YES! Dialogues in Faith Communities about property stewardship and community vision.

Graphic from the
Faith Land Initiative website
because this post needs a visual

Yes! Yes to the Church Council of Greater Seattle Faith Land Initiative !

YES to faith communities engaging actively about growth projections indicating that a million people are likely to come to this region by 2050 and where to put them all is going to be an acute concern for everyone.

YES to a certain Meeting RantWoman is supposed magically to stop caring about participating WITH OTHER FAITH COMMUNITIES in something that feels much more like life-embracing movements of Spirit than tiring discussion from a few years ago about "condo church" in the University District.

YES to a group of Friends offering time for a process that will last a year at least and YES to there being at least ONE Friend younger than 60 among this group.

YES to intentional discussions that cultivate shared work and wider conversations than one small committee trying to fit a bunch of things easily into boxes.

 

YES AND 

Early in a previous attempt at property discernment, RantWoman suggested just developing a glossary of terms that might be valuable in a conversation. Discernment about property matters involves terms from many different language domains. Not everyone is going to become urban planners or experts in every angle but in RantWoman's experience common vocabularies that do not make assumptions or presuppose any direction for a final destination can be extremely valuable. Ignoring this suggestion did NOT enhance RantWoman's confidence in previous process. RantWoman would be thrilled if this new process adopts RantWoman's suggestion or perhaps has already thought about this.

RantWoman realizes discernment about faith community property is not necessarily about the spiritual and worship life of any single faith community. RantWoman also hopes that discernment well done will bring to life better communities of all kinds

RantWoman lives in two worlds as far as advocacy / public ministry. Transportation advocates tend to go "Huh? when RantWoman wants to think of faith communities. And some of RantWoman's faith community work is with people who go "Huh?" about transportation issues. RantWoman would love it if the Faith Land Initiative can help build bridges about transportation issues both at a regional scale and in terms of one of RantWoman's favorite mantras about safe continuous  travel networks for all modes..

RantWoman craves a process that also engages with hard realities about climate change, the needs of people of different ages, and earth-friendly amenities.

People with Disabilities? The voices of PWD? Access needs even to be part of a process!

RantWoman needs to speak of African American Church lady hats and how housing and travel patterns intersect about people's ability to worship together. RantWoman some years ago caught a bus to Meeting near an African American church known for strong community presence. It made RantWoman sad to realize that because of housing displacement most of the people who came on Sundays all dressed up drove in from the 'burbs, the areas they could afford to live in.

RantWoman needs to speak of the Sunday Morning God bus and the fate of faith communities along a certain bus routes. RantWoman can be all over concepts such as "time to pray" on the bus. RantWoman thinks it's equally important though to think of models such as the 15-minute city full of neighborhoods where most people can live within a 15-minute WALK of work and most of what they need for daily lives.

In any case, YES! KEEP TALKING.