Thistles may be weeds, but they have strong roots and can be transformed into something beautiful, says Becca Stevens, Episcopal priest and founder of Thistle Farms, a haven for women emerging from prison, addiction, and prostitution. She likens the women to thistles, with their hidden strength and potential to create beautiful new lives.
Like Pope Francis—as well as the saint whose name he adopted--Stevens links caring for the earth with human healing. In her new book, Letters from the Farm: A Simple Path for a Deeper Spiritual Life (Morehouse, June), she writes of “a farmer’s theology”--that the world and its people should be cultivated like a farm, treasured and tended rather than degraded and abandoned.
In 1997, Stevens opened Magdalene, near Nashville, to offer free, long-term housing for women rescued from the street. In 2001, she started Thistle Farms, a residential and manufacturing facility about 90 miles from Nashville that supports some 50 residents and graduates of the program who produce a natural body care line made from plants and herbs. There also is a sewing studio, a café, and a workshop where the women use thistle paper to make bookmarks and greeting cards. Sales reached $1 million last year, with projected growth of 25% in 2015.
In her 2008 book, Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart (Abingdon), Stevens told the story of Thistle Farms through the words of its women. Stevens had been sexually abused as a child, and, she says, and “I had a deep connection to the women I was serving in the shelters and in ministry on the streets,” most of whom had first been raped or molested between the ages of 7 and 11. “Through opening one house,” Stevens says, “a whole movement for women’s freedom emerged, and a communal vision of hospitality and love grew like thistles in an open field.”
Thistle Farms was selected by Isabel Allende to receive the 2014 Espiritu Award, which honors the memory of her daughter and recognizes organizations that help women and children in Chile and California. Stevens was named 2014 Humanitarian of the Year by the Small Business Council of America. She plans to expand Thistle Farms and continue working for women’s economic freedom worldwide through Shared Trade, a partnership of women’s businesses in Third World countries like Rwanda, Guatamela, and Uganda.
Only a sentimentalist would imagine that helping those who have been abused is easy, a lesson the earth continues to teach, Stevens says. “It takes a much larger crop than you might imagine to distill the essence of a plant into a healing oil. Healing comes in drops, from countless years of work.”
