Kinship Over Coffee: Brewing Hope at Deep Time AVL

What if your morning coffee could change lives?

In this episode of The UPLift, we sit down with the Deep Time AVL team to explore how unfiltered engagement, meaningful employment, and fierce collaboration are reshaping reentry in Asheville—one cup at a time. 

At Deep Time, coffee becomes the unlikely bridge between prison and possibility. Operating as a coffee roastery and café run with, by, and for people impacted by incarceration, Deep Time blends social enterprise rigor with trauma-informed care and wraparound support. The aim isn’t temporary relief. It’s dignity. It’s skill-building. It’s reducing recidivism by strengthening the social determinants of freedom: housing, work, belonging, and community. 

The result? Real connection. Real trust. Real transformation.

Deep Time isn’t charity. It’s kinship with a paycheck. And this conversation is a proven playbook for second-chance hiring and community-based recovery.

About Dustin: Rev. Dustin M. Mailman is a friend of those whom the so-called empire deems disinherited. As the Founding Pastor of Deep Time, he sits at the intersection of care, grassroots organizing, and solidarity-based approaches to faith formation. He is a graduate of Appalachian State University and Emory University, and is an Elder in Full Connection in the United Methodist Church.

About Marisa: Marisa Johnson is a dedicated Sojourner at Deep Time Coffee, a community she gratefully calls both a workplace and a family. After overcoming significant life challenges, including rebuilding her life following a 10-year period of incarceration, Marisa has embraced Deep Time as a meaningful place of stability, growth, and purpose. Grounded in faith and resilience, she is committed to personal development and to the continued journey of transformation ahead. Marisa looks optimistically toward her growth and transformation through God and Deep Time.

About Shilone: Shilone Knight is the Head Barista at Deep Time. He is fascinated with the work and healing he’s found at Deep Time. He is passionate about leading other Sojourners by example, so everyone has a shot at being in community. 

Want to help fuel change?

🎧 Press play.

☕ Visit the café.

📦 Subscribe to monthly beans at deeptimeavl.org.

We'll see you same time, same place next month. Until then, peace.

Transcript

Welcome & Intros

SPEAKER_02 0:03

We're profoundly, profoundly interconnected. We don't always live that way, we don't always acknowledge it. But if we're going to heal, we have to live it, experience it, and create institutions that celebrate it. And we create a we when no one's on the outside of it.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to the Uplift with ZedEc, real talk for real change. Before we jump in, a quick reminder of why we're here and what we hope to achieve. We're here to build authentic community relationships and help fuel social transformation in Nashville, North Carolina. We believe collective liberation is not only possible but probable as we share, listen, and learn together. We're here for the process. However, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Welcome to ZX The Uplift. We are so excited to have with us an amazing community organization called Deep Time. I'm going to give everyone an opportunity to introduce themselves. Let's start with you, Dustin.

SPEAKER_05 1:04

Hey there. My name is Reverend Dustin Mailman. I'm the founder and pastor of Deep Time.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

My name is Marissa Johnson, and I'm a sojourner at Deep Time.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

My name is Shyloom Knight. I am a lead sojourner, hey barista at Deep Time.

Defining Deep Time

SPEAKER_04 1:19

I have a question. What's a sojourner?

SPEAKER_05 1:21

So the word sojourner means someone who accompanies for a short time. Every single person who is a returning citizen or a young person who's at risk of incarceration who walks through our doors, we say we're committed to community for the long haul. If your plan is to just stay here in one spot for a long time, you're at the wrong place because we're we're trying to make sure we are participating in a full ecosystem and that deep time isn't just the end all be all for everyone. With that, sojourners are folks who are either coming out of prison or are a young person who's at risk of incarceration or has been justice involved, who participates in a nine-month cohort where you'll get formation, you'll get wraparound re-entry resources, and then you'll have specifically either coffee roasting or barista uh employment opportunity to where you'll get all kinds of certifications related to trauma resiliency, uh to uh future uh like more contextualized workforce development skills. So, like we got a fellow who works with us right now, shout outs to Jesse, who wants to be a beekeeper. We were able to locate ways for him to get a scholarship with Mountain Bizworks to create a business plan. And then A B Tech has a certification program in beekeeping. So we're in addition to kind of what's in-house, we're connecting people with what their vocation and dreams are outside of Deep Time.

