A Third Place Community
Foundation
a 501c3 nonprofit grassroots all
volunteer organization
growing healthy lives and neighborhoods
in the 74126 and northside areas.
Center: 5920 N. Owasso Ave. and Park:
6005 N. Johnstown Ave. 74126
918-691-3223
offering The Welcome Table Community
Center, Free Corner Store Pantry, Free Books, Free Clothes and More, Community
Art Studio and the Community GardenKitchenPark and
Orchard
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facebook
Hi all.
First, our news and then our Thanksgiving
message...
1. We were named a finalist for the statewide sustainability
award for nonprofits serving communities with more than 45,000 persons by the
Keep Oklahoma Beautiful organization; we were in the category with the Tulsa
M.E.T. and Tulsa Young Professionals, who won the award last week, and were
proud to be in such company and to have our story told of our gardenpark and
orchard created from a block of abandoned houses. We are hopeful of continuing
to grow our presence of healthy food and nutritiion here where there is a 14
year life expectancy gap from other parts of Tulsa and will try again next year.
The park has really been taking shape in the "Vegetable Village" and play area
for kids thanks to visits from Riverfield School and LifeChurch. We are still
harvesting the cold crops of greens and the edible roots of Jerusalem Artichokes
(sunflower plants).
2. This Wednesday, Nov. 27, from 10 am to Noon at one of our
regular Food Community Days we will have a Thanksgiving Pie and Ice Cream Fest
at the community center; and use our newly received Espresso machine from the
Food Bank. Come have dessert first before your Thanksgiving Day meals....And
this Saturday, Nov. 30 from 10 am to 2 pm we will have another of our weekly
Community Art Days at the Center for all ages, including free lunch...Stay tuned
for an important news announcement soon from here as we will sponsor a Free Meal
Giveaway next month from a Mobile Food Truck from the Food Bank coming here.
3. Why we are here and why we do what we do was driven home
this month in a study that we participated in with OU and the Food Bank has just
been released and puts statistics to what we have known: so many in our local
area we see here are sick, especially with mental illnesses, with high degrees
of food insecurity and hunger, and the food we are giving is both not enough
even as emergency supplemental to their "food stamp" supplemental assistance
each month, and it is not the kind of healthy food they particularly need. And
yet the food we do give them, as well as the community support we create and
offer through relationships of mutuality does help reduce a little bit the
stress triggers that help them to make better decisions, to make responses not
reactions. To get the full report on the statistics and my report go to
http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-we-are-here-and-needed-revealed-in.html.
4. The Turley Area Community Meeting will be held tomorrow
evening, Tuesday Nov. 26 at 7 pm at O'Brien Park.
5. You and all are invited to a "Justice For The Poor" video
series and meal discussion will be held at the Center on Sundays Dec. 1 through
Jan. 5. It is produced by the Sojourners in Washington, D.C.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYeGLaosTg0 The
topics include: Dec. 1: Burger King Moms: Being Poor in America; Dec. 8: Is
there something wrong with the prosperity gospel? [answer is yes]; Dec. 15:
Standing at the Corner of Church and State; Dec. 22: The Gospel according to New
Orleans; Dec. 29: Outside the Gate: The Poor and the Global Economy; and Jan. 5:
From Serial Charity to a Just Society.
6. Share with others our 4 Project
Winter 2013 Mini-Capital Campaign designed for individuals or church groups or
others to be able to easily make a specific small-but-huge transformative action
with us here: 1. $500 creates both an outdoor
hospitable rain garden permaculture area and will prevent flooding, working with
Green Country Permaculture; 2. $500 for the women's restroom and $500 for the
men's restroom to help put in showers and stalls in time for our visiting groups
to use next Spring for the Life on Fire national conference that will come here;
3. $600 for copper tubing and coolant to match the donated air conditioning unit
we received and the matching free labor donated to install it; and 4. $350 for
supplies for a new Central Grand Entry Gate and Sign for the GardenPark and
Orchard. Please share for those looking for end of the year giving opportunities
that make a difference on the ground here...We also have our membership support
campaign going for operations and are a fifth of the way to achieving our goal
of 60 people giving at least $5 or $10 a month (15 or 30 cents a day), but the
mini-capital campaign will propel us to being able to serve more people and host
more people. See www.turleyok.blogspot.com for our
story, our statistics, our spirit.For just 15 or 30 cents a day, we can broaden
our base of support to break out of our cut-off notice to cut-off notice putting
it all into mission, no salaries, budget. At the website you can choose either
one time donations for the capital campaign or subscribe for small monthly
figures to be ongoing operations support.....Consider Yourself
Asked!!!
