Don’t live in Vermont, but still want to support Vermont Green FC from afar? Live in Vermont and want to support our mission in a bigger way? We have the perfect solution for you. It’s our “Spread-the-Love” Season Ticket Donation.
This ticket includes:
- Two tickets to one home game of your choosing. If you’re able to make it to Burlington for a match, bring a friend and reach out to tickets@vermontgreenfc.com to receive your two tickets to a single match.
- One season ticket that will be donated to local organizations serving youth and families.
Why Are We Spreading The Love?
It’s Valentine’s Day, the annual reminder that it’s important to show some love to those we love. To be perfectly honest, I’ve botched this day on more than one occasion. But my bumbling journey to becoming a more mindful, attentive, sensitive, and, dare I say it, marginally wiser person in the ways of love, isn’t your problem. You’ve had your own journey, learned your own lessons. Maybe you’re dancing that graceful, affectionate dance with your loved ones every day of the year. Seriously, what’s your secret? Yet for the rest of us works-in-progress, Valentine’s Day can be our day to shine. So we’ve got an idea for you that we hope can brighten not only the day of your lovely Valentine, but extend some of that love to our community. After all, the world could use a little more love these days, don’t you think?
The sad truth is many of us are confronted with constant, daily reminders of how we’re not loved. That can show up in our close relationships, or in how society treats us. It’s painful. The urgent counterpoint to this truth is that we all have the ability to choose a more loving approach to life. We can practice. And if we choose to practice, we are less likely to stumble in the moments when life needs us to be more loving. Valentine’s Day, of course, has been commercially co-opted, but the sentiment remains: it’s a day we can choose to practice giving and receiving loving gestures. If we really boil it down, our aim as a Football Club is to practice this exchange, not just on predetermined holidays, but every day. We made this choice from the start; we would run the club in a way that promotes and exemplifies showing love to one another and our planet.
What this means in practical terms is that we act in a way that recognizes the presence of every member of our community, which for us, also includes the natural environment. As the late Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Thich Nhat Hanh put it, “to be loved is to be recognized.” Moreover, Nhat Hanh reminds us that to recognize someone in this manner requires a willingness to listen deeply to this person. This may strike you, dear reader, as either antiquated, or worse, a naïve notion of what humans are capable of. Trust me, I get it. Willingness to deeply listen to one another sounds like a fantasy reserved for Disney movies or devoted Buddhist monks living in Plum Village. The reality, however, is it’s just a skill, like any other, that has been allowed to atrophy. The prevailing toxic culture of tuning each other out and talking past one another has bloomed in its absence. We see this in the halls of Congress, in the media, and sadly, more and more in our families and communities. As a result, we push each other farther away from solutions and deeper into cynicism. Rather than being discouraged, we’re listening and paying attention. What we’re hearing and learning from our community is equity must be at the center of the work we do to address our major societal and environmental challenges.
We recognize that not everyone in our community has the financial means to come to a Vermont Green FC match and systemic inequities play a role in this. One step we’re taking in a more equitable direction is to offer a season ticket solution that gives our supporters the opportunity to come to a match with a friend, and support our mission of making our games accessible to all. This is the “Spread-the-Love” Season Ticket. The idea here is that those of us with the financial means, but perhaps not the time to attend every game, can pay forward our good fortune, support the club in a mutually beneficial manner, and at the same time support our community. By purchasing this ticket, you are showing our community you recognize social inequities exist. You are also acknowledging that being financially constrained is nothing to be ashamed of or blamed for. Instead, our club acknowledges social inequities affect socio-economics. And because these inequities exist, we are committed to finding solutions to address them. Everyone deserves a welcome spot in the Vermont Green FC community.
So to my fellow aspiring Valentines, today is your day to shine. Today you can showcase your thoughtful, intimate adoration of your loved ones, and your bigger love for our community. We hope you’ll consider spreading the love through the beautiful game today and throughout the season. We are grateful for your support!