A photo of before, and one of now....
Three years ago, we began the Miracle Among the Ruins project
here in far north Tulsa and Turley area, turning blight into beauty, eyesores
into places of community, and working on the poor health and food insecurity of
our 74126 and surrounding zipcodes.
Today, Saturday April 13, we hold our Big Event Spring
Planting Day at The Welcome Table Community KitchenGardenPark and Orchard, 6005
N. Johnstown Ave., taking it into our next phase of creating a space for people
to become neighbors, to find peace, to grow and share healthy food (twenty
varieties of tomatoes, 18 varieties of peppers, a dozen varieties of melons and
squash, a Three Sisters Garden (corn, beans, squash), a Vegetable Village of
edible playhouse gardens for children, a Kiwi Dragon garden art and play space,
25 raised beds, 50 fruit and nut tree orchard, berries of all kinds, damaged
trees turned into art and storytelling places, old tires into art, and restful
places amid the ruins of abandoned buildings one of many of which just burned
two nights ago right across from the park after years of neglect by owners and
officials. Stop by today to tour, to help, to put in a bed for your family, your
church, your civic group, your friends, or yourself. Free lunch for helpers.
Things for all ages and skill sets and physical abilities to do. Start the day
at the community pancake breakfast, 7 am to 10 am, at the Lodge Hall, 6227 N.
Quincy Ave., $5 all you care to eat, then come to the park about half a mile
away.
Two years ago we began using the largest, oldest church
building, that had been abandoned for several years, at 5920 N. Owasso Ave., one
block west of Peoria Ave. as our Welcome Table Community Center, with library,
meeting space, computer center, clothing and more room, and food pantry, and art
space. We continue to work on repurposing all of the property into community
space, and our centerpiece now is the expanded Welcome Table Free Cornerstore
Pantry where people come and select their own food items, as they would in a
commercial for profit grocery, but with nutrition counselors, and where we have
a counselor to help them sign up or ask questions about food assistance cards
from the Dept. of Human Services. We provide opportunities for people who
receive to give back to others too; and we will have our next Big Food Event,
the Mobile Van Food Giveaway, on Friday, May 3. We are partnering with McLain
High School on this event. Volunteers are needed to come help us from 9 am to
noon, and receive a free lunch after the event. The very next day, Sat. May 4,
from 11 am to 1 pm we will have a Community Food Day that combines our regular
First Saturday gathering with a followup from the Mobile Van the day before.
Volunteers are always needed at all events, including our weekly Wednesday Noon
to 4 pm Community Food Day at the center.
But first, at the Center, on this Sunday, April 14, at 3 pm we
will hold our open-sourced leadership circle to brainstorm and develop ideas and
relationships and projects that keep us on the radical edge of growing community
in abandoned places. It is where the idea for the expansion and change in the
pantry emerged. On Sunday we will explore ways to turn requests for financial
assistance into deeper relationships of economic investment in people no one
else would invest in, as well as exploring ways to create a barter economy, and
economic co-ops. And you never know what the Spirit will reveal.
Also this Sunday, we will leave from the Center at 4:30 pm to
go to the 5 pm Taize worship service (or invite any who cant make the
brainstorming to meet up with us there), with communion, and meal at Trinity
Episcopal Church downtown at 5th and Cincinnati Ave. This is a missional act as
well, as we are moving from creating "a church" to growing our participation as
members in "the church," that people of God seeking in a myriad of ways to make
the loving and liberating Jesus visible in the world. This past Sunday, as we
will on the First Sundays, we held worship and communion with one of our local
partner churches, Turley United Methodist Church, across from the gardenpark and
orchard, and then we held a picnic lunch in the park. On Second Sundays we will
go to Trinity downtown. On other Sundays we will worship with other churches
across denominations, making connections, and growing relationships with them,
moreso than feeling we have to create our own identity through worship each
week, and sometimes we will still gather and lead worship in our own spaces at
the park or center or out in abandoned places of the community, as it emerges
organically, not organizationally.
