I would  like to host a weekly meditation/conversation time for gardeners and others in the garden. Maybe starting in June. But for now… just planting seeds.

Here is a meditation from A Mystic Garden: Working with Soil, Attending to Soul, by Gunilla Norris. Enjoy

Peace – Bill

First Planting –

Here is the moment for which I have been waiting so many months. The packet is open. The seeds lie inside full of promise, dry and potent. Some are so small they can hardly be handled. This is the season for arugula and lettuce — the daring early crop that can tolerate wet, cool weather.

I make shallow furrows, sprinkle in the seeds. Then they are tamped down with a thin layer of earth. Here’s the lettuce bed, full of intention and hope.

Can we remember that every thought we have is seed also and that we plant seeds inside ourselves all the time? Our inner gardens have thistles and ragweed as well as marigolds and sunflowers.

Our thoughts may seem small to us, almost insignificant, not unlike the lettuce seeds put in the ground. But they can grow into significance. Our lives develop from them and in many ways they determine our existence.

How can we realize what we plant daily? How do we bare this responsibility?

Seeds germinate in the dark, sink their roots, develop stems. It is the way of thought also.  Only when what has been invisible breaks the surface can you see what to weed, what to feed and water.

“Starting the Seeds for your Garden” – a free workshop for parents and children, presented by Growing Gardens and sponsored by PUMC’s Parkrose Heights Community Garden – April 17, 2010.

Space is VERY limited – first round of information and registration is this Sunday at the garden, PUMC 111th and NE Knott St.

Join us 3 p.m. this Sunday, Feb 28

• register for the free workshop “Starting the Seeds…”
• find out what’s happening at the garden this year…
• sign up for a raised garden bed or in-ground plot…
• join us for snacks and an informal presentation

Growing Gardens -http://www.growing-gardens.org/

But we are finding common ground. And it’s  just that… common ground – working the earth together, planting seeds together, watering/tending/weeding and even sharing the harvest. 5 communities, 1 community garden.

It’s our first season. And even though we got started late (planted in mid-June) our gardeners from the four-corners of this earth have quite a harvest for their efforts. A few tomatoes, I’ve heard, have made there way to the SnowCap food pantry as well.

We still have lots to learn and there is much work to do to get the garden up to capacity. But I am thrilled! What’s most exciting is the building of relationships between microcultures that traditionally we have walled off from each other.  Schools (public elementary and a new Montessori Pre-School), neighborhood associations, and churches (Hispanic Pentecostal, Mixed-up Methodists, Oromo Seventh-Day Adventist). OK, it may be more than 5 communities – I owe you an announcement of the Lily Field Montessori School.

On  Friday, October 2, 6:30-8:30 p.m., we’ll meet in the garden for a Native American blessing of the garden, then share a pot-luck dinner. Sharing stories over food? Doesn’t get any better than this. Hope you’ll join us.

Peace – Bill

A conflict has surfaced in my schedule. SEIU Local 503, service employees union representing thousands of public employee service workers, is staging a public demonstration downtown Portland Sunday at the same time as our Community Garden meeting. As the State of Oregon tries to cut $4 billion from the state budget over the next two years, our legislators are proposing cuts that will lay a signficant part of the burden of our tough economic times on the shoulders of low income families in need of public services (through reduced services) AND low income public service employees (through the loss of jobs).

The organizers of the demonstration are using the image of the transformation of service employees moving from BEHIND THE COUNTER (as in services such as food stamps) to IN FRONT OF THE COUNTER (as recipients of those services).  JUSTICE says budget cuts shouldn’t be shouldered by the most vulnerable in our midst. So I plan to attend the demonstration.

Please let me know if you need anything from me for the meeting. And keep up the great work on the garden! Well done – you guys rock!

Peace, Pastor Bill

This is the hook our national advertising campaign RETHINKCHURCH  is using to invite today’s faith seekers from late teens through mid-thirties to connect with today’s church. It’s not just about Sunday! Church is about an applied faith that demonstrates a profound transformation of the personal and the community TODAY. I found the above excerpt in this week’s Newsweek Magazine inviting seekers to connect with thousands of job training programs through 10thousanddoors.org.

In this regard just  look at the convergence of applied faith experiences on June’s horizons here at PUMC. Here they are:

Music and Drama Camp – June 16-20. 33 children/youth from our neighborhoods have registered for this fabulous experience of team-building and gift-development led by Lesley Bossert and Molly Fazio, our highly acclaimed and talented (and extremely fun) music ministry staff. And you don’t want to miss the BBQ at noon Saturday, June 20 followed by music/drama presentations. Ya’ll come! Open to all.

Summer Reading Program – June 15-18, June 22-25, 9-11 a.m. This is our fifth year in partnership with Sacramento Elementary School hosting young readers during the first two weeks of summer, then finishing with one week at the end of summer just before school starts. Literacy is undoubtedly one of the components that allows families to break the cycle of poverty. We’re honored to be part of this program that has elevated participants’ reading skills over summer months that commonly see declines. This year will be Betty Keast’s first year as coordinator at PUMC. Way-to-go Betty!

Parkrose Heights Community Garden – scrambling to open in June. Water lines are set, building of raised beds is on the near horizon, and then we’ll be off and running. Hands-in-the-dirt spirituality just in time for summer. Katrina Kellmer, our first garden coordinator has a garage-full of seeds planted and they’ll be ready for transplanting any minute. (A community project of PUMC in partnership with Parkrose Heights Assoc. of Neighbors and Sacramento Elementary School).

