Will the groundhog even be able to get out of its burrow? And why would it want to?

             We had the first community meeting of Katie’s Commons this morning, albeit a small meeting.  As I sat in my office yesterday watching the snow blowing across the parking lot, I was put in mind of a white tide rising unimpeded until it crashes upon the beach, in this case the piles of snow from earlier storms, sending a spray flying, in this case a spray of ice crystals. With more snow and high winds predicted overnight I was pretty sure travel would be difficult to impossible by morning.  I contacted those who I had heard were coming to the meeting and asked them to stay home and put a cancellation message on the church voice mail.  But because I had placed flyers throughout the community and at the food pantry I wasn't sure the word of cancellation would get around.  So I headed for church a little after eight this morning.

            The drifting in my driveway was just shy of the limits of my car.  The town roads were passable.  The church parking lot from a distance did not look too bad.  However, the snow shoals of yesterday had grown by several feet; a direct assault on the front door was impossible.  An overland route to the front door, around a tree and behind the snowbank, was possible and this in turn allowed me access to a side door, locked from the inside, on the West side of the building where the wind had swept the icy sidewalk clean. Once opened, a little salt on the sidewalk made for fairly safe entry into the building. A few minutes later the coffee pot was on.  Access and coffee are about all any Lutheran church needs for a meeting.

            One brave soul, a close neighbor, showed up right on time.  We had a delightful meeting.  We talked about what the Commons is to be.  Certainly the garden is a main component of our work.  It will, as said elsewhere, be a link in the food security chain of our community, planned, planted, tended, and harvested by a community of diverse volunteers for the benefit of our food pantry and citizens without easy access to fresh produce.  But the garden has always been only part of the mission of Katie’s Commons.  There is also an educational element.  We will offer educational opportunities related to food issues, e.g. food preparation and preservation as well as seed saving and basic gardening skills.  Recently it occurs to me that there is yet another component that has always been there, but needs lifting up: community building.  A third volunteer opportunity, therefore, in the Commons is hospitality.  We talked about these pieces of Katie’s Commons, discussed funding and possibilities for grants (we have received a grant of seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and have applied to Kitchen Gardeners International for a monetary and supplies grant), and the immediate goals we must focus on, such as beginning to construct raised beds by Easter and planting in late May.   Our first meeting raised some interesting questions and generated energy to move things forward. I also received affirmation that valuable knowledge, skill and experience resides in the community, far beyond the personal resources of any individual.  It takes a village to care for the common good.

            We will try for a general community meeting again on February 8^th.   Gardening, if nothing else, teaches one patience, especially when dealing with the weather.

In the Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

            earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

(Christmas hymn, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, #294)

In the bleak midwinter, breath exhaled as fog,

herald of spring appears, the seed catalog.

Okay, I should leave the classic hymns alone.  However, in the post office box this week, among the last minute advertising that assures me the perfect Christmas gift awaits and is even now on sale, has come the seed catalog; a word of hope and promise in the bleak midwinter.  Such is the nature of the seed.  What a blessing.

In the Commons plans are underway for the spring.  In recent weeks letters have gone out soliciting from community partners names of people who might want to participate in the work of the community garden.  After the first of the year we will gather to put dates to tasks and details to turning the church lawn into garden.  We also have gained another community partner: IMPACT.  The children in this Mulberry, Indiana after school program will be invited to help plant, tend and harvest at Katie’s Commons.  They will be an important link in the chain of our community’s food security, plus it will be a chance to play in the dirt (win-win).  And finally as I dream by the fire, grant applications are being prepared.  While Katie’s Commons is sponsored by Gloria Dei Church and is given the use of land, water and storage facilities we look to the community and friends for the financial support and the additional resources necessary to be successful.  Grants will be an important part of that mix.

