A community garden is like a little shared oasis, a special spot where folks from all walks of life come together to grow delicious veggies, fragrant herbs, and beautiful flowers. It becomes a green sanctuary, where members roll up their sleeves, dig in the dirt, and let nature work its magic. Often organic, community gardens help promote soil health and community connection as much as they do delicious, locally grown food.
Posts tagged #Community
Great Lakes Herb Faire -- Learning and Sharing The People’s Medicine
Cool wind whistled through the white pines, bringing the first hint of winter on this early September day. I was west of Chelsea, visiting the Great Lakes Herb Faire. The Faire provides classes for herbal and naturopathic practitioners and students, shared ceremony, and time for community meeting. Successful since it began in 2014, the Faire draws herbalists from around the country to speak and present, but its focus remains the Great Lakes region, its plants, and practitioners.
A Place in the Circle-- A Yearly Gathering of Women
I tell everyone that my daughter went to the high school featured in the movie “Mean Girls,” and that it was true to its namesake, minus the caricatures. Back then, I didn’t know how to help my daughter navigate the turbulent social climate. That is, until I had a women’s circle at my house. She sat in a few times and the women loved her. Not once was my daughter marginalized. The women in our circle made space for her by listening, asking questions, and affirming that her goals were important. Fast forward to our new lives: my daughter is thriving at a university in Los Angeles with her own circle, and I have found one here in Ann Arbor. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from being part of a women’s circle is that it is a safe and sacred space to come together with authenticity, and its regenerative properties sustain me.
The Feminine Face of God in Ann Arbor
I posed many similar questions to different spiritual leaders in our community in an effort to educate myself about the Ann Arbor goddess scene. They all recognized the dominant masculine energies which pervade our society and still they were hopeful, funny, erudite, and, most importantly, wise. They helped me see that I wasn’t confused, but that the grander cosmos was unaligned.
Members of the Zen Community on Zen Meditation and Daily Life
To gain insight into how Zen practice impacts daily life, we asked eight Zen Temple practitioners, each in different stages of his or her meditation practice, the following questions: 1) How long have you been practicing Zen Meditation? 2) How does your involvement or meditation practice at the Zen Temple show up in your daily life?
Haju Sunim: A Patchwork Life
Reverend Haju Sunim has been at the Ann Arbor Zen Buddhist Temple since 1982. She was ordained as a Dharma teacher in l984 and as a Buddhist priest in l993. She hails from Vancouver, British Columbia, where she was born in 1944. In her early 30’s, she lived in Toronto, where she unwittingly joined the avant-garde of her generation, taking yoga classes and seeking new paths.
The Crazy Wisdom Interview with Jim Robert of Pioneer High School by Maureen McMahon
Pioneer High School social studies teacher Jim Robert is known to many, including his students, simply as “JR.” At age 58, he has been teaching for 25 years, 24 of them at Pioneer. In 1996, while teaching a philosophy class to seniors, he began to develop an innovative curriculum idea: how could he create an experience for students to explore self-awareness and self-examination in an academic setting, especially as our culture moves toward test results driven measures of success?
Seeds for the Future — A Local Organic Seed Grower Explains the Importance of the Emerging Seed Movement
By Erica Kempter
Let’s stop and envision an ideal food system. One that gives us the collective ability to feed ourselves sustainably for generations to come; one that provides healthy, safe food for all. A system where most of this food comes from local, organic farms that don’t work against nature, but with it. . .
