Nourishing Bites | Start Singing Part 4
The Farm to Heart Initiative
Please make sure to catch up on how our Farm to Heart Initiative is taking root and find out how you can support our efforts to provide healthy food to elementary school kids and their families.
OR
Mail donations to:
Farm to Heart Initiative
c/o April Joy Farm
PO Box 973
Ridgefield, WA. 98642
Part 4 (Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)
Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and author. In a 2016 interview she spoke of being a college professor early in her career. At one point she said she realized, “I was teaching the names and ignoring the songs.”
By way of explanation, Kimmerer said:
“One of the difficulties of moving in the scientific world is that when we name something, often with a scientific name, this name becomes almost an end to inquiry. We sort of say, well, we know it now. We’re able to systematize it and put a Latin binomial on it, so it’s ours. We know what we need to know. But that is only in looking, of course, at the morphology of the organism, at the way that it looks. It ignores all of its relationships. It’s such a mechanical, wooden representation of what a plant really is. And we reduce them tremendously if we just think about them as physical elements of the ecosystem.”
When you’re wrestling with a problem, stop and take a deep breath.
Is it possible to set down the reductionistic view of your situation and think about the other seemingly unrelated challenges in your life? Can you find some connection points? In what ways might you focus on integrated solutions, even if that means simply, but intentionally, changing your daily habits, or working a mere inch by inch?
By connecting our deep values to our daily actions, (i.e. honoring the relationships as Dr. Kimmerer suggests), we can spark meaningful change.
To put it another way, stop ignoring your songs.
For you may think splitting firewood, or tending seeds, or herding chickens, or working to find just the right words for an essay are nice pastimes, but not necessarily on par with the ‘bigger things’ in our world.
I’d ask that you think again.
Because I spent the better part of my early farming career feeling as if I wasn’t doing ‘enough’. I carried on my shoulders and in my heart this feeling that the world would probably not ever value my contribution.
But even that deep uncertainty wasn’t enough to make me quit.
I kept going, inch by inch, row by row, because there was no other work in the world that felt as meaningful to me as growing food, growing community, and collaborating with this precious piece of land.
The song inside me was too strong to ignore.
Flashback Photo: Spring, 2008 with Rosie’s newborn piglet
You too, have such a song, even if you’re not quite sure yet how to sing it.
I know this, because every year I farm, I see how many people come alive when they step foot on my farm.
I know this too, because every year, I’m still learning new verses.
Understanding what and how we are meant to share our gifts— this does not happen overnight. It requires getting back up again when things don’t quite pan out and diligently working, little by little, to move ourselves and our world forward toward kindness and integrity.
Learning how to share our gifts means practice, not perfection, and it means accepting that we cannot and do not need to know the extent of our impact, only that the work itself matters deeply.
To this day, I keep a Mary Anne Radmacher quote close at hand. It reads, “Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.”
The truth is, learning how to value and share your unique gifts with the world may be the biggest, hardest, ‘thing’ of them all. I write from experience when I say, this is a practice of humility, of stewarding hope, of cultivating compassion, of day after day, doing the work.
“[W]hat does it mean to be an educated person? It means that you know what your gift is and how to give it on behalf of the land and of the people.”
~Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer
Friends, don’t wait for your lyrics to be wholly written. Our world is counting on you.
Be intentional. Do the next right thing. Inch by inch, day by day, please — start singing your song. ~AJ
The Gifts of Diversity: Hidden In Plain Sight (Golden Campine Chicken Feather)
“If there is a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”