We are getting so close! The professionals are starting to wrap up their work and the final stages of finishing the building are...up to us. It's happening. We hope to do a "soft opening" at the end of May with our Annual Meeting. Our April 27/28 work parties were a huge success. We've laid our zendo floor. This weekend we're ramping up to lay our Cloud Hall and dokusan room floors! Join us if you can. Saturday May 3rd Work Party  9am to 3pm Sunday Morning May 4th Work Party 9am to 1pm Come join us for floor laying, landscape work, and yes the opportunity for more painting!

 

Our Volunteer Coordinator Ariel Paulenich is the person to reach out to if you have a volunteering offer or a volunteering need at Red Cedar.  Email Ariel at volunteering@redcedarzen.org See also the Committees & Volunteering page on the website.

We apologize for mis-copying the poem last month from Bert Webster-- misread a whole line--sorry, Bert!  The correct version is below: Aria Who shall sing when the songbirds are all gone? A lonely car sits on its back with a wheel slowly turning. Broken glass. From the car a beautiful Aria is heard A sound seemingly not from this world Who will hear when there is no ear to hear with? A battery dies, the song stops, and in a long moment the car turns into something else A songbird sings.  Who is the who that sings? From beginningless time we come And to endless time we go.

News and information from the Red Cedar Board and Committees

From the Board of Directors

A Request...

The Board of Directors of Red Cedar Zen Community will offer the following slate of officers and board members going forward for the community’s review at the Annual Sangha Meeting at 1:00 PM on Sunday, May 31:

• President: Mari Ritalahti (formerly our Treasurer)

• Vice President: David Ketter (and interim Secretary)

• Treasurer: Kris Blake (new board member)

• Barbara Noda (continuing member)

• Scott Allen (continuing member)

• Bob Rose (extending service until 12/31/2025)

Our by-laws call for a 30-day comment period on board nominations. Please offer any comments by May 30 to board@redcedarzen.org or you may submit an anonymous suggestion at our new Sangha Suggestion Box.

...and an Invitation

We also have available openings available for sangha members to serve our community’s needs. The Board is responsible for prudently managing the sangha’s financial resources, maintaining our new temple and community gathering space, and providing dependable support for our Teachers and students to offer a range of dharma opportunities to the public.

Board service is another form of practice - taking zazen off the cushion and rolling up our sleeves to offer a stable practice space for our community. We welcome your interest as an expression of your commitment to our growing sangha.

A new feature for our newsletter: have news you'd like to share with the broader sangha in the newsletter? Just send your submission to newsletter@redcedarzen.org

Whatcom Faith Community Immigrant Support

Contributed by Carolyn McCarthy 

Red Cedar is one of 32 faith communities coming together to help immigrants in Whatcom County. The Whatcom Faith Community Immigrant Support (WFCIS) is a network drawn together to support immigrant rights and to provide support for immigrant families. Requests may include donating food and supplies or participating in an event. If you'd like to help out, please contact Carrie McCarthy: carolyn@carolynmcc.com

Community giving opportunity through the Interfaith Coalition 

Raizelah Bayen is currently working to expand volunteer/giving opportunities for the RCZC sangha. 

Help Feed those that are Hungry: 

We are working through the Interfaith Coalition where Red Cedar is a member congregation.

CAST is the Coffee & Sandwiches Together program, coordinated by the Interfaith Coalition. Through this program, every weekday afternoon meals are prepared, delivered and served in downtown Bellingham to the homeless population. 

If you would like to volunteer in the CAST program or help at the Food Bank who are looking for volunteer delivery drivers, please contact Raizelah: raizelahb@gmail.com or 707-364-0431

