Meet the Co-Directors - Emily

Dear Friends,

This is Emily, one of the new co-directors at Plainsong Farm.  Though I am starting my fourth year at the farm, I wanted to reintroduce myself and share with you how excited I am to serve in this new role.  

I love the farm.  I love how the asparagus pops in unexpected places.  I love singing with people.  I love watching my dog Stu romp the perimeter paths.  
I arrived at Plainsong as a summer seminary intern.  It was May 2020 and I could wave at my new co-workers from a safe six feet away.   By August, I accepted a permanent position at the farm.  

Originally from Maryland, the Lake Michigan Watershed has been my home since I attended Calvin College.  Before the farm, I worked as a worship planner, occasionally taught dance lessons, and spent significant time living and working in Three Rivers, Michigan with *culture is not optional, a small nonprofit working for the flourishing of their community.  

I have known despair, both my own and the world’s.  I know well how an illness can have a name but not an antidote.  I’ve experienced how places designed for belonging begot estrangement.  I have worshiped and worked in places where the groundwater is too polluted to drink.  And I am a prisoner to hope.  I grasp at it.  ‘Work ahead in hope’ is framed on my wall. When I’m feeling particularly hopeless I throw myself a hope themed dance party.  As Mariame Kaba, the activist, says: “hope is a discipline.”  

Plainsong seeks to be a place of hope and healing.  Though we may know all the facts about the changing climate in our bones, we know the pain of exclusion and dashed expectations, though we have doubts, and have known loneliness; I get excited to go to work every day because I work with and in a community that is practicing hope.  

I see Plainsong practicing hope as we nurture young adults who are asking big questions.  I see Plainsong practicing hope when we welcome kids to play and skip, to run like the deer, and to taste and see how good God's creation is.  I see Plainsong practicing hope when volunteers weed carrots that will later be delivered to a pantry.  I see Plainsong practicing hope when we plant bare root hazelnut and plum trees.  I see Plainsong practicing hope when we offer space for prayer and singing, questions, and counter liturgies to the world that says our only hope is to work better, harder, and to save more money.

Thank you for being a part of this small practice of hope.  

grace and peas,                                                          

Emily

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