How do we begin to enter into the space that is 2024 ? In some ways the constraints that we construct around the parameters of time, weight and other measurements can be a barrier upon our ability to thrive and connect, placing imposed frameworks that separate this flowing tendril sprouting through the topsoil from the one growing from the rhizome right here, creating a distinction where none needs to be. Arbitrary containers ? All too often we can fall under the under the weight of systems we have constructed but never built to nourish us.
Sometimes it can also be the case that sinking deeper into the cycles and seasons, the rhythms and ebbs and flows of these periods, can help us witness what has been, what continues to be, and where the path may unfold ahead, in our dreams of shared abundance. Where are we headed ? A glance where our feet have tread allows us to hold gratitude for them carrying us there, and can help us to see the light gleaming in the distance ahead.
We know that the road for our community has been littered with debris, nourishing and challenging in equal measure. The struggles of existing within this financial framework, whether as a business that holds its values and attempts to live by them in all aspects of operation or as a worker buried underneath the ever present weight of capital. We are here hoping to imbue that challenge with life, the worn hands and hours of the composter, the truck driver, the person hacking away at a computer keyboard, the community garden tender’s tattered gloves . Not reflected here and yet also very much so are the number of hours thrown into the compost pile of making sure the work gets done, the number of hours our community members took to collect what we have all in the past tossed into the garbage bin to be a weight somewhere else, where we have helped to stoke the notion of “other”. The number of hours that hands spent digging deep into the soil and planting seeds with the hope and faith that what we truly have is here, with one another, that these connections to our food, our communities, our health and one another are one and the same, where our resiliency and joy are fed in an uncertain world. The number of maggots and flies that helped to digest our organic material back into the summer’s juicy cherry tomato. The number of times a community supported compost toter lid was thrown back at a drop off site and filled with the remembrance of tomorrow.
So… numbers, two thousand twenty three. Wild and bewildering, conveying some essence and also utterly without, tiny pixels on a screen singing some gorgeous melody. Here they are
All of this only to lead ourselves back, again, the unending return. How many gardens will we tend to in this coming year ? What number of giant sunflower stalks will reach up to the sky out of the nourishing tilth that we hold ? How many new faces will we get to meet along this path, here ? Maybe we’ll sink into the soil under the sun’s warm light, together.
