Ask me in 15 years

Just over a year ago I was starting out on my Master's thesis and was also in the final phase of my move home to Canada (the phase that involved moving back to Canada).  During this process I met some wonderful gardeners and farmers who have inspired me and impacted the choices I am making in terms of the kind of work I do and life I am living.  One of the patterns that kept coming up was the timeframe of 15 years.

At our Organic Gardening course at CAT (in Wales) when the instructor was showing us what he's done in his own backyard.  Looking at the photos and listening to the story, I thought it would have been a 3-4 year project (especially since they don't have the winters like we do).   I was floored when he said it had bee 15 years.

Back in Canada, I met with and learned beside a wonderful farmer, Don Ruzicka, who has become a dear friend and mentor.  Talking to Don and walking his land, you would think he's been farming like this since he began.  But it has been 'only' 15 years since they took their first Holistic Management course and began to restore the health of the land, their finances and their family through ecological agriculture.  

And neither of these gentlemen are done or complete.  They are still learning, experimenting, building and breaking down.  

So... back to me and to now - June 2011.  Being done my thesis for over 8 months, getting married in around 4, working on contracts related to rural community, food and agriculture as well as doing some writing for our local paper, planting gardens and learning about raising chickens, pigs, cows... people around me (family, friends - old and new, neighbours, strangers) still seem to be trying to 'place' me in a job or career that is easy to explain.

 "So, what do you do? What are planning to do? Do you want to be a farmer? Will you open a restaurant or local food shop?  Are you going to write more? I always knew you writer.  Are you still training and facilitating? You're going to be making sausages?"

These questions and statements are all asked with honest inquiry and no judgement.  I feel that they want to support and help but perhaps can't grasp the picture I am painting so don't know where to place their own brush on the canvas.

But the fact is - I don't know either.  I am painting as I go and living my way into whatever I will be or become.  It's worked pretty well thus far (33-15=18... I could have never planned all I have experienced since I was 18, especially not when I was 18).

So I am finding peace in the prospect of a horizon of 15 years.  When the plans we have for a house, a farm, a life seem overwhelming... I try to remember to smile at V. and remind us (me) that we have 15 years or more to let it happen.  I might like it to be up and together overnight but I would miss a lot if it did.

Thus - when asked about what I do or want to be doing, I am learning to smile and be okay with answering "Can I get back to you on that?  Maybe in about 15 years?"

77 million paintings... and as many new wholes

While up in Calgary before my flight out - V. and I stopped by the Glenbow Museum to take in Brian Eno's show, 77 Million Painting.  We walked into a darkened room and sat down facing a wall that looked like it had a kalidescope-type image installed and music created a long, pausing, soundscape.  As I sat and was pulled into the colours - I let go of seeing the changes and was immersed in the colour and sound and the whole 'scape.'  It would only be when I shook my head and looked, that I would see the drastic shift in colours and images that had happened.  Meditating on the experience, I journalled:

"Still points and process... When you pull self out of to a point in time you see the changes but when the flow is subtle and steady, changes of parts are not distinct until the whole is transformed.
Snapshot in time are distinctly different yet the process and flow make them a natural transformation.
The snapshots or pauses give us opportunity for sense making of the change taking place but it it is in the process they are taking place... In the living and not the planning.
I didn't plan to be doing anything I am involved in right now, I live my way into them.  Yet I do take pause to defragment, organise and fit it all in - to recognize the wew whole that has evolved to this point as I release into the process and open to coevolving further."

Acknowledging hope and fear

I wrote this in response to an email I received a few days ago and thought to share it here:

Thanks for reminding me of previous meditations I have had on hope and for allowing me to reflect on where they sit for me today.

Years ago in a retreat we did individual meditation and then group exploration on the question "What am I without hope?"  

For some of us - we recognised that hopelessness also meant being fearless.  That when I found myself hoping, I could also look to the other side and see that there was something that I was fearing.  "I hope the roads will be good tomorrow." and "I am afraid the roads will be slippery." are two sides of the same coin.

In the years after this recognition - it doesn't mean that I have been able to become hopeless or fearless, but it does mean that I am able to check in with myself on where my energy is.  When I feel myself hoping or fearing - I look to the other to see what is there.  What am I afraid of?  Or What am I hoping for?  Being honest with myself, seeing that, and then letting it be a guide forward and not a barrier to action. (Our hopes can stand in the way of taking the next, best step just as much as our fears can.)

So it is not about working to be hopeless or fearless - but an acknowledging without attachment to.

And I find that helps me have cheer, be calm, and live into the future.

**********

In addition - I was reading some poetry this week and this was one small verse by a Slovenian poet, France Preseren:

In hope, in dread long did I dwell.

To hope and fear I said farewell.

My heart, now empty, hold no cheer:

It yearns again for hope and fear.