SPEAKER_04 2:43

So I'm gonna back up a little bit because I heard that word and I kind of looped around. What is Deep Time?

SPEAKER_05 2:49

Deep Time is a community that celebrates, employs, and creates spiritual community with people impacted by incarceration. I founded Deep Time as a United Methodist pastor who was uh deeply committed to the idea that where the church ought to be is wherever those with their backs against the wall find themselves. Over and over again, when I stepped into relationship with my friends in my congregation that lives on the sidewalks and front lawns of West Asheville, I found that there was this intersecting reality of mental health crisis, sheer bad luck, systemic realities, substance use. And then the last was uh recidivism and all of those other realities to climb to see more immediate impact. But recidivism, you know, we can we can look at something like the social determinants of health. So, like the bare minimum of what it takes to just kind of live, right, and realize that when those are addressed, recidivism decreases exponentially. If someone has somewhere to live, somewhere to work, if they have access to a community to where they could participate in life with a higher power in a community, the likelihood of recidivizing plummets. All that that sounded like to me when I heard first heard about social determinants of health and how it impacts recidivism, you know, all the fun, like public health stuff that people want to talk about. That's just ministry. And that's what uh the church, for as long as I could think of has been falling short of. I so deeply appreciate the mission of Zedak because Deep Time's also sitting at this intersection of like, what is the role of queer people in the church? What is the role of untangling the mess that is uh just harm that's been done to other faith traditions? Yes. How can a tradition like mine, Unite a Methodist church, you're you'd be hard-pressed to find a Methodist church in the South that wasn't a Methodist Episcopal South church, which means it was explicitly founded on principles of segregation. Yep. Deep time is an opportunity, not for us to overlook that history, but it's an invitation to heal through that history. That's really what deep time is. So we're we're a community specifically for returning citizens and uh young people who are doing everything they can to not get ensnared in cycles of recidivism.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

Thank you so much for that. One of the questions that I was gonna ask is when did you realize that coffee could be a way, a vehicle for addressing recidivism? Coffee, how did that birth happen?

SPEAKER_05 5:11

I've always been an armchair coffee uh snob. I was gonna say expert, but snob. Um, and I I've always had this idea in my back pocket, but it wasn't until the fall of 2022 where I experienced uh the first person in my life that I loved as a part of congregational life here. Her name is Phoenix, and she overdosed during the first cold snap of that year. Uh, she used a substance that she didn't typically use. When I showed up with my clergy collar on and my cross and was sitting with her uh bedside while she was intubated, all these activists started coming into the room. And it wasn't any church folk, it wasn't even like business owners around where she was at, or people who I expected to know her. It was harm reductionists, it was community health workers, it was all these different people who all had the same landing point. If she never would have been to gone to prison, this never would have happened. The nature of her charges kept her off food stamps, kept her from being on any housing lists, it kept her from any employment in Bunkham County. So it was from there that I saw clearly a need. And we're in a big church building with a lot of space. And it was the first attempt at saying, what's it look like for this church to live into the deed? Literally, on Trinity's deed, the building was commissioned for the good of the neighborhood. This church, until three, four years ago, looked nothing like the neighborhood. Also, on Haywood Road, on any given day, there's five to eight different coffee shops that are either opening up or are longstanding, but there's not too many coffee roasters in Asheville. So I dug into my back pocket. I presented this idea to a bunch of community sages, either folks who are on the streets, folks like Michael Hayes, who's been at the front of culturally aligned healing work for a long, long time. Um, artists like Joseph Robinson, Dan Pizzo was a part of that circle. There's just a circle of people who are doing kind of direct solidarity work at that time. Gene Edison, of course, how can I not? He's gonna hate that I brought his name up, but Gene Edison was at that table too. And it wasn't until then that I learned about coffee as currency in prison. And I all I could think about to myself was this dog can hunt. And if you look up the kind of coffee that's that's in prison, it's called cafe coffee. And it's literally money. And I didn't know this until later, you know, I didn't Google search cafe coffee, I just talked about it. And our bags look they're a bright yellow and have the white logo, and it's like our bags are almost identical to cafe coffee by divine providence, I guess.

