March 2010 Archives

Today, we cleaned the barn at the Hermitage and moved over to St. Gregory's Abbey, where we'll be spending our last day together. The hymn for morning prayer this morning was "Lord, whose love in humble service," which seemed a perfect way to finish our time at the Hermitage:

Lord, whose love in humble service bore the weight of human need, who upon the cross, forsaken, worked your mercy's perfect deed; we, your servants, bring the worship not of voice alone, but heart, consecrating to your purpose ev'ry gift which you impart.

Still your children wander homeless, still the hungry cry for bread. Still the captives long for freedom, still in grief we mourn our dead. As you, Lord, in deep compassion, healed the sick and freed the soul, by your Spirit send your power to our world to make it whole.

As we worship, grant us vision, till your love's revealing light in its height and depth and greatness dawns upon our quickened sight, making known the needs and burdens your compassion bids us bear, stirring us to ardent service, your abundant life to share.

Raking: check. Well, the front yard at least. One of the themes of the week has been adjusting our sense of scale with the school as tasks take more time, more people and taller ladders than we expect. That said, our feeling after our last morning of school work was that we made quite a bit of progress. The gym is cleaner than it has been in a while, the building is somewhat aired out, some of the stuff-sorting work is finished and we're starting to get set up for a potential rummage sale fundraiser. Sure, there's a lot more to do, but there's always going to be a lot more to do. We finished our time together working at Huss with a photo in front of the giant leaf pile and a reading of Oscar Romero's famous prayer.

After leaving the school, we enjoyed a more leisurely lunch than we've had all week and took some time after we ate just to rest and read and nap--a welcome space of quiet. Just before 3:00, we commenced our art explorations. First, we walked a half block to the Carnegie Center for the Arts to see the current exhibits, as well as some of the creative learning spaces within the building. Then, we piled in the van (leaving Rob behind to staff World Fare) to visit Larry-Michael and Becky Hackenberg at their wetland property along the St. Joseph River called Floodplain meadow. We took a short walk around to see and hear how they've worked to steward the marshy "fast food restaurant for birds," honoring the creatures and history of their place. Afterwards, we gathered in their warm, cozy living room with hot cups of tea to hear their thoughts about the arts in the Three Rivers community. Larry-Michael is a watercolor painter and Becky is a photographer, as well as the founder of the Three Rivers Artists Guild. They shared some wonderful insights about the relationship between art and place. Larry-Michael expressed how art often serves as a record of the ecology of a place, helping viewers see beauty in their community. He recounted a story of a painting he did of a bosc pear from Corey Lake Orchards, which he used for his series of greeting cards. When someone from the orchard came across his cards, she saw herself in the art, exclaiming, "Hey! I'm Corey Lake Orchard!" Later, when he displayed his cards at the orchard during the annual fall color tour, the farming patriarch of the orchard family took three bosc pears and gave them to Larry-Michael, expressing a common understanding of their beauty. The farmer saw beauty in his pears, and so did Larry-Michael--enough to create a painting of them, which then reinforced the farmer's feelings about the fruits of his labor. Like many other folks we've met with this week, Larry-Michael and Becky also wanted to hear from the students, particularly about why they chose to come to Three Rivers for spring break and how they see art being part of both Huss School and their lives in the future.

Our departure was a continuation of the day's theme as Liz, who's been working on a series this week for a photography project, took a portrait of Larry-Michael and Becky with the marsh in the background. We said our thank yous and good byes and headed back downtown to see Police, Adjective at the Riviera Theatre, which we'd just visited and toured yesterday. The film was sometimes excruciatingly slow and quiet, but intentionally so, as the story followed a Romanian police detective trailing a group of pot-smoking teen-agers. Though many first reactions were, "What the...?" our conversation afterwards and over dinner helped uncover some of the film's complexities and purpose related to themes of language and a culture negotiating its post-Communist identity.

Our evening meal was a delicious collection of Asian delights, including bi bim guk su, a spicy Thai lemongrass soup with fresh cilantro, kim chi and citron tea. In a town that has good pub food, but not much in the way of really creative cuisine, it's great to be able to call on our friend Julie to make ethnic dishes with fresh, local ingredients as part of her start-up, on-the-side catering. Just like Rob's and my experience going to college in the middle of cornfields, we're exploring how to make our own fun when someone's not providing it for us.

