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Community Potluck - Please Join Us!
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Hello Braided Bridge Community! Let’s come together for a potluck to get to know each other better.
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3 pm pacific at the studio
730 29th St. in Oakland
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RSVP to receive the phone number to use if the gate is closed when you arrive. If you already have the number, RSVP is appreciated but not required.
If people are up to it, we’ll have some arts activities out to do - unless the studio is so full with people and food, in which case we’ll make another time for art. Kids and guests welcome. If out-of-town community members are available to join on zoom, let us know and we'll set up a link so you can say hello!
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What's Been Happening?
Below is a short update of things people in the Braided Bridge community have been doing. If you'd like to share a project that seems in alignment with Braided Bridge, please reach out!
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Melissa successfully completed her first season running the warming shelter in the City of San Leandro.
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Jared has been working together with Melissa, Kim, and others on a detailed proposal for community centered temporary housing assistance for the Wood St. cabin site or other local location.
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Bill has been putting many years of poems together and will be offering some to us to share on our website soon. He's also been participating in recent rallies and actions and working to bring in other participants.
Michelle is offering a talk and demonstration on making Japanese style paper (washi) on June 8th at the San Francisco Public Library. The event is free but requires registration, which can be done at this link.
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We are a very small group but laying the groundwork to grow. If you aren't active in the community and would like to know more, please let us know!
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The Testimony Project is a series of very short stories, describing what has been witnessed by people offering support and advocacy for houseless people, or by the people themselves who have been unhoused.
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A man died during a sweep last week. Some, but far from all, of the displaced people from the sweep were moved into transitional housing. Others had to find somewhere else to go, where they may be swept again in another week or another month. The man who died had been through two sweeps in recent weeks, losing belongings each time, including a van. He was not one of the ones being offered a legal or transitional space. He was only being helped by people with lived experience and advocates to move his belongings yet again, and they didn't have a truly safe place to offer him. His cause of death was not readily apparent.
Those who were moved into the transitional housing site were not permitted a means of preparing or keeping food in their rooms. They were provided with allotments of food that are less in portion size than I have ever given my children, even as toddlers. One participant took a picture of his meal: a single fish stick, a half a lemon wedge, and a few chips.
This is the same week that a number of people in the US have launched a fast on behalf of people in Gaza, who have, on average, only 250 calories a day to live off of. Participants in the fast are also consuming only 250 calories a day, and are calling for humanitarian aid to Gaza, and an end to weapons shipments to Israel. I wonder, as I try to going for a multi-day stretch on 250 calories per day, in prayer for Gazans, as well as others facing hunger and violence...how many calories did the man with the single fish stick have?
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Wood Street Commons Resource Fair
Homebridge Connect / Braided Bridge is participating in the Wood Street Commons Resource Fair, Block Party and Fundraiser on Friday May 30th from 3-6 pm on Wood Street between 26th and 24th St. There will be live entertainment, food, vendors, resources, raffle prizes and a silent auction.
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Michelle will be leading a community paper making project that witnesses, grieves, and memorializes lives lost to homelessness. We will also have clothing and other donations available.
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Please come by and say hello! Feel free to bring a donation to share at our table, or a plate of baked goods to donate for the bake sale led by Wood Street Commons.
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On being one with
Braided Bridge invites sharing of people's varied spiritual practices and experiences. This will span the faith traditions and lives of people in our community. Bill writes poems, many containing spiritual elements:
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In the time when there was only one
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and longing did not exist
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it happened, I don’t know how,
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that one could not be one forever
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came, too, the gift of longing—
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or the longing to be the other.
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It is this latter longing
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with which I am most familiar—
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a longing that speaks of a certain lack
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whose origin is no more known to me
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than the origin of the grace
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nor reverse time’s ravages
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nor take us back to the time
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the time before the we or the us
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but does allow me to be wholly me,
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within myself, wholly me, then, with you—
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which being I feel, as well, to be holy—
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which being I know, as well, is holy and entirely real.
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– Bill Denham, December 21, 2009
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Active Love: A Change in Operating System
Active Love or Nonviolence - what's in a name?
(...continued) Separating relationship and operating out of a dominance framework are fundamentals of violence. To come to peace, we need to build healthier, interdependent relationships. The resistance-based mindset undermines love-based actions, damaging effectiveness though conflicting intentions.
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One of the concepts of practicing active love is in “positive-flow” language and naming. This means naming according to where you want things to go, rather than what you want to stop. Someone who practices active love chooses positive flow language because words have creative force.
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Nonviolence is itself a resistance-based term. You have to name and picture violence in order to say or practice it, and in so doing you remain a participant in the perpetuation of violence. The term “active love,” names a relationship-based practice that actively forms communities of justice, peace and safety.
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Active love challenges its followers in discipline and courage. It invites us to share lived experiences, as well as to listen to the stories of others. It both drives and grows from spiritual development, and asks for continual work in the integration of body, mind, and spirit. It opens us to bear witness and testify. If we can be brave enough and vulnerable enough to open ourselves to it fully, it invites us to live, move and be out of the fullness of freedom that love affords, the law of love. It is fierce. It is devastating heartbreak. It is also balm. And it is joy. It is fire, and still cool water.
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Using the Studio
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We would like to open the studio on Saturdays from 1-4 pm. If you'd like to use it to work on a project, you an use the contact button below to let us know. Once we have a small group of people we will launch.
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How Donations Have Been Spent
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Donations have been used to replace a computer for an unhoused person who was using his to assist others and advocate before the computer died. They've also been used to provide temporary hotel stays to prevent unhoused people who were being threatened with arrest when they didn't have anywhere else to go. Members have also made personal contributions of food, water, and art supplies. Please join us!
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Recipients of this new mailing include past donors and workshop participants, members of Braided Bridge, participants of Homebridge Connect, people familiar with the starting of Braided Bridge, and a couple of close friends. If you are on this list and didn't want to be, please do feel welcome to unsubscribe and accept my sincere apologies. –Kim
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