Dream Wildly With Me, Please (by Intern Tess Waechter)

Welcome to the Table! For the last four years, it has been a dream of mine to open a cafe that brings community together through good local food, conversation, and relationships. A vision that has been inspired, shaped, molded, held, stretched, pushed and prodded by those around me with whom I’ve shared my dream. Perfectly so, because I want this cafe to represent community in the deepest way possible.The idea stemmed from a time in my life when I was trying to discover what I could do for a career that captured things most important to me and that I loved. What I found was relationships and community, locally grown food, and working with those marginalized.

Over the years, this cafe grew larger than my mind could hold, it began to seem as though it would always remain a dream. Still, I talked about it with anyone who would listen because it fed my soul to imagine it as a possibility. Eventually, I met a person who listened deeply and believed it could exist. In return, she said, “Yes! And I want to support you in making it become a reality.” That person was Robyn Hartwig, which led me to the EcoFaith team and this internship.

Now with this opportunity to live wildly in my dream, my first goal is to gather together a group of visionaries to learn from their experience, share in their knowledge, and welcome their visions. I’ve realized this dream is too large to hold on my own. It needs to be nurtured by a community; so together we can make it an actual living and breathing place. More goals will come, some have already been discovered. I intend to share them with you all here as I work toward them. Just as I hope to develop community through this cafe, I hope to build a community through these posts. And one that will participate in this creation. I welcome your thoughts, connections, questions, and ideas.

Thanks for joining me at the table.

_____________________________

p.s. If you click the link in the upper left sidebar of any page at test.ecofaithrecovery.org, you can sign up to receive these Lenten reflections and subsequent blog posts directly to your email account. We welcome you to share them with others.