Seizing this opportunity even on our “lazy day”, Vanessa, Dave, and I headed to town after getting word that Fern and Johanna were available and ready to meet at Brewbakers cafe. When one feels such a calling and inspiration to create, even a community designated day off of work is perfect time for us to throw our aspirations into a cafe and blend up our project visions together. During our short visit to Morning Sun, we’d been seizing such opportunities and gathering in groups of 2, 4, or 5 of us at a time, whether after breakfast, in the meditation hall, or in this bustling little college town down the road from the community.

Dave, formerly known as the Brother Heart, had recently transitioned from living four solid years in the monastery, having shed his brown robes and laid down his alms bowl. Leaving the monastery a few months before, he decided to spend the entire summer program at Morning Sun, a destination already known as a safe-haven and respite for former monastics. Having spent a few years in monastic life myself, I couldn’t imagine a more supportive, inspiring, and wonderful place for him to be right now. A wise and blessed choice for him, no doubt. Having practiced with him for some months at Deer Park, Vanessa and I also couldn’t be happier to see him at Morning Sun.

I dropped off Vanessa and him in front of the cafe, as the spring morning sunshine had quickly turned to puddles that afternoon. By the time I reached the cafe only a block and a half from the car, I was half-sopping wet. The warm and rich roasted coffee bean and pastry aromas infused every nook, cranny, wooden table, booth, and person in this cozy cafe. Straight back, there was Fern and Johanna. A 27 year old aspiring artist and dedicated Wake Up community enthusiast, Johanna had arrived at Morning Sun a few months before. Each with a mug of hot cocoa and whipped cream on top, and cozily seated towards each other in the booth, their intimate sisterhood session had clearly already begun.

After some warm greetings and smiles, Fern shared with us that she had to leave by 6pm, so we had only about one hour together. Between attending her children’s dance at school, forging out time for a biweekly date with her husband Michael, and shopping for Morning Sun, her time is squeezed. By the genuine freshness in her smiles as we sat down, and the spontaneous bright beams of compassion in her eyes, you wouldn’t know it. But this is the life of a mother of three, senior lay Dharma teacher, and one who’s devoted the last 10 years of her life to creating a thriving mindfulness community. We’d gratefully take each minute offered of her time.

We hunkered together, intending to write a video script intend that would excite and inspire potential donors for the Wake Up Center. We knew that our brainstorming time was short, so we jumped in with our creative ideas, passion, insights, and schemes all together. It was a short amount of time and it was messy. We tried our best to listen to each other’s inspiration while still searching for our own, talked over each other at times, disappointedly let go of personal ideas that were initially exciting but altogether not working out, and tried again to listen to each other. We seemed to grind down each other’s ideas to the core, sometimes patiently, and sometimes less so, but the air of safety and care never left the circle. 

In the midst of our brainstorm grinding, the cafe was grinding its own beans, and so loudly that we couldn’t hear each other anymore. We stopped, relaxed our postures, and took a few minutes to just breathe, and re-establish our presence of calm, ease, and connection together. Then Dave started making over-exaggerated facial gestures of concentration, acting as if he was thinking just as hard as the coffee bean machine was grinding. We all burst into laughter watching him make such ridiculous faces of concentration – but we were also really laughing at ourselves being so serious about our work together. Good thing the air of humor and playfulness never fully left our circle either.

Michael, Morning Sun co-founder #2 and Fern’s husband, joined us after an hour and a half; to our happiness, he was 30 minutes late to meet Fern. He came to take Fern on their Friday night date, but our conversation was all too powerful and moving to leave. So we then had Michael’s creative genius and fresh eyes to join us.

Our momentum and vision were coalescing together slowly, steadily, increasing, brewing, and finally, Aha!! We had it. What finally came out was a damn fine vision for our video, and most importantly our collective harmony, happiness, and celebration together.

We had a vision to deeply inspire and uplift others, no matter if they were to partner with our project or not. Our video would be a mini-Dharma talk in itself, watering seeds of hope and peace in anyone who watched it, while also creatively imparting our deep collective dream and message to others. Each one of us would have an important role in the video’s creative expression. It was perfect.

These moments together, hashing out our aspirations and dreams, and putting them into concrete expression, these are what great community memories are made of. This, my friend, is Sanghabuilding.