06 27 11 Self Aware



OK, I flew to Fairbanks on business and had to miss two days in our potato patch. I usually end my evening walk in the potato patch, to check on the plants, pull a few weeds and enjoy the green space in which the potato patch sits. My evening visit has become one of those daily rituals that help me remember and enjoy the beauty of it all.


After only two days, though, the cow parsnip was already nearly a foot tall! How can the weeds (I’ve decided a weed is any plant I do not want!) jump ahead so fast, but the potatoes grow so slow? I also realized that I had let the fireweed—which I don not think of as a weed, despite the name (it’s a flower, and perhaps a salad ingredient)—grow too closely to the potatoes. The fireweed was now so tall that it was overshadowing the first row of potatoes, and already that row of potatoes is behind in growth. So much change in two days! So I pulled some weeds and enjoyed my time in the potato patch.


Permaculture is an effort at agriculture based on the relationships inherent to healthy ecosystems. One of the things that permaculture encourages is the selection of which plants to grow in each of the four layers: ground cover, shrubs, trees and climbing plants. If we are not somewhat selective the land will not produce as well, which means it is less successful as an agricultural project. In fact, if we are not selective, some of the plants in each of the four layers will compete against one another, and waste energy defeating each other’s productivity rather than encouraging one another. There is, indeed, a need for weeding, culling and pruning.


One of the permaculture teachings that I am not very good at is how to help the agricultural system develop into a kind of balance that both optimizes food productivity, and minimizes the human effort involved. It is about entering the relationships of the system with understanding, and I still have a lot to learn. We did plant beans, mixed-in with the potatoes, as a companion plant to increase productivity. But I need to spend time with a wood chipper, making chips to cover areas where I don’t want weeds.


Actually these two activities, companion planting and weed control, reflect insights that have been helpful in all relationships in my life. In relationships that matter, I need to be engaged in a way that adds to what my companions are about, and they need to be involved in ways that add to what I am about. Relationships that matter need to work in a way that lift up and enhance the greatest passions or purposes of the people involved.


Paradoxically, though, being in relationships that matter also require clarifying distinctives and real differences between the parties. Just as the potato benefits from the bean but is not a bean, so do I benefit from the important relationships in life, even though I regularly have to clarify the differences. It is sort of a weeding exercise, an exercise of not allowing into the relationship those unhelpful elements that compete for what is important.


This balance between self-definition, and affirmation of being together in relationships, is an ongoing effort. But my faith tradition teaches that it is a good effort. I have been taught that we are created in the image of God, and God is always defining how God is holy (that is, different from us) and how God is with us (that is, in relationship with us). And so that leads me to some ongoing questions in my life—questions like these:


  • How good of a companion plant am I to those I have a relationship with? Which I take to mean, is the way I am living building up my marriage, my family, my community, and the life of the planet on which I live?
  • How aware am I of my own wants, needs and abilities? How clear am I of who I am, so that I can bring my best self to my companions? Is there anything I need to weed out of my life to clarify what I authentically bring to the relationships that matter?

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