7.
Thankful to be a part of recent community events: Taste of North Tulsa feeding
400 in our area; Food Glorious Food Day at the North Regional Health Dept
Wellness Center connecting with more than 100 residents, many youth here; and
our 8th annual community Halloween Party held for the first time for some 150
residents at our gardenpark and orchard; hosting service learning projects with
Riverfield Country Day School high school and middle school students, and with
Diversity classes at the OU Graduate Social Work program who are working with us
on research projects in educational issues, housing issues, abandoned properties
project, and other issues facing our residents. And supporting the local
nonprofit Sarah's Residential Center in its mission to provide small community
living for seniors...Also the McLain High School Homecoming Weekend...hosting a
reunion of one of the first integrated junior high basketball teams in our area
in the mid 60s at Monroe Junior High...And sponsoring a Mobile Food Van giving
out several tons of food in one hour here partnering with the Food Bank...And
meeting monthly with others in the Greater Tulsa area to forge connections for
community organizing....Also Look for further updates from me on some of the OU
graduate paper research topics related to our immediate zipcode areas.
8. The
Wish List of ways to be a part of our Miracles Among The Ruins projects of
blight to beauty, despair to hope, can be found also at http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-wish-list-for-fall-2013.html
9. We
are pleased to be hosting a national conference Feb. 28-Mar. 2 for those seeking
to live more missionally, for and with others. See more and register at www.lifeonfire14.com.
Thanksgiving Message:
CommonWealth/CommonLife/CommonGood
I have
been fortunate this month to travel to Pennsylvannia and to Massachusetts and to
talk with people about our mission of community here in the 74126; I got to do
the same thing in October in New Orleans, and the same thing in September in
Tennessee. At each place I expressed thanksgiving for the many partners in our
area, and for the people who come and serve with us, and receive from us and
giveback at the same time; in short, for the experience of a community that is
turned not inward toward itself and for itself but turned outward always looking
for others to connect with. Every week we are blessed to connect with some new
person or new group; new volunteers finding through us a way to give their own
gratitude back to life itself; new groups from schools to churches who bring us
food, who listen to our stories, who match their mission with our mission.
Last
week we got to provide a common meal to our regular volunteers and supporters
here to tell them thanks and to tell them about the recent survey results of the
work we do here (see above and the link) and why what they do here, even though
they think it is such a small thing in their life, is literally a life-giving
action. We are extending people's lives; we are making it just a little bit
easier for them to make just a little better decisions; to take next steps. One
of the things that our gratitude now leads us toward is to foster advocacy on
the conditions and decisions people in power make which are making it in fact
harder for people to live, shortening their lives, adding stress to already
burdened lives. We plan to do this not only by making information available, and
avenues for responding, but inviting people to go deeper into their own lives
and life of their family and their neighborhood in order to see where the
stresses are coming from.
I am
grateful above all for the blessing of being able to live in the McLain School
area. I just listened to a public radio report about the increasing
re-segregation, and sometimes deeper than ever segregation, of our communities
splitting apart people by not only race but by economic levels and educational
levels. There have always been these tendencies, but the growing wage inequality
and abandonment of the cities and of common institutions have created wider gaps
of where people are interacting and getting to know people of different life
experiences than themselves (which is why again we called our Foundation "A
Third Place" for the movement to create spaces in public that counteract this
tendency). Our schools, churches, parks, businesses, transportation means,
entertainment venues, all are segregating across some of these lines in ways
never before. Against all this, the blessing of living here and working here is
draining at times, challenging and growing and learning, but an immense pleasure
and adding of meaning to life.
This
call to common good coming from common life is best summarized for me in the
words by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haws in "Common Prayer" when they write, for
this time of the year:
"Independence is a value of our culture, but
it is not a gospel value. Jesus lived in community and was part of a village
culture...Jesus' culture was more like the Bedouins than the Burbs.
The Scriptures teach us to value interdependence and community more highly than independence, and tell us that we are to lose our lives if we want to find them. Forming our lives around something other than our own desires, jobs, and goals is radically counter-cultural. Even our architecture is built around individual families, not around community. But for many Native Americans and tribal cultures, society and architecture are built around a village. Individual dwellings...are very small, and they are built around a central common space where people eat, dance, sing, and tell stories. The rampant individualism of Western society is a relatively new thing, and its emptiness is increasingly evident. We are wealthy and lonely. But God invites us into a common life with others.
Rather than build our lives around the individualistic dream of a house with a white picket fence, we can build our lives around God's vision for community.
