The Liturgy of the Hours is prayed in common in the morning, at midday and at dusk. Mornings are spent in conference or dialogue, afternoons are given to manual work -- often outdoors -- and evenings are free.

The sisters have also led retreats with brothers from the Taizé community, hosted the Madison Interfaith Dialogue, and held a Jewish-Christian-Buddhist retreat. Numerous volunteers also come to St. Benedict's to help with earth-tending projects.

At the dawn of the new millennium, 175 people showed up for a New Year's Eve gathering which had been advertised on local radio and television stations. Guests shared a meal, then chose between a variety of spiritual exercises including centering prayer, Taizé prayer and a hymn sing. At midnight, everyone gathered around a bonfire on the hill outside.

"It was fun and people absolutely loved it," Kollasch says. "And there were people from a lot of different backgrounds."

In the transition to a new style of monastic community, flexibility and patience are important, she says.

"It has to be the experimental approach, not an approach whereby you figure it all out in advance. It is very important for us to learn to hear each other. We can't do that if we have determined all the answers before we have the questions. The vision must have its time, I'm convinced of that. We have to take the approach of waiting, seeing, not casting it in a mold."

Marianne Arbogast is associate editor of The Witness, <marianne@thewitness.org>.