This Thing We Are Creating

January 16, 2010

We just spent 12 hours straight deciding what we're gonna grow next year, how much of it, and when. It's January, and yet the farm slowly begins to wake up and move again. This organism, this entity -- we are building it, creating it, breathing life into it. From dust and dirt it arises. Skeletal now, soon we will flesh it out. And it will take on a life of its own. Like parents, we birth it, then watch in dismay and delight as it finds its own way and goes about it independent of what we had planned.

Sometimes I wonder if it's my own life that I give it, and it is. My breath, my sweat, my hope and my fears. Yet it's not a one-way street. Not just an out-pouring, but an in-flowing as well. And perhaps, really, I am just the conduit, the reed through which the universe sings its farm-song, its food-song, its work-song. Gibran says that, "when you work you fulfill a part of the earth's furthest dream," and so I am also the heart through which the earth dreams. And I am the hands that bring that dream to fulfillment.

I like that thought that the earth is dreaming through me, that perhaps the feeling that keeps me up at night and knocks on my door in the morning is just the universe, asking me to help it manifest. Maybe then I can relax and be at ease--if it's the universe's dream, then perhaps the universe has more resources at its disposal to bring this dream about. Perhaps I don't have to do it all. Perhaps, indeed, it will be all right, and maybe even more glorious than I had imagined.

Which is a good thing for me to remember, because, often, I get lost in the fear of it all. Fear that what I am creating is an animal, that it will eat me. Maybe that's just the veggies getting back at me for eating them, but as I am here, on the cusp of setting this plan into motion, I tremble because I know deep down that I cannot control it. That it will get away from me. That, ultimately, I am bound to its timing, its demands, its requirements. It will ask of me and I will give. So I am afraid of what it might ask. Afraid of what I might give. My life becomes not my own, but part of the greater whole, the larger effort at hand. Which is what it has always been. Maybe what I really grieve is the loss of my illusion of control.

Perhaps what I stand to gain is a realization of my true partnership with the universe. The earth dreaming, and dreaming through me, means that more than just my desire will move this dream into being. More than just my sweat and effort and striving. All the energy does not have to come from me--just through me. I can be the conduit. I can sit back and release my death-grip on how I think it has to happen, and simply let it be, perfectly as it is, flowing into existence as it will. I can ask and know that forces beyond me are moving my passion forwards in ways I can't even grasp. I can dream and I can manifest.

I can ramble. I guess 12 hours of ounces and grams, row feet and plant spacing, yields and planting dates will do that to you. It is the beginning. Something big has begun. It is larger than I am. And perhaps that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be scary. Maybe it's a gentle giant who wants to bring me treats. Maybe that's what I'm creating.