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April 12 2023 Work Party
What a joy and delight to meet such heart-filled people and work alongside them for a better today and tomorrow. What a balm to now know that they are out there living their values of community and connection in all they do. Thank you Jim, Teresa, Noah, Peyton, Sid, Karen, Cameron, Kaitlyn, and Alby. Your hearts are now forever part of mine. To lean more about these fine humans, visit Tinte Cellars.
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April 1, 2023 Work Party
A song for you.
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March 11 2023 Work Party
You arrive, the Elders arrive, two Christophers from Texas find their way to us through separate winding paths. We build protective cages, secure them with wooden stakes, pull ivy and wrestle Himalayan blackberry from the earth. Betty and Thelma race side-by-side through the muddy field to rest at the center of a prickly pile of English hawthorn branches. You hold a far-ranging course for two in science and nature and culture, maybe untangling a theory of everything beneath the osoberry blooms. I hear just enough to be intrigued, not enough to really know. We prop up a listing conifer. You snuggle Betty and Thelma, they gaze with beseeching eyes, give…
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March 4 2023 Planting Work Party
“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” –Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachman The feedback feels personal and harsh, landing hard after more than a year of working diligently to be present to partner needs and desires. The path with this child feels dark and thorny. And this world. We cannot seem to change in the face of overwhelming evidence that things are not well. Delusion gets in the way of clear seeing, of knowing the questions to ask, of discernment. We grasp for the one perfect something we believe will erase all our suffering. We cause ourselves so much suffering. “This moment or this place…
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March 3 2023 Preparing for Planting
85 native plants wait for human hands to place them tenderly in the ground.
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February 4 2023 Work Party
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” –Desmond Tutu Thank you for being the light, my dear ones, and a wellspring of hope.
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January 16 2023 Work Party MLK Jr Day of Service
“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking before the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1968 It was an honor to serve alongside you. Thank you with every part of my being.
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January 7 2023 Work Party
Cut English hawthorn hauled. Cozy rooms carved out of a tangle of Himalayan blackberry. Wondering who might dwell under a small mound of decaying wood. We met here in this new year, full of possibility, under the blessed, wondrous rain, to give each other the gift of being alive together.
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December 3 2022 Work Party
Most of the English hawthorn in our original restoration area has been cut down – thank you Quinn! – to make way for a planned planting this spring. We clipped, sawed, and hauled tree limbs in wheelbarrows, as many as two hearts and four hands could, through beautiful white snow. Red berries dropped like jewels into sparkling cold puddles. Birds revealed their presence through song. Falling clumps of wet snow sprung branches into oscillations that reverberated the silence around us, the smell of wood smoke hung in the air. A small white dog bound through snow yipping with the pleasure of being alive, a human chasing behind. Little snow people…
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November 25 2022 Work Party (three years)
A song for us. We belong together — for these past three years, for many more. For always. *** We had a special guest at our third anniversary work party — constant, steady, wonderful, life sustaining rain. We felt the drumming of ki on hoods and hats, watched water meet wetland, observed ki seeking Swamp Creek in sinuous, braided strands over grass and rock and mud. All the while, clippers and shovels met blackberry canes and earth, carving out space for hidden ferns holding on and exiled plants we will one day invite back. Robins skittered across wet earth, snails nestled in the reed canary grass. It was wet and…
