Sweeping the Shaker Way

Brooms make me think of Shakers. That's what I put on my Shaker Wednesday post on my Facebook page this week, but there's only so much you can put on a Facebook post. And a person can write a lot about Shaker brooms. 

If you visit the Shaker village of Pleasant Hill here in Mercer County, Kentucky, you can see a reenactor dressed as a Shaker making brooms. These men, like the one pictured here, explain over and over to the tourists who drop into their workshops how the Shakers made brooms and answer hundreds of questions, probably some of the same ones over and over, with the kind of patience and gentle spirit the Shakers may have had in the past. And then, taking their cue from the thrifty Shakers whose ways they're demonstrating, they sell the brooms in their gift shop.

Shaker history says that Brother Theodore Bates of Shaker village in Watervliet, New York watched the sisters sweeping in 1798 with their common round brooms and realized they were wasting time and effort. While he didn't offer to help them sweep, he did flatten the brooms to make them sweep more efficiently. Then the Shakers came up with machines to manufacture the flat brooms. Soon they were making more brooms than they needed and began selling them to the "world." Throughout most of their history, the Shakers didn't believe in patenting any of their inventions because they felt that would be selfish. If they had a better way, they were willing to share it with others. 

 Shakers could not abide dirt. One of the sayings attributed to their founder, Ann Lee, reminded them of the need for cleanliness. “Clean your rooms well; for good spirits will not live where there is dirt. There is no dirt in Heaven.” So a broom was available in every room, not hidden away in a broom closet, but instead hanging at ready on the peg strips.

The Shakers took ridding their physical world of dirt seriously since one of their purposes was to make their villages as much like heaven as possible. That was part of the reason for their furniture having no ornamentation. A table with plain and simple lines was quicker and easier to clean. That was the reason for the pegboard strips that circled every room, so they could hang things out of the way while they cleaned. Chairs were hung upside down on those pegs so dust would not collect on the seat of the chair. Their beds had rollers so it would be easy to move them out of the way to sweep under them. They even had brooms specially designed to sweep out corners and other hard to reach places.

They also labored "sweeping" songs during their worship such as "Sweep as I Go" where they would pretend to sweep as they sang. 

One of their best known sayings is "Hands to work, hearts to God." That has found a place in all my Shaker novels, but I've used other Shaker sayings too in order to add to my story. This is one I've used often. "Do your work as if you had a thousand years to live, and as if you were to die tomorrow." 

Here are a couple more that I might take to heart in my own work and keeping my house in order. :)

"Never wish a thing done; do it!"

"A place for everything and everything in its place." 

I need to find that place for everything and then put everything in those places and stop just wishing it would happen. Right now it's time to go back to Rosey Corner and write a few more pages on my story. I think I'm writing it as if I have a thousand years before my deadline. Better get that out of my head.

Do you like a good broom? Then you might have a Shaker to thank. 

Shaker Sayings & The Gifted

My book in fine company at WalMart

Every week on my Facebook author's page, I do what I call "Shaker Wednesday." On those days I hunt up some bit of Shaker history or maybe a picture of something the Shakers made or a building in one of their villages. Some days I just post one of the Shaker sayings. They had a lot - many of them credited to their founder, Mother Ann. Many more were added as the years went by. Most of the sayings are based on commonsense. The Shakers were a practical, hard-working group of people who just happened to believe they weren't meant to marry and they were meant to dance as they worshiped. 

I use some of these sayings in all my Shaker books. One that I use most and is probably the most familiar to anyone who knows anything about the Shakers is "Hands to work. Hearts to God." That is so much a part of the Shakers' beliefs that it has to go in all my stories. Other sayings I drop in as needed. Another I've used a lot is "Do your work as if you had a thousand years to live, and as if you were to die tomorrow." To me, that one reveals how they thought their work was to be perfect but also as productive as possible with diligent attention to the details of their tasks. 

I've often allowed an established sister or elder to speak the following one to my character who is generally a novitiate trying to learn about this strange group of people and their odd ideas that go so against the ways of the world. "Our testimony is for peace, now and always. No Christian can use carnal weapons or fight. He never did so. We oppose wars of households, and wars of nations. All wars are the result of lusts for lands and for women. Those who marry will fight." I suppose the Shakers didn't think about the fun of making up. 

