REFLECTIONS: Mending the world

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. – E.B. White
In Jewish tradition, these are the Days of Awe – the span of ten days between Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the creation of the [...]

Read Full Post »

REFLECTIONS: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without…

(Earlier this month, we received a generous gift from Jon Meinholz, a parishioner at Holy Faith Catholic Church and good friend of the house. We wore out our old truck over a year ago, and we didn’t realize how much we relied on it and how much of a real blessing it was to us [...]

Read Full Post »

REFLECTIONS: Little helpers…

We’ve got the Bean with us here this week, and he’s “helping” a lot. The enthusiasm a four year-old has! He falls asleep each night happily anticipating the next day’s work. Garden-work, kitchen-work – what some might call drudgery – this boy is all over. I know from experience that the helping phase passes about [...]

Read Full Post »

REFLECTIONS: On Van Gogh, seeing the light, loving the broken…

From Kelli’s blog, “What am I doing in Paris?”
I took one last train trip before leaving Paris – to Auvers-sur-Oise, the tiny town about 20 miles from Paris where Vincent Van Gogh lived and painted a few months before finally shooting himself.  I missed the daily train from Paris, so I took the RER (suburban [...]

Read Full Post »

FOOD: A community garden in central Paris

There is a wonderful demonstration garden right in the center of Paris in front of the l’Hotel de Ville, a 15th century municipal building.  The closest space we have like this is Gainesville I think is City Hall, a plain 1960s building surrounded by concrete and former goldfish ponds. Normally, the area in front of [...]

Read Full Post »

REFLECTION: We need to destroy nature to enjoy it

I was at my parents’ house this past weekend, tucked away in the northwest corner of Georgia—a picturesque area of mountains, forests, lakes and streams. My parents live near the end of a dead end road, on the side of a mountain replete with pines and hardwoods, wild blackberry bushes and flowers of many colors. [...]

Read Full Post »

REFLECTION: Vegetables, yes–but sunflowers too

Whether you are into bio-regionalism, the locavore or local food movement, food security, sustainability or whatnot, gardening seems to be at the center. And the prime purpose of a garden, of course, is to be able to grow your own food.
But I have a little confession to make. Behind the utilitarian value of it [...]

Read Full Post »

REFLECTION: No one lives locally, alone

Our life at the Gainesville Catholic Worker might be best summed up by the word hospitality. Our meals often consist of 8, 12, 15, or even 30 or more people. Our doorbell rings a dozen (sometimes two or three times that) times a day, with friends or visitors looking for a place to sit out [...]

Read Full Post »

REFLECTION: On biking and “The Kickstand”

NOTE: Some of you regularly read Kelli’s blog, www.ourlocallife.com, which covers some of what happens here at the GCW but also more broadly treats the question: “How can we live more locally?” When Kelli or I post entries on that blog which touch on the work of the GCW, we’ll post the opening paragraphs and [...]

Read Full Post »