I wanna dance the tango with chance
I wanna ride on the wire
'Cause nothing gets done with dust in your gun
And nobody respects a liar
So goodbye for a while I'm off to explore
Every boundary and every door
Yeah I'm going north
I wanna know where children would go
If they never learned to be cool
'Cause nothing's achieved when pushed up a sleeve
Till nobody thinks you're a fool
So goodbye for a while I'm out to learn more
About who I really was before
Yeah I'm going north
Up where the hunted hide with ease
Under the arms of eye-less trees
Up where the answers fall like leaves
Oh and your love is all I need
Yeah I'm going north
I'll be back October 31st...
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Center for Nature and Christian Spirituality
Hello friends and family!
It’s been over a month since starting my program at Westminster Woods called The Center for Nature and Christian Spirituality and today I think I might be at a place to start informing you of what we are doing here.
Our first month was a month of observation as seen in the Permaculture design process. The idea of Permaculture (or sustainable agriculture) seems to be one that engrosses all of the many things we are doing here. The Wikipedia page says that “Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies.” Why fight against nature when you could work with it? In designing anything with a Permaculture approach, you first observe to see what is already in motion. That’s what this month has been.
So in the list of things we are doing, Permaculture is one of them. We are being certified in Permaculture in February but are getting some foundations now. Part of that is because we are looking at creating a teaching, herb garden at camp (next to Vernon by the cobb oven and vesper). We want to make a place where we can teach the campers about organic and sustainable food and why that is important and, for summer camp, how that fits in with our faith. This is one of our big projects. We have written for a grant and doing some big fundraiser, also.
A similar but separate project that we are working on is bringing more organic food to camp. This is a big project that will take many years but we are taking a stab at the ground work that needs to happen for that. We are already getting veggies from a local small farm where one of the EE naturalists works/lives. Westminster Woods is their first whole sale and provided them with more customers so they can plant more. This year we would like to get the whole salad bar to be organic and local.
So that’s a little of the nature aspect. The majority of our spirituality part is coming from our classes at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Every Tuesday night, we drive an hour down to San Anselmo and sleep on campus. Then wake up in the morning and go to our Contemplative Listening class. We also have our community class in the afternoon. This is the class that is for people in this program. We are reading books about how to live a life of spirituality and faith. We also process our community living. This is our time to be slow and “take a long, loving look at the real.” There is a lot of synthesis that happens in these classes and good conversations.
I’ve already talked about how we are learning Permaculture. Along with that, there are other skills we are learning. We’ve been going into Windsor for a weekend here and there. We are learning holistic financial planning. What a great thing to learn about while I’m still a young adult!
We’ve also been spending time in Windsor doing work exchange. A lot of what we are doing here is done on work exchange. Instead of money exchanging hands and making our program cost more, we are doing work for the different companies involved with the center. In order to pay for our housing at camp, we are helping with the environmental education program and guest groups. That’s great because we can help the camp so they don’t need to pay people for the work we are doing and we are also learning about the EE program, etc. We are also helping at the ‘ranch’ where we are learning Permaculture and holistic financial planning. The other weekend we helped build a rain garden. We finished that in a weekend which would not have been possible without us but we also were learning the Permaculture process and some strategies for working with what nature was already doing. Win win, right? We are also taking out invasive species of plants on the hillside at SFTS and there was a lot of work that was done outside of the four apprentices to make everything work with the seminary. Awesome, revolutionary stuff.
And there’s more. We are doing more individual projects around camp to help bring in revenue or help fill in gaps that are around. Also, next week we are doing a Sacred Quest where we go out on our own for four days and pretty much have some awesome Jesus times. We are living in community and learning with each other in that.
I’m so happy to be here. Even as I sit here after a day of watching Food, Inc., learning about the pollutants in our air and the negatives of our consumer economy, I am happy to be in a place where I can look at what is happening in our world in a contemplative way, taking a long, loving look at the real with people who have hope and want to make a change, too. I’m happy to be taking a year to become a renewable resource, to learn what it means to love my neighbor and what that would look like if I started viewing nature as my neighbor.
It’s been over a month since starting my program at Westminster Woods called The Center for Nature and Christian Spirituality and today I think I might be at a place to start informing you of what we are doing here.
Our first month was a month of observation as seen in the Permaculture design process. The idea of Permaculture (or sustainable agriculture) seems to be one that engrosses all of the many things we are doing here. The Wikipedia page says that “Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies.” Why fight against nature when you could work with it? In designing anything with a Permaculture approach, you first observe to see what is already in motion. That’s what this month has been.
So in the list of things we are doing, Permaculture is one of them. We are being certified in Permaculture in February but are getting some foundations now. Part of that is because we are looking at creating a teaching, herb garden at camp (next to Vernon by the cobb oven and vesper). We want to make a place where we can teach the campers about organic and sustainable food and why that is important and, for summer camp, how that fits in with our faith. This is one of our big projects. We have written for a grant and doing some big fundraiser, also.
A similar but separate project that we are working on is bringing more organic food to camp. This is a big project that will take many years but we are taking a stab at the ground work that needs to happen for that. We are already getting veggies from a local small farm where one of the EE naturalists works/lives. Westminster Woods is their first whole sale and provided them with more customers so they can plant more. This year we would like to get the whole salad bar to be organic and local.
So that’s a little of the nature aspect. The majority of our spirituality part is coming from our classes at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Every Tuesday night, we drive an hour down to San Anselmo and sleep on campus. Then wake up in the morning and go to our Contemplative Listening class. We also have our community class in the afternoon. This is the class that is for people in this program. We are reading books about how to live a life of spirituality and faith. We also process our community living. This is our time to be slow and “take a long, loving look at the real.” There is a lot of synthesis that happens in these classes and good conversations.
I’ve already talked about how we are learning Permaculture. Along with that, there are other skills we are learning. We’ve been going into Windsor for a weekend here and there. We are learning holistic financial planning. What a great thing to learn about while I’m still a young adult!
We’ve also been spending time in Windsor doing work exchange. A lot of what we are doing here is done on work exchange. Instead of money exchanging hands and making our program cost more, we are doing work for the different companies involved with the center. In order to pay for our housing at camp, we are helping with the environmental education program and guest groups. That’s great because we can help the camp so they don’t need to pay people for the work we are doing and we are also learning about the EE program, etc. We are also helping at the ‘ranch’ where we are learning Permaculture and holistic financial planning. The other weekend we helped build a rain garden. We finished that in a weekend which would not have been possible without us but we also were learning the Permaculture process and some strategies for working with what nature was already doing. Win win, right? We are also taking out invasive species of plants on the hillside at SFTS and there was a lot of work that was done outside of the four apprentices to make everything work with the seminary. Awesome, revolutionary stuff.
And there’s more. We are doing more individual projects around camp to help bring in revenue or help fill in gaps that are around. Also, next week we are doing a Sacred Quest where we go out on our own for four days and pretty much have some awesome Jesus times. We are living in community and learning with each other in that.
I’m so happy to be here. Even as I sit here after a day of watching Food, Inc., learning about the pollutants in our air and the negatives of our consumer economy, I am happy to be in a place where I can look at what is happening in our world in a contemplative way, taking a long, loving look at the real with people who have hope and want to make a change, too. I’m happy to be taking a year to become a renewable resource, to learn what it means to love my neighbor and what that would look like if I started viewing nature as my neighbor.
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