News

2015 Food Guide

May 14, 2015• Publishing, Three Rivers

New 2015 River Country Local Food & Recycling Guide

Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world.  In this pleasure, we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

 

— Wendell Berry in “The Pleasures of Eating” from Food & Faith

The new 2015 River Country Local Food & Recycling Guide in now available across the county! The Guide is co-published by *culture is not optional and the St. Joseph County Conservation District; it highlights local growers in our region who sell a wide variety of food directly to customers. Our hope is that the Guide can help facilitate a better relationship between eaters and the neighbors who grow our food.

You can find print copies in libraries, city halls, and local businesses in Three Rivers, Vicksburg, Mendon, White Pigeon, and Constantine. You can also find listings and leave reviews for your favorite farms at our Food Guide web site!

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Garden cleanup

April 22, 2015• Education, Event, People

Get outside with *culture is not optional!

As spring emerges here in Three Rivers, we are very excited to announce a few opportunities to get outdoors and enjoy each other’s company while we work the land together.

Coming up in May, join us any or all of three Saturdays to help get the community garden at the Huss Project rolling for the season.  Produce from the garden goes to local families in need directly and through partner agencies.  We also sell our veggies at the Three Rivers Farmers Market to help raise money to sustain the garden, and we’re thrilled that the farmers market will be participating in Double Up Food Bucks this coming season!  Join us to help kick things off for 2015:

  • May 2: Potato planting (2-5 p.m.)
  • May 9: Garden clean-up (9 a.m. – 1 p.m.)
  • May 16: Garden planting (9 a.m. – 1 p.m.)

Whether or not you can make it one of these dates, we would love to have your help on an ongoing basis throughout the growing season as we water and tend our plants, and harvest good food for our community.  Please get in touch about helping out through our online citizen interest form.

In case you’re looking for a weekend opportunity, *cino is also partnering to host a weekend gardening retreat just west of Three Rivers at GilChrist Retreat Center.  Part of the Contemplative Ecology series, the weekend will feature both time to work together and time to rest apart.  Participants can enjoy free camping or discounted stays in GilChrist cabins in exchange for doing some work on the center’s 67 acres.  Other features of the weekend will include a shared meal, campfires and silent and guided meditation times.  It’s sure to be a wonderful, restful, reinvigorating weekend and we’d love to have you join us!  There are more details here and on the Facebook page for the event.

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2014 interns

April 17, 2015• *cino Work, Education, Organization, People

Summer intern application deadline extended to April 30

Are you looking for an amazing summer experience alongside wonderful people in a great rural city? Well look no further! We’d love to have you join us this summer in Three Rivers to help us with our community development work. We grow a market garden, work on renovating an old elementary school to help build a community center, hold a summer festival, run a fair trade store, sell at the local farmers market, make art with neighborhood kids, publish an online magazine, listen and tell stories to know our community better, and more … so there are a lot of great ways to plug in!

We’re extending our application deadline for our summer internship program to April 30, so there’s still time to apply. We’re specifically looking for folks to fill roles in agriculture, business support, promotions/communication, and event coordination, but anyone who is interested in our work should feel free to apply —  we often find creative ways to employ the unique talents of our interns.

Apply online now!

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David Dark

April 2, 2015• Education, Organization, People

A good listener

This past weekend, Rob and I had the pleasure of reconnecting with old friends at the biennial Festival of Faith & Music at Calvin College.  Among them was our friend David Dark (above), whose book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything has been an anchoring influence for us with its prophetic reminders to just chill out and listen: to our doubts, to our neighbors, to our voices in the wilderness.  We returned to Three Rivers for some Sabbath rest and then, on Monday, we gathered for our weekly *cino staff meeting.  Thanks to another friend, Emily Ulmer, we begin each meeting with a centering reflection — usually a quote or a poem.  For this week’s centering, Rob shared a Merold Westphal quote that David used in his book and that previously appeared as a daily asterisk quote:

If I am a good listener, I don’t interrupt the other or plan my own next speech while pretending to be listening. I try to hear what is said, but I listen just as hard for what is not said and for what is said between the lines. I am not in a hurry, for there is no pre-appointed destination for the conversation. There is no need to get there, for we are already here; and in this present I am able to be fully present to the one who speaks. The speaker is not an object to be categorized or manipulated, but a subject whose life situation is enough like my own that I can understand it in spite of the differences between us. If I am a good listener, what we have in common will be more important than what we have in conflict.

Reminds me of something I heard this past weekend, from Chelsea McInturff of the organization Level Ground, which creates safe space for dialogue about faith, gender and sexuality across various divides.  Talking about getting someone who’s gay and someone who’s vehemently anti-gay in the room together, she said that their goal is not to change what people think, but how they interact with one another.  That’s something I’m going to think about for a long time — and hopefully practice, with *cino and otherwise.

