Pre-Birthday Ruminating

 

Ministerial Meditations

by The Rev. Connie Yost

July 22, 2013



Annie Oakley "Little Sure Shot" age 28, 1898



I recently flew to Los Angeles to meet with one of our Chalice Oak Foundation clients, the nonprofit 20KWatts, which brings solar lighting to desperately poor communities in Central America.  As I boarded the small commuter plane in Long Beach to return home, I found my seat next to a young girl who was sitting next to the window.   I settled into my seat and asked her if she was travelling alone.  Limpid blue pools looked straight at me and she kindly but firmly announced that she was.  "I'm old enough," she told me.  "People don't think that I am, but I am.  I'm fourteen."  Impressed with her self-possession, I struggled with what to say next.  Certainly I would NOT say that she didn't look fourteen.  She knows that; everyone always says that.  And I remember how much I always hated people telling me that I didn't look my age (when I was younger, mind you!).

So I said, "Well, that's very good.  I know how annoying it is when people think you're a lot younger than you are.   They treat you like you don't know anything.  I always hated that."  "Yes," she agreed.  "It is annoying," she said and calmly went on reading her book.

I didn't start travelling alone much less on an airplane until I was much much older than fourteen.  But then, I was raised in the pre-feminist dark ages, discovering my own womanpower well into my thirties and with little support from my parents or society.  I wondered how my life might have turned out had I been as empowered as she when I was 4'7" and weighed 80 lbs.

Dreams Can Come True

 

Plant Dreaming Deep: The Story of

EarthWorks Community Farm

by The Rev. Connie Yost

December, 2006

                  

EarthWorks Class Fall 2006

            In 2002, while in seminary at Claremont School of Theology, I attended a conference on poverty and heard a young man from inner city Boston named Wil Bullock speak about how at age 15 he became employed by The Food Project, where for one whole summer he worked alongside other youth to grow and sell organic vegetables to the community.  Now he was 22 and running The Food Project’s for-profit business venture – marketing salsa made from their farm’s organic tomatoes, peppers and onions.  He said, “The Food Project changed my life.  It gave me – a kid from a struggling, single parent family – the chance to do meaningful work.  It gave me a way to think about the importance of food and community.  Now I work to advocate for the health of our planet and people.”   He said, “Today I am honored to be part of this movement for change.”

            That speech touched me deeply.  It was one of those aha moments when my entrepreneurial passion joined my passion for social change and gardening, and a practical vision for restoring our connection to each other – especially to our youth – and to the earth was born.