Sisters Of The Valley: Weed-Smoking Spiritual Commune; New Style Of Spiritual Collaboration?

[EnolaGaia]

This group is ostensibly non-religious in any traditional sense of "religion", but its avowed objectives and principles are "spiritual" in nature and echo a defunct medieval order of nuns. I'm placing this new thread in Religions & Cults not because I dismiss their claims of being non-"religious", but rather because they make me wonder if their group represents an emergent form of collaborative spiritual lifestyle that may proliferate.

First, here's a photo worthy of the Random / Peculiar Images thread ...

Yep - it's a group of women in nuns' habit garb smoking marijuana (their own homegrown product). This is definitely something new in sisterhoods ...

Our Ladies of the Perpetual High

How a New Age order of feminist nuns is reimagining spiritual devotion and trying to heal the world — one joint at a time

In the middle of California’s Central Valley, in a modest milky-blue home on one acre of farmland, lives a small group of nuns. They wear habits and abide by a set of vows, but as the door opens, it’s clear that the Sisters of the Valley, as they’re known, aren’t living in a traditional convent. Because as the scent wafts out, it’s unambiguous: It’s the earthy, pungent smell of weed. ...

The Sisters of the Valley are not a religious organization, but an enclave of self-proclaimed sisters who are in the business of spreading spirituality and selling healing cannabidiol products. “Look, the average age of a new Catholic nun in America is 78,” says Sister Kate, founder of the sect, which has 22 sisters and eight brothers worldwide. “Christianity is dying all around us. What are people going to do? They need spirituality in their life; we need it for meaning. We are very spiritual beings walking a physical path, and so for that reason we will find ways to connect. And we are just one example of that.” ...

FULL STORY: https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...nia-weed-cannabis-nun-sisters-valley-1272595/

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here are some excerpts from the same Rolling Stone article illustrating the group's history and how they contextualize themselves.

According to Sister Kate, her fall into nunhood began in 2011 ... “When I protested with the Occupy movement dressed as a nun, people wanted me to organize myself into a religion and I kept saying, ‘No, this is meant to be crazy. This is meant to be a thumb at the establishment, that everything is broken in this country.’” ...

During her years of protests against tuition hikes and budget cuts throughout California as a self-proclaimed nun, the question arose: What would a new order of nuns look like? “I thought everybody would think I was crazy because I was this single, self-declared sister, but really it sparked a debate about what a New Age order of nuns would look like if they were refounded today in this environment,” says Sister Kate. In August 2013, she was invited to a gathering of Native American tribes at the Tule River Reservation in the San Joaquin Valley. There, she talked to the women elders who held ancient knowledge of making medicine from plants. “When I came off of that mountain, I’m like, ‘Damn, I’m going to form my own sisterhood,’” she says. ...

“We didn’t want to be a religion. A religion forces you to be in the business of begging, and we know we can support ourselves. It had to be something that supported women ownership of businesses, and here we are. As it turns out, we end up looking like an ancient order called the Beguines.” ...

A now-defunct religious order, the Beguines date back to the Middle Ages. Due to a multitude of unmarried women and a desire for spirituality, all-female groups found a way to live in devotion without officially joining a religious order. These women, who lived communally and supported themselves by making cloth or caring for the sick, stressed living like Christ; they were spiritual, and some even delved into mysticism. “We are not trying to romanticize the past, but there are things we like about it,” says Sister Kate. “It’s the way that these women worked in harmony with nature that we are trying to emulate.” ...

FULL STORY: https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...nia-weed-cannabis-nun-sisters-valley-1272595/