A Breaking Bread Series

Attending together to what matters to us in this dangerous and fertile time

A Series of Four Evenings at the Hancock Library

6:30-8:00 pm

If there is consensus at this moment about one thing, it’s fair to say that we are all deeply concerned about our world.  Divisiveness, inflation, extreme economic disparities, and oversized corporate power and consolidation are issues that cut across party lines. Human interests are being sidelined to those of sheer profit, and we are all feeling the results.  All this plays out in agriculture and our food system, and we all eat.  “Breaking bread” together can extend to conversations about our concerns and values, what we hold dear, and what we hope for the future.  Not only that — agriculture can also help to solve many of our pressing crises, aiding us to make real the futures we envision.

Gandhi said there are as many paths to truth as there are people.  We each have something to contribute and we need that diversity at this time.  In the face of the current breakdown along just about every dimension of life, it is natural to feel profound despair, hopelessness, anger, or denial.  Sometimes it is too painful to stay awake.  As feeling, sensing, and caring creatures, we need each other in these times.  None of us can face all this alone, and the solutions demand vast numbers of us to change course in deep and transformational ways.

Joining together in cross-partisan conversations will be part of a four-evening series at the Hancock Library, one every three weeks, starting Wednesday, January 21^st, from 6:30-8:00 pm.  The evenings will consist of presentations, inner reflections, and interactive exercises.  Registration is required by January 12^th for the first evening. To learn more or sign up, call 603-525-3300 or email mainstcheese@gmail.com.

And, mark your calendars!  Following the introductory evening, there will be a series of three additional evenings to be taken as a whole on Feb 10^th, March 3^rd, March 25^th for which there will be a charge.  Registration for these evenings is required by January 30^th.

With integrity, kindness, and respect, we can have hard yet even convivial conversations about this moment, giving voice to what matters most to us, and how it relates to our food system.  “Right” and “left” no longer serve our imaginations in designing what could be possible.  Can we come together and look anew at long-held economic assumptions and how we might update them for our current context, in service to each one of us and to life as a whole?

Sarah Gilliatt, from the new Futures Center at Main Street Cheese, LLC, invites you to come with a friend or someone you know, with whom you feel you could comfortably converse despite political differences, to go into our heart of hearts together, and from curiosity to seek to understand each other, baby step by baby step.

Come as you are, show up with an open mind and heart, and we will begin!

BIO

Sarah Gilliatt is a socially-engaged buddhist philosopher and farmer, with an eye towards heterodox economics.  Her economic and farmer lenses allow her a particular, often non-partisan viewpoint on this moment that many find refreshing and inspiring.

Sarah holds a degree in Philosophy from UC-Berkeley and an MA in Socially-Engaged Buddhism from the Naropa Institute.  She has an internationalist perspective, having studied and worked with many leading global south and “south-within-the north” activist-scholars contesting globalization and promoting economic localization.  She represents the Northeast Organic Farming Association of NH (NOFA-NH) on the NOFA Interstate Policy Council and is a NOFA liaison to the National Family Farm Coalition and more recently the HEAL Food Alliance.  She founded and manages Main Street Cheese, LLC in Hancock, NH where she is starting a new program, The Futures Center at Main Street Cheese.