This morning I woke to a temperature of -10 and clear blue skies. My husband and I looked out of our bedroom window to a forest glinting with white. It was beautiful. We have a daily ritual of reading poems to each other at breakfast, we take it in turns, he usually reads Swedish poems and I usually read those that are written in English. This morning I found this one:
Testing Gardening
In the garden I watch myself take care
as if I were the garden. I even learn
from experience! Slowly (fair is fair),
I may grow less stupid and learn to turn
error to advantage - though mistakes take
years of uprooting seedlings sprung from seed
dropped a decade ago in error's long wake.
I was right to want you, to sweat, weed,
balance acid soil, shield you from sunscald
early, then prune to make sure the sun you need
found you. For the few spring weeks you're a sprawl
of flowers, you green in summer towards its rest
in fruited autumn. Yet it's winter that's the best
yes to imagine joy, next. The winter test.
Marie Ponsot (1921 - 2019)This poem and some of the work I am doing at the moment, got me thinking about seed and soil and the need to tend our own soil, as well as the soil in our gardens, communities and organisations.
Let me tell you a story about compost:
My husband and I moved to our wonderful house about 3 years ago and one of the reasons for moving here was the garden. (Well I say garden, it was mostly a messy lawn with a few fruit trees and a few very neglected raised beds.) I was desperate to get busy creating new vegetable beds, flower beds, arches and much more including making my own compost from all our green waste. (You need to know at this point that I have never really had the opportunity to do any of this and was very much a novice.) So I bought one of those huge dalek-style composting bins that kept the compost warm and I diligently started filling it with all of our green waste and coffee grounds. In the summer I noticed that when I lifted the lid, there was a really unpleasant, noxious smell of ammonia. It smelt toxic. After reading up a bit and asking friends I realised I had been feeding my compost too much of one type of 'scraps' and it had too much nitrogen in it. I found that I needed to counter-balance this with 'brown waste' such as paper, leaves, cardboard etc. I learnt my lesson and now feed it a balanced diet and this is where ‘systems’ come into the picture - this picture in fact:
I created this image for the work that I do. It shows how deep narratives lie in the compacted soil that we grow from. These may be the belief that black bodies are worth less than white ones, or that women are less valuable than men.
These deep narratives form systemic structures, such as white-body supremacy, ableism, etc.
These systemic structures create our cultural narratives - ghettoisation, ‘colour-blindness’ (I am not racist, I don’t see colour.)
The cultural narratives go on to inform the personal ones - I value myself less as a woman and will not use my voice in meetings because it might be seen as too aggressive etc.
The personal narratives become the stories that we tell - “she is so bossy and such a bitch” (as opposed to, “she is a firm and powerful leader.”)
And these support and feed the deep narratives and lead to a toxic environment - just like my compost!
So we need to change the stories we tell in order to change the soil that they come from - in order to break it apart.
How?
I think I have found the answer and it started with listening to this amazing
The On Being Project
podcast ahttps://onbeing.org/programs/janine-benyus-and-azita-ardakani-walton-on-natures-wisdom-for-humanity/ll about bio-mimicry.In it she talks about how land recovers in a series of ‘islands.’
“if a rain forest gets cut down, the way it starts is that there might be a stick, or a little rise and a bird lands — This is how it really starts. This is how the seeds of the weed seeds get in there — and it poops something out. And then that seed takes over and starts to become the facilitor of this succession in a circle, in a sort of circular way. And it’s also happening over there in the field, and it’s happening over there in the field, and in between, there are empty spaces.
And when people ask me, how are things going? I’m like, well, I think the circles of healing are starting to grow and they’re starting to grow towards each other. And if we were to reach out our hand in the dark at this point, we might find another hand.”
She continues saying
“So say a landslide has come through or there’s been a clear cut or whatever. So there’s this beautiful succession that happens where at first, the first ones coming, come in the type one species, and we call them weed species. They’re annual plants and they come in and what they’re doing is basically spreading out as quickly as they can — cover that ground. Because healing, the first thing is, don’t let the good stuff go. And that’s why you scar over so quickly. There’s that little, don’t let the good stuff leak out, all those nutrients that are there. So that’s their job. They come in and then they put all of their energy into creating pretty small bodies and seeds, not a lot of roots. And those seeds then blow off to the next opening that needs healing.
And what they’ve done though, is started to soften up the soil, started to put nutrients in, and the next group is the shrubs and the berries. And they start to put down roots. They’re going to stay for a while, and then they start what’s called facilitating. They start shading little seedlings, keeping wind away, creating. There’s a windward and a leeward, so some species that are a little more tender can get started. There’s this whole chaperoning and facilitation that happens. And then in the shade and the windshields of these trees, of these shrubs, little seedlings start and then those seedlings become the overstory that we know about. So literally it is a progression of making way, making things more and more fertile for the next cohort to come. So there’s this incredible generosity and everybody’s got their place.”
The incredible thing is that she says only 1/16th of a field needs to be ‘islanded’ for the whole field to eventually be covered. This beautiful way of working led me to develop my tree into a forest:
This is my new process:
The Me, We, The Story
I now use this image as a representation of the ‘Me Story,’ where the group is invited to ‘Explore Our Roots.’
The second image is the ‘We Story,’ where I invite people to ‘Create Mycelium’ through the sharing of stories and identification of intersections.
The third image is a representation of ‘The Story,’ a ‘Mycorrhizal System’ of the future change we wish to see.
It is a beautifully simple yet powerful process that holds deep meaning and sense-making for people.
I keep saying again and again and again,
Turn back
Look Back
Turn Back
To the old stories. To the earth. To the soil.
Within so much work that involves systems and systems change, new ideas are created, new images and flow-charts that have
no soul
no emotion
no deep roots of meaning.
They are an exercise in logic and whilst they can help us identify patterns, they do not go deep enough (into the soil of our soul, into our soul-soil) to create meaning and change. We cannot throw seeds of change onto soil that is unable to nurture them into life.
We have to start with the soil.
I am seeing Substack as soil and me as a stick for people to come and poop ideas and thoughts on.
I hope from this fusion and facilitation that some weeds will form to hold ideas together and help them spread.
I hope that they will attract bushes of action and thought.
I hope that this will lead to great trees growing that will share beautiful, wise fruits
That will fall into the soil
And seed
And take root again
And again
And again
And my stick will decay and become part of that
Rich,
Beautiful,
Nurturing
Soil.
Katrice
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