Marisa's Journey

SPEAKER_04 7:43

Okay. Okay. So, Marissa, share a little bit of your story. How did you come to know Deep Time and how long have you been working with Dustin and this crew?

SPEAKER_03 7:53

So my time at Deep Time started three weeks after I got out of prison from doing a 10-year stint. And um, I was initially introduced to Lindsay Hensley through coming into prison at Western Correctional with Angel Boone through our Goodwill re-entry class. I didn't get to participate in that class that they had already graduated, but the lady angel that runs it brought me down to meet Lindsay specifically. I had a lot of resources, but transportation is a big issue. And I had a lot of barriers standing in my way of getting my license back. So I was really stressed out about that. So when I came and met Mercy at Transformation Village, she and I have been friends about seven years. And she has seen me through my prison transformations, through what God has done in my life in prison after losing my daughter. I still made bad decisions and was still not acting accordingly at all, even though I knew what the calling on my life is. And I know it's to whom much is given, much is required. So when I met Mercy and realized that's my mercy from prison, and she's the operation manager at Deep Time, it was like God was just lining all of this up. And she works at Transformation Village as well. I just got a lot of one-on-one time with her. I came in, I did an interview, I met Dustin, who was on paternity leave with his second son, Jackson, and he is amazing. I just, it felt like home. It felt like home. It's my kind of people. Everyone here, 99% of us have been impacted by incarceration. And the only 1% is Dustin. And he's definitely been impacted by incarceration because we all impact him daily. So I think it's probably about 100%. I've been here for a month and a half, and um, I just see that this could be part of my life for the rest of my life in in some form or fashion. I want to always be connected to Trinity, to Dustin, to Deep Time. This is a place where we're welcome, where we're not shunned or stigmatized because of the life that we have lived. Sounds like you have dignity in this space.

Shilone's Journey

SPEAKER_04 10:04

I do. I do. I do. Can you share your name one more time? I we've heard from Marissa, who's been here about six weeks, but you're you've been with Deep Time a little bit longer. Can you share your name one more time and tell us how did you come to know Deep Time and how long have you been working with Dustin and the crew?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

My name is Shyloom Knight. How I started working at Deep Time. Um we were staying at a hotel in South Carolina, specifically in Spartanburg, but um my mom has some company, and I guess it was our last night. So she told him, and I ain't never had a job. He asked me. So, you know, he'd take me to his car and everything. We sit down, we talk. You know, I guess he was trying to see if I fit the criteria of whatever he was trying to refer me to, and I guess I did. The next day, we driving over here, and he get a flat tire on his way here. I ain't even gonna lie. But we get that situated. His dad came through, gave him a replacement tire, then we end up over here at the safe shelter. And it took us about two days. But as soon as we uh got in within them two days, that's when Gene affiliated me within Deep Time and got me employed and gave me my first job.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

And so, how long have you been with Deep Time now?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

October 6th marked my six months of working here. So, probably about a year and a month now. So, what does deep time mean to you? Deep time, what does it mean to me?

SPEAKER_04 11:22

Yes.

On Building Community

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Well, if you're showing up, you you already on point because that means you you ain't doing nothing, you ain't got no business doing. What does it mean to me though? I mean, they helped me and my family with our situation. So the best way of giving back is first my time. But the way I see deep time, I see it as community work. That's really just a nitty-gritty, it's just community work and a lot of selflessness, definitely. Um, a lot of consideration, just not even for yourself, but more so around like everybody around you in your space, things of that nature. Just making sure everybody elevated, uplifting, just seeing where everybody's heads at within the space, just you know, everybody got unique situations, different situations. I'm already knowing I don't never take none away from this man, this person, you know.

SPEAKER_04 12:08

And how do you see community coming together through Deep Time?