We dream of a holy village in the middle of the urban desert, with a little cluster of homes sprinkled about and a neighborhood where folks are committed to God and to each other. Some folks are indigenous to the neighborhood. Some are missional relocaters. Some have gone off to school, trained as doctors, lawyers, social workers, or business folk, and then returned to the neighborhood to offer their gifts to the work of restoration. The houses are small, but that is all we need--a place to lay our heads--because most of our lives are lived on the streets, on the stoop, sweating in the practice of resurrection. Village life begins by greeting the day in morning prayer, and in the evenings we share a meal or grill out on the street. Maybe there is a village center where folks can cook healthy breakfasts for the kids as they head off to school. Perhaps in that center there are laundry machines that we can all share and a game library where kids can borrow a game for the afternoon. Maybe there's a tool library so folks can check out a saw or drill for the day; maybe there's an exercise space for lifting weights or taking an aerobics class to keep our bodies healthy. It's a dream for a village that shares things in common, a space that makes sure possessions and privileges are available for all, a place on earth where there truly is a "common wealth."
Shaping a life together sometimes begins simply by creating a space for community. For many intentional communities, that means that we work only part-time so that we free up time for things we don't get paid to do, like welcoming homeless folks for a meal, helping neighborhood kids with homework, planting gardens on abandoned lots, or praying together each day. Sometimes we have to remove some of the clutter that is occupying our time and energy, like getting rid of the television. But then, as we say no to some things, we say yes to others--cooking meals, painting murals, playing games. And most people don't miss the old life much anyway. A reporter once told Mother Teresa, "I wouldn't do what you do for a million dollars." She responded, "Me neither." We live in community and among the suffering because it is what we are made for. Not only does it give life to others, but it gives us life as well."
The Scriptures teach us to value interdependence and community more highly than independence, and tell us that we are to lose our lives if we want to find them. Forming our lives around something other than our own desires, jobs, and goals is radically counter-cultural. Even our architecture is built around individual families, not around community. But for many Native Americans and tribal cultures, society and architecture are built around a village. Individual dwellings...are very small, and they are built around a central common space where people eat, dance, sing, and tell stories. The rampant individualism of Western society is a relatively new thing, and its emptiness is increasingly evident. We are wealthy and lonely. But God invites us into a common life with others.
Rather than build our lives around the individualistic dream of a house with a white picket fence, we can build our lives around God's vision for community.
We dream of a holy village in the middle of the urban desert, with a little cluster of homes sprinkled about and a neighborhood where folks are committed to God and to each other. Some folks are indigenous to the neighborhood. Some are missional relocaters. Some have gone off to school, trained as doctors, lawyers, social workers, or business folk, and then returned to the neighborhood to offer their gifts to the work of restoration. The houses are small, but that is all we need--a place to lay our heads--because most of our lives are lived on the streets, on the stoop, sweating in the practice of resurrection. Village life begins by greeting the day in morning prayer, and in the evenings we share a meal or grill out on the street. Maybe there is a village center where folks can cook healthy breakfasts for the kids as they head off to school. Perhaps in that center there are laundry machines that we can all share and a game library where kids can borrow a game for the afternoon. Maybe there's a tool library so folks can check out a saw or drill for the day; maybe there's an exercise space for lifting weights or taking an aerobics class to keep our bodies healthy. It's a dream for a village that shares things in common, a space that makes sure possessions and privileges are available for all, a place on earth where there truly is a "common wealth."
Shaping a life together sometimes begins simply by creating a space for community. For many intentional communities, that means that we work only part-time so that we free up time for things we don't get paid to do, like welcoming homeless folks for a meal, helping neighborhood kids with homework, planting gardens on abandoned lots, or praying together each day. Sometimes we have to remove some of the clutter that is occupying our time and energy, like getting rid of the television. But then, as we say no to some things, we say yes to others--cooking meals, painting murals, playing games. And most people don't miss the old life much anyway. A reporter once told Mother Teresa, "I wouldn't do what you do for a million dollars." She responded, "Me neither." We live in community and among the suffering because it is what we are made for. Not only does it give life to others, but it gives us life as well."
This is
a vision far from the realities of our mission here, and always will be I am
sure, as visions tend to be, but this is the time of the year for casting
Visions, reminding us of our possibilities, together. And what falls from the
movement toward Vision is enough.
If you
would like to see a couple of videos from talks I gave in Dallas last year they
have recently been published at this site: http://www.ntuuc.org/
Finally,
thanks for you, blessings, and more soon,
Ron
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