How do you move a mountain?
Box by box. That’s how it feels today. It’s good, it’s motion, but it is a long, long process. We formed Community Happens Here October 2016, and here we are in April of 2020, still building piece by piece.
For the next few days, my job is to move boxes. Not yet to their final destination, not to unpack them, but to empty the shed, fill a storage unit, so the shed can move, so the earth can move, so the shed can move again. I feel as if I’ve done this dance many times in this mountain-moving process.
Each box/stone/cup/board that is moved builds the mountain in its own way. Friday’s triumph was a QuickBooks report that made sense and conveyed the information needed for a budget meeting on Monday. No small feat for someone as “numbers- averse” as I am.
Decisions are made one by one as well. Each day we know more, and make the best decisions we can, knowing that in some part they will be right, and in some part wrong, but at least we’ve moved something from the “not decided” to the “decided” section.
Person by person we build. A long conversation with the board, getting everyone up to speed. A great meeting with a new board member Aiesha White. A deepening commitment growing from more knowledge and more ways to help. Strong partnerships with really good consultants such as Catilin Seigel Hartzler and Gwen Dunn.
Hand by hand we build. Two-by-fours nailed into place. Miles of wires run through joists and studs. Pipes to bring water in and out. Sound insulation, weather insulation, foam insulation. Footers dug shovelful by shovelful. Soon drywall panel by panel, and painting one brushstroke at a time. Each step requiring care, precision, skill, and much decision making.
And how does all this work in a time of COVID? Day by day. In some ways we are so fortunate that the work took this long, since construction can still proceed, even if a little slower, and we are not suddenly faced with stopping programming that had already begun. We’ve lost a grant for this summer that would have supported a cool community art project, so we’ll wait and see on that. What can be done today can be done tomorrow.
What we have mostly learned in this tie is that the work of Community Happens Here is and will be vital—to deepen community resiliency, to reconnect neighbor to neighbor, and to build up entrepreneurs one person by one person, one dollar by one dollar.
We will come together again, we will create community.
Cup by Cup