SPEAKER_05 12:12

When Deep Time started, we were so kind of like ragtag grassroots. Whoever's in front of us, that's community. Just it it was what it was. And as we've grown, we're seeing that there's no other option than community if we're gonna be showing up the way that we're supposed to show up where we're at. If we're saying we're thinking critically about justice and and equity, that if if that's dislocated from community, then there's no point. I just got word that um our head roaster GA, he just met a woman on the streets and and bust her with some clothes from Ross. It looks like Lindsay, who just took my man Aaron to go wash some laundry. It looks like Marissa uh yesterday there's a there's a fellow who showed up to work. We really, really believe, like if you come to deep time, you can come when you're having a bad day. Dude was having a bad day. He trusted us. And in hearing Marissa, this is one of her peers, and just hearing her be able to encourage him in the midst of that bad day, where normally it would be like, oh, you say you want to leave right now? Go. We were saying, no, linger, say what you got to say. It's about sitting in in some really tough tension, too. The the prison industrial complex places each of us, not even just people who are actually incarcerated, in really complicated head spaces. No one's supposed to be sitting in solitary confinement. No 17, 18-year-old supposed to be on the streets. No one is supposed to uh just eat the bare minimum three times a day and depend on whatever you got to depend on to eat real food. There's also this insidiousness of some of the more evangelical, proselytizing types of faith that comes in to where it's it's all about blaming you for what you've done instead of reframing what's it look like to really wrestle with the reality that all of us are more than what our worst day offered us. That's what I see at deep time. We will say again and again and again, you can cuss us out. We can have to disarm you, but we will find a way for you to participate in community. My guy, my guy, his name's Sadiq. I'm gonna send it to him. He's currently incarcerated, one of the first sojourners. And over and over and over again, he just reminds me. Uh, I have a Bible study that I do on Six West, which is the kind of holding unit for the folks with the most serious crimes. He constantly reminds me, he's like, you could have given up on me. Deep time could have given up on me. And over and over again, y'all keep saying yes. Even when I can't say yes to myself, y'all say yes to me. That's different. That's that's the kind of community that that deep time offers.

SPEAKER_04 14:49

And that's trust. Even when I mess up, I know that you're gonna be there because we built that relationship and you're proximal. That's beautiful. I know, Sadiq, I feel like.

SPEAKER_05 14:59

You do.

Deep Time Programs & Impacts

SPEAKER_04 14:59

You were this teacher. I know I was. So we talked a little bit about how deep time shows up in community, looking at things like homelessness and recidivism. Are there other programs that are connected to deep time that you'd like to share about?

SPEAKER_05 15:14

Yeah, so there's three main ways that deep time shows up in the community. So it's through our sojourner experience. That's nine months working alongside folks who are who are ready to take the next step. The second is uh an opportunity called uh Deep Time Inside. That's us going into prisons. We heard about Lindsay reaching out to Marissa. That's part of Deep Time Inside. You know, I hear re-entry experts talk about it as in reach, not just being a well for people to come here and drink from the well and then leave, but for us to go out and see who's really ready. And then the third is something called deeper time. This is when you hear us talk about formation, it's looking at the whole person. It's working on your GED, it's getting, it's getting trauma resiliency skills. Emoja is is our is our key collaborator there. Every single sojourner who works with us gets the hope curriculum and then also gets a social emotional learning in the workplace curriculum. It's both in that like what is the past experience that you're healing through? And then also how do we make sense of what comes up? Because most workplaces are dysfunctional and you can't just crash out when you have a bad day at work. And we have to be real.

SPEAKER_04 16:22

And so I saw some reaction going on. Are you in deeper time?

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Yeah, deeper time.

SPEAKER_04 16:27

And what are you experiencing with deeper time?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Deeper time. I mean, deeper times every other day. I mean, deep time gets on my time. Like helping me get my GD with my tutor. She's um the mother of my CHW. He makes sure and checks on me every other day, makes sure I'm on task and things of that nature. My tutor, she comes through every Wednesday, makes sure I'm on my GD as far as my reading side of things, helps me get right. In deeper time, I study for my GD, my driver's license. I got all the stuff that I need to study for it. If anything, if when my coworkers need help, training or something, I always be willing to help them out in any way, shape, or form I can. Just really picking up any slack that I see, or just advocation in any shape, way, or form that I care, or just being useful in the space that I am in, just things like that.

unknown 17:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Assisting in any way, shape, or form I can. Because I'm only one man, it's so much only so much I could do for everybody around me.

On Cultivating an Ecosystem of Support

SPEAKER_04 17:24

You are one incredible young man. Thank you. Just listening to you gives me so much joy. And I can see it's not just deep time, but it's a lot of partnerships that you have that really works together to cultivate these beautiful relationships.