In short (to mix a couple of poetic references) in the bleak midwinter, we in the Commons are trying to make perfect our will, taking no thought of the harvest but only of proper sowing. (Choruses from The Rock, T.S. Eliot)

I wish all who read these words a blessed Advent, a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

A Step Forward

Katie's Commons, a community garden, took a step forward this week.  The Congregation Council of Gloria Dei Church voted to sponsor the community garden as a ministry of the congregation and support it as a community administered project.  This means that the council oversees the good order of the ministry and its finances.  The congregation dedicates land, gives access to water, and use of the tool shed.  And the larger community shares in the administration and work of Katie's Commons.  We have an excellent model to follow in the Stone Soup Food Pantry, a ministry of Mulberry United Methodist Church, administered and staffed by representatives of all three Mulberry churches.  Stone Soup Food Pantry will be a partner in the community garden ministry.

Things begin to get a little complicated for me from this point.  I know myself to be an experienced dreamer and an introvert.  Now it is time to put the community into community garden.  I need to share my dream and allow room for others' visions.  I need to share the work also.  A commentary on a reading in this week's lectionary, Isaiah 65:17-25, reminded me that new things are created from the weaving of the people's work and God's work and that which is created from such collaboration includes joy, delight and peace.  My challenge then is to be open to what God and people bring to Katie's Commons.  Our challenge is to find and invite many partners into the garden.

In the weeks to follow this collaboration will take shape, plans will be made and Katie's Commons will begin to become manifest.  Your prayers are needed, your ideas welcomed, your involvement encouraged and in the spring your strong back and shovel are absolutely necessary.  :)

The Commons is a community of volunteers planning, planting, tending, harvesting, and giving food for the common good.  The Commons is God's gift of good land lovingly worked for the commonwealth.  The Commons is knowledge preserved, discovered, grown, and shared for the common well-being.

A Scattering of Seed

Katie's Commons is a work in progress whose genesis can perhaps be traced to my coming to Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (GDLC) seven years ago.  The physical assets of Gloria Dei Church include a lovely building on the West side of Mulberry, Indiana.  The church structure, built in the mid 1970's, is a one story brown brick building situated on approximately 5 acres of land, part of which is leased to a local farmer and planted in corn or soybeans every year.  What is not building, parking lot or land planted in commodity crops is lawn with a small play ground, a picnic shelter, a storage shed and a few trees scattered about; all in all Gloria Dei enjoys a very pretty setting as a small town/rural church. However, these physical assets also set GDLC apart from the other Mulberry churches which are located on lots in town and necessarily have only small green spaces around them.  Land is a gift with which GDLC has been blessed; land is a blessing with which we can bless the community.

The idea of a community garden has swirled around in my mind for some time.  This summer at the Seed Savers Exchange Conference, in the midst of dedicated gardeners, seed savers and community activists, the idea began to form into a vision that can be realized. Here are a scattering of ideas, seeds, that have led to Katie's Commons to date:

The first idea for a name was the Neophuton Community Garden.  Neophuton is a Greek word and means "newly planted seeds."  It appears in St. Paul's writings and describes new Christians and churches, things which had never been seen before but which had great promise for new life, like a newly planted seed.  But a New Testament Greek name came to seem too geeky even to me and besides I couldn't get past hearing that word and seeing in my mind's eye the couch/bed (the new futon) we hauled (with much gnashing of teeth) to my daughter's college apartment a few years ago.

Katie's Commons felt right, a garden at a Lutheran church named in honor of Katharina Luther (nee Von Bora).  Katie was Martin Luther's wife and was quite instrumental in the Reformation.  In a time when women were often pushed to the background, Katie excreted an important influence not only in the Luther home but on all who passed through.  The recorded conversations around the Luthers' dinner table, called Table Talk, reveals her influence.  She is described in her biography as becoming, "gardener, fisher, brewer, fruit grower, cattle and horse breeder, cook, beekeeper, provisioner, nurse and vintner."  Indeed, these attributes point very nicely to a goal of Katie's Commons to promote and facilitate food security in our community.