Upcoming Events Please click on links for details May Construction Work Morning Sunday, May 4th; floors wrap up, painting and yard work options. Hidden Mountain Spring Retreat Friday, May 9th; Join us at Hidden Mountain Zendo for an overnight camping retreat, hosted by Reizan Bob Penny and Nomon Tim Burnett Lay Entrustment for Reizan Bob Penny Saturday, May 10th; Reizan Bob is the co-founder of our sangha and the creative energetic force behind our Wilderness Dharma program over the past 25 years. Hike: Lake Whatcom Watershed Hike Saturday, May 17th; A hike to perform rituals honoring the gathering of water in the Lake Whatcom watershed. Annual Sangha Meeting with the Board Saturday, May 31; please join us for our 2025 Annual Meeting of the Red Cedar Zen Community from 1-4 pm at our new site, 2509 Cedarwood and on Zoom.  The board will present updates and discuss volunteer opportunites, review policies and invite feedback! Opening to Nature Walk: 100 Acre Wood Saturday, June 7th; Join us for an easy 2.5 mile hike through Fairhaven's charming 100 acre wood. Samish Island Sesshin 2025 Friday, June 13th - Saturday, June 21st; Join us for our annual summer Sesshin with Zoketsu Norman Fischer at the beautiful church camp on the water on Samish Island in Skagit County. Many options for housing are still available. Backpack: Mountains and Rivers Retreat September 6th-11th; *this backpacking trip requires a phone interview about experience and abilities, with a discussion of the route, assessment and questions answered. Upcoming Samish Island overnight sesshin (retreats) - save the dates: November 6 - 9, 2025 June 12-20, 2026

This is a joyful and exciting time at Red Cedar as we move closer and closer to inhabiting our own temple.  What a gift and what a blessing to have a dedicated space in which to meet together, practice together, explore the dharma together, and grow together. This couldn’t have happened, of course, without the tremendous generosity of our members and friends. 

I am writing to you on behalf of the Membership Committee for 2 important reasons:

(1) to inform you that we have simplified the levels of membership at Red Cedar, and

(2) to ask you to reflect on your current level of membership.  Is there room to consider a change in membership to meet the growing needs of our sangha, as we build and move into our own temple? 

There is no need to change, if your current level of membership feels right to you. You will be “grandfathered” in at that level, even if that particular level no longer appears on our website as an option to new members. If, however, it is within your means and it feels right, please consider increasing your monthly or annual membership contribution to meet the growing needs of our sangha. 

Here are the new membership levels, as they appear on the website:

Monthly Membership Dues	Annual Membership Dues
Just Sitting	$120
$10	$200
$25	$300
$50	$400
$75	$500
$100	$600
$150	$1000
$250	$1200
	$1500

If you want to stay at your current level of membership, you do not need to do anything.

If, however, you choose to move to a new level of membership, clear instructions for changing your level of membership are here.

Please feel free to reach out to me, or any other Membership Committee Member, if you have questions about membership, or need technical support in changing your membership level.

In gratitude, The Membership Committee

Raizelah Bayen 

Kris Blake

Catherine Jones

Last week I stepped out of my position as the Executive Director of Mindfulness Northwest. This has been a rewarding and incredible chapter of my life, and also my primary source of livelihood since 2014, so I'm starting to feel into what this new chapter of my work life will be like.

I created Mindfulness Northwest (MNW) in 2011 because I saw an opportunity to serve others as interest in mindfulness seemed to be growing strongly. I wondered if it might be a way to bring what I'd been so nurtured and transformed by in Zen to a wider group of people who were never going to be comfortable with all of the stuff we do here. Plus my wandering career was feeling less and less meaningful and satisfying. (A few stops along the road: field botanist, handyman, cabinet maker, elementary school teacher, computer programmer!). Might it be possible to make a living through....meditation? That this might be possible amazed me.

(And yes I know I'm a lucky privileged person to even have the option of  prioritizing meaning in my work. Plenty of folks don't have the luxury. I'm deeply grateful for that.)

To my great surprise and delight it worked! The organization was successful. With a lot of hard work of course, but it worked. I was even able to hire a small staff and MNW supported them as well! In alignment with my values, I created it as a non-profit organization. We've actually served something around 10,000 people in our programs since it was founded in 2011. It'd good to take a breath now and recognize how amazing all of that is. Wow.

And after a few years MNW actually was doing well enough to pay me a modest professional salary which has been my primary income even since. Supplements by the stipend the sangha generously shares with me and the dana folks generously offer (thank  you!) it's been enough.

And now I am dropping a lot of my income. And that's a bit unsettling. I can feel the parts of me that want security tugging at my mind. And I do have some faith that it'll all be okay. Objectively: I did manage to set aside a chunk when I worked in technology.

