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Lucy Poulin, 68, started Homeworkers Organized for More Employment in Hancock County 38 years ago.

enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Lucy Poulin, founder and director of Homeworkers Organized for More Employment, or h.o.m.e., comforts a worried young mother at the group’s soup kitchen in Orland. A former nun, Poulin is still often referred to as Sister Lucy.

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During an afternoon lunch at the soup kitchen, Lucy Poulin chats with Richard Shubert, one of the homeless men staying at the shelter in Orland. The group has built 50 homes for low-income residents.

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Eric Snow works in the sawmill owned by h.o.m.e., producing lumber to meet the group’s building needs – from framing for houses to wood for finished cabinets.

enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

The h.o.m.e. shelter and assistance organization started on a farm in Orland in 1970 as a place for local women to sell their patchwork quilts. It now provides basic needs for many of the poorest people in Hancock County, with five shelters around the county.

I BELIEVE

EDITOR'S NOTE: For some people, commitment to an ideal is more than something for the holiday season. For them, faith in that ideal is a touchstone for their lives. First of five parts.

A soup kitchen is attached to a greenhouse, a few doors away from a working sawmill. Pottery, weaving and stained-glass studios are interspersed with a homeless shelter and a small wooden chapel. The only similarity among the buildings is their functional, rough-sawn appearance.

What might look like architectural confusion, though, is both the headquarters of an award-winning social service agency dedicated to fighting rural poverty and a complex, multifaceted community. The cohesion of the place lies not in its buildings but in the vision and beliefs of Lucy Poulin, founder and director of Homeworkers Organized for More Employment.

Poulin, 68, is a former nun still known as Sister Lucy to most. She and other members of her order started h.o.m.e. in 1970 as a craft store to provide local women with a place to sell their patchwork quilts. Thirty-seven years later, the organization has evolved into a provider of basic needs for many of the poorest people in Hancock County. The group runs five shelters around the county and has built 50 houses for low-income residents. Other programs provide people with firewood, food, medical care and low-cost auto repair.

More than a collection of social services, h.o.m.e. is an effort to build a cooperative community according to Christian principles, Poulin said.

"We try to be a welcoming community for people who are left out in our society," said Poulin. "We help people heal and become who God is calling them to be."

'WE'RE ALL ON AN EQUAL BASIS'

Poulin grew up in central Maine in a Catholic family as poor as many of those who now receive help at h.o.m.e. Her mother, a widow, raised 11 children on a farm that Poulin was running by the time she was a teenager.

Poulin held jobs in a paper mill and a chicken factory after high school. Hard, physical work was a fact of life, one that Poulin came to believe holds spiritual value. Everyone at h.o.m.e. is expected to help with the labor of running the place.

"If we're all out loading the truck with firewood, then we're all on an equal basis," she said. "We found that doing manual labor breaks down divisions among us."

Early on, Poulin began to show the entrepreneurial abilities that she later employed in her service to the poor. In her twenties, she started what she described as a successful equestrian center at her mother's farm in Fairfield Center.

Soon afterward, though, Poulin said she decided she wanted to spend more time praying and being alone with God. At age 26, she joined the Carmelites, a contemplative order of nuns dedicated to prayer and quiet reflection.

Her brother, Michael, took charge of the riding center. He earned a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona in equestrian competition and later moved the business to Florida, where he still operates it today.

A photograph of him with his Olympic teammates standing in crisp equestrian uniforms beside their competition horses hangs in Poulin's office. Nearby is another photo of a large draft horse pulling a sled.

"That's me right there with the work horse in the woods," Poulin said. "I feel that life of a farmer is close to God. Our culture is so fractured and value-less, farming can bring you back to reality."

A 'LOT OF SILENCE' FOR SEVEN YEARS

With the Carmelites, Poulin's life was dedicated to prayer and quiet reflection. She lived in a convent in Orland near the present site of h.o.m.e., where she and the other nuns prayed alone in their rooms for two hours a day. The nuns raised sheep and made shoes to support themselves, keeping quiet while they worked, to open their minds to God.

"There was a lot of silence," Poulin said of the seven years she spent with the order.

The rewards of Poulin's work have never been material. She said she believes...