Seeding Resilience

Somewhat unbelievably, August, 2026 marks a dozen years since Corey and I took on the stewardship of our building in Detroit. Through years of change, growth, many losses, and much support from community, we've been immensely fortunate to have a home base in which to live, make our art, and (for the several years we ran it as the performance space Light Box), to host other artists in sharing their work. Though the centenarian building requires seemingly endless care, and the projects of renovation will not likely be completed in our lifetimes, we've been eager to turn our attention to the land, itself.

With some native (and, frankly, naive) landscaping dreams in mind, we needed first to have the asphalt removed from the quarter acre parking lot. We would then sow plants that might help to clean and prepare the underlying soil. Corey had once learned that sunflowers are used to remediate toxicity, even at the sites of calamitous chemical spills; and the plucky, sunny flowers are known to withstand harsh conditions. We envisioned a field full of them, each one doing its small part to help us to make the place a little better than we found it.

Once the asphalt had finally been removed and trucked off and the lot graded, however, we were dismayed to be greeted not only by some rocks and glass here and there, nor only expectedly sandy soil…,

but by an entire moonscape of gravel.

It seemed unlikely that we would be able to plant much of anything without first bringing an unaffordable amount of topsoil.  So, we resigned ourselves to seeing what would happen if we tried a couple small experiments.  We would watch what dared to grow there on their own— the Queen Anne’s lace and the blue chicory and the deviously brilliant bindweed had always found their way through the cracks in the parking lot. And we would reach into our bag of sunflower seeds, (dwarf sunflowers — another story), and offer them up to a small plot anyway.

It took literally drilling a hundred holes in the rocky terrain in which to deposit a little fresh soil and a few seeds each.

It took months of waiting.

But last week, the first bold, proud bloom emerged victorious and our hearts swelled with hope (and just a tiny bit of pride).

One… out of a hundred. Somehow, had the entire graveled plot been filled with yellow faces smiling back at us, it would not have felt as utterly miraculous as with this one bloom.

Now, we would never ask or expect one little sunflower (dwarf or otherwise) to take responsibility to clean a quarter acre lot.  But knowing what is possible to cultivate even under the least forgiving terrain will help us to show up the next time — hopeful, humble and with more tools, resources and knowledge.

This October, my dear colleagues and friends Kath Weider and Carrie Hatcher-Kay and I will offer our third annual retreat  for all the courageous sunflowers in our communities — the helping professionals, educators, clergy, activists, artists and the care providers, both vocational and familial.  We will facilitate somatic movement, sound/voice, IFS/Parts Work, and other contemplative practices through which everyone might receive respite and resource. We will again be held in the peaceful autumn beauty of the Triple Crane Retreat Center, and we'll share two nourishing meals this time. And we will cultivate a container in which, despite some of the disheartening harshness of the conditions of our world at present, each of us -- tenacious as we are -- might feel properly right-sized in our service and know ourselves as small members of a mighty, sunny field.