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Posts tagged #community
Kindred Conversations: Susan McLeary and Kelly Campbell
It was a passion flower that first stopped Susan McLeary in her tracks. The exotic flower ignited her passion and initiated her purpose toward becoming a florist, a designer, an artist, and an author. Yet, educator is the title Susan McLeary identifies with most these days.
Rhythm: Good for What Ails You
Can you recall a moment with a group of people having the time of your life? What memory pops up first? Is it a sports event when you were all cheering, or dancing at a wedding, or maybe in a club when your favorite tune played? Did your experience include some kind of rhythm, or let’s name it “pulse,” that was pulling you all together? Most likely you weren’t even aware something else might be happening. You just thought you were having fun. If you think you don’t have rhythm, spoiler alert, you do!
Intervulnerability: Practicing Love at the University of Michigan Art Museum
Humidity weighted the autumn air as I walked across the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus. Vermilion ivy coated the walls of the buildings while orange trees stood like flames amid the evergreen shrubs lining the sidewalk. In the distance, I heard chants of a protest on State Street as I sauntered through the prismatic glass entrance of the art museum.
The Parliament of World Religions Returns to the Shore of Lake Michigan
Religious leaders from around the world converged on the shore of Lake Michigan this past summer for a convening of the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. For one week, the McCormick Center, which normally plays host to auto shows and pop culture conventions, was filled with priests, pastors, monks, nuns, rabbis, imams, swamis, and various other devotees of world religions.
Folk Song Jam Along— Singing and Playing Just for Joy
A half hour before the six o’clock start time of the monthly Folk Song Jam Along, there were already about a half dozen people in the program room at the Westgate Branch of the Ann Arbor District Library. Song leaders Lori Fithian and Jean Chorazyczewski greeted early arrivals at the door and chatted with familiar regulars. There were about fifty chairs facing the large pull-down screen at the front of the long rectangular room. Fithian had set her Mac laptop, complete with purple case, on the lectern on one side of the screen, and Chorazyczewski’s Yamaha electric keyboard rested on its stand near the other side.
Black Men Read: Expanding Possibilities Through Storytelling
“This has to change, on my watch,” Yodit Mesfin Johhson realized. The need for change became urgent when her own son was in second grade. Her life’s work in racial justice organizing took a big pivot toward the education sector with one call. It was Black History month and there were no Black men on the Mitchell Elementary School’s faculty. Her son’s teacher called to ask if she knew any Black men that would read to his classes. Of course, Mesfin Johnson arranged a roster of volunteers that rotated through the school's reading hours all throughout February. The realization that her son had no Black male role models at school collided with her own awakening to spur a deep dive of research into the educational system. “It turns out that less than 2% of U.S. teachers are Black men.”
Leaps of Faith: Brighton Light House
You read it right. Brighton Light House (BLH) is three words. That’s because, unlike a “lighthouse,” BLH is not a cautionary beacon on a rocky shoreline—a vision that may have come to mind at first glance. Rather, the light radiating from BLH is one that beckons the community toward it with the sole purpose of providing space for individuals to find, nurture, and shine their own light.
Unsiiciyapi, Wawoohola, Cantognake: Humility, Respect, Love-- Healing through Service
What do you get when you merge a life called to support adolescents, spiritual awakening that all are one, and an ongoing relationship with the Lakota people? Omega Commons and a staff that lives to serve in higher truth and humility.
Community Farm of Ann Arbor-- A Look at the Past, the Present, and the Future
The Community Farm of Ann Arbor was founded in 1988. It was one of the first organic, and perhaps the only biodynamic, farm in Michigan, as well as one of the first CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). A few years after the Farm began, and up until three years ago, it was run by Annie Elder and Paul Bantle. After Annie and Paul moved to California in 2018, several other farmers ran things, and then this spring, Dan Gannon was hired to run the Farm.
Random Acts of Kindness: International Neighbors--Sisters From All Around the World
When Eunkyun “Nana” Oh first joined International Neighbors (IN), an Ann Arbor-based nonprofit, in fall 2019, she knew she had finally found a way to feel like she belonged to the community. “It’s difficult for foreigners when they first come here,” she explained. “Especially for women who come here to support their husbands and children. Maybe in Korea they are important. But I talked to one Korean woman who said when she first came here, she thought to herself: “I am nothing here. I am like dust.”
