On Thursday, the Three Rivers Commercial-News ran a great front page story covering our first planting at the Tripple Ripple Community Gardens at Huss School. Here's how Brenda McGowan, one of the garden organizers, contextualizes the work:
This is really a social justice project. The whole goal is to take the people in the community and teach them how to provide for themselves the things that they need. We all need good, healthy food. Whether you can afford it or not, it's here for you.
The other day, I heard a radio ad promoting the local Powerball lottery. "All you need is a dollar and a dream!"
Especially in the context of the hard work we've been doing lately to raise funds for Huss School, I was struck by the linking of a dollar and a dream. I mean, we have something in common with the state lottery, right? We're trying to invite people to take a risk on something they deeply hope for, something with a very real financial cost. And at the same time, there's a very important difference.
We are not promising personal riches to one lucky winner, but seeking abundance for many, especially those who are poor in spirit, in power, in dollars, in influence, in imagination.
We are not asking our contributors to pick the right numbers in a carefully regulated game of chance, but to give without the expectation of reward and trust that a creative, life-giving vision will flourish where they plant the seed.
Rather than a gamble in which there are winners and losers, it's an exercise in imagination wherein we all have a role to play to the best of our abilities.
We'll continue to extend invitations for new contributors to this project through every means we have available to us. In the meantime, would it be inappropriate to remind you that you can't win if you don't play?
Monthly contributions are greatly needed to sustain the work that's been begun at Huss School in Three Rivers, as well as the ongoing publishing and educational work of *culture is not optional. Please consider becoming a monthly donor or making a one-time donation.
Saturday morning was gray and misty, but warm as we gathered to speak words of blessing and break ground for Triple Ripple Community Gardens at the Huss School property. Many denominations, ages, colors, neighborhoods and vocations were represented around our circle and each minister brought a distinctive angle to the task at hand, calling God's abundance onto the land in so many different voices.
There have been many moments since *cino's purchase of Huss School last spring that Rob and I have felt overwhelmed with gratitude at the sense that this project is being carried beyond our limited human efforts, and the garden blessing was one such moment. To be sure, God will require our practical participation in the weeks and months ahead, from recruiting young gardeners to hauling watering cans. But as Pastor Bennett reminded us all during the blessing: God provides the water. We are gifted with the raw materials and with the imagination to put them together in a new way in a new place. And in this sense, all our labor is pleasure, whether it's the welcome pleasure of a successful tomato transplant or the more difficult pleasure of trusting the Spirit to help us overcome a relational challenge.
In the moment of the garden blessing on Saturday, I believe we all glimpsed what is possible in that place beyond what we were expecting.
Watch for video footage of the community garden blessing soon. In the meantime, enjoy these photos.