From Pastor Grace:
On September 11 we’re hosting Healing Harvest, a community meal on the lawn. The date was no accident. It is in the times when we are most shaken that we need to hold onto one another and what really matters the most. To spend the anniversary of an event designed to rip us apart bringing people together is a resurrection work, a way of saying that love and life are stronger than death and despair.
As a church, we will put on a potluck for our friends, Cooperative Parish, nearby churches, neighbors, and passersby. The beauty of a potluck is that it is organized in the belief that lots of people will participate, bring dishes to share, try new things, maybe sit with new people. You cannot have a potluck alone – kind of like communion.
This is an opportunity to showcase our theological commitments. We want to feature the produce we grow, glean, rescue and share. Lots of places offer food to those in need. We grow food with love and give it away no questions asked. We create community in the making, in the sharing, and prayerfully this time, in the fishing. How we choose to come together says so much about what we perceive the kin-dom to be.
This is also a way of embracing fresh language for old ideas that are new again. In hosting a farm-to-table, field-to-fork feast we aren’t really doing much that is new to us, but we are actively rethinking how we communicate with those for whom church is not a place they see themselves as needing or wanting to be.
This is for fun! For joy! The joy of being together, the joy of a shared meal, the joy of good music – we will be hosting a reggae band – The Humble Boy Club.
Months ago, we declared what most defines us is our determination to share not just enough with others, but to share lavishly, with abandon, wasting nothing, taking nothing for granted. So much of what makes us who we are is shown in the instinctive desire to turn even simple gifts into extravagant expressions of God’s love. This event is a way of celebrating the ways in which we reaffirmed and began to recommit to those ideas in our Dream Team work a few months ago.
With this letter you are receiving a link to sign up to bring something. The more of us who contribute the more amazing this will be. Bring a dish. Bring a friend. There is a suggested donation of $20, but no one will be keeping track, no one will be turned away – it’s just not who we are. And if you need help with the sign up, just send a message back with what you want to bring.
Set up will begin at 3. Around 5 we want to be able to welcome people and offer hor douvres. At 6 we will be ready for people to make their plates and some new friends. We will be featuring local venison and fish in addition to the bounty of our gardens. If we have food left over, we will make it into meals to supplement Free Fresh Food and add to the Community Fridge.
I can’t wait to spend the day with all of you, together, in the community, doing what we do best.
Love,
Pastor Grace
