The Village Blog

We are now approaching two months living into this new disrupting personal and social condition.  Impacts have been various, determined by physiologies not yet known, preexistent medical conditions, economic placements, psychological dispositions and, sadly, racial...

Peace In The Time Of CoronaVirus In Mid-March, only days ago, after the meaning of the CoronaVirus impact became clear, and we feared for life, and markets crashed, and people began hoarding, one of VEC’s board members shared at our virtual meeting with an abrupt and...

“Beauty will save the world,” is an intriguing phrase out of a Dostoyevsky novel which has been notably repeated and explicated within the Christian Russian Orthodox tradition.  Beauty understood as a fold of ultimate reality is not new to human experience. In the 4th...

Many of our refugee and immigrant partners at the Village Exchange Center find themselves in a diaspora condition, lifted out of land and culture, seeking to keep critical values and mores in a new social context.  For these communities, values are often rediscovered...

As we follow the increasing frequency of violent events, of white supremacists, of hatred toward immigrants, and aggression toward the other, people of good will are searching to find avenues of healing and wholeness.  At the Village Exchange Center, in all our areas...

At the Village Exchange Center we sometimes engage with cultures and people who are baffling to home grown sensibilities, but often encounters are unpredictably and wondrously enriching.  Notably, the Center recently hosted a Hindu Puja festival at which the young and...

  Almost two years ago when Amanda and I set out on this journey to create the Village Exchange Center, among the first we talked to was Joe Horther who generously welcomed us and shared his wisdom and support.  Joe talked about creating a space of belonging. ...

  I felt a playful tapping at my waist as I stood in line at McDonalds.  I turned, no one there, but on my other side, giggles.  It was an impish, gleaming Sam, one of our boys from the Center.  “What are you doing here Sam?  Are you getting a burger?”  “No, I...