Giving Thanks

This is it, the week of Thanksgiving.
So instead of the usual grocery shopping (purchasing more than normal), how about coming by any of our Cafe Gratitude Cafe and letting us serve you a Thanksgiving meal (free of charge) and then how about you serving someone else?
In every Cafe (except the one inside of Whole Foods in Oakland) we serve a free meal to anyone who joins us from 11am - 3pm and everyone donates their time. This is my favorite day, favorite celebration, it is such a heartwarming, heart opening celebration of giving Thanks. Everyone shares what they are grateful for and the long community tables are filled with people from everywhere. The servers and bartenders and kitchen folks are all volunteering their time, they are serving simply because they want to give.
Come on by, eat, serve, remember the real source of gratitude is giving to others, others before self!
It is a day you will remember, promise.
We would love to serve you!
Happy Thanksgiving.

What are you grateful for?

Love, Terces

Surprise and delight

Wow here it is, the season to give. What if it is always the season to give?
What I mean by that is notice how you feel when you do something kind, thoughtful, generous for someone else? Feels pretty good, huh? Well consider that whenever you feel stuck, stopped, worried, anxious, selfish, separate.... you get the idea? .... you gave.
That is how our I Am Grateful Bowl came into existence. We were experiencing a slow down in business, a block in the flow... so we said, "How can we give more?" and the idea of a bowl of delicious organic food paid by donation, based on what someone could afford to give, or someone might choose to purchase for someone else in advance, came into existence.
So look and see, where can you give today, who can you surprise and delight? This is such a great exercise to take on, in all seasons, each and every day.
Love, Terces

Creating a context for your life

What is the context for your life? What gets you up in the morning inspired to face your day?
I was on the farm the other morning doing my chores while listening to the birds sing. I started thinking about how grateful I am that my day to day life requires that I get up, carry water, rake, clean, wash, shovel, cook, build a fire.... you get the idea. I remembered how growing up I was actually afraid of a life that would have me come home at the end of my work day and sit and watch television! When people come to the farm the sometimes ask me, "do you like living this simply?" It's funny but I never think of it that way, I actually think when we are gathered around a campfire in the evening, "what was it that sent us all in doors?", "what were we thinking?"
The context for our lives is one of empowering the future generations, so living close to the earth, growing our own food, creating a more sustainable and local existence gets us up each day. We say that the universities of the future may well be small family farms.
I encourage you to create a context that not only inspires you but has you stretch into making the difference you are committed to making.
Love, Terces

Sharing

We are quickly coming upon the Holiday season when sharing is a common theme. I was thinking just the other day how much of a gift sharing really is. When we share with others we let them into our life, we open our hearts to them and often they in return open their hearts and lives to us. By sharing I mean really digging deeply into your experience of life and sharing from your most passionate place.
Last night we were guests at a dinner in Oakland where 10 others had earned the opportunity to be there via a raffle that was part of a fund raiser for the East Bay Waldorf School. We all gathered and then shared in a conversation, that we started, about gratitude and abundance.
It wasn't long before people were sharing about their challenges of being parents of young children and their deepest wishes for the quality of life they wanted for their families. Or how judgmental they sometimes are of others and how separate they feel. How much they long for community and a sense of belonging. There was such deep sharing that in less than one hour this table of mostly strangers was connected with the warmth of love. We could all actually feel it.
I invite all of us to take on a new level of sharing this Holiday season. Not just in gifts and parties, but that deep sense of truly connecting with those we love as well as those we wish we knew better. Reach out to one another, share from your heart.
That is the gift I want to give and the one I want to receive as well.

Love, Terces