In a few hours, five Calvin College students will arrive in Three Rivers to spend their spring break learning about our city, working at Huss School and dreaming about future possibilities for both.
We’ve planned a full week of work and events that will keep us pretty busy throughout the week. The group will be staying at the Hermitage Community and St. Gregory’s Abbey and we’ll be observing a simple rhythm of prayer, work, study and reflection for each day. Each day will begin with morning prayer, followed by several hours of work at the school. In the afternoon, we’ll be meeting with various community leaders to look at the intersection of place and agriculture, history, business, journalism and art. We’ll finish each day with a shared meal and time to reflect on what we experienced during the day. To help guide some of our learning, we’ve created a reader of essays about place from a variety of writers–from local collaborators to world-renowned thinkers. We decided to make the readings optional … it is spring break, after all!
We’ll also be joined by community members and other *culture is not optional supporters at various points throughout the week to help with the work projects at the school. On Monday, we’ll have 13 people cleaning and organizing; we should be able to get a lot done in a short amount of time. Thank you to everyone who is volunteering!
We’re hoping this week gives both the students and us a glimpse of what the off-campus program we’ve been imagining might look like in practice. We’ll try to post a few updates with photos during the course of the week.
