Ruminating & Germinating
To farm, you have to tap into a part of yourself that requires an ever-growing bounty of faith. A special reliance on the unknown variables of mother nature’s mood. It’s a balancing act to feed yourself and the land all at once. The job is filled with decisions that can make or break a strategy for the season. Disappointment and redirection happen far more often than I’d like to admit. All disappointment has expectation attached, right? A thought is a seed planted. The hope is an expectation for what could grow and bloom or fruit from those efforts. Come to think about it, without expectation, feelings don’t really grasp onto a concept.
I’ve learned patience and persistence. I’ve learned that consistency brings about change then change motivates greater change… greater reward. I’ve learned that caring for one’s self is undeniable necessity for sustainability. I’ve learned thoughts aren’t real until proven so. I find comfort in all of these new lessons as if they were the hugs and snugs waiting for me back home.
I have lived a life of extreme privilege. One filled with love, lust, hurt, harm, joy and deep sadness. But the blessings of being here were spending time getting to know all of the pieces of me. Even the ones that don’t seem to fit. Those pieces join to create the picture of who I am today. I can consider the faults a high grade fuel to a premium luxury vehicle that is me. Filling me with everything I need to run better. But that’s a matter of the mind. We come here broken and this place gives us the time and space to see who we are and how to make food out of the pieces we thought we should retire to the compost. How can we take the good and make it better? How do we take the bad and make it something we never knew it could be?
”Saarvam Annam-everything is food”
These words were read to me on my first day in the unit. My 7 day psychiatric stay changed the course of my life. Because it taught me “everything is food.”
How do you consume the dishes served to you? With fear and insecurity? With grace and gratitude? It’s all a matter of the mind.
Germinating
After a seed is planted, there’s this dark and inquisitive period of time where patience is critical. Warm soil is like the womb, a plant pregnancy that we get to simulate with our favorite farming practices.