SPEAKER_05 17:41

So because Deep Time is a community, we're not a social service agency. Um, when we have community health workers, it's not community health workers to do the kind of more transactional thing that you see in a traditional nonprofit model. Our community health workers, we're focused on the personal, the interpersonal, and the spiritual. So vital records, of course. Let's get it done. But then also things like GED. I mean, statistics show it's something like 70% of the people in prison in the United States have no GED or high school diploma. I wish we could see how vital just that one, just having a graduation certificate, you could flip that on its head, means there's a 70% less chance of you going to prison. Also, it's like really intentional professional development opportunities. So every single year we go to Los Angeles at the end of the summer, and we learn from Homeboy Industries, who's kind of the authority on uh re-entry and gang rehabilitation uh in the world. They're a huge conversation partner for us. Lots of people don't really do the employment-based social enterprise. Social enterprise, I feel like every other person I know is starting something like that. But employment-based social enterprise requires something of you that's just very different. And folks like Shalone, who have never even thought about stepping foot on a plane, riding to California and going to the little record stores and buying streetwear. You know, it's just it's a it's a different kind of thing. Because Deeper Time also focuses on the individual. We have a program. We're workshopping names for it right now, calling it New Creation. And it's tattoo cover-ups specifically for people who have hate tattoos, uh, gang symbols, uh trafficking tattoos. We have a particular focus on covering up tattoos that are related to anti-Semitism, Nazism, imagery. Our very first, it's our boy, my boy Edward. He's he told me, I asked him, is it okay if I talk about this? He is a former member of a white supremacist gang, and he got an SS covered up with a heart, and he got a swatzka covered up with a rose. I mean, that's really the intersection that we're trying to sit at, is that really uncomfortable. It's one thing to denounce white supremacy and anti-Semitism. It's another thing to sit with someone who called themselves a Nazi while they're getting their tattoos covered up in a tattoo parlor. Shout out to Crystal at Nvidia Tattoo. She is our go-to for cover-ups. Okay. She's amazing. We collaborate with Emoja again. Like they're just such a key collaborator. Uh go places through uh Landa Sky. Haywood Famous. If y'all aren't drinking coffee in the evening time at Haywood Famous, what are y'all doing? Ava is our friend. It's a it's a queer alternative to nightlife that's a Cuban coffee shop on Haywood Road. Uh, she also trains our staff. Amazing. Holden over at Cooperative trains our staff with Barista Skills and Roasting too. Cooperative also sold us their roaster. We collaborate with All Souls. They also offer counseling here. We collaborate with Blue Ridge Hope. They start off in Rutherfordton. They just started a wing in Bunkham County. And they also offer more like arts therapeutic-based therapy. Collaboration is the name of our game. We realize that we can't do everything. Again, when I we're flipping the model of what it means to be a community that's in solidarity with the folks that we're in solidarity with and saying, okay, we know what our resources are. So, like someone like an Operation Gateway or a Homeward Bounds or a WindCap who just started collaborating with one of our sojourners. We're not going to pretend to be any of them. In fact, we're going to say, okay, we have one CHW on staff. How do we get people participating in an ecosystem of support instead of just saying one person needs to do everything and drill themselves in the ground? I think that's also part of the, you know, self-care talk can sometimes be a little toxic. And self-care doesn't work if it's an asilo. Um, having really clear boundaries on what you can offer and can't offer. Um, I've I've heard folks like Amy Cantrell say, let your yes be yes and your no be no. That's food for me, seeing really clearly we can offer community, we can offer some employment. As a pastor, I can offer ministry. But outside of that, we need to be really clear who who are our friends who are willing to walk alongside our community. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

And that's a beautiful part, thinking about the way that deep time has entrenched itself in community and also. Observing that it has a lane. And so, in order for us to be in community together and to be proximate, we understand that this is a highway. There isn't just one lane, there's several lanes. And so I really love hearing about how you have cultivated relationships with other organizations. A year and a half, two years ago, Jennifer and I visited Deep Time. And so I'm looking around this space, and this is not where we visited. This didn't exist at that time. How have you been able to grow from Deep Time coffee roasting to now having a cafe and all these other pieces?

