The pandemic created a season of monsoon participation at Alice’s Garden Urban Farm. We are all still adjusting, seeking to claim some semblance of fullness in the midst of a virus that dismantled our routines and left so many of us feeling empty. This 2.2-acre farm has become one of the few spaces in Milwaukee where eager women, families, volunteers, and other people may gather responsibly, openly, with meaningful activities.
As a farming minister in a public place, with every sunrise, I prepared both the garden and my physical being to become places of refuge, sanctuary space for people overcome with sorrow, questions, confusion, and disbelief. From time to time, families brought lunch and games, just to be somewhere other than home. A day of melting down guns to transform them into tools brought in people from across the world. I personally held a healing circle for Black women’s rage.
This past year was a season and a time for almost everything.
This message is an excerpt from “Earthwise: For everything there is a season” by Venice Williams in the April 2021 issue of Gather. Today we remember Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who died in 430; and Moses the Black, monk, martyr, who died around 400.
Daily Grace has been offering you things to ponder and things to pray about for more than 10 years. For free. Women of the ELCA provides many other free online resources, too—see welca.org/resources. Please support Women of the ELCA at welca.org/give.
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