Please share with others these upcoming events and
reflections...
Make A Difference in our Far North Community and in Your Life,
Connect with us, Donate To Our Mission, www.turleyok.blogspot.com
Hi all. Many opportunities coming up in the next weeks to help
us as we seek to renew community, empower our residents on the northside, and
grow healthy lives and neighborhoods; if we do these things, our other issues
that more often make news headlines---school issues, crime issues---they will
take care of themselves. It is about growing organic life. If we have school
test scores much lower than they should be (though they are rising slowly), or
if we have domestic violence, drugs, gangs, juvenile crime (though those are
much lower than people stereotype), the way to focus on them is to focus on the
soil in which they are planted: that is community life, neighborhood spirit, and
justice for those most neglected, abandoned, wounded, left out. Let September be
a month when we turn our attention and time and resources to making sure we have
healthy soil in which to grow our communities.
Recently, some people visiting our area described our Turley
and far northside area as "a dying community." If you look at the statistics,
and the stereotypes, it is hard to counter that description. But if you look at
the stories and the spirit of the people living in, moving into, resisting, and
if you look at just this small glimpse of what is happening here in just one
piece of the picture, it would better be described as a "resurrection
community." Bless or curse, choose life or death, which vision of life calls out
to you?
Tuesday, Sept. 4, 9 am to 2 pm, North Tulsa Farmers Market at
TCC Northeast Campus, apache and harvard. And every Tuesday and Friday morning,
9:30 am to Noon, our Food Pantry, clothing room, community center. Also we are
blessed to host the Legal Aid Society most Tuesdays and Fridays with us also
during these hours. Free legal advice on a multitude of issues. Spread the word.
Wednesday, Sept. 5: At McLain High School 1:30 pm grant
announcement of a $100,000 award for the school from AT&T. Lots happening in
the next few months at McLain; see below. It is a privilege to serve on the
School Foundation Board; we pray for the new principal Darrius Kirk and all
there this year as they face many challenges of growth and change, serving more
students.
Thursday, Sept. 6, GROW TURLEY deep planning meeting, 3:30 pm,
at the community center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave. Focusing on disaster response,
incorporation into a city research, abandoned buildings and connecting leaders
to coordinate planning for this area.
Friday, Sept. 7 Day of Caring at our community center and
community gardenpark and orchard, as we host people from Nordam, Hillcrest
Medical Center, and Legal Aid Society of Eastern Oklahoma volunteering to make a
difference with us. Come volunteer to work on our center and grounds, getting
ready for our big fundraiser auction, and improving the gardenpark, 6005 N.
Johnstown Ave. Come and see what's going on; come help us host; come serve
alongside these helpers; thanks to the United Way. It all begins at dawn and
goes to dusk; come for as long or as short a time as you can, and spread the
word.
Saturday, Sept. 8, Community fundraising breakfast 8 to 10 am
Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227 N. Quincy; 7 am on GardenDay at our gardenpark. Last day
also to register for the Cherokee School reunion on Sept. 22; see
below.
Tuesday, Sept. 11, 6 pm at the Community Center, the first
Turley Area Disaster Response Network Orientation Session and free dinner; come
be a part of building our network of neighborhood leaders, begin mapping our
resources, and helping prepare and spread the communications information our
residents need for a multitude of potential disasters, natural or otherwise. Be
a leader in your immediate area.
Wednesday, Sept. 12 I will be meeting in the evening at OU
Tulsa Graduate Social Work class to help orient them to our service area and
help them get started on this semester's service-learning projects. If you have
connections with other universities and classes in all kinds of departments that
might be interested in working with us to serve our area and educate new
leaders, contact me.
Friday, Sept. 14, 1 pm the real estate auction of the old feed
store and old fire dept building and adjacent lots on North Peoria; an
opportunity to turn abandoned blight back into places of community
transformation or economic development; these are historic buildings in our area
that have been neglected for years; we painted over graffiti and mowed the weeds
and hope to see them put to good use. http://www.williamsauction.com/property-auctions/turley-lots/332563
Saturday, Sept. 15, 10 am. at the Center. Our Big Community
Benefit Auction and Fun-Fest. Help us raise funds for our projects and our
partners. Charity auctioneer Jay Litchfield will be coordinating. We have many
wonderful items donated from law firms, homes, businesses; looking for more.
Lots of items small to large. Everything goes so we can begin renovating the
biggest part of our building space for community kitchen and other use.
Children's activities and community information booths,
refreshments.
