Chapter 04 of 06
Farmers, artists, workers, witnesses and city hosts
The first four hundred carriers turn one Asheville clock into a network of local tables, stages and daily stories.
Time remaining
“XXXchurch.com had the shortest statement of faith in America: I believe what Billy Graham believes.”
The shirts carried two words: FIREPROOF. WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE? Craig's own travel-accountability practice was inspired by Billy Graham. Belief was never a new marketing angle. It was the work.
Craig was born into the San Francisco culture Bill Graham helped electrify—where music gathered people before anyone agreed on what they believed. Now he is driving the Billy Graham Freeway into Asheville with hemp in one building, vinyl in the next and a federal clock running.
This campaign starts where the hard conversations should have always started: I love you. Then it asks the old question again.
Cultural references from Craig's personal story · No affiliation or endorsement implied
Interstate 240 through this county is the Billy Graham Freeway. He grew up on a dairy farm down the road in Charlotte, he's buried an hour away, and the man built a life out of a very simple idea: you gather people first, and you love them before you argue with them.
That is the entire operating instruction for these forty days. We are not borrowing his message. We are borrowing his method — fill a room, be kind in it, ask the honest question, let people answer for themselves.
A tent, forty nights, and a question nobody gets forced to answer. That's not a cannabis campaign. That's a revival with better speakers.
“Billy would have been on board with Willie.”
Craig says this out loud. In public. To strangers. On the freeway named after Billy Graham.
“They both filled stadiums, both sang in them, and only one of them got audited for it.”
This is not a theological position. This is Craig doing bits at a farmer's market.
“One preached grace to a hundred thousand people. One rolled it up. Both were from the South and both meant it.”
Nobody asked him to say this. Nobody can make him stop.
For the record: we have no idea what Billy Graham would think about hemp beverages, and it would be rude to put words in his mouth. So we put them in Craig's instead. He can take it.
Tribute only · No affiliation with or endorsement by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the Graham family, or Willie Nelson
Where This Came From
Before there was a countdown, there was a family home on 131 acres ten miles from Asheville — and a question about whether people change when they gather in meaningful places. The Deer Trail is the film about it. The Hollow Bone Initiative is what it turned into.
Can we move the collective beyond fear? Can we shift the nature of exchange? Stephen Sedmak's two questions are the philosophical spine of Hollow Bone — and honestly, they are the same two questions this countdown is asking about a plant.
Stephen and Mary Sedmak opened portions of their Appalachian family land outside Asheville to children, teachers, artists, musicians and healers. Forest Floor taught thousands of kids to track, to build, to listen. The land was already working before anyone named it.
Artists, founders, musicians, healers, elders, children and a dog named Lion, gathered with no formula and no pitch. The pilot that made Hollow Bone visible — and the gathering The Deer Trail documents.
Learning. Alignment. Realization. Sharing. You do not have to believe anything — you are invited to allow for the possibility of everything. That's the posture we want in the room for all 40 days.
The Connection
Hollow Bone is building sanctuaries where healing does not begin with "what can you afford." We are running a forty-day argument that a plant should not either.
Hollow Bone Initiative is a nonprofit vision in formation, now establishing its first permanent sanctuary in the greater Asheville area. Shope Creek remains Stephen and Mary's home and its sacred origin point. The Deer Trail screens here as a Hollow Bone Initiative film, and proceeds from screenings during the 40 days go toward The Well — the founding fund carrying the work forward.