September

Hello and happy sweater weather to you all!

It really feels like fall today as I write to you on this rainy afternoon. And, yesterday I purchased a giant plastic skeleton so, ready or not, here comes the cold weather!

We were thrilled to see a couple of familiar faces at our Casting Bread Café Revitalization Orientation (say that five times fast…) a couple of weeks ago. If you missed it, don’t worry! It was just the first of many steps towards bringing our Café to where we know it can be. Before the pandemic, Casting Bread Café was a lively and exciting place to be on any Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. Not only clients, but all sorts of folks from the community came by for lunch and then came back because of the people. The conversations, the compassion, the community; these are the things that make our Café such a very brave space.

Associate Pastor Hopper Gibby of Faithbridge UMC, whom I am blessed to know because of this place, shared this poem with me this week. I believe it beautifully paints a picture that I know CB Café can embody once again:

 

AN INVITATION TO A BRAVE SPACE

By Micky Scottbey Jones

 

Together we will create brave space. 

Because there is no such thing as a “safe space” —

We exist in the real world.

We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.

In this space

We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world,

We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere,

We call each other to more truth and love.

We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow.

We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.

We will not be perfect.

This space will not be perfect.

It will not always be what we wish it to be.

But

It will be our brave space together,

and

We will work on it side by side.

... 

 

And we can’t do it without your help. Right now, Casting Bread has a huge need for volunteers!  We’re looking for help with all sorts of tasks from cooking in our café to picking up food on Saturday mornings at Food Lion and delivering it to the pantry, to speaking on our behalf at our table at The Watauga County Farmer’s Market!

We all know someone with a HEART for helping. We want to find the folks in our community who know that others are living without their basic needs being met, and just can’t quite sit with that. Do you know anyone in our community who wants to get involved but just doesn’t quite know how? If so, please email clara@increasefoodsecurity.org

I know these people exist because every person in our community WAS one of them, before they found Casting Bread.

-Clara