August 2026
As I Sit in the Silence
Over the past two months, The Neighborhood Garden Project has entered a quieter season.
Our partnerships with St. Paul's Episcopal Church and Emmanuel Episcopal Church have come to a close, bringing nearly four years of daily community gardening to an end. While we continue walking alongside a handful of individuals and families, much of the work that shaped our days has slowed. The pace is different now, and with it has come something I wasn't expecting.
Space.
Like many transitions, my first instinct was to think about what comes next. What should I be building? Where should my attention go? How do I carry what we've learned into whatever follows?
Those are reasonable questions.
But they weren't the first questions this season gave me.
Instead, this quieter pace has invited me to look backward before looking forward. To spend time reflecting on the work itself and asking a different question: What has this work actually been teaching us?
Over the past four years, we spent thousands of hours alongside gardens, churches, neighborhoods, and families. We built raised beds, installed irrigation systems, planted seeds, harvested vegetables, repaired what broke, and shared countless conversations. Some of those conversations happened while working shoulder to shoulder. Others happened while standing in the shade after the work was finished. Looking back, I'm convinced those relationships were always more important than the gardens themselves.
The gardens simply gave us somewhere to pay attention together.
As I've reflected on those years, one observation continues to return.
Our culture is very good at moving.
We move from one opportunity to the next, one project to another, one growing season to the next. Organizations move from one strategic plan to another. Churches move from one ministry to the next. Funders move from one grant cycle to the next. Families move from one stage of life to another. There is always another problem to solve and another future to prepare for.
Movement isn't wrong.
Much of the work we did required it. Gardens don't care if we're tired. Irrigation systems don't repair themselves. Relationships require presence. Community-based work asks us to participate because something living is always changing.
But living systems don't always teach according to our pace.
Some things can only be understood over time. A garden isn't understood in a single season, and neither is a community. Trust grows slowly. Responsibility develops gradually. Even our assumptions often remain hidden until enough time has passed for reality to reveal them.
I've begun to wonder how often we move on before reality has finished teaching us.
Not because we're careless.
Because we're busy.
There is a difference.
Looking back, I don't see four years of successful gardens or unsuccessful gardens. I don't primarily see grants, partnerships, budgets, or harvest totals. I see thousands of small moments where reality quietly corrected something we assumed to be true. Again and again, creation proved to be a patient teacher. It reminded us that healthy conditions matter, that people grow through participation rather than dependence, and that stewardship is less about controlling outcomes than faithfully responding to what is actually in front of us.
Those lessons weren't discovered because we were looking for principles.
They emerged because we stayed close to the work long enough to observe them.
That may be the greatest gift this quieter season has given me. Not answers about what's next, but space to better understand what has already been given. The work hasn't stopped teaching simply because the pace has changed. If anything, some of its clearest lessons have only become visible now.
As we continue discerning what comes next for The Neighborhood Garden Project, I'm grateful for everyone who has walked alongside us over these past four years. Whether you volunteered in the gardens, supported the work financially, prayed for us, or simply followed along from a distance, thank you. You have been part of a community that has continually reminded us that the deepest work is rarely measured by what we produce, but by how we are changed through faithful participation.
For now, we're choosing not to rush.
We're choosing to pay attention.
I believe there is still more to learn.
