Help Quanita Preserve the Heart of Hope Springs

The Spirit House vs the Farmhouse

I’m up at 4am writing this because it won’t let me sleep. It won’t leave me alone. This is how things start to work through me. This is how clarity comes to me.

I am a part of the Hope Springs community, a place that holds deep healing work for lots of people. A place that has held some of my own work (me holding others and me being held) for the past 23 years as of next month.

The thought that won’t let go of me is the Spirit House vs the Farmhouse. Recently there has been a movement to hold the Spirit House as the center of Hope Springs instead of the Farmhouse. This reminds me of how so many places mistake the church building as being the center of the church instead of the church work and its people.

It is also worth noting that the Spirit House is the newest building on the property and that the Farmhouse is the oldest building. It was there when Hope Springs was founded.The Spirit House doesn’t have the structural issues that the Farmhouse now has after years (around 100) of service to this land and it’s people. The Spirit House doesn’t require the amount of maintenance that the Farmhouse needs to restore and maintain its functionality.

If we aren’t paying close attention the Spirit House can look like the most spiritual building on the property but I don’t think it is. I think the Farmhouse is the place where we, as Hope Springs community, and the families that live in the Farmhouse before have always gone to feed our bodies, minds, and spirits. It’s the place that has held us in our sleep, fed us, it is the place where we have gathered around the fire and shared our stories, our hopes, our fears with each other. And before it was a place for Hope Springs it was the place that I would imagine babies have been born, kids were raised and people who tended to the land called home. Its a place that I call home.

There has been talk about tearing down a part or all of the farmhouse, mostly because of the cost to restore. I think this would be a mistake. Since the beginning of Hope Springs we have always encouraged people to listen to the land, listen for what it wants. I would suggest that after all these years the farmhouse is a part of the land. I suspect that the original part of the farmhouse was build from the trees of this place. It is of this place. Restoration of old things is never cheap but there is a reason that we do it.

Maybe this is working me because I have a birthday tomorrow and as I get older I see more and more how we live in a country that glorifies youth and often doesn’t know how to hold the old with reverence. I know it doesn’t seem practical to try to save the farmhouse but when is love or spirit ever practical. The saboteur archetype however is always practical. It tells us that there isn’t enough time, money, energy, resources…but the saboteur lies. It steals our possibility before we even get started. The saboteur is steeped in the belief that we can see or know all the parameters of how something will unfold to say yes to it. This is the whiteness. This is the water that we are all swimming in that tells us what is right, real, and true is White and male. This equation often leaves out nature and the divine. Then we use this as a yardstick to make our decisions by. But something deeper is possible.

I would suggest that the spirit house, as lovely and sacred of a space it is, it still is a baby compared to the Farmhouse. I would suggest that we hold the Farmhouse with a little more reverence.

So, for my birthday I would like you to donate money to support the restoration of the Farmhouse at Hope Springs in my name. If I have touched your life please donate for my 53rd birthday. It can be $1, $1,000,000, or anything in between. To me your donation means hope and reverence.

Thank you for your consideration,

Quanita

(I am now a current board member of Hope Springs. This is my personal view and not the view of the board.)