I had to step back to be in integrity. I was getting tired. The organization has struggled since the pandemic. Where I once had great creative and dynamic energy from 2011 through 2019 - I was creating new programs and excited to go to work! - by 2023 or 24 it was feeling like a slog. I was just keeping it going as an obligation. Right when the org needed me to be sparking and excited to reinvent it it's leader was anything but excited. I still loved the teaching (still do!) but it started to feel like if I had to go to one more weekly admin meeting or make one more decision on polices my brain was going to implode. Do you know that feeling? I was done.

Plus I started allowing myself to feel how hard I'd been working. For years. How constantly I'd been responding to all kinds of needs in two organizations. Somehow for these last 14 years I've managed to be leadership in two dynamic organizations full of interesting and passionate people.....with all of the emails and personalities and great ideas and the occasional conflicts and issues that involves. And I always seem to want a family feeling where everyone's included (not that I do that perfectly as a leader but it's my default). Which is wonderful and creates a lot of richness and community but also just a LOT to keep up with.

So I'm a bit nervous about this change but also relieved at the same time. There will be a big release from a whole lot of tracking and remembering and tending and organizing with people.

And more room for me - not someone I usually prioritize! - and more room for our sangha and our practice as we move towards opening Sansui-ji. A lot of my sangha work has felt squeezed in to not enough mental space for...years.

So I let go of something big. Wonderful and pretty unsettling at the same time. What big things have you let go of?

It all has me thinking about the idea of renunciation.

In our life-practice journeys it may be that what real growth and change requires - what deep practice requires - is letting go of things. Allowing more change. Releasing from the assumptions of continuity we make as our conditioned selves yearn for more stability in the face of impermanence. Embracing change more. Living in deeper accord with the empty, impermanent, rich, wondrous, unpredictable nature of all things.

So last week I renounced being the Executive Director of an amazing non-profit. And I'm sure it's not the last thing I'll renounce. While we need to be practical in our lives, we also need to take risks! As I risk a drop in income I also look forward to discovering what opens up in my life.

What have you renounced? What might you renounce? What are you holding onto out of habit or unconscious obligation?

Big things and little things both are worth considering. Our way of practice is the way of letting go. Of releasing. Even as we stand strongly in our hearts in service of all beings - especially as we do that.

To paraphrase the Diamond Sutra: we save all beings understanding that there are no beings to save and no one here to save them, that's how we save all beings. We are called upon to be passionately engaged and completely letting go at the same time!

May we go forward together in grace and understanding as we lot go of going anywhere at all,

Nomon Tim

Aria

Who shall sing when the songbirds are all gone?

A lonely car sits on its back with a wheel slowly turning. Broken glass.

From the car a beautiful Aria is heard; a sound seemingly not from this world

We will hear when there is no car to hear with.

A battery dies; the song stops, and in a long moment, the car turns into something else

A song bird sings.

Who is it that sings?

From beginningless time we come

And into endless time we go.

~Bert Webster

BIPOC / LBGTQ / Low Income Event Scholarships We have been gifted a $1500 scholarship for one day sits and classes, earmarked for those who identify as BIPOC, LBGTQ, or low income. If you are interested in utilizing this scholarship for an event, simple select the option during event registration.  It is available this year or as long as the monies are available!  Sangha Cares! The Membership Committee is starting a project called Sangha Cares. Can you help us support members who are sick or in need of assistance (such as a ride to a medical appointment, or help getting groceries)? If you would like to be part of Sangha Cares and be contacted when a sangha member needs assistance, please contact membership@redcedarzen.org, to be added to the the email list.

 

Supporting the Sangha: New Integrated Donations Page The Technology and Finance Committees have worked together to create an integrated donations web page. You can now make donations for the sangha or dana donations for all of our teachers into a single easy-to-use page. Note there is also an option for recurring donations if you want to support a teacher or the sangha in an ongoing way through donations. Memberships are also welcome if you'd like to support the sangha in an ongoing way.  Already a member? If you haven't thought about your membership level in a while, this time of transition into our new temple may be a helpful time to do just that. Cedarwood Building Update Huge progress continues! In April (19th, 26th & 27th) we'll be back in full gear with our sangha work: painting, laying floors, trim, and cabinetry. Please join us!  Ready to get inspired - check out Nomon Tim's latest video tour of our progress.