FEATURED FRIENDS

The Wild Farm Alliance

The Wild Farm Alliance was established in 2000 following a meeting of wildlands proponents and ecological farming advocates. WFA sees itself as a bridge uniting the sustainable agriculture and wildland conservation movements, spanning a divide that previously isolated them from one another. Their bold vision excites people on farms, in communities and in academic institutions. WFA's purpose is to draw attention to the vital role that farmers must play in reversing the biodiversity crisis; to encourage farmers to adopt better practices while staying economically viable; and to help build alliances between agricultural and conservation communities that will make greater progress in this area possible. WFA encourages conservationists, chefs and consumers to support farmers' biodiversity stewardship. Their website offers more information and tools for making your food purchases part of the solution. 

“The function of each component in this network is to transform or replace other components, so that the entire network continually generates itself. This is the key to the systemic definition of life: living networks continually create, or re-create, themselves by transforming or replacing their components. In this way they undergo continual structural changes while preserving their weblike patterns of organization.”

— Fritjof Capra

www.fritjofcapra.net

SUMMER 08

CURRENT THOUGHTS

A Garden Lesson

By Chas Moore

I enter the garden for many reasons, and find that I often leave with more than a beautiful flower or tasty morsel. One lesson, which has clung to me like a sprig of cleavers, is that change and death are parts of life. In fact change indicates something is alive, for all living things transform. As gardeners growing annual food crops we witness the cycle of sprouting, growing, flowering and fruiting before death leads to renewal in the compost pile. We snatch the plant at one of these moments in its life cycle. The eater savors the unique taste of each phase but often neglects the life and death cycle that repeats itself with various plants throughout the seasons spiraling into a larger pattern over the years.

In a favorite garden an archetypal majestic Oregon White Oak which had served to anchor the garden and provide shelter for everything from classes to weddings to all night dances reached the end of its line this July. The community living on the land held a ceremony to honor this tree before it was taken down. The several dozen people gathered shared many fond memories of the oak, and even the gardeners expressed surprise that they were going to outlive this 150-200 year old being. In our fast-paced modern lives of perpetual change we misplace our longings for stability, but the material world is not stable. As a native New Yorker I've seen this happen with buildings, where modern man seeks shelter. Part of the horror felt in the loss of the World Trade Center towers was that something as apparently enduring as two of the world's tallest buildings could disappear in a day. This illumination of the illusion of permanence aggravated the feelings of loss that so many deaths caused.

In the last few weeks I lost a dear friend. As I type I can see her smiling face shinning at me as easily as I can read the words on my computer screen. I know from experience with time her smile will not float into my mind as often, and I also know her essence will always reside in my heart. She was a fellow teacher, one of my "yoga teachers" in her death as she was while living, a willing student of life open to the painful changes as well as the beautiful ones.

In all these losses-iconic tree, fellow citizens, symbolic structures, a beloved friend-I only lost the changeable manifestation. Another deeper, truer part endures. We are all a combination of both the changing, growing and maturing material world and the eternal, immortal, already divine truth of the spiritual realm.

No matter how many veggies I pick in the garden and prepare in my kitchen, I know that the earth will always have tasty annuals to savior. No matter how many trees die, or buildings fall to violent minds or urban renewal, I know there will always be shade to enjoy life under and shelter to live in. No matter how many friends precede me to whatever lies after this life, I know that our shared love will endure. So whenever I share a meal with someone I love-something I try to do three times a day even if eating alone-I appreciate that it is unique moment in time and also a continuation of an unchanging ritual linking me across the ages to all my ancestors. There are beings I will always love, be they a tree, a garden or a beautiful woman, but how that love manifests changes every day, every season and every year for eternal love is alive in my changing body.