Year in Review: Hope-Fullness ❄

Snow scene at Place Corps campus, 2020

“The two words that I would use to (reflect on my time at place corps) are divine intention. Divine intention is the definition of love that I came across recently and I think about the work we’re doing here at Place Corps and that we’re all hoping to foster into the world as being very intentional but also modeling and mirroring the inherent divinity that exists within us and all the beings around us.”
- Jordan William, 2020 Resident

Hello friends,

We are looking out our window today on a winter wonderland of snow. A first snowfall. A moment of quiet and beauty. The earth around us is blanketed in much needed water which will sink into the ground and nurture roots for next year. It’s a graceful system of regeneration, and yet one that may also feel uncomfortable to all of us 21st century humans who want our daily lives to remain at an uninterrupted productive pace. It’s a disruption to what we call “normal” but one that revives life. 

2020 has been an incredible journey year. As we pause to reflect on this past year, we are proud of all that we’ve opened to. Normally, we might use a word like accomplish when describing the work completed in a year, but that word is rooted as acomplir "to fulfill, fill up, complete.” Instead, we feel the great work of 2020 has been to fill up with hope and open up to what can be—- to be in right relationship, rather than to fill up with what was. It has been a year of simultaneous breaking as well as building—- a year of breakthroughs. It was a year of new beginnings and incompleteness. It was an unwelcomed but great year of disruptions to what was “normal.”

The pandemic has forced us to slow down and adapt in order to move safely ahead. Like the snowfall today. Stop and stay where you are, be with who you are with, slow down, scale down, see what is already in front of you with new eyes, make what you already have more special. This is how we are moving ahead with our Place Corps programs. We are embracing delays as signs of care. We are accepting the pandemic’s disruption to our plans as grace for revitalization. We are adapting to challenges as opportunities for healthy growth. We are doing this together.

We will continue to open ourselves to the challenges of our time and work to develop transformational learning for a new and radical way of living together. However, we cannot do it without you. We never have. The dedication and commitment of our community continues to be the force that gives us the opportunity to create and build exceptional learning programs. As we look forward, this has never been more true or more needed!

If you have already made a donation this giving season, we thank you for your generosity. We believe gifting to others is also trusting in your abundance. Asking for help is trusting in the abundance of your community. Our continued mantra: when you give your love, you still have all of your love. Please consider taking a moment to stand with us and show your support and love with a donation, a kind word, or any other act of care. 

We invite you to visit our website to view our 2020 cohort’s reflections on their time at Place Corps at Hawthorne Valley Farm which encapsulates beauty and hope that survived the pandemic.

We are sincerely grateful and wish you love! 

Warmly,

Dawn Breeze
Director