Community Growing Community

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look^* into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ ¹⁴

When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ ¹⁶Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’

I have just returned from a seminar on community gardens held in Trenton. Even though Holy Week looms large I decided to attend. After all, Jesus was buried in a garden tomb and mistaken for the gardener on the day of resurrection.

The morning was inspirational, although emerging from an event showing slides of lush gardens into a veritable blizzard was cause for dismay. There were about fifty people on hand from every group imaginable and some representing themselves.

One of the presenters was Jill Bishop, the coordinator of the Peterborough Community Garden Network. http://growpeterborough.org/Jill offered an excellent overview of the growing community gardening network in that city. There are now 32 community gardens in Peterborough and I'm sure that Jill's enthusiasm and hard work are a big part of the success. By contrast Belleville has three community gardens and about 60 plots.



As Jill showed us images of the various gardens three United Churches were featured. These are congregations which have decided to literally plant the seeds of community outreach as well as nurturing a sense that living as Christ's people involves being active outside the cloistered walls of places of worship. I was pleased that churches were featured and that they were United Churches.

Today there were several volunteers from our Inn from the Cold and Thank God It's Friday food ministries in attendance. We are exploring what the possibilities might be for expanding our support of those who are "food insecure," to use a current phrase. We have discovered that the guests for our hot meals during January and February appreciate that they are being served wholesome, nutritious food. What if we could actually grow some of that food and teach our guests how to cook it?

We don't have much space around our Bridge St physical plant, but we are adjacent to a large empty lot. Many of our volunteers are from St.Thomas Anglican church just across from us. They do have land which might become a community garden.

Community gardens help build community and can be part of the revitalization of tired city cores. Take a look at this video to see what can happen  https://wangarigardens.wordpress.com/

Today's seminar opened up many possibilities and I'm glad I was there.

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