The compost bins still need to be built. And the basil plants need to be pruned and weeded. The starter house in Huss needs to be constructed so seeding can begin this winter instead of late spring. And that food co-op we keep talking about hasn’t gotten underway yet.

And classes start in a week.

This statement sums up a portion of my emotions as I prepare to leave Three Rivers, MI for Grand Rapids, ending my summer internship with *culture is not optional. (Actually, at the moment I am sitting in a coffee shop in Kalamazoo, a momentary limbo between my summer and fall homes.) There is much to do — at the Huss Project, community garden, and the downstairs bathroom I forgot to clean — and just as I feel myself getting something of a grasp on my work here in Tres Ríos, it is time to move on, to turn the page and begin something new. On the other hand, these feelings of anxiety that are triggered by this sense of incompleteness — like planting, watering and caring for a garden, but leaving before the harvest — remind me of other lessons I’ve learned this summer.

On a sunny afternoon in early June, roughly a month into my summer in Three Rivers, I stood in the middle of the community garden behind the Huss Project staring tensely at the small space beginning to show signs of fertility. As the agriculture intern, it was deemed my responsibility to lead the caretaking of the community garden — now in its fifth year of production — and the weight of this duty was beginning to feel like an anvil on my chest. After expressing a mellowed-down version of this unease during a Monday staff meeting, my good friend (and boss) Rob put his arm around my shoulder and briskly walked me out to the garden just a few yards away. I sensed the urgency and deliberateness in his pace, but was unsure of what was coming next.

“Seth, look around. This garden exists as part of a gift economy. It is entirely the result of gifts from others. As a caretaker of the garden, you are in debt to no one and no one is in debt to you.”

This simple declaration was one of many pivotal experiences this summer that significantly shaped how I understand the world and our place in it as human beings. When most people ask what I’ve been doing this summer, I do a rapid mental fumbling for the most accurate description until I revert back to “community development in Three Rivers, Michigan,” a statement too broad and feel-goody to mean anything, at least to me. The truth is I can’t give a simple description of my experiences and work this summer with *cino; it would be like trying to recreate a Picasso using only the primary colors, and not being allowed to mix them. I am reminded, however, that there is great virtue in trying despite the knowledge that what one is undertaking will inevitably fail to achieve the expectations set for it.

Perhaps the most transformative lesson this summer for me has been experiencing the power of storytelling to change and shape us. To tell a story, especially a personal one, is to place oneself in a defenseless, vulnerable state. It is to bare a piece of oneself and open it up to criticism or comfort from another. Also, to listen intently and openly to stories of others also means to make oneself vulnerable, in this way by being transformed by the experiences — joyful and devastating — of the storytellers. Honest storytelling and compassionate listening are like flames that burn away our prejudice and fear, creating newly vacant space for empathy, understanding and love to foster.

My friends at *cino believe in the power of storytelling. I know this because they practice storytelling often, both formally and in the mundane of the everyday. They tell their own stories: of where they come from; of their fears, ambitions, desires, heartaches and joys. They tell the stories of others: those that have inspired them; those that have confronted and convicted their spirits; stories that make them laugh, cry or sit in devastated silence. And just as much as they tell stories, my friends intently and earnestly listen to the stories of others. They listen to kids’ stories of triumphs, failures, love and rejection. They listen to the stories of those outside of their supposed tribes: those who live in a different neighborhood or come from a different tradition; those who have more or less money than they do; and those who drink different beer than they do. Additionally, they make it a regular practice to listen to the stories of those they are closest to; as they have found, there is always more to a person than what we already know or think we know. They even go so far as to hold events during which they tell such stories, which always include good food, as is their style.

After three and a half months working with *cino, I hold many stories of Three Rives, MI and the people there I now call friends. The best summary I can give of these experiences is they have deeply rooted themselves in me and transformed how I live in ways I am tremendously thankful for. Because of my time with *cino, I find myself quicker to forgive and slower to hold tight-fisted grudges, both with others and myself. I have experienced good work as a joy in itself and have seen with my own eyes alternatives to consumerism, capitalism and monetized relationships. I forever will cherish the pure joy of good food grown on healthy land that has felt the care and attention of one’s own hands and is shared in the company of good friends.

Rather than delve further into how *culture is not optional and the community of Three Rivers, Michigan, have changed me, I instead extend an invitation to you that my friends at *cino have adopted as a type of pedagogy for inviting others to experience a life of abundance and peace: Come and see.

Above: Seth plays soccer with neighbors at Community Fun Night.

Nine months ago, someone asked me if I’d always been a drifter. I didn’t know I was until they said it. But once they did, I knew it was true.

Arriving in Three Rivers, three hours from my childhood home of blink-and-you-miss it Maybee, MI — a home I hadn’t stayed in for more than three weeks in almost three years — I knew two things: my soul was beaten and tired, and yet some Elpis at the bottom of the Pandora Box of my heart was hungry for a meaning. It was begging for some new definition of purpose, because I’d burned up all my first drafts to that question in a recent bout of situational depression. I’d played the Divine Comedy backwards, finding the Woods and a personal Hell after leaving Paradise. Or at least my semester abroad  in England had felt like paradise (semesters abroad always do). So there I was: weary, wandering, not having stayed in one place for more than five months in four years, with half a heart left in Oxford and hauling the other shabby half out of my significantly dented 1997 Pontiac Sunfire the day I arrived at the Rectory.