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Summer 2014

February 20, 2015• *cino Work, Education, Leadership, Organization, People, Three Rivers

Seeking 2015 Summer Interns!

“Living life well, and with intention.”
“A space to celebrate my own contributions and talents.”
“Honest, communal storytelling.”
“Working and playing joyfully together!”

These are just a few of the thoughts from former interns on their time spent working with *culture is not optional in Three Rivers for our ten-week summer internship. If these ideas pique your interest, read on: it’s still chilly out now, but summer will be here soon!

We welcome flexible and committed individuals who wish to embrace community, simple living, social justice and spirituality in everyday life. Interns who are independent self-starters, have some experience living independently away from their parents’ home and work well under little supervision are often best suited for *cino internships. The 2015 summer internship runs officially from May 29 to August 15. Interns live together in a house, alongside the more permanent resident community of the organization, and are asked to contribute an average of 20 hours of volunteer work per week for *cino. Interns can also look for part-time employment in the community if necessary.

If you have an interest in farming and gardening, planning special events, communications and promotion, or business support, read more about our intern positions! Do you have a different set of skills that you think would benefit *culture is not optional? Apply! Want to know more about what *cino interns actually do? Read these reflections from our 2014 interns Nate, Alexandra, Seth, and Kate. Wondering what you’ll get out of the internship after two and a half months? Glad you asked! What about jobs, loans, fundraising, and other details? Find the answers to these questions and more here. Applications will be accepted through April 15, 2015.

If you know someone who would be a good match, please pass along the encouragement to apply!

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Cookies

February 18, 2015• Education, People, Publishing

A letter from a daily asterisk reader

Note: We recently received this message from Seth Regan, a friend and former *cino intern, and were so touched by the depth of his compassion and thoughtfulness that we wanted to share it with you all.  The John Dear selection appeared as a recent daily asterisk, which is a quote the *cino community sends out via e-mail each weekday.

Yesterday (Sunday) around 4:45 pm, there was a shooting — two separate shootings, in fact — outside my house, targeted at my next door neighbors. They moved in two weeks ago. No one was hurt. The children upstairs thought it was fireworks. The boy who was targeted while sitting in his car was not hurt, though his car is… I saw it happen from my upstairs window.

So today I shakily brought over a box of cookies, baked by my girlfriend especially for them, and knocked on their door. I met a young girl, probably in her late teens. Her name is Hope. There was a young boy, too — Josiah. I introduced myself. We talked. It was pleasant and neighborly.

And then, after walking into my home feeling slightly more empowered, but still very violated and traumatized (and I wasn’t even the target!), I saw this:

God as nonviolent

Imagine God as nonviolent, and worship takes on the fragrance of peace. We enter a deep mystery and bow our heads in awe and wonder and finally, ever so gradually, in imitation of the God of love, evolve into people of nonviolence and peace. The culture of war discounts all this. Its grumbling takes a form something like this: “Such talk is tantamount to heresy. Let go of the vengeful image of God, and what becomes of boundaries? What becomes of order? Worse, such talk amounts to flagrant defiance, stubborn nonconformity, perhaps an act of resistance punishable by law!” The culture of war always tries to instruct us on the nature of God, the definition of sin and morality, the way to be Christian, even human. It knows only “sacred” violence and a god of thunderbolts and fury. And mushroom clouds. Thus the task at hand: to envision the God of peace. For our souls and for the world. The more we envision and grasp the image of the God of peace, the more we’ll fathom Jesus’ teachings, comprehend how to be human, become a peacemaking church of all-inclusive love, and come upon a way or two to help disarm a world armed to the teeth.

John Dear
Put Down Your Sword

Thank you for your work and steadfast commitment to peace. I’m trying to do the same.

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Epiphany series

February 16, 2015• *cino Work, People, Publishing

daily asterisk inspires Epiphany series

One of our catapult contributors, Tamara Hill Murphy, has conducted a wonderful experiment for the season of Epiphany.  Having collected a whole mess of *cino’s daily asterisk quotes over the years, she selected some quotes to use as prompts for guest writers on the theme of where we see the Light in our respective neighborhoods around the world.  Check out the series, called Walking Epiphany, on Tamara’s blog This Sacramental Life.

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2014

December 31, 2014• *cino Work, Building, Education, Event, Hospitality, Organization, People, Publishing, Rectory Stories, Three Rivers

2014: Year in review

With hearts full of gratitude, we say goodbye to another year and anticipate 2015 with hope and discernment. Please enjoy this review, written by the members of our core community here in Three Rivers.  Thank you for the many ways you’ve supported *culture is not optional in the past year!  Our work is sustained by generous donations of all kinds and we thankfully receive your gifts of time, money, prayer and encouragement.  Please be in touch about how you’d like to be involved in the coming year, and if you’d like to make a financial contribution, you can do so here.  Peace be with you in the coming year!