(A personal missional aside note: Sometimes it seems worship,
or rather liturgy, as wonderful as it is, can get in the way of the deep soulful
community relational connecting with and through God and one another, especially
if it begins to feel forced or added onto for its own sake. It has always been
here one of the four paths of manifesting church: missional service to and with
and for others, community and relationships among us, personal spiritual growth
and learning, and also community worship. Experiencing worship with other
diverse groups, retreating more, holding spiritual check-ins, even partying and
sharing lives more all has a way of loosening us up and opening us up to the
promptings of the Spirit, and moving us yet another way out of ourselves, over
ourselves, de-centralizing ourselves so that we can serve others and God better.
At least that has been part of the discernment underway, and the continiuing
experiment with trial and error and epiphany that we call missional community. I
will be looking at ways we incorporate prayer and response into as many of our
missional moments together as possible, and also creating a separate spiritual
center space as well for those who come to receive food or information or for
meetings, etc, and wish to find worshipful space and resources, so worship may
become more thoroughly infused into our work even as it becomes less something
"we" do to create a sense of "we" on a set day and time.)
We are looking ahead to the weekend after this one already too
for great community engagement. On Friday April 19 at 4 pm the McLain School
Foundation meets at the school near us; and on Saturday, April 20 there is much
community sports activities at O'Brien Park, and we will be focused on helping
with the Global Youth Day at 10:30 am and the following Community Resource Fair
at the new Health Dept. Wellness Center from Noon to 2 pm, all at 56th St. and
Martin Luther King Blvd (formerly known as Cincinnati Ave.). Come experience and
learn about what all is going on with many of the nonprofits in our area, and
support the youth of McLain and northside schools and neighborhood youth
regardless of where they go to school. Then at 6 pm on Saturday, April 20 you
won't want to miss the McLain and Booker T. Washington Alumni Classic Basketball
Game to be held at the BTW Nate Harris Field House, where we will have a booth
for the McLain Foundation.
For the rest of the month after that, I will be out of the
country in the Philippines as I go preach and talk and learn from the Unitarian
Universalist Church of the Philippines as it celebrates its 58th anniversary,
having begun as an indigenous Christian Universalist church in and around
Dumaguete in the Negros Oriental. I will be preaching on "Jesus' Lost and Found:
Becoming Alive Again In and Through Community" based on the parable of the
prodigal sons in the Gospel of Luke, and talking on The Missional Church, and
planning how the UUCP and the UU Christian Fellowship can grow together and help
us launch a new global initiative for progressive Christians within, related
to, and beyond Unitarian Universalism and other faith communities. You can learn
more about the church at www.uuphilippines.org. And about the UUCF at
www.uuchristian.org.
I am also working a lot these days on the Missional Revival
2013 in New Orleans: Jesus, Justice, and the Mission of the Post-Katrina Church"
to be held Oct. 10-13 this year at the Center for Ethical Living and Social
Justice Renewal at the First UU Church of New Orleans. All are welcome and
invited to come help us work in New Orleans, and much worship, and have small
group sessions and great social times, especially during the acclaimed Louisiana
Seafood Festival. Our panel on the theme will include two dynamic local
preachers and activists, Rev. David Billings, a United Methodist minister and
anti-racist organizer, see www.revdavidbillings.com, and Rev. Dr. Dwight
Webster, an African American Baptist minister and seminary professor and
community activist from New Orleans, see http://www.christianunity.org/index.php/pastor/1-pastor-biography. If you want to stay at the Center itself in the intentional spiritual
community space, you will need to reserve space with us by June 7. We will have
online registration up soon. But let me know if interested. We will also have a
block of rooms reserved at the Garden District Hampton Inn for those who wish to
stay there or register closer to the event. That hotel is right on the St.
Charles Streetcar line and close to the church too. You can see lots more on the
schedule, the worship services, the Center and more at our Facebook Event Page
at https://www.facebook.com/events/155450421288980/.
Finally, for those in the Tulsa area, keep Saturday May 11 in
mind to come these way and experience Street Cred 2013, a community neighborhood
makeover event for 36th and N. Peoria area, sponsored by Tulsa Young
Professionals and others; we will have a booth at the event fair part of this
glimpse into what renewal in the area can look like. Fun and Justice going
together, growing together.
Thanks, blessings, and more soon,
thanks for all the prayers for all the above,
Ron
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