A Better Place

In short, we don’t make the world alone, the world makes us too.  Maybe the world also wants to make us a better place.  To know this is not to finally be at peace, or to be enlightened, or to be at home…it is to continue to experiment, to theorize, to touch the always-fresh blister that is our tale of becoming. 
Bayo Akomolafe, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences (2017)

The world makes us a better place.  We like this idea a lot.  It allows us to let down and enjoy every living thing that groans with us.  We can trust in Something much larger, deeper and wider than ourselves. Something swimming in Love.  

This month has been a beautiful blur.  So have the past 3 1/2 years.  This is the final post on the 4910CecilSt blog.  If you wish to remain on our monthly email list in 2018, shoot us an email and opt in!  

These are a few of the shimmering images from our November:

The Ginkgo that we sat under all summer and early Fall lit up (above) and then let it all go (below).

We revisited the willow on Belle Isle that Tom's Dad stood under three years ago.  Mom joined us to sprinkle his ashes on a strangely warm windy day.  

Afterwards, Mom got the legendary Bill Wylie-Kellermann tour of the Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  

We hit the trails along the Huron River during Thanksgiving Weekend.

We recruited some friends to join us in a one-thousand gallon water shift to refill the water station at the St. Peter's Peace + Justice Hive.

Speaking of water, we ran into We The People of Detroit's Debra Taylor and Michigan State University professor Dr. Jade Mitchell transporting water to Lansing to test for high lead levels.  There have been many reports of colored water coming out of taps in Detroit neighborhoods!

We shared a meal with our friend Eliisa who is applying for her residency years in her quest to become a doctor who holds onto her integrity and holistic commitment to care, while walking the muddled tightrope of the medical industrial complex.  We got to know her and her husband Peter a year and half ago during a MarriageStrong weekend we facilitated for them (and then got to officiate their wedding in September 2016).

Keith Wilkinson (Capo Valley H.S., class of 2005) is still 6'9", but is now the assistant men's basketball coach at UC Riverside.  The Highlanders came out to play University of Michigan so Tom picked him up and took him for a little tour of Detroit.  

Our friend Bryan is a professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work.  He asked us to be guest lecturers for 90 minutes to talk about Detroit's struggle for water affordability.  

On Thanksgiving Eve, Tom shared a few moments with Fletcher 

on the sacred steps of the St. Peter's Peace + Justice Hive.  

May we all continue to experiment, to theorize, to touch the 

always-fresh blister that is our tale of becoming.