THE CRACK IN EVERYTHING for Kathy Leo A friend wrote yesterday from where she lives on a wooded hillside in Vermont, where the temperatures have gone below zero and freezing rain is washing away the snow. She says, I am reading your pieces on this wintry morning when the freezing rain is pouring itself all over the perfect white snow we have loved playing in. Time to let go of woodland skis and snowshoes until the next snowstorm. Its all washing away. But such a soft grey slow morning it is when the paths and roads are too icy for travel and schools are closed again. It has been a wild winter already with cancellations of plans every other day. The weather determines our moods, our social life, our work in the world. Tucks us into our cozy warm homes again and again. Makes us think of the homeless ones wandering the streets in temperatures of 15 below nothing. We are brought to our knees by northeast winters. I think its why we live here. To remember how to be brought to our knees. Here in California it is the opposite. Magnolia trees are in bloom in January and violets are peeking through the brush in the garden. Last night I dreamed of fire in the redwoods. I am so scared – what have we done? I, too, am brought to my knees. But there’s something in me that refuses to stay scared, that sets my imagination dreaming up fix-it schemes. I learned how to do this as a child dealing with crazy and depressed parents - to figure out how to get around the obstacle of the moment and find another way to get what I needed. I became skillful at sensing the atmosphere, feeling for a positive vibe in the welter of negativity, and then improvising my way towards it, getting all enthusiastic in the process. I still do that, and it drives my family crazy. I believe I was in training for this time in the world, learning a skill we all would need when things fell apart. I actually enjoy such challenges, especially when I am told that my cockeyed schemes are impossible; that’s when my creative juices go into action and I feel for possibilities beyond my ordinary mind. For me, it’s about becoming sensitive to the subtle cues in and around me: dreams, unexpected coincidences, hunches. With each synchronicity - the right person at the right time, the fortuitous meeting that leads to something new – I pay close attention. That’s where the opportunities lie, I find; they are ‘the cracks in everything. That is where the light gets in,’ as Leonard Cohen has put it. We’re at a big crack now, and I’m peering over the side: monster storms on one coast and searing droughts on the other; rising seas and melting glaciers. It’s real, and denial is no longer an option, so it’s time for outrageous improvisations and creative chutzpah, whoever we are and whatever we most love to do. It is time to go for our heart’s desire! What I love to do is dream up the world I wish to live in, and then make some little piece of it happen. The more unlikely, the more fun it is to really reach for the so-called ‘impossible’! People will always resist, of course, but that’s part of the game - to make a way out of no way and show that whole new kinds of thinking can work. I did it as a kid and I’m doing it now! I have always imagined a farm in the city that grew food for all the people living around it. I could see how folks would get to know each other when they stopped by after work to do a little weeding; that the children would run free amongst the garden beds; that the neighbors would lend each other tools and share the harvests. In the past, I’ve made farms in the country; I’ve made gardens in the city, but never yet a farm in the city. Until now. Against all odds and working with a bunch of creative and courageous young people, I am helping to make an urban farm not 20 minutes from where I live. It is time, and my years of trying it out have prepared me to now help these young folks realize this vision. We will, in this drought-ridden land, capture every drop of rainwater that falls from the sky; solar arrays will provide all our energy and our farmers will be everyone from men who used to be incarcerated, to neighbors, to people volunteering their labor because they want to see this happen. How this has come about is through a series of unexpected meetings, synchronicities one after another that have fallen at my feet like feather-messages from the sky; like encouragement from voices subtly heard, that come from who knows where. Do it! They all say. I am listening. Against all odds, I will.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 01:53:04 +0000
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