Matt, a local artist friend, joined us today, and Julie joined us later for the movie and dinner. J.D. Yoder and Bruce Snook also made brief appearances at the school. Oh, and let's not forget Taggy--J.D.'s curious and friendly pup, so-named for her habit of tagging along. Overall, another great day of connections, of the human, animal, culinary and idea varieties.

We did a lot of raking today at Huss School. I'm beginning to realize the scale of this place because I continually underestimate the amount of stuff in the building or on the land. For example, I looked at the front yard today and thought, "There aren't that many leaves here; we can probably finish this in a few hours." Well, at the end of our work period, we weren't quite finished and we had a mountain of leaves collected in a new compost pile on the south side of the gym. The largeness of the building and the yard make everything look small in comparison. I suppose that's a good thing to learn, for all kinds of reasons!

Today's afternoon conversations were really good and informative. We started with a quick tour of a few local businesses in Three Rivers, talking to Tom Lowry at Lowry's Books, Bruce Monroe at the Riviera Theatre, Caryn Wilson at Voyager's Inn and Peggy Deames at Love Your Mother. Each had really interesting observations about running a business in a small town and being committed to this particular place at this particular time. Tom talked a bit about the history of the Three Rivers downtown district: how malls completely changed the landscape and drove out businesses that had operated downtown for decades; how Wal-Mart changed the business landscape again, closing several local stores; and how a vast majority of business attempts simply don't make it at all. The numbers are pretty daunting. 80% of businesses fail within the first five years and, of those that succeed, another 80% fail in the next five years--leaving a 4% success rate after ten years. And small businesses fail for all kinds of reasons, only a few of them financial. Almost every business owner we spoke to recognized these odds and chose to start a business anyway--many of them in middle of one of the worst recessions our nation has ever experienced. These folks really know how to live into hope, disregarding all evidence pointing the other direction.

We concluded the afternoon with a panel discussion featuring several local journalists: Elena Hines from the Commercial-News, Helen McCauslin from Day by Day in Fabius (a daily photo blog), Bruce Snook from River Country Journal, and Buck Hicks from the Liberty 1st forum. We had a great conversation about the possibilities and drawbacks of both online and print media, the way information spreads around the community and is discussed, and the power of the media to tell some stories while missing others (particularly in relation to race). We really enjoyed the conversation and it was great to get all of those folks in the same room talking about what they do in the community.

Today was another full day--which means I am again sitting down to type this near midnight. We don't have internet access at the Hermitage, so I'm posting these updates to the blog while we grab water from our apartment in the morning for cleaning at the school (the school building is winterized, so there's no running water).

The Gospel text for morning prayer today included Jesus saying he was not of this world. When I was growing up, it seemed that we always inferred from this that Jesus was speaking about how the world didn't matter much because we were all going to end up in heaven eventually anyway. It wasn't until I started reading Walter Wink several years ago that I discovered another (more accurate?) reading: the word "world" implies "system." So when Jesus says he's not of this world, he is saying that he has a completely different economic, social and political system in mind for the purposes of human flourishing. The systems in place both then and now were primarily in the interest of the wealthy and powerful; Jesus' economy includes everyone and ensures all receive what they need while delighting in their ability to contribute.

With this in mind, we set off for another day of work at Huss School. We were joined today by J.D. Yoder and Bob Hostetler. J.D. is a local contractor who has shown significant interest in the Imagining Space project and has been remarkably open with volunteering his expertise and equipment to help get things moving. He invited Bob, a tree trimmer by trade, to help cut down several dead trees on the property. In the meantime, the students cleaned some nasty mildew stains in the gym and raked leaves in the front yard. We again managed to get a lot accomplished in a relatively short amount of time!

