inspired and empowered

Wouldn't it be enormously encouraging and uplifting if you knew that every little positive and meaningful thought or action of yours made a difference in the world?  We tend to think that an individual is so insignificant compared to the enormity of the world population at large, or perhaps that your individual vote doesn't make much of a difference. I sometimes feel discouraged that even though I conscientiously recycle all my paper, cans, jars and plastics so many other people don't seem to care and put it all in the trash, which seemingly makes the overall task of contributing to healing our planet so much more daunting from my individual perspective.  

 But physician, psychiatrist, author and lecturer David R. Hawkins wrote in Power vs. Force (one of the most insightful and amazing books I have ever read!), "Note that in a holographic universe the achievements of every individual contribute to the advancement and well-being of the whole." Author and changemaker Charles Eisenstein said the same thing during the retreat I attended this summer.  This awareness is so empowering and means that in effect everything matters.  Your contribution matters, makes a difference, is meaningful and inspiring. Don't ever discount your own power! Don't ever give up!

odd produce

Sometimes, established cultural patterns no longer serve, maybe they never have.  Take food waste that stems from unusually shaped produce. Whoever determined that carrots had to be straight and shaped just so?  Not two legs, definitely not three or more legs, only one single root leg, although children delight in detecting animal and human forms in some of these odd shaped root vegetables. That Bell peppers shouldn't be gnarly?  That all apples in a bag had to be the same size? Or that potatoes should be nice and evenly round?  Odd shapes of course do not alter the taste or nutritional content one bit. 

According to the website Ugly Produce is Beautiful, in the US annually "about 6 billion pounds of producego largely unharvested or unsold for aesthetic reasons." That is insane!  What hubris. It's not new news that we don't have to produce more food to stave off world hunger, but that world hunger stems from distribution and waste problems.  Industrialization of the food distribution system made packaging of evenly shaped produce more convenient, although square watermelons did not make it into the mainstream, and supermarkets like the display quality of evenly shaped produce.

The art of living deeply entails inspecting and questioning cultural patterns so that you do something because it makes sense to you, not because everyone else does it - the lemming syndrome.  Through our CSA we get whatever produce is harvested, even or odd shaped, regular or irregular.  And awareness about so-called ugly produce is growing in all industrialized countries. I just signed up for deliveries of ugly organic produce at half price.  Delivered to my door.  Counters food waste. Couldn't be more convenient.

a new math

We are so used to this type of math:

                                    100 - 30 = 70

 But how about this instead?

                                    100 - 30 = 110

The first equation is how conventional agriculture works.  We grow and harvest crops, which deplete the soil of nutrients and minerals, the soil erodes (it literally flies away at alarming rates because the soil lies bare from fall to spring and the wind takes it away), we desperately throw chemical fertilizer and pesticides at it, the ecosystem degrades, insect and bird populations shrink, carbon goes up, we eek out another harvest until the input needs to be increased yet again.

Although there are wide differences in organic practices, the organic label or certification more or less only specifies a clean version of conventional agriculture in that the chemical fertilizers and pesticides are substituted with natural inputs (and no GMOs permitted).  Still, mostly purchased inputs, but not toxic, process is similar.  Soil and mineral content are certainly richer than compared to conventional agriculture, and organic practices maintain the soil, but they don’t by definition regenerate it. Sheldon Frith explains that the main difference between organic and regenerative agriculture is that organic is mainly chemically based, while regenerative is ecologically and biologically based.  

Regenerative agriculture is based on the premise that through a complete understanding of, and cooperation in sync with, the local ecosystem, we end up with something better than where we started.  Wow! Sounds unreal? Regenerative agriculture works without outside inputs and actually rebuilds the soil and ecosystem on an ongoing basis, and even though the crops extract minerals and nutrients from the soil, as time goes by the ecosystem becomes stronger and more complex, and the soil healthier. Regenerative agricultural systems are unique and local with no one-size-fits-all prescriptions.  Biodynamic agriculture and permaculture are such regenerative agricultural models and I have written about them previously.

Key features of regenerative agriculture are the rebuilding and retention of our depleted topsoil through no-till practices and growing perennial crops (I have previously written about these too), the reestablishment of grasslands, and carbon sequestration, among others. Healthier soil means more mineral and nutrient rich food for us, a healthier ecosystem all around, and packing some of that surplus carbon away into the soil.  

Don’t ditch your Prius yet, but this practice counters climate change! Win-win!  

eat my lotion?