COMMUNITY: Volunteer partners come and go, while friendships remain

by Jay Howard

The Rectory, *cino’s community house, was full of good food and laughter in 2014. Jay, Liesje and Deborah endured an exceptionally snowy, cold winter, looking forward to summer when four amazing interns joined the household: Seth, Alexandra, Kate and Nate. They were a wonderful addition to our group, bringing many gifts to the work of a prosperous community garden, exciting and creative Community Fun Nights, a glowing Future Festival and lovely Friday night potlucks. In addition, we hosted visitors from Project Neighborhood, a Calvin College spring break group and a service group from Palmerston, Ontario, who all helped out at the Huss Project and explored the Three Rivers community.  Now as we make our way toward the end of the year, the Rectory will be losing one its inhabitants as Jay is heads to Grand Rapids to pursue new adventures.  Deborah and Liesje, along with Rob, Kirstin, Julie and David, continue to gather regularly as a core group, sharing and discerning the focus of our work for the coming year.

 

SHARING: Telling tales and tasting treats

by David Stewart

Preparing and eating food and telling stories has become central to what *cino does. This year we hosted Underground Supper Clubs on monastery grounds at St. Gregory’s Abbey and in the heart of downtown Three Rivers in one of the beautiful storefronts along Main Street. We told stories about our origins, local haunts, our favorite books, and about our love of food during storytelling events at the Huss Project. We want everyone to experience these sacred acts as fully as we do, something that has become clearer to us over the past year. There are stories in food, and stories in turn are food for the soul. It is our hope in 2015 to make more stories and to find more amazing ways to serve excellent food to the people who love it.

 

PLAY: Growing friendships with our neighbors at Huss

by Liesje Brouwer

Once again in 2014, Huss served as a site for a summer lunch program in partnership with Three Rivers Community Schools. School-aged kids in our neighborhood enjoyed over 700 lunches throughout the summer, gathered around the new picnic tables we built in June. In addition, the Huss Project hosted weekly Community Fun Nights where friends of *cino gathered for baked goods, garden goodies, games and crafts. 40-60 kids, parents and other neighbors attended each week—more than ever before! *cino invested in flag football gear, which was put to good use every week as we worked together with our young neighbors on building respectful relationships. We cranked up our jammin’ play list and ran around with kids and had conversations with adults and basked in the sun and learned a little bit more about one another. On the final fun night, all the kids gathered around and held a string attached to a homemade piñata, then collectively pulled their strings to break it open. The most popular piñata find: bouncy balls! Community Fun Night and summer lunches help us to stay connected to the neighborhood, and our neighbors. A big thank you to everyone who participated!

 

CELEBRATION: Creative connectivity at Huss Future Festival

by Julie Keefer

The fifth annual Huss Future Fest on July 19 was a day full of activities that brought in over 600 visitors, community partners and volunteers — that’s nearly double the attendance in 2013 and it’s encouraging to see the festival grow as a fun, creative and safe place for neighbors to gather.  Future Fest is the pinnacle of our summer for *cino staff, interns and volunteers who put in countless hours full of blood, sweat and, yes, even sometimes tears to clean, plan, paint, fold, mow, imagine, and clean some more. A highlight this year was partnering with TRAFC (Three Rivers Area Faith Community) to host their annual Back-to-School Celebration.  We saw lots of families coming to the festival to join in the fun and get backpacks full of school supplies. In addition, volunteers from the Huss Project’s community garden sold quinoa salad and grilled veggies and brats, while the locally-famous Weenie King added his hotdog stand to our food options.  This year we hosted our second Coin Carnival partnering with local organizations: Three Rivers Public Library, Red Cross, Save the Frogs, River Country Resilience Circle, Congo Cloth Connection/Florence Church, St. Joseph County Department of Human Services, Pregnancy Helpline, St. Joseph County ISD/Great Start, Animal Rescue Fund and Flowerfield Enterprises.  Many local farmers also donated generous amounts of produce for our mini farmers market: Triple Ripple Community Garden, White Yarrow Farm, Bair Lane Farm, Corey Lake Orchard and Butternut Sustainable Farm.  Dozens of volunteers also helped coordinate many activities for kids, a rummage sale, art vendors, workshops, art installations, a bake sale and live music.  It was a joy to witness such incredible collaboration, which is a primary value we hope to cultivate at the Huss property.  At the end of the festival, our *cino community, friends and festival attendees took the opportunity to celebrate in gratitude for the Huss Project’s fifth anniversary with a five-song dance party!