SPEAKER_05 22:36

It's been the privilege of my life to watch Deep Time grow. When y'all came and visited, we were in a dingy old Sunday school classroom, busted in walls, no paint. There's probably a thick fog of smoke because we were roasting dark roast that day. And from there, we just continued to see one, that folks were willing to participate, but two, the nonprofit space, the coffee space, the church space can all be really competitive and not treat you super well. And the more that we said we're not in competition with anyone, we're only interested in community. As soon as this feels like competition, that's actually when we back off. We're not dominating anyone. Solidarity is what we do. That's when we started to see more and more opportunities appear. The people who needed to kind of drift away did. This church embraced us in ways that I never would have imagined when I first started as an associate here. To where now Deep Time's what I do full time. This church has a hard time seeing an identity that doesn't have deep time as a part of it. It's it's seeing West Asheville embrace us too. Hail Mary, they were our first uh non-church, non-nonprofit, uh wholesale account.

SPEAKER_04 23:41

And the restaurant.

SPEAKER_05 23:41

The restaurant. It used to be Tasty Diner. And if you come to our cafe, the booths that we have are the original Tasty Diner booths. Oh, they were given to us whenever they they shifted to Hail Mary. If you walk into Hail Mary, it doesn't look like the kind of place that church folk will hang out, is a generous way of saying it. Uh-huh. And they embrace deep time like pretty much no one else in the city.

SPEAKER_04 24:03

Love that. Love that.

SPEAKER_05 24:05

So it uh it was through community kind of hugging back that we started to say, okay, this cafe has become a really cool hub for people to have staff meetings. There's people doing hurricane relief and recovery work right now. There's a lot of people doing organizing work in here. There's been a lot of conversations around what's it look like to have the people who are affected by affordable housing actually centered in the conversation about affordable housing. Right. We have a really strong collaboration with Asheville Prison Books and Transmission, and we've done book drives. This has become a community, not just like organizing, but it's just become a place to where people can really kind of let their hair down. You're not gonna get a barista. A lot of times it'll be Shalom or Lamar behind that bar. Marissa, you're up next. But you're gonna get someone who's gonna be like, yo, I'm experienced with this. Do you want to give it a try?

Marissa’s Goals, Recovery & Service

SPEAKER_04 24:56

All I know is my little latte over here tastes really good. I'd love to come back to you for just a moment, Marissa. I want to just kind of touch on some things I've heard from you so far. And you were talking about how you became a part of Deep Time. Where do you see yourself six months from now with the support of Deep Time?

SPEAKER_03 25:15

Well, I just through JRC shot out at Ed from Pisca Law. They just paid$615 to get my license restored. Um, I'm going to go take this driving test again because I didn't pass on the first one, let me just be honest. And it was just a hit to the ego. It was, it was refining and it was humbling. Just shows me that I've just got to be more prepared and not go into a situation thinking I have it. So I've been preparing and Lindsay made us driving books. Like she just goes the extra mile. I'm just so grateful for the team that I work for. But I'm in college at A B Tech getting my associate's degree in human service technology and the addiction and recovery track. I was a heroin addict for 25 years and did 18 years of that in prison. I've lost a daughter, all my friends. I came home from prison and they were all gone. They're all dead. So in the future, I see myself giving back to this community that is so broken by trauma. Trauma is the number one enemy of our soul. Traumas that have not been healed. I went through a 16-week class at Western called Trauma Talks. And it was the best thing I have ever done in any of the classes of all the years of my life that gave me real freedom. And I want to give that back. The only way to stay clean and to stay on this road is to reach back down and to help my fellow brother or sister back up, if that's what they want without being pulled down. But you know, the word says to do it with others, not to do it by yourself, to be careful, you'll go back to your old way of life. And this group is so strong. There might be silly squabbles, but at the end of the day, we're coming together and we're coming around you, and we are not gonna let the enemy steal what God has put together. So I just see myself um making a positive impact in my young people that work here or that are coming, just trying to be of service and stay in my own lane because this is a highway. It is a highway. You're right, Miss Libby. There are lanes for each of us, and it's not competition. And I have been a competitive person my whole life. I have a very strong personality and I do have great leadership skills when I'm under a good leader. And I feel like I have that good leader in Dustin and Mercy and Lindsay. The sky's the limit. And I'm just grateful for this opportunity. GA, his influence, we get in the word every week together. We pray together. And I just feel like if we continue to do these things, that deep time really has the potential to change the world, not just Asheville. So my partner is still incarcerated. She has gotten to the point of being a level three minimum security inmate, and she's a cosmetologist. Her name is Kristen Ellis. Currently, she is at CCT. Only 30 women in North Carolina get the opportunity to go to this transitional house. She has an interview today at Ulta, which is her second technical interview. Um, she was a master cosmetologist there when she got out of hair school some years ago. She's been incarcerated for almost seven years. We were actually, Dustin and I were speaking about possible space for um a salon opportunity that has been offered. And that would like, I see that. I see us having a tattoo shop. I see us having a salon. I see us having bees. Um, the honey industry that Jesse brings to the table with his bees and things. I just see that this could really blow up. And um, I want my wife to be a part of it.

