By Trathen

How does this sound to ya’ll: a rich life that matters deeply thru each breath, step and bite, each purchase, moment of grief and reclaimed belief? How about households and communities full of such lives, crafting a culture of celebration and resiliency in which every choice, every drop of water, every scrap of life and act of living is valued? With global warming, peak oil, peak water, peak soil and a systemic decline of the life systems on which we depend, staying aware of the world as we are is vital medicine for now. Maybe enough to get scared sacred and inspired into living lives that enrich selffamilyhomegardencommunitywork world.

How? By effectively wielding what we’ve got with astonishing wisdom, beauty and grace for the greatest good of the aforementioned. To restore our world, we need to consciously and constantly restory our lives. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Paradigms are our lenses; shaping our beliefs, actions and world. We are swimming in a paradigm of lack as constant and hard to see as the air we breathe. The message is that nothing you do, buy or consume is enough. Nothing you give or save is enough. You are not enough. But that’s bull poopie and priority one is to take back our story of the value we wish to contribute, one mindful moment at a time. So don’t be overly distracted by the Lex Luther bad guys, ‘cuz the kryptonite’s in your mind.

A story I’m fond of luvingly bludgeoning myself with is of being soaked in sufficiency. It’s a consistently cultivated sense of ease and acceptance that despite what may not seem entirely right with this moment or my contribution to it, we are both enough. In simply acknowledging this, we can by trathen take back any and every instant from the mountain of lack blocking our light and destroying life. And it’s no small task with plenty of humbling gaps.

But, instead of lack, why not lavishly wrap life’s majesty thru each blessed broken ounce of our being? I say “our”, because there is no me, my or individual on this li’l world of water sauntering around our sun at some 67,000 miles an hour with a bunch of hominids who’ve forgot who they are. Our blood and bones, any pine tree and its cones and all things that flow and grow literally spiral the same as the milkyway.

What’s at the center of your SOULar system - the beliefs and practices that keep your acts in rhythm? The Peace Pilgrim spoke volumes when she said, “Find your highest light, schedule it, live it.” A sense of sufficiency comes from appreciating and tending our vital relations and living our truth the best we know how from one moment to the next.

Key to this is staying clear on meeting true needs. Not to be confused with the ego greed of a fool’s dream, high or low on esteem and hungry for money, power, drama or distractions. Or even the partial peace of a well-kept unstretched bubble. True need for me being a life that’s healthy, just and reverent with enough clean food, air, water, shelter, luv, peace and purpose. Peace and purpose being a centered service to waking and learning to live well in place. Place being this selffamilyhomegardencommunityworkworld in this miraculous time. A fool’s dream being different than the requisite risking to seem a fool by facing your fears, and stretching the seams of comfort to fill your dreams. What’s your true need? What are the practices and habits you have and need to stay clear and on path? To schedule your priorities, not prioritize your schedule? By tenaciously rooting out the limiting beliefs shaping a life less than it’s potential to be, you take back your power to shape reality the greatest you can vision it. Then day after day you orient your compass by sowing the beliefs, visions, mantras and whatever else astounds you and embodies your values. You find what shines your highest light and equips you to dismantle your demons.

Once a core practice is established, other routines and reference points can be sown to keep you lit and on track. George Bernard Shaw said, “Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” What better way to create yourself than to consistently marinate in the voices, flavors and faces that light you up?

In my own familyhomegarden portion of living well in place, Mary and I, our kitties, worms, bees and fifteen truckloads of plant companions recently moved to a new home. As we forage a new way forward on hands and knees nibbling front yard greens, a whole food forest in containers sure makes starting anew easier. Recycling moving boxes is ok, reusing better. But ohhhh the joy of sheet mulching your way to onsite abundance by burying your lawn! Peeping out the window, I have my own people zoo, as curious passerbys pause to ponder. The west coast’s #1 export is used paper and cardboard, wasting emissions and energy to transport carbon across the sea. Why not keep it to bury our green grass artifacts of a wasteful past and replace them with multi-beneficial plants that reconnect the functional affiliation of our landscapes to all life’s relations? What about a front yard farmacy of food, fuel, fodder, fun, fecundity and feline felicity? Even your kitty likes to get high on life. Why not provide catmint and catnip, next to a bed of chamomile flowers so you can both roll, sniff and tap your bliss?