Also on Saturday Sept. 15 we will have a crew at the
gardenpark building our new tool and storage shed. And that day I will be
speaking at Suburban Acres library on our sustainability and food justice work
as part of the Library's year long Food for Thought focus.
Also on Saturday, Sept. 15 we will be making our big
announcement about the next online voting event to help us win our
kitchenshelter rain water collection greenhouse. Get your networks primed to
turn out and vote for us again as you did when we won the orchard from the
national fruit tree planting association.
Tuesday, Sept. 18, the Disaster Response Orientation Session
at 6 pm at the Fire Dept building; again we provide free dinner for those who
couldn't make the first session or wish to attend and connect and go deeper and
help our resource mapping.
Friday, Sept. 21, McLain High School Homecoming Game and
Event. Come support our local high school.
Saturday, Sept. 22, Cherokee School every four years Reunion,
this one may be the last one in the school building at 6001 N. Peoria, from 9 am
to 4 pm. (I am setting up a meeting between now and then, I hope, to talk
further with TPS officials about a possible lease use of the school for our
growing food justice center and as a site for community meals and events; if
your non-profit or business is interested in partnering with us to turn this
newly abandoned but wonderfully equipped building into community use again,
contact me).
Sunday, Sept. 23, McLain all grades reunion picnic at Shelter
2 at Mohawk Park, an informal bring your own everything from 1 to 4 pm; a
chance to build bridges and connect with old friends and meet new
ones.
Tuesday, Sept. 25, 6 pm Disaster Response Orientation Session
at O'Brien Park, free dinner, followed by the monthly 7 pm Turley Community
Association TownHall; hear local officials report on activities in the
community, your chance to ask questions.
Coming Up Not To Miss in October: We will again be a part of
helping plan and put on the Fourth Annual Taste of North Tulsa event on
Thursday, Oct. 11, 5:30 pm at McLain High School. Great local food, stressing
healthy eating, with community fair, and great music. Free.
And Saturday, Oct. 13 our Far North Community Renewal
Conference, featuring a tour of our two mile service area, questions and
response, free lunch, keynote presentations by Ann Patton, author of Dan's War
on Poverty about Father Dan Allen, founder of Neighbor for Neighbor, and by
Terry McGee, community business leader and activist on the northside, followed
by small group planning sessions focusing on the major issues facing our
community, helping to move us forward as a community renewal organization and
joining with others to become a movement for this far northside region, from
46th St. North to 76th St. North.
On the Welcome Table missional community side of things,
August was splendid and fun. While I was on vacation and study leave, but
enjoying worship with the group from time to time, we focused on worshipful
support of the Leadership of Women Religious Conference, the "radical nuns"
seeking justice for the poor and the oppressed; we visited and worshipped with
St. Aidan's Episcopal Church here in north Tulsa, we worshipped with All Souls
Church, and our new Board member and resident of Turley, Rev. Eliza Galaher,
recently moved here from Austin, Texas, led worship and conversation at the
community center...For September, we will be focusing again on a theme for the
month: this time "The Spirit of the Bible and The Vision for the Church." Each
Sunday I will take a pivotal story from the Bible and teach on its missional
meaning and we will discuss a facet of our radical vision for what church is and
can be. We gather at the community center, or the garden park, at 9:30 am and go
with study and communion and common meal until the noontime hour, or so. We
invite people to come be a part even of this one day only aspect of our
missional community even if you are unable to be with us for our many communal
gatherings throughout the week. On Sunday morning Sept. 30 I will be travelling
to Stillwater to preach on "Inward/Outward: The Synching and The Salting of the
Soul" and invite you to our missional road trip.
Also being launched in September will be our Praying the Hours
with The Welcome Table. Look on both www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com and
www.missionalmonastics.blogspot.com for more
information coming, and for when you can join us either virtually on those
sites, via Skype group, or with us in face-to-face contemplative centering
prayer sessions to grow and deepen our inward lives to sustain us and shape us
as we live our outward lives in mission in the ways listed above, and in the
myriad of ways in our worklives, our families, and our times with friends that
we "meet God and serve God wherever we go, especially to be with the abandoned
places and people of the Consumer Market Empire. We are already developing this
time to go deep together on our facebook; follow me at revronrobinson there;
using resources from Thomas Merton, Rainer Marie Rilke, Joan Chittister and
others.
blessings, thanks for all you do and hope you will find ways
to do more of it in community with us, and more soon, Ron Robinson
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