The Salish Seals reunited on the first weekend of March for a unique outing: we spent much of our afternoon inside, aprons donned, to bake up a storm for Bellingham Community Meals. BCM is a group of volunteers that comes together once a month to prepare and serve a warm meal free to those living in transition in our community. The only thing that isn't prepared onsite is dessert. This is where we put our energy, and the girls collaboratively counted, measured, stirred, whipped, beat, melted, poured…and cleaned!
After an introduction to our project, we explored questions like: Whose "cups" are we filling today with this project? What other needs are we meeting by helping with this community meal? What would happen in our community without these resources? Why might people need a free meal once a month? The girls responded with thoughtfulness and compassion. We all agreed that filling others’ cups makes our cups more full (we call this "the magic cup"!). Today our goal was to help people meet the basic need of food. But going a step beyond this, the girls discussed how community meals meet other basic needs as well, such as love, community, and connection.
The girls split into three groups, stirring lots of love into the batter along with the other ingredients. The kitchen was a-flurry with egg cracking, whirling beaters and recipe checking. We remembered to go one step at a time, implementing our motto, “Think It Through Before You Do.” Soon our treats were baking and our mouths were watering, and we began a serious Leave No Trace kitchen clean-up. Very inspiring to see these girls wash, dry, sweep, and clean with gusto.
After our hard work we ate lunch together out on the deck, in rare March sun. Then we geared up and headed out for an exploration at the beach below Aimee's house. Embracing the sunshine on this lovely March day, girls explored widely. Some found crabs, others made art, and others stretched their edges by navigating along the sandstone, doing safety checks all along the way, discovering varied sea life and basking on the rocks like harbor seals. We could have explored all afternoon, but we had one last task to tackle: bagging the sweet treats. We headed up the trail and packed nearly 90 bars to share with others. When these girls are older, they'll have the opportunity to serve at this meal, offering direct service to complement the indirect service we offered in our baking.
In our closing circle, our cups overflowed with gratitude: for full cups, sunshine, trees, the Salish Sea, generosity, nature, service, Gus the dog, and for each other.
You may check out the slideshow from our day here.
