Spirituality is an overworked word these days, but there is a spirituality of land conservation and environmentalism. It has to do with a sense of place, of course: locating ourselves in the context of nature, in the created world of which we are a part, stewards rather than exploiters of what we see as gift, not conquest. It has to do with the need to nurture, not simply to consume. And it also has to do with a sense of time, an appreciation for the long horizons of seasons, the slow evolution of landscape and creatures, our own mortality, the heritage that one generation passes to another. It has to do with beauty, reverence, peace and, indeed, holiness.
Arthur Walmsley, a leader of the Episcopal Church and longtime member of the PLC family, died this past October at the age of eighty-nine. Arthur was a man whose working life centered in cities: St. Louis, where he began his career as an Episcopal priest in an urban parish after the Second World War; New York, where he worked in the crisis years of the civil rights movement and Vietnam; Hartford, where he served as Bishop of Connecticut, the largest diocese in the Episcopal Church. Bishop Walmsley was for a generation a towering figure not only in his own denomination but in the ecumenical community – a leader in civil rights, in global reconciliation, in the empowerment of women and gay people.
Even as his work took him around the world, Bishop Walmsley returned as often as he could to his chosen spiritual retreat, a small farm in Deering that he and his wife Roberta purchased in 1961. Originally settled in 1780, the farm first served as a summer place, then became their year around home upon Arthur’s retirement from the church in 1993. The heart of North Farm was the woodshed they converted into their living room, lined with bookcases, Roberta’s piano in one corner, windows looking out on acres of meadow and woodland. It was this beloved place that Arthur and Roberta put under conservation easement with the Piscataquog Land Conservancy in 2007. At just 14 acres, North Farm is not a large tract, yet it connects with many more acres of protected land that comprise a substantial portion of the town of Deering. Arthur was enormously proud to be part of this conservation effort and spoke of it often.
In retirement, Arthur served on the board of PLC and on the Deering Conservation Commission. He also continued to provide spiritual direction, and among those whom he nurtured was Steve Blackmer, a career New Hampshire environmentalist who became an Episcopal priest and founded Kairos Earth and the Church of the Woods in Canterbury, NH. Arthur saw environmentalism as linked to social justice and world peace, and knew that what is done at home is connected to what happens in the greater world, that the environment is linked to the human soul.
Arthur Walmsley died as he wished, in his home, in his bed, in his sleep. His last illness was brief, a bout of pneumonia in the hospital, and though it left him severely weakened, he insisted on returning home and, in his final few days, took particular joy in gazing out on the land he and Roberta had protected – delighting that the meadow had been freshly mowed, that the trees at its edges were gleaming yet again with reds and golds. It was his deep joy that this piece of God’s creation would be protected into future generations; as a home for Roberta, a summer retreat for his son and daughter and their eventual retirement place, and for generations yet unborn.
Written by: John McCausland, the retired vicar of Holy Cross Church in Weare, and a former member and chair of the PLC Board of Trustees.
Photo by Pat Nelson