A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 24

This is the 9th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: Catholic nuns build a chapel to block the path of a gas pipeline.

COLUMBIA, Pa. — The end of the road, where the street suddenly stops and the towering wall of corn begins, always called out to Linda Fischer. She would pedal her bike there slowly as a child, back before they built any houses on the road, when it was just the cornstalks growing thick toward the sky. It was the silence she found there, the holiness she felt in that stillness, that led her to dedicate her life to God.

Fischer has always known this land as sacred.

Now the 74-year-old nun and her sisters in their Catholic order suddenly find themselves fighting to protect the land from an energy company that wants to put a natural gas pipeline on it.

“This just goes totally against everything we believe in — we believe in sustenance of all creation,” she said.

The pipeline company first sought without success to negotiate with the nuns. Now as Williams Cos. tries to seize the land by eminent domain, the order is gearing up for a fight in the courtroom — and a possible fight in the field, as well.

There, smack in the path of the planned pipeline, the nuns have dedicated a new outdoor chapel.

“We just wanted to symbolize, really, what is already there: This is holy ground,” said Sister Janet McCann, a member of the national leadership team of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, whose 2,000 nuns around the world have made environmental protection and activism a key part of their mission.

The sisters’ chapel is a rudimentary symbol, but a powerful one: eight long benches, a wooden arbor and a pulpit, all on a straw-coated patch of land carved out of the cornfield. More than 300 people came to the chapel’s consecration service July 9. Since then, neighbors of many faiths have been stopping by to pray, leaving ribbons to mark their solidarity.

For nearly fifty years, Sister Helen Mirren has lived in the Little Sisters of the Poor convent just outside the farm community of Good Intent, Kansas. She has witnessed the slow ebb of membership so that at present only five sisters remain: Sister Sissy Spacek, Sister Sally Fields, Sister Kathy Bates, and Sister Anjelica Huston. Each is in their 60s and 70s, and with no new recruits for several years and a decaying infrastructure, it appears certain that the nunnery will slide into oblivion.

Well, almost certain. Sister Helen has always been steadfast in her prayers and while her fellow sisters may express concerns about the community’s future, she has no doubt God will provide.

Enter the Kloch brothers: Michael [Shannon] and Sam [Rockwell]. Having inherited a multi-billion private company specializing in fossil fuels and chemicals, the pair is obsessed with proving they belong. Indeed, they can do BETTER than their hard-driving, ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ father. They were raised to believe in Manifest Destiny and wealth is proof of walking on the True Path.

Their big plan: A pipeline to go from the Arctic Circle down to the Gulf of Mexico, bringing heretofore untapped enormous reserves of crude oil down to their Houston refineries.

They have greased the palms of politicians. Bought out individual ranchers and farmers. Strong armed local authorities. Used their media empire’s propaganda machine to sway public opinion. They are 99% of the way to seeing their grand vision realized.

Except for one last parcel of land: 67 acres of farmland owned by the Little Sisters of the Poor. Sister Helen cannot be bought despite enormous sums of money flashed in front of her eyes. She cannot be swayed by threats. And when the brothers obtain a preliminary decision in favor of their claim of eminent domain, Sister Helen and his fellow nuns clear away one acre of farm land, smack in the middle of a Kansas cornfield, and build a chapel.

This is Field of Dreams meets Sister Act. A drama with lots of humor. The quirky personalities of the good Sisters. The powers of Godliness vs. the Powers That Be. Toss in some brazen millennial environmentalists who take the Sisters’ protest wide on social media and…

You’ve got yourself a movie.

There you go, my twenty-fourth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Here are links for all the previous posts in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.