It's very exciting to have the support of folks like J.D. and Bob. We certainly couldn't afford to hire someone to come and do the work they did today; but they seem to implicitly understand a Kingdom economy, a new way of doing things that Jesus was alluding to in this morning's text. In a Kingdom economy, profit is never the sole motivating factor. Other goods, such as community, relationship and beauty come into a complex equation to determine how we spend our time and talent. The same can be said, of course, for everyone who is helping us out this week. And we simply can't thank you all enough; it's amazing to witness Kingdom economy in action.

Later in the afternoon, we explored downtown Three Rivers and the surrounding parks, concluding with a trip to Lowry's (probably one of the best bookstores in the country). After an amazing meal prepared by Mariann and Liz (with help from just about everyone else), we went for a moonlit hike through the Hermitage woods. It was a beautiful way to end the day.

One of the text's for today's morning prayer was the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It's a story I've heard a thousand times, but I don't think I'd heard it in quite a while. I was struck during this reading by the number of people who told Jesus upon his arrival that "if he'd only been there before Lazarus died, he could have healed him." It seems that people hadn't quite gotten the picture yet of the power in this new thing Jesus was doing. They thought he only had the ability to heal, but he was about to show that he was after something much bigger: to defeat even death, the worst fate we can imagine.

Even death; those two words kept turning over in my mind while we were sitting in silence.

We left the Hermitage after breakfast and headed over to Huss School to begin our work for the day. Several folks drove down from Grand Rapids to join us for the day--including a few additional Calvin students and staff, plus a couple *cino supporters (thanks everyone!). For our three work hours, we gathered all of the miscellaneous stuff from around the school into a few rooms to begin sorting it and started cleaning the gymnasium for a future rummage sale or auction. Though there was a lot of stuff scattered throughout the building, we were able to gather most of it in a short amount of time. Many hands really do help quite a bit!

Often, when I look around at the bigness of the project we've taken on at Huss School, I get completely overwhelmed. There is so much to do if we're going to get to where we want to be with this space and it is all going to cost so much money. How are we going to do any of this? What have we gotten ourselves into? It was good, then, to have prayed this morning and to hear in the silence: "even death." Yes, this project is huge and overwhelming ... but God has defeated death! We, then, can surely come alongside the Spirit to breathe new life into this old school building.

After a short lunch break, we visited with several small-scale farmers in Marcellus who are challenging conventional agriculture wisdom. Dale Hasenick of White Yarrow Farm has been running a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for several years now and is a great model for how someone can make a living growing food (albeit modest). It was wonderful to hear Dale talk about the soil variation from where we were digging out carrots to the land 30 yards away--a beautiful kind of intimate familiarity with the land. We met Randy Ewert who, after almost 20 years of farming on the side, is attempting to go into full-time farm work this year--raising sheep and chickens; growing a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs; and harvesting maple syrup. Finally, we spoke with Luke Nofsinger, a recent graduate with a degree in journalism, who has decided to start his own farming business instead of pursuing a journalism career.

We headed back to the Hermitage for an amazing meal featuring carrots we'd dug up at Dale's farm in a tasty carrot soup, plus a white bean spinach pasta. We took our time cutting vegetables and preparing the meal, then lingered over the table while enjoying a wonderful conversation reflecting on the day. Most of the Grand Rapids contingency didn't leave until well after the sun had set.

As I'm typing this, it is now well after midnight. I must adjourn if I am to be of any use tomorrow.

We've already had a very full weekend and first work day with our spring break work group! I only have a few minutes to post, so I'll just post a few photos ...

Sharing a meal with the Three Rivers Sustainable Food Group at The Hermitage:

Organizing furniture and other miscellany in the school:

For more photos, check out our photo set on Flickr.

In a few hours, five Calvin College students will arrive in Three Rivers to spend their spring break learning about our city, working at Huss School and dreaming about future possibilities for both.

We've planned a full week of work and events that will keep us pretty busy throughout the week. The group will be staying at the Hermitage Community and St. Gregory's Abbey and we'll be observing a simple rhythm of prayer, work, study and reflection for each day. Each day will begin with morning prayer, followed by several hours of work at the school. In the afternoon, we'll be meeting with various community leaders to look at the intersection of place and agriculture, history, business, journalism and art. We'll finish each day with a shared meal and time to reflect on what we experienced during the day. To help guide some of our learning, we've created a reader of essays about place from a variety of writers--from local collaborators to world-renowned thinkers. We decided to make the readings optional ... it is spring break, after all!

