Acorn

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: TRUE DREW

Media Credit: Charlotte Hammond

Ever since she was a child, Sarah Maple has always wanted to do the right thing. She remembers dreading the prospect of being sent to detention in school, not because it would take free time away from her day but because it implied she had done something wrong.

But like all of us, Maple is human.

She has her vices, she makes mistakes, she curses. Above all else though, she has her convictions and a deep spiritual connection to God.

Maple, perhaps more than anyone, understands that the Lord truly does work in mysterious ways. And yes, I did just say that.

After a two year hiatus from church, Maple found herself one day in the very back pew of a Catholic mass.

Ever since she has taken to a life of asceticism and prayer.

She credits God for her coming to Drew. She creates religious art in her spare time, herself schooled in oil and watercolor painting. She goes into New York on the first weekend of every month where she volunteers her time as an Associate of Franciscan Friars. She fasts during certain times of the year, prays a certain number of times each day. She shops online at Urban Outfitters.

Maple is a person who genuinely values relationships, be they human or spiritual.

It is the reason she spends one weekend a month in the Bronx with the Franciscan monks, why she wakes up at 7 in the morning and treks through the trees to St. Vincent's Martyr in Madison.

"Going into the City every month is like my retreat," she says. "Which I guess is strange, being that I'm in this wooded campus and I'm traveling to the south Bronx."

You can tell from the way she talks about the things she's involved in that she has been able to reconcile what it is that she wants with what she needs.

It's a unique characteristic in today's whirlwind world of plasma screens and Blackberries. A person like that stands out.

"Our highly secular and 'tolerant' society has surprisingly little acceptance of young people who take their faith seriously," co-Spirituality House resident Katy Fitzpatrick ('08) said. "It's considered ok to enjoy going to church if you're going to a hip New Age congregation that draws from eastern religious traditions like yoga and meditation, but to be a young American who makes Roman Catholicism a part of your everyday life takes real guts."  

Continued...

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