 

FLAVOR: Sharing fresh, local food with our community

by Rob Vander Giessen-Reitsma

Working alongside our neighbors, we continued to produce food at the Huss Project this year in our wild and wooly community garden. In June, we hosted a compost tea workshop where several of us learned how to create organic, nutrient-rich fertilizer for our gardens. Even as we struggled with a streak of vandalism, we distributed the garden produce to individuals and families in need through several agencies in our county. Beyond just our own garden, *cino helped publish a local food and recycling guide for our region.  We also partnered with several local farms this summer to sell their produce alongside our own at the Three Rivers Farmers Market. After the market closed for the season, we gathered additional farm partners and opened the Downtown Harvest Market in a downtown storefront on Saturdays in September and October. Through these efforts, we shared and sold fresh, local food to a wide variety of people in our community, raising over $3,300 for continued food production at the Huss Project in the future.

 

REFLECTION: Pausing to consider with catapult and the daily asterisk

by Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

The question has come up with increasing frequency: what happened to catapult?  With many changes in the lives of *cino community members over the past year, 2014 seemed like a good time to pause for a little while and re-imagine the function, look and structure of this longstanding online publication.  We initiated a survey that gleaned rich feedback from both new and veteran readers and contributors and we look forward to digging into those ideas in 2015 to see what seeds show promise of germination in the spring.  In the meantime, the daily asterisk has continued to be a provocative resource, drawing from many voices past and present, who speak insightfully to the pressing issues of our time with celebration and lament, encouragement and repentance, joy and critique.  If you’re not receiving the daily asterisk already, you can sign up for the e-mail list here and dig into the archives here.

 

CONVERSATION: Discussing our core values, our community, and our future

by Deborah Haak

For all of the hustle and bustle of the year, the *cino staff also made concerted efforts to sit, read, discuss, and dream. We gathered each week over the summer with interns to explore *cino’s core values, and that conversation has continued this fall and winter with a discussion of Peter Block’s book Community: The Structure of Belonging. At the staff retreat this fall, we reflected on 2014, discussing *cino’s successes and shortcomings, evaluating roles and duties in light of staffing changes, and brainstorming where to focus our energy in 2015 and beyond — all while sharing delicious food and enjoying each others’ company!

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Giving Tuesday

November 26, 2014• Event, Organization

*cino joins Giving Tuesday at the Riviera Theatre

Thanksgiving Day, Buy Nothing Day, Cyber Monday … we’re approaching a feast of “days” this coming weekend!  Giving Tuesday is the newest one of them, designed as a way to encourage generosity for causes that serve the common good.

This year, the Riviera Theatre in downtown Three Rivers will be hosting a huge event on December 2 featuring local organizations, including *culture is not optional.  The night will be chock full of live music, food, drink specials and opportunities to contribute dollars, as well as canned goods, toys and winter clothing.  Our very own David will be bar tending for tips that will go to *cino, plus we’ll have an information table staffed by Rob and Liesje AND you can look for Jay in the bar wearing his Huss Project t-shirt and enjoying a drink for his birthday!

So come on out 6:00-8:00 p.m. to join us in celebrating good work in our community.  And if you can’t stop by in person, you can certainly give online.  Thank you for your support!

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2014 staff retreat

November 7, 2014• *cino Work, Organization, People

Change afoot: Report from the *cino staff retreat

Last fall, the seven members of the *cino volunteer staff and intentional community went on retreat together at St. Gregory’s Abbey in Three Rivers.  Though the monastery is just a 10-minute drive from home, the act of heading out into the woods together for an overnight gave us enough distance to gain some much-needed perspective on our shared work.

Last weekend, that same group of seven gathered again at St. Benedict’s guest house.  When we initially scheduled our annual retreat for this fall, we perhaps were not aware of all of the changes we’d be facing as a group and how much we’d really need this time of sharing and discernment on retreat.  One of us will be moving away at the end of the year.  Several others have had significant job changes — all for the better, but demanding more time and energy.  Another is considering a local move.  Overall, we find ourselves with a much different capacity to do everything we did in the past, while we still remain committed to our common work.

Thanks to skilled facilitation, good food and plenty of play time, we were able to begin and continue important conversations about where we are, and where we’re headed in 2015.  The Rectory, our community house, will be changing significantly, and we supported each other in seeing this shift not as a problem, but as a possibility.  We also honestly acknowledged which of our activities and community connections are life-giving to each of us and which are draining, which is important to acknowledge as we head into a year that we hope will be characterized by joy, gentle change, relatedness, clarity of vision and more-with-less.

We started plugging in some things on the *cino calendar for 2015, but I think we’d all agree that we left on Sunday afternoon with more questions than answers.  And that’s not a bad thing as we head into a season of the year characterized by rest, reflection and waiting.  As we continue to meet for weekly staff meetings and book discussions (we’ve been going through Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging), we plan to keep the questions in front of us, discerning our next steps with trust and openness.  We appreciate your thoughts and prayers as we seek to navigate the coming months as a loving community, for the sake of our greater community.

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