We'll also be joined by community members and other *culture is not optional supporters at various points throughout the week to help with the work projects at the school. On Monday, we'll have 13 people cleaning and organizing; we should be able to get a lot done in a short amount of time. Thank you to everyone who is volunteering!

We're hoping this week gives both the students and us a glimpse of what the off-campus program we've been imagining might look like in practice. We'll try to post a few updates with photos during the course of the week.

Three Rivers, MI March 15, 2010. The youth of Three Rivers are going to be cultivating the spirit of community, neighborhood and diversity by growing food collaboratively and sustainably. In April, coordinators of the Triple Ripple Community Garden, Julianna Sauber- and Brenda McGowan-Nurturing Communities Initiative will begin what is hoped to be the first of many local community gardens. The location of the gardens will be the former Huss School. Huss School property, owned by *culture is not optional, of which two local residents, Kirstin and Rob Vander Giessen-Reitsma are connected, is poised to be a space of creative collaboration among many individuals and organizations. Offering a community garden will get kids off the couch, involved in nurturing relationships and a great summer project. Youth will have an option for free, healthy food that will help with nutrition and developing good eating habits. The kids will learn to grow organic food, prepare that food and store it for the winter extending the benefits of this garden to year around. They will have the benefit of good peer and adult role models to show them that they have the skills to be successful, and with a little hard work can have the pride of accomplishment of growing a beautiful garden, and for older youth an opportunity to sell their products at Farmer's Markets. The goal is to recruit, train, engage, and mentor anywhere from 60-90 youth to invest in 9 plots. Estimated cost for tools, plants, supplies, and marketing is $10,000.00

Triple Ripple Community Garden coordinators have scheduled two informational meetings for anyone who is interested and skilled at working with adolescents and gardening. Our meetings are scheduled for Sunday, March 21st at 3:00 p.m and Thursday, March 25 at 6:00 p.m. All meetings will be held at Family Education and Development Services office, 2 North Main, Three Rivers.

For more information or to make a donation contact either coordinator- Julianna Sauber (574)238- 5289 or Brenda McGowan at (269)744-0646. All checks should be made payable to *culture is not optional P.O. Box 1, Three Rivers, Michigan, 49093. Checks should be clearly marked for the Triple Ripple Community Gardens project.*culture is not optional is a non -profit 501c3 organization. Donations of hand tools and other garden implements may be made at Eagle Auto Glass on South Main Street in Three Rivers.

Please contact us if you have any questions regarding this project. Thank you!

The Tripple Ripple Community Garden project, led by Julianna Sauber and Brenda McGowan, is hosting a few informational meetings to get things rolling. Here are the details:

A free community garden is starting at the Huss School property, led by kids giving back to the community.

Please attend our first meeting. The kids and the community need your help to make this successful.

Food produced from this garden will go to those who need it most!

When: March 21 at 3pm or March 25 at 5:30pm
Where: 2 North Main Street, Three Rivers at Family Development Services

Last weekend, we walked through Huss School with an architect (a friend of a friend) to get an informal but professional opinion of the building. The good news: the building is structurally very sound. The bad news: the building needs new mechanical systems and presents a number of architectural challenges. We learned a lot from the visit and it was good to have our overall suspicions professionally confirmed.

The biggest mechanical item that we'll need to replace is the 90-something-year-old boiler. Replacing the heating system for a building as large as Huss will be a significant expense and will take quite a bit of planning. We also will need to address the current electrical system--which has been cobbled together over the years and stands in need of updating. Another big ticket item will be replacing the windows and creating a better envelope for the interior (so heating and cooling won't escape as readily).

So ... those are the big things we're going to need to address in renovation. Before we can get started, we need to have an official feasibility study done to determine potential and concrete next steps. Unfortunately, a feasibility study will cost a good amount of money in itself. We're working to find grants that might cover the costs of the study; in the meantime, we need to get the point where we can pay our monthly expenses.