While the notion that you should potentially be able to eat your body and skincare products sounds a bit funny it's not all that far fetched.  It's better not to put something on your body that you wouldn't want in it since your body, skin and make-up products are absorbed through the skin and end up inside you.  Until not too long ago we were oblivious to all the body products with petroleum derived ingredients (lotions, petroleum jelly or vaseline, lip balm), but come to think of it, you probably wouldn't want to brush gasoline on your skin.   Growing up in Europe, I used Nivea lotion and that brand’s Labello lip balm all through young adulthood until I found out about their petroleum derived ingredients and hormone inhibitors.  Haven't used them since.

Then there is the controversy about lead in red lipstick.  Not kidding, although the jury is still out.  And the synthetic fragrances that smell soooooooo....artificial once you become aware (read here an earlier post on that).  And the hormone disrupters, and all sorts of other toxic ingredients that have no place on your skin and in your body.  

If you are new to this exercise, start by reading the ingredients on the shampoos and lotions you have at home.  Have you noticed that even large chain stores are beginning to offer more natural skincare and cosmetics brands?  There are several comprehensive databases where you can research whether what you have in your bathroom cabinet is reasonably safe or if it would be better to replace it.  This can be overwhelming, so do it one item at a time starting with the product that you use in the largest quantities and most often, perhaps body lotion or shampoo.  If you have children begin with their products.   Here are some databases that are very helpful in this process - ewg.org, safecosmetics.org and goodguide.com, although I find the latter cumbersome to use.

I wouldn't want to eat that Nivea lotion I grew up with, but I probably wouldn’t die if I ate my rose lotion.

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the empathy switch

Why are those animal videos on Facebook so popular? Why do we love animals so much in the first place? When a pet dies it can be as painful as when a human family member dies.  When I drive by a dead deer or raccoon I usually respond with an "awwwwww," and tell it in empathy how sorry I am about how it found its end.

Those cute animal videos make me smile spontaneously, as do our cats.  I cannot be angry at them even though they scratch up the couches and dining chairs.  Sometimes they visit the litter box in the basement together, and come back upstairs with dust on their little faces from digging around in the sand.  I feel so much love and tenderness for them.  Animals' pure unconditional love and innocence elicit instant empathy.  No hidden meanings, no angry emotions, no holding back. When I look an animal in its eyes it tugs on my emotional strings.

We, on the other hand, almost always have a hidden agenda, hold grudges, or dish our love out conditionally ("You can have your dessert once you finish your spinach.").  The big question is how to shift in our relationships with people in the same way and turn that empathy switch on, and the grudge switch off?

sizzling energy

My husband called me from the voting place early in the morning and reported that the energy was sizzling, a photographer was documenting for the local press, people were chatting, and he encouraged me to come out and vote right away instead of waiting until later in the day.

The parking lot was indeed full when I arrived not long after, and an air of anticipation permeated the voting place.  I felt an almost giddy excitement, the way children anticipate Christmas in the hopes for good things.  The energy was indeed crispy and it wasn't even 9am yet.  The election officers had arrived at 5am to be ready for when polls opened at 6.    Several had their first or second of many coffee cups in front of them, anticipating a long and busy day, until 10 at night.  

I could feel the spirit, the energy, the hopefulness at the polling place.  No matter what your convictions, expectations, or wishes for this momentous and important election - in the end we all come from the same place of hope, anticipation, and a wish for a turn for the better.  Voting is all the more meaningful when you know that every vote counts, as it does in the mid-terms.  It looks like people have been jolted out of their voter complacency. It's encouraging.  Democracy only works if we participate in it.

my butter dish

Recently, I broke the bottom part of my glass butter dish, while the lid stayed intact.  Both, broken bottom and useless top, or so I thought, went into the recycling bin.  Then I went online to see where I could find a similar dish to replace it.  Lo and behold, what I thought was the lid was actually meant as the bottom portion, and what I broke was supposed to be the lid. I had been stuck in my thinking. If I had  thought out of the box, I could have saved the lid, and kept using it as the legitimate bottom part it was actually meant to be.  Instead my mind had tagged the unbroken part as unusable because I had labeled it  lid.  Of course in my defense I could have said that my application was creative too, just to make me feel better.  As a matter of fact, and in hindsight, I guess the butter dish could be used either way around.

But the creative beauty would have been in seeing right away that the dish can work either way, my choice, my preference. This incident taught me to look more deeply, to slow down before acting spontaneously (the throwing out part), and to be more creative and less rigid in my approach.

Has something like this ever happened to you?