March, 2014 Archive

Project Neighborhood

March 20, 2014• Education, People, Three Rivers

Project Neighborhood visits *cino

Part of what we do at *culture is not optional is to show people why culture is not optional and one of the ways we do that is by introducing various visitors to our rural city of Three Rivers.

This past Saturday, 45 students, mentors, and even a few children from Calvin College’s Project Neighborhood program piled in vans and drove down to Three Rivers for a day of learning and community. Project Neighborhood is a collection of living-learning communities of Calvin students who live in an intentional community for an academic year.  In many ways, the *cino intentional community in Three Rivers is another model for intentional community post-college, providing a basis for interesting conversation throughout the day.

Our day was divided up into segments. We began with an introduction to Three Rivers, to *culture is not optional and to the Huss Project. After lunch, we split into three groups. One group visited a Bluebird Farm, a small local, very organic farm replete with chickens, cows, sheep, maple trees, bees and even a few ducks. One group ventured to St. Gregory’s Abbey, to get a small taste of what it’s like to live a monastic life in rural Michigan. One group toured Downtown Three Rivers, learning about historic architecture and small, local businesses in the the heart of the town. All three groups also toured the Huss Project and were introduced to our current programming as well as our vision for the future.

We then convened everyone for a panel discussion with our intentional community members, specifically the ones living together in *cino’s community house — the Rectory at Trinity Episcopal Church. We finished up the day with an early dinner of soups, breads, conversation, and the feeling of having shared a good day with good people.

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March 11, 2014• *cino Work, Event, Three Rivers

Coming soon: student groups + justice films

The next few weeks will be busy for the *cino gang, with lots of good learning, sharing, eating, field tripping and film-festing!  Here’s what we’re looking forward to…

March 15: Project Neighborhood Retreat

45 students and mentors from the Calvin College intentional living communities will join us for a day-long retreat to explore community life after college and experience some of the things that make Three Rivers a unique place to live and serve.

March 22-29: Spring Break Service-Learning Trip

For the fifth year in a row, we’ll host a group of Calvin College students here in Three Rivers to explore themes like rule of life, place, contemplation, activism, agriculture, art, government, local business and more.  We’ll stay at the Hermitage Community, and serve throughout the week at the Huss Project, wrapping up our time together with a night at St. Gregory’s Abbey.

April 4-5: Rivers of Justice Film Festival

This annual event, organized by World Fare and a committee of volunteers, is expanding this year to feature three films over the course of two nights (plus a potluck and a reception with complimentary appetizers, of course!).  For a complete schedule and trailers, visit the film festival web site.

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Ray Bradbury

March 11, 2014• Leadership

A nursery for ideas

As we discern how to keep moving forward with *cino, Rob and I have embarked on our own informal leadership course, and as part of that, I’ve decided to start posting some interesting quotes and ideas related to leadership on the *cino site.

Leadership is a tricky thing for us, since much of the literature out there promotes a profit-driven, status quo model that feels antithetical to *cino’s jazzy, upside-down Kingdom, ridiculous joy motif.  In that spirit, here’s something that David shared as a centering reflection for our volunteer staff meeting last week:

If your meeting room, your board room, or your office (take your pick) isn’t a nursery for ideas, a rumpus room where seals frolic, forget it. Burn the table, lock the room, fire the clerks. You will rarely come up with any ideas worth entertaining. The full room with the heavy people trudging in with long faces to solve problems by beating them to death is very death itself. Serious confrontations rarely arrive at serious ends. Unless the people you meet with are fun loving kids out for a romp, tossing ideas like confetti, and letting the damn bits fall where they may, no spirit will ever rouse, no notion will ever birth, no love will be mentioned, no climax reached. You must swim at your meetings, you must jump for baskets, you must take hefty swings for great or missed drives, you must run and dive, you must fall and roll, and when the fun stops, get the hell out.

Credited to Ray Bradbury in The Leader’s Edge

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