What if… church wasn’t just a place to go on Sunday, but a place for neighborhood children to get some help reading, find their giftedness in music and drama? What if… church was a place of diverse ages and ethnicities and economic capacities working together to grow healthy food for their families and neighbors? What if…

Get Involved… Bill

For the next six weeks teams of garden bees will be buzzing around our community garden space working to prepare the space for a June opening of the Parkrose Heights Community Garden. The following is a lineup of dates/times/tasks for all you who feel a little more spiritual with some dirt under your fingernails. We would love to have you join in.

May 2, Saturday – 9 a.m. to Noon: Finish setting fence posts. We’ve dug the post holes. They’re waiting and ready for concrete and posts. We need people to help mix concrete , a couple of teams of post-setters and many helpers/runners. If we finish setting posts early we’ll start installing the rail hangers (metal hangers that attach the wood railings from post to post).

May 9 & 16, Saturday – 9 a.m. to Noon: Sod days. Removing sod is a big job. We’re still in the decision-making process about how we’ll do it. Renting a sod cutter, rolling it, hauling it to a recycling center is one option. We’re exploring several other options as well.

May 23, Saturday – 9 a.m. to Noon: Fence rail installation and irrigation system trenches dug. The irrigation system will be installed professionally after trenches are completed.

May 30 and/or June 6, Saturday – 9 a.m. to Noon: Raised beds constructed, grounds prepared, sign installed, shed delivered. Seeds ready for planting. Sunshine and 80 degrees – right?

Of course all this will change because some things will take longer and some things won’t. 9 a.m. is the start time each Saturday. Work til noon if you can. If teams want to stay for a little longer, we’ll have lunch for you. If you can just come by for moral support, we want that, too.

If construction is not your thing we also have a couple of teams working on Garden Management (how we organize ourselves and operations of the garden), and Promotion/Publicity. Contact me if you’re interested. bill@parkroseumc.org

Many hands makes light work.

Peace, Bill

View a PDF of the plans

Our community garden project is on the move. As I write this we are collecting soil samples for testing and beginning to design the plot. June 1 is our “open for business” target date. We’re planning to roll out the garden over several years allowing for a learning curve as we go. So by June we should have a third of the space ready for shovel and seeds. There is much to do between now and then.

We have created several teams to put “community” into this garden project. Design, organization, publicity, construction, and money are a few of the areas we are looking for. Another is spirituality. There is no question that gardening is a deeply spiritual experience. The church’s very purpose is to come along-side people in their spiritual journey to connect and strengthen as we go.

Team meetings on the horizon -
Saturday, April 11, 2009 – 2 p.m. at PUMC, (Ed. Wing) – Plot Design
Sunday, April 19, 2009 – 2 p.m. at PUMC (Ed. Wing room 1) – All Teams

Please join us!
Questions? contact me at bill@parkroseumc.org
Comments? (sign in and comment away)
Peace,
Bill

Here’s a poem shared by Robin at our last meeting:

A Gardener’s Springtime Prayer
Here are my hands, Spirit of Earth and Space,
mysterious Wisdom within and behind everything that is
and is promising.

Gardener ever ancient, ever new,
who fashioned out of those colossal explosions at our beginning
all the avenues to life, to its complexities,
and to the communion we are destined for,
here are my hands,

Give them the skills of a midwife
to put good order into expectations,
to coax along the natural forces of life and growth
that are already within the earth,
and to help wisely with the harvesting.

Here are my hands,
and here are my dreams.

(from A Lively Garden Prayer Book by William Cleary)

Listen to the program MP3

Hunger persists. The wealthy United States is home to millions of people who can’t sustain basic nutrition in their homes. Those numbers are growing as more families are going hungry because of recent wide-spread layoffs. Our guests are hunger-eradicating activist, JOEL BERG, who is the Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. He served in senior Executive Service positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture for eight years. His new book is called, “All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?” CAREY MORGAN is the Director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, a non-profit that fights hunger in Southeastern Pennsylvania through education, outreach, and advocacy. And Pennsylvania State Senator MIKE BRUBAKER (R), from Lancaster County, is the co-chair and founder of the legislation of the Pennsylvania Hunger Caucus.

Much gratitude goes to Rob Eaton who is our point person. Rob and his wife Petal met in Africa in the Peace Corp where they were both involved with developing food sources for the villages they served. Keep up the good work.

Bill

Parkrose United Methodist Church (PUMC) proposes the design and development of a community garden to promote the building of strong relationships between diverse socio-economic and ethnic communities residing in the Parkrose neighborhood. The plan is to create a garden consisting of 16 raised beds, 8 in-ground garden plots, and a small gathering area established on a 75 X 90 plot, adjacent to the PUMC church building located at 11111 NE Knott Street. With the Parkrose Knott School, the Knott Street Park, and a public transportation bus stop all within one block of the site, the garden will create a central node for the community. The raised beds will be made available for a small fee to residents of the Parkrose neighborhood, with focused outreach to low and fixed income individuals and families, people of color, immigrants, and people with disabilities. Members of the PUMC congregation whose socio-economic or ethnic demographic aligns with the project’s target communities will also be encouraged to participate. Under the leadership of PUMC a board will be established with garden members and community members to manage and oversee the implementation and future operation of the community garden.

The project goal is to establish positive connections between diverse populations that traditionally do not connect with each other. By providing a venue for community members to grow their own food while also establishing partnerships with local neighborhood organizations, PUMC will create the opportunity for diverse populations within the community to work together toward a common mission. This work will promote understanding, acceptance and ultimately celebration of the diversity within the community while also fulfilling a basic human need for food. As such, by the end of the project year, December 31, 2009, PUMC intends that each raised bed and each garden plot will be actively used by community members that reflect the demographics found within the Parkrose neighborhood. This goal directly aligns with PUMC’s organizational priorities of reducing hunger in lower income families and communities.