Palm sunday in the wild
As I arrived at a vacant lot before our Palm Sunday gathering, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. It was the 4th Sunday of the month which is a “Church in the Wild” day for us. This one felt a little different though.
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. As you probably know by now, we learned in January that the beloved brewery where we’d been hosting our Sunday gatherings was closing. Since then we’ve been following a crazy little Wind that seemed to be blowing us in an unlikely direction.
Instead of leasing or buying a building, after years of sharing space, we were here on this vacant piece of land to begin creating space together. “Begin” is not really the right word though. Well community participant & founder of Overalls Farm, Nathan Ballentine [aka Man in Overalls] says it better than I could - this is what he shared on social media earlier this week:
Barefoot atop a circle of palms.
Yesterday I celebrated Palm Sunday with The Well at Springfield on the site of what will grow into Overalls Farm Three. We started our morning barefoot on a circle of palm fronds and read the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-12) that says, amid a miraculous story, "Remove the shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." And so we did.
Then, after a moment of reflection, we put them back on for there was work to do.
We joined hands to scatter two tons of crunched granite across the property to enrich the land; tilled a short row of compacted soil out front to plant sunflowers; picked up several wheelbarrows of trash and concrete debris; tore out 50 feet of ramshackle old chainlink thick with vines; and weed whacked to keep ahead of the grass and weeds.
Thursday evening, The Well finalized a decision to make Overalls Farm a primary meeting place for its community. Sunday was the first physical manifestation of that partnership. Well, actually that's not true. The Well has been bringing good energy to our farms by making use of them coffee meetups, worship gatherings, and potlucks for years.
What's different, now, is that Overalls Farm is starting our 3rd location, a space that is larger and has the potential to feed and foster more of our community. Meanwhile The Well has - for years - wanted to partner in developing a "Neighborhood Commons" that would serve as a platform for community to converse, connect, and collaborate. More urgently, The Well has just lost its primary meeting space upon the closure of Hyperion Brewing; thus a need for a new place to plant their feet.
Btw, the partnership with The Well has challenged us to expand our notion of "who is our neighbor?" in terms of our farm membership. Going forward, since our mission is to feed and foster community (in real life), we've decided that a neighbor is someone who "lives, works, or worships" in a neighborhood.
If that suddenly qualifies you for Springfield/ East Side farm membership, go ahead and jump on our wait list at www.Overalls.Farm.
And, for our future farm neighbors - in other places - as you may have heard suggested, yes, following the completion of Farm Three, we'll be growing in other neighborhoods, and we'll use our wait list to guide our expansion. Best way to make sure we start an Overalls Farm in your community is to rally neighbors to the wait list (and help us scout property). But, honestly, it's going to be a year before we can jump on that. Farm Three is going to be (a steep hill to climb, the biggest project we've every taken on and)... Awesome, especially with great partners like The Well.
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The wild has been so formative for us already. Now it’s time to put down some roots here. I am excited to see how this season will shape us - there will surely be more letting go, more cultivating community, more reimagining church and I pray, much more learning to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