Here I end for today.  There are more seeds to recall, but that must wait for another time

Katie's Commons

The Friends in Commons blog is an excuse to converse about gardening, the importance of community and nurturing the common good.  The vehicle for this conversation is a community garden being planted in Mulberry Indiana, Katie's Commons.  Below is the proposal made to our local food pantry, Stone Soup, and to the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church Council, two of hopefully many more partners to come in this enterprise.  No ground has yet been broken; we stand at the very beginning of this project. Friends in Commons will chronicle the first year and perhaps beyond of our work.

The idea for Katie's Commons was born of a love for gardening and an observation of increasing food insecurity in our community.  Stone Soup and other pantries such as the one at Cornerstone Assembly of God are doing great work.  The community garden will be a venue to involve more people in the process of providing food and in the process growing community.  The harvest from Katie's Commons will include the common good.

I have much to learn.  I welcome conversation and ask for your prayers.

    Katie’s Commons, a Proposal

Katie’s Commons is a community garden that will serve the people of Mulberry and the surrounding area.  It resides under the umbrella of Gloria Dei Evangelical Lutheran Church, which will allow it to apply for church and community grants and offer appropriate tax breaks to donors.  It also looks to Gloria Dei for the use of land.  However, in its administration Katie’s Commons takes its lead from the Stone Soup Food Pantry in that it seeks to serve beyond the congregation and involve leadership from all the Mulberry churches and the community.

Katie’s Commons (named in honor of Katie Luther, wife of Martin Luther and Reformation leader in her own right) will be a “victory” garden.  It will not, at least initially, parcel out individual plots to members of the community but it will be a garden planted, cared for and harvested by a community of volunteers.  The produce will be selected with those served by the Stone Soup food Pantry in mind.  They will be consulted as to what is to be planted.  They will have opportunities to work in the garden and they will have access to the first fruits of the garden through the food pantry.  Greater detail of mission and implementation will be worked out by the board of directors for Katie’s Commons.

The garden will offer seeds and seedlings in the spring so that clients of the food pantry and people in the larger community can create and plant their own gardens.

In addition to being a source of food Katie’s Commons will also find opportunities to be a source of education.  The knowledge and skills required to provide for one’s own food security are not universally possessed.  Therefore, education, particularly in the areas of gardening, seed saving, food preparation and food preservation, is necessary.  We will seek out teachers and mentors in these areas and facilitate educational opportunities for the community. 

Just as the newly planted seed is the beginning of a miraculous life giving transformation, it is our fervent hope that Katie’s Commons will be a part of a life transforming process in the lives of people and communities.

A Commons Beginning

Greetings Friends,

Somewhat to my surprise, I have felt moved to create a blog.  As a rule I confine my musings to my sermon journal and my preaching in the pulpit of Gloria Dei church in Mulberry, IN.  But as I begin the blog we are in a time of national trouble, the symptoms of which are a partial government shutdown and a threatened default of payments on the national debt.  Our situation has been exacerbated by hardened ideological positions, particularly of Tea Party Republicans.  And while I understand imperfectly their motivations, I am struck by their orientation toward selfish individualism without apparent regard for the common good.  Such a position does not allow for negotiation or compromise.  They seem willing to inflict damage in the commons  without regard for those who share the commons.  When this happens all suffer, but particularly the powerless, those who the Old Testament refer to as "the widow, the orphan and the stranger," who Jesus calls "the least among us."

 I hope I will resist the temptation to simply vent (although I will not promise that I will always resist [see above]).  I do hope to be positive in my musings.  I wish to think about how we might nurture the common life; how we can live our individual lives in safety and dignity in the midst of community. 

Allow me to step back at this point and offer a working definition of "the commons":  simply, those areas of life shared by people, i.e. the community.  These areas are not limited by scale, they include: family, neighborhood, town, state, country, the world, in short, "wherever two or more are gathered."  The commons are also places where personal well-being is dependent on communal well-being, where a web of interdependence unites all in a common bond for the sake of happiness and, ultimately, survival.  This "web" implies that the commons includes more than people e.g. ecological health is a component of communal well-being. 

I welcome your comments and look forward to conversation.