 This is one I like too. "None preaches better than the ant, and it says nothing." I don't know what Shakerisms I'll find for my Christmas Shaker book. Perhaps this one. "Man is a harp with a thousand strings.  Touch the spiritual cord of his heart, and lo, with what inspiration he sings!”

I also came across a few bits I'd pulled out of my book The Gifted for some kind of promotion. I don't know that those ever got used, but the quotes weren't half bad. So I'm going to share them with you.


Security generally trumped love in the game of life. Love was a poor man's card of choice. (Tristan thinking about how he was expected to marry to enhance his family fortunes.)

"A waste of time chasing the past. It won't do anything but bite you if you catch it." (Laura Cleveland's father warning Sheldon Brady not to look backward.)

And last, Laura telling Tristan why they can marry but perhaps never have love. "Love can’t be ordered up. It is a serendipitous thing with wings that swoops here and there and sometimes lands on you when you least expect it. Or when you can ill afford to follow your heart.”

 It's interesting trying to pull a quote or two out of a 100,000 plus word novel. Do you ever notice particular passages in a fiction book? It is probably common to underline this or that part in non-fiction books, and now with the e-readers, favorite places can be easily marked and highlighted. At least that's what I've been told. If you have an e-reader, have you ever done that?

Thanks so much for reading. I do appreciate each of you.

Labor Day and Shakers

Shaker Kitchen tools, etc

  “Do your work as if you had a thousand years to live, and as if you were to die tomorrow.”  (Shaker Saying)

The Shakers believed in work. In fact they believed their work,  whether it was making chairs, weaving cloth, peeling potatoes, tanning hides, or any of dozens of other tasks, was an act of worship. They considered that work and the faithful performance of their duties a way to show love and obedience to the Lord. The "laboring" of songs and dances in their worship services was how they kept their spirits inspired and their minds focused on the Shaker way.

So celebrating work and workmen would have been something the Shakers were ready to do everyday. We are celebrating laborers tomorrow. At least that was the initial reason for the Labor Day holiday. Now many consider it the last gasp of summer before cooler weather sets in and school starts in earnest. But the origin of the holiday is much more involved than that. I looked it up to include in our church bulletin today. I don't know what I expected to find. Perhaps that, like Mother's Day, some person had decided we needed to celebrate the hard workers in our country. But this holiday is different.

It originated during one of the most dismal periods in America's labor history. In the late 1800s, workers had to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week in order to eke out even a meager living and often under the harshest work conditions. Children as young as 5 or 6 labored in mills, factories, and mines, earning a fraction of what their adult counterparts made. 
 

On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, holding the first Labor Day parade in U.S. history. The idea of a “workingmen’s holiday,” celebrated on the first Monday in September, caught on in other industrial centers across the country, and many states passed legislation recognizing it.

  Congress would not legalize the holiday until 12 years later, when a watershed moment in American labor history brought workers’ rights squarely into the public’s view. On May 11, 1894, employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago went on strike. The government sent in U.S. marshalls and the military and a number of the strikers were killed. President Grover Cleveland attempted to reconcile with the labor movement by making Labor Day an official federal holiday and the act was rushed through Congress and signed into law 6 days after the end of the Pullman strike.

I have always known Labor Day was for workers, but I never before dug into the history of how the day came to be. We sometimes think things have always been the way they are now or the way we remember them in our lifetime, but when you explore history your eyes can be opened to how much things have changed - and how much better things are for the common laborer in this day and time. We may be struggling with unemployment but none of us have to send our children out to work in factories in order to have food on the table. Our children go to school. Our workplaces are required to be safe. And tomorrow we'll have a day off work to celebrate the working men and women in our country. 

The Shakers would have understood that. They celebrated labor. But even more they believed in God dwelling within man and his work. One of their best known sayings was "Hands to work and hearts to God."

Hope you have a wonderful Monday holiday and get a rest from your labors. Thanks for reading. I'll leave you with one more Shaker saying. 

 “Man is more precious than anything he makes, and the best product of industry is character.”