Ways to Plug into Deep Time

SPEAKER_04 28:44

That's beautiful. These are the stories that we need to hear. So, can you tell people how can they learn more about deep time if they want to donate? Where do they need to go? And anything else you want to share?

SPEAKER_05 28:53

So there's four ways to be involved, the deep time. First, come to our cafe, kick it. We're open Sunday through Thursday from eight to two. Get a drink, bring a friend. It's the easiest way to actually see and flesh what we do. The second, become a coffee subscriber. So a lot of places you could just buy a bag of coffee here or there. We have it set up on our website, www.deeptimeavl.org. You can have a monthly subscription to coffee to where every single month it'll automatically pull it to where you can get a bag of coffee on your doorstep. All of our coffee is roasted within the week that you will get it on your doorstep. The third is that in April, we're gonna have a series of events for Second Chance month. Uh, we're gonna be hosting uh a film screening in the church sanctuary. We're gonna be hosting an event called Second Chance Fest that's gonna be in the parking lot of the church. There'll be food vendors, there'll be other folks who are doing community-based work, just a time for everyone to celebrate and in a really not stigmatizing way offer really concrete services to the community. And we're gonna be uh doing a talk and presentation on Deep Time at Skyland United Methodist Church. And then we're gonna have a blend. Pay attention to this blend. It's gonna be called the Kinship Blend. Every single year we take a crew of sojourners to Los Angeles to go visit Homeboy Industries. We go to a conference. We also just enjoy each other. We go to the beach. I'm looking at Dodgers games right now for us. This kinship blend is gonna go towards a scholarship for sojourners to come to LA. And then finally, in the fall, we have our annual fundraising gala. It's called Brewing Hope. Last year it happened at the A B Tech Ivy Building. Our very own GA went in on his original tracks. It was Equal Parts Americana concert, equal parts hip hop concert. Tickets will come out at the end of the summer in 2026. If you want more information, either pull up or go to our website, www.deeptimeavl.org. Instagram is also where we're most active at DeepTimeAVL. That's the Instagram page to follow.

SPEAKER_04 31:05

I will see y'all in the morning because I'm coming to get another latte. Are you?

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Yeah, I'm ready to make it live tape.

SPEAKER_04 31:10

Okay. All right.

Wrap UP

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Marissa, you have one more thing you wanted to share? I just wanted to share that um I was asked to be part of the planning committee for Western North Carolina Recovery Day that we're gonna have this fall. Okay. And represent Deep Time. So we are planning together. We're working on a logo now. More will be revealed. I'm just grateful. Like I've only been involved with Deep Time for six weeks and opportunities for growth and promotion and to show up in the community that I have been away from for so long in a way that I want to show up as my true self, not trying to fit in, not trying to be somebody that I'm not, but just to be the real me with the real story. It's just been great. I'm it's I'm speechless. I just love deep time and I'm grateful.

SPEAKER_04 31:56

Thank you guys for welcoming us into this space. Thank you for sharing your stories and thank you most of all for being an example. We are often in spaces where there's a mindset that only one, it can only be one. No, it should be many. Many hands make light work. And so when we all are working together and we all focus on what our community needs, not necessarily what we or what an individual org needs, we do much greater work. Thank you so much for all the ways that you contribute to our community. And I look forward to drinking coffee. I'm also gonna subscribe. Let me go ahead and get that together.