Sangha Thanksgiving Dinner

Every year, in the midst of our biggest week of Center activities, we invite Sangha as well as friends of Sangha to share in a vegetarian potluck supper at 4 p.m. in the Center’s dining room. If you’d like to join with staff and others on our favorite holiday of the year, sign up at the Center (there’s a sheet for that in the Link) or call (585-473-9180) and we’ll pencil you in. Bring a vegetarian dish, hand-made or store-bought, to share.

If you’d like to come early to socialize, there will be a whole lot of cooking going on in the kitchen starting in the early afternoon.

Here’s a link to the full schedule for the week, and there are printed copies in the Link. If you’d like to help out, we’d be especially glad for help next Friday, November 29, when we set up for Temple Night. And don’t miss the Ceremony of Gratitude this Sunday morning, November 24!

The Lotus Has Landed

After years of planning and labor, a major and generous donation to the Center has come into concrete form (or more accurately, into bronze form). On October 28, two large sculptures created by Todd McGrain, were lowered by crane into the courtyard at the Chapin Mill Retreat Center. Todd was the sculptor of the hexagonal basalt piece in the Founder’s Garden at Arnold Park as well as of Spinning Still, which is installed by the pond at Chapin Mill. He’s best known for the Lost Bird Project (Lost Bird Project), which consists of five large pieces that are memorials to five extinct North American bird species.  

There’s more work and design remaining to complete what’s now a sea of gravel and mud, but we can see that the finished result will be stunning. Much gratitude to the donors who conceived, offered, and fully funded this project!

Tom Kowal put together a video that shows one of the sculptures being raised and lowered into place. Check it out here. (Please note that depending on your browser settings, the video clip may either play or download when you click on the link.)