Salt & Light Service on Zoom - Sunday, Jan 14 @ 10am

Click here to join the service on Zoom 

Because of the anticipated snow and extreme cold, the CMLT has made the decision to move Salt and Light's weekly service to Zoom. Pleasestay safe and warm during this extreme weather, and join the community as we gather on Zoom!

If you're able, donate toan organization providing warm shelterin the cold weather.This wishlistfromTransition Projectsallows you to directly purchase needed items for folks living outside.  

Children's Accompaniment Circle

If possible, please make sure your youth have a separate device to Zoom on and join with both devices at 10am. They will join using the same link and be placed into a breakout room with Jane.

What to Expect: 

• It’s a Zoom Pajama Retreat! Jane will be in her PJ’s.  We’ll be meeting each other in everyone’s houses at once! 

• We will play our own version of CAC “Video” games as a group.

• And of course we’ll do our Rose and Thorns for a cold snowy day.

• If you haven't already received your Epiphany Star we'll have some for you to choose from!

• Please bring your colored pens and some paper.

Announcing Leaven's 2024 Leadership + Strategic Goals

On December 10, 2023 at Leaven’s annual meeting, the community made some big decisions, approving five strategic goals for 2024-2025 and electing 12 members to Leaven’s 2024 Board of Directors.

Leaven’s 2024-2025 Strategic Goals

• Recommit to Community Organizing as a Core Sacred Practice of Leaven Community - Community Organizing and Action is one of our four core values. It’s time to scale back up, training our leaders and use the lens of community organizing to guide our strategy.

• Build a Culture of Radical Belonging - In 2024, we will create a team at Leaven that attends to Leaven’s culture and communal sense of belonging, in order for Leaven to more fully live into its vision where all people can gather here - making meaning and organizing for change regardless of race, gender, religion, age, ability, sexuality, class, and other identities and experiences.

• Explore Leaven becoming a Community Resilience Hub - We will initiate and deepen our existing neighborhood and organizing partnerships to understand what needs there might be for increasing resilience in a time of climate and other social, political and natural emergencies, as well as where and how Leaven might support, lead or partner in these efforts.

• Develop Secular Sacred Spaces at Leaven - Cultivating deep, meaningful relationships is an essential part of who we are as Leaven Community. We long for more spaces to cultivate strong relationships, and for more secular spaces to explore our diverse spiritualities.

• Develop a Sustainable and Abundant Resource Pool for Leaven's Financial Stability - Leaven has a strong foundation of generous and longtime individual donors who are committed to our vision. To strengthen our financial stability, Leaven’s Raising the Dough team will experiment with and evaluate the development of additional revenue streams such as grants, events, and earned income, and will build on what we learn.

Leaven’s 2024 Board Members

• Meshal Alajmi

• Vanessa Bird

• Jennifer Creswell

• Derek Fenwick, Co-Chair

• Mike Hogan

• Lois Jordahl, Salt and Light Appointee

• Cheryl Lohrmann, Co–Chair

• Joe Morgan, Treasurer

• John Rodgers

• Jazmín Vélez

• Marshall Wattman-Turner

• Brent Wilson, Secretary

Unveiling the Sacred Spiral of Leaven

“Love and Justice are not two. Without inner change, there is no outer change; without collective change, no change matters.” - Rev. angel Kyodo williams, sensei

On October 27-29, 35 adults and 14 children and youth within Leaven Community participated in the community-wide Leaven retreat, following the Listening Season in September 2023. The primary purpose of the retreat was to unveil the next steps for the community emerging out of the Listening Season.

Retreat design centered around aligning Leaven’s existing values (Diversity, Justice, Story and Action) with its existing activities, as well as holding them alongside the hopes and dreams that had been discussed at House Meetings in the listening season.

All our activities at Leaven are connected at a fractal level through relationships and shared values - so we were able to physically map on the floor Leaven’s existing programs and the hoped-for ideas that had been expressed in the listening season.

Building momentum from the sacred spiral mapping, the group engaged in an ideas-creation activity led by Rev Julia Nielsen, director of the Leaven Community Land and Housing Coalition. Each individual wrote one bold idea on a notecard. Notecards were then passed anonymously from person to person, stopping five times for individuals to review and score each idea on a scale of 1 (no thank you) to 5 (love this idea!!) for a total of 25 points. Ideas with scores 20 and higher were then added to the spiral map.

These conversations wove a deepening story of our shared dreams for this community! Curious to learn more? Read the 2023 Leaven Retreat Report here.