The *cino application had asked “why here?”, “why choose *cino to for your summer?” I’d been devouring writings on the Slow Food movement and sniffing around the works of Wendell Berry, so the topic of agrarian ethics was in my head and I said I wanted “definitions for the good life I thought I was starting to form a rough outline on.” I thought I’d get some hippy wisdom here, a hipster blog post there, it’d be a good time. The thing is, most of us interns said we didn’t really have an expectation about the summer because we had no idea what we were going to be doing. And that’s not a critique of the intern program, it’s a comment on the nebulous nature of *cino’s vision. Now, that’s not a “we have no real vision” kind of nebulous nature. The Huss Project is 27,000 square feet of solid vision. World Fare = serious, definable, fair-trading vision-ness. School lunches, Community Fun Nights, storytelling nights, Future Festival:  all solid visions and measurable in smiling faces or full stomachs. And yet *cino’s vision is nebulous, its work hard to define. We often toss around the words community development, but for me, describing *cino as that would be akin to defining a mother simply as “a woman who has birthed a child.”

The vision of *cino permeates everything. Yes, we all work, live, and play together. And yes we’re all working under the same general goals and similar drafts of a life vision, but the sole thing that appeared to me to unify everyone under the *cino banner was the question “how do we do life well?” Not right or correctly, not successfully, just well. As a quote from the homesteading, self-sustaining classic “Living the Good Life” by Helen and Scott Nearing goes: “There are several ways to perform almost any act — an efficient, workable, artistic way and a careless, indifferent, sloppy way. Care and artistry are worth the trouble. They can be a satisfaction to the practitioner and a joy to all beholders.”

That’s *cino to me. It’s a bunch of people asking  the “how do we do life well?” question. How do we do it beautifully but not superficially? Practically but not soulessly? How do we create something sustainable, relational, genuine, joy-filled, and healing? How do we love through how we live life? Because it’s the mugs on wooden s-hooks for the public to drink coffee of freely at World Fare. It’s the home-planted, home-grown, and home-made food of Community Potlucks. It’s the talk and the stories and the no-there-will-not-be-money-in-this-and-yes-it-is-important attitude. It’s the spontaneity and the play. It’s the dedication to the local, whether in food or friendship. It’s life. It’s love.

Is it perfect? Never. But being alive necessitates imperfection.  *cino did give me definitions. More than I was looking for. And  I’m an unabashed fan of the *cino core values and all they represent. And they helped give my own self a few new definitions. I’m a dinner-party addict. An insatiable cuddler. I’m very aesthetically-oriented and I tend to romanticize most things. I’m also a drifter. Just taking it one thing at a time.

So the summer? It reminds me of that ancient al rustica hymn of Americana, “Down to the River to Pray:”

As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good ol’ way…

Above: Alexandra and Seth work the Huss Project table at the Three Rivers Farmers Market.

Just over two months ago I stepped out of my car into the town of Three Rivers for the first time. To be honest, I didn’t really know why I was here. Yes, I was here to be an intern for *cino, but the reality was that I had little idea what that meant. I hadn’t even applied for this internship until the very day of the deadline and even after that I spent another weekend deliberating before finally accepting the role. I knew coming in that my soul was tired. I needed to learn how to live sustainably, environmentally yes, but more crucially with a lifestyle that wouldn’t drain me. When it really comes down to it, I came to Three Rivers seeking renewal and rest.

What I found was so much more than both. I found a rest that was not just restful but active and productive, and renewal that didn’t demand lethargy or apathy. I found a community of people that really desperately wants to know how to live well, and seeks each day to live better than the last. Before I arrived I struggled knowing what to tell people who asked about my summer plans. “I’m interning for a non-profit,” I would tell them, and invariably they would ask, “Doing what?” That was where I usually got stuck. “Well, kind of just living mostly” was often my reply. Yes, I would tell them about planning for our weekly Community Fun Nights, but I didn’t really know what that entailed then, and I would tell them about Future Festival, but I had only a shadow of an idea of what that looked like, and really, when I look back on it, I think I like my first answer better anyway. Describing the tasks I did falls far short of understanding what this experience was about. It was not just a list of things to get done, a manner of being productive, but rather a shift in paradigm. It’s really about living, not doing. A better question would be “How did you live?” instead of “What did you do?”

So how did I live? I lived with six amazing people, each uniquely gifted and beautiful. We cooked and ate together each night, sat together on the porch laughing, enjoyed beers together at the bar, played together, cleaned together, and cuddled together (all seven of us at once). I worked as a grounds-keeper at Gilchrist, a local retreat center, drinking in beauty and peace each morning as I arrived to bright flowers glistening with dew. There I learned the meditation of weeding, contemplating life as my hands sifted through dirt seeking out roots to remove. I spent hours at the Huss Project fixing things, cleaning things, sorting things, organizing things, making things. There my imagination felt free: free to take risks, to create, and to permit myself to be artistic. I visited downtown, regularly patronizing the Riviera Bar and Theater, Up in Smoke, and Main St. Café, loving the feeling of being a regular after showing up the second time. I went on adventures to Lake Michigan, to the hidden marsh, down dirt roads, and onto the swings of a playground. That was life: an exhilarating mix of order and spontaneity, responsibility and whimsy.

Now I stare at the end of my time here in Three Rivers and a long road beckons me. I’m leaving to begin my student teaching experience in New Mexico, a new space, a new way of life. The road is simultaneously incredibly cruel and wonderfully kind. Cruel because it takes me away from this life I have grown to love so fully and richly in such a short time, and yet kind because it brings me to a new place that is bursting with life and possibility and the road lets me bring along the lessons of my summer here. I also take comfort in the fact that as the road carries me away, the rivers here keep flowing. Others remain, continuing the life that I was privileged to be a part of, and maybe someday my road will cross these rivers again.

Rivers and roads,
Rivers and roads,
Rivers ‘til I reach you.

Above: Nate helps a neighbor pick blueberries during a Community Fun Night at the Huss Project.