Beloved ones in Christ,
We are finishing our first year together in ministry and are well on our way to deepening our work together in the love of Christ. What an incredible year it has been! We have welcomed new families with young children and cared for our aging. Our gardening ministry has not only been awakened from its years of laying fallow, but it has begun to expand and bear fruit in welcoming our neighbors next door and nearby.
This Spring, we have received a grant from Tillamook High School of $750 for new fencing, and our neighbors are lending a hand in
preparing the soil for new growth. We are reaching out to additional funding and working partners to continue this beautiful ministry that enables us to engage our community in deep relationship and allows us to be good stewards of one of our most valuable gifts from Creator — the land we dwell on. Truly, we are blessed as a community and we are able to be a blessing for others as well.
As the flowers around us blossom, (and we have more bulbs awaiting planting parties this month!) we joyfully embrace our calling to care for creation, to love our Earthen Mother, to honor our interrelated lives by caring for our fellow human dirt creatures, and we look for additional ways in which to cultivate compassion in our everyday lives.
Take some time every day this month to get out into the dirt. Give thanks for the birdsong. Give thanks for the winds and the willow. Give thanks for the creeping insects and the vitality of this lush and glorious land in which we have the tremendous opportunity to live. Visit the seashore as often as you can. Ocean energy is a glorious one: revitalizing, cleansing, healing, renewing, and offering birth to all kinds of weather. Truly we are blessed to dwell nearby, and so we often use the Great Thanksgiving by the Sea in our celebration of communion. Blessings to you all in this month of vitality and growth!