Perhaps because I desire so deeply to cultivate it. Perhaps because I am awed by the intelligence of it. Certainly because I am meant to be in concert with it. Life. In its slowness and urgency, it may remain a quandry for those to won’t afford themselves the time. And even for those who yearn with all their getting to truly get the vastness of our interconnectedness, we only sip and taste, which spoils us for anything other than more of the potent truth of life that brings us to our most honest, raw selves. That I am sure it what we hunger for and need most.
So much seeking to burst through my wearied reservations, I needed to write down the wave of deep, gurgling-over thoughts and feelings, along with concerns and inspirations. Something happened in me after watching THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM this weekend. Maybe it will for you. I hope my own rush of collected thoughts which I cannot quite adequately capture only salts your own need to try.
This documentary film following a couple who dares to fulfill their promises and enter into traditional farming practices against the prevailing tides of current practices and alluring economic drum-beaters somehow transcends touchpoints of tangibility and so breathes life into parched souls. Mine especially. All of us need a more untethered, unfettered flow of being in affirming syncopation with our design and purpose that is not self-made or solo-sourced. That’s hard to deal with for self-reliants like me.
On Apricot Lane Farms, neither the seemingly lowly aphid, nor fearsome creatures of prey …or even profitable produce take preeminence over other created beings…no, not even “pests” or unsellable plants. When finally loosing the bonds of uncompromising idealism or being humbled, then awakened enough to relinquish ego exalting control to “correct a problem,” a sacred expanse within humankind may very well finally be ready to receive pure gold into our innermost being. In unrelenting, uncontrollable, unforeseeable conditions, glories seem to have come in perfect time and only for the humbled. As this couple and farm community stepped back, as they said, and looked at the matters of troubles with an unprejudiced curiosity, a web of created wonders brought gifts of sublime purpose showing that there is no issue not already accounted for… and that all in the grand design can be brought into a disharmonious beauty meant to be just beyond our full grasp of comprehension. Only in that place of precious commonality, co-existing in gratitude with all other life on Planet Earth, will beauty become most full in us and around us. That is, as long as humanity’s hubris does not too far offset nature’s most remarkable mechanisms to heal and thrive.
This is why I need to watch The Biggest Little Farm again. This first time stirred embers long unstoked within me. Perhaps these are starting to catch wind and fire again knowing that my leading within weaves a web of life–for the arts, for stewarding all life and healing in congruity with my Maker’s heart, for fulfilling my own purpose and design.
JOIEdeJANE 