Full Moon Ceremony: Creating Sacred Space With Others
What is sacred space and where do we find it? I would describe sacred space as any environment that evokes a serene, reverent feeling of safety and connection. It is a space that allows you to remember the feeling of being exactly who you are with a knowing that you, alone, are enough. It is like receiving a warm hug from a friend or stepping into a bubble that comforts and supports you in every energetic way. Sacred space can be a place—a corner of a room or a park bench, but it can also exist within us in the moment-to-moment connectedness to our own inner wisdom, to our spirituality, to our wholeness. Native American wisdom describes sacred space as the space between the in-breath and out-breath. It exists eternally, within each of us. It just takes slowing down and listening instead of doing to uncover it.
Friends Lake Cooperative Community: A Nature-Based and Spiritual Sanctuary
Places that hold great spiritual energy and history have a special feel to them. For decades, it has been our family practice to pause and open our windows when we turn onto the dirt road that leads into the Friends Lake Cooperative Community. This is partly to inhale the smell of the pine trees near the entrance, and partly to feel the spirit of the place, and the immediate sense of refuge and relaxation it brings us.
Crazy Wisdom Kids in the Community: Socially Conscious (And Distant) Kids’ Art & Personal Development Programs After the Toughest Parenting Year Yet
It has been a challenging year for group events, to say the least, as many kids’ programs around Ann Arbor went virtual or were suspended. The situation dragged on so long, I decided to create my own after-school program for half-grown kidlet—a mashup of virtual art programming and trying to get her out of the house and off her screen. Surprisingly, she adapted quite well to being home, so the biggest challenge was getting her moving again. I started thinking: what about all the other parents out there who are sick of researching which programs are still running or don’t have the brain space to plan enriching activities anymore? What if we came up with a plan for this year that didn’t depend on virus numbers to succeed? Here’s what I came up with. It’s pretty simple, though I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, as I was, with some unique programs out there right now to choose from.
Mutual Aid in Washtenaw County--Can the Pandemic Have a Silver Lining?
It’s likely that most Americans will remember the year 2020 as one of the worst in their lifetimes. But if we take a step back, we might find that the year also brought many inspiring reminders of the capacity of the human spirit to overcome adversity and lend comfort to strangers.
The Whimsical World of David Zinn
If you are observant enough, careful enough, curious enough, there is an entire world underfoot waiting to be discovered. It is a world nestled in ours but unlike ours—an illusionistic wonderland etched in chalk by Ann Arbor’s neighborhood “chalk man.” It’s a reality only visible to those who are looking for it amongst the jumble of the mundane. But in this world, if you are lucky enough to stumble across it, one rule remains the same as ours: things will not, cannot, last forever. Artist David Zinn says that’s the point.
Honoring Our Ancestors
I was 18 years old when the telephone rang. My grandmother had passed. In a moment of stunned disbelief—this was my first experience of death in our family—I was also informed that in two hours my flight would leave for Boston. There was much to be done and very little had to do with processing emotions. I had to arrange for someone to cover a shift at the restaurant where I was waitressing, contact my college about missing class, find someone to care for my cat, and pack a suitcase. I had never been to a funeral, and my only reference was the movies. Yet, somehow, I managed to sort it all out and found myself surrounded by family, all mourning my grandmother.
Learning the Culture and Heritage of Washtenaw County through Food and Architecture
Prior to Covid-life, the Local Food Summit event took place with food diversity and food justice being the main focus. I had the pleasure of sitting with speaker, Melissa Milton-Pung, who represented a program she created in conjunction with the county’s Heritage Tourism department. The tour is called the Foodways Heritage Tour and there is a recipe guide online for those interested in our counties rich and bountiful cultural heritage.
Pandemic Q+A’s for the Community Leaders on our Anniversary Cover
For our 25th Anniversary Issue, we invited eight well-respected leaders in the regional conscious living community, all of whom have been on our cover before, to gather together for a cover photo shoot to help us celebrate. (Plus, since it was our anniversary issue, we asked our founder/publisher, too.)
It turned out to be on Thursday, March 12th, the eve of the national pandemic lockdown.
Thankfully, they are all well, and so we asked them to tell us what they have been up to since that fateful evening, and what they have been thinking about during these months of sheltering in place. Here are their answers…
Out of My Comfort Zone
Crazy Wisdom Journal asked a number of leaders in southeastern Michigan’s conscious living community to reflect upon times in their lives that they’ve left their comfort zones to venture out in new ways. In the distant past or much more recently, we asked, what did you do, what inspired you, did it change you, inside or outside, big or little? Did you attend a new class, take an adventurous trip, go skydiving, stretch beyond a long entrenched boundary, start a new relationship or end an old one, take a leap, retire, join the Peace Corps, go on a night trek in the wilderness, or just do something way out of your ordinary?