The beauty of getting to know your place, be it urban or rural, rent or own or whatever is that by tuning into true need, seasonal energies, local resources and overlooked opportunities, we rebuild our atrophied relations and relational capacity. We can grow soil, food, medicine, skills, community and the biological wealth of our lives, gardens, porches… All that I learned and grew in the marginal conditions of our last place greatly benefits my understanding of our new abode. Seasonal angle of the sun, cold spots, sun traps, where to plant deciduous fruit trees to passively cool our house, waste streams to be reclaimed. Just after moving in, a Hosui asian pear tree welcomed us with 250 lbs of fruit. At $3.00/lb to $3 each, this and other fruit are a scrumptious dividend.

But are you too busy to deal with seasonal abundance and so you let it go to waste? The gift and challenge of tuning into natural rhythms is that while it pulls us into alignment with life’s pulse, it pushes hard against busy schedules disconnected from seasonal flows. But what delight it is when you make the time. Awash in pear potential, we juiced, canned and froze. Jams, sauces, chutneys, frozen pearcicles and some tasty peartinis chilled with pear slice ice cubes. I’m amazed at the diverse bounty of harvests we’ve enjoyed this year from compost to fruits, greens, flower teas, bee swarms and so much more. An infinite intermingling of cycles coming and going, complex, rich relations teasing and tempting for attention. Attention too often occupied by a maelstrom of deadening relations individually wrapped in plastic crap. I do have enough time for what matters when I prune the mind-numbing array of choices that don’t.

Just as we’re pear-saucing, my man Meucci is having an apple-pressing party, plum-jamming sessions are fresh in memory and mouth as folks share some tart abundance. Garden treats arrive from all over on our doorstep. Blueberry Luke is giving away an onslaught of plump tomatoes. As I load 25 lbs in a sack to be sauced and canned, I share the locale of a dumpster with wood ready for rescue as we build a culture that values each drop, scrap and act. We share seeds, cuttings, sprouts, harvests, meals, bees and waste streams. I swing by the Mackey’s lush urban permaculture homestead with the ginormous pumpkin vining into the street and happen upon fresh blackberry pie, homemade cider and a stash of gleaned peaches. Who needs Prozac when you got relations baking fresh berry pies and heirloom squash while sipping cider bubbly from last season’s surplus?

While the line between sustainable hedonism and unsustainable hypocrisy is vital to accurately assess and compassionately address, these stories and millions like them exploding across life reek of the world being born. The richness of flavor and experience, with an ethic of fair share, earth and people care is the difference between the world being killed and the one being sown, grown and tenaciously luved into existence. Yes, we are rapidly moving into an energy descent era with radically less resources available and a moral imperative to leave a livable future for those to come. But why not descend peak everything with a sense of sufficiency and our ethics intact? Rather than lack or an “I gotta get mine” paradigm, when these gardens and waste streams are ready for harvest, they beg to be shared. You can’t help but want to give and store it away. Relish and propagate these experiences.

It’s all the more amazing when you know the true cost of agribusiness dinners, far traveled foods and car trips to buy imported fruit when needing to drastically reduce green house gas emissions.

Aside from declining resources and ecosystems, with the subprime mortgage meltdown, people in debt to their eyeballs and increasing inflation eroding the value of your dollars, it’s wise to use less while growing real wealth: healthy relations and community preparedness, skills to meet true need, plants, seeds, food in the ground, water catchment. No matter what happens to the dollar, 250 lbs of pears is 250 lbs of pears.

Thru living by simple ecological principles and human values we can create rich, resilient lives that use significantly less resources and are more lush, productive and sustaining. Hell yes it’s a lot to get your head, heart and acts around. But it is what it is. Get your facts straight. Get your story straight. Get your compass and practices in place. Step to your truth from your peace. Impossible times are an opportunity to shine in a way you couldn’t have previously imagined.

I would have never thought I’d be here, in this way with these ripples. We’re growing more food, medicine and relations with a smaller eco and carbon footprint and more quality time for peeps and work than I believed possible. Daily Acts has doubled our output and I started serving as director of Green Sangha too. But I feel richer, more peaceful and in balance than ever, even as I push and stretch as far as I can fathom and sometimes bear. I don’t know how, but I know I couldn’t do it without you and a tenacious intent to luv this life with all I’ve got in spite of the pain, fear and lack.

Amidst your busy-ness, hold the space and clear intent to tune into the seasons, build community and make living in rhythm your culture. Why not turn this into the future we call home by feeding and infecting friends, family and strangers on the street with a well-luved life? These are the conditions conducive to life, and with proper placement in heart, mind and taste buds, this story can thrive. It already is. Just keep knowing, sowing and becoming an inspired and infected infector, invested in you and your relations lit and on center. You are amazing and whole and were born for this time.

Luv and live accordingly, Trathen

Reprinted with permission from
Ripples Journal Fall 07 - www.daily-acts.org