December 2012
in search of a transforming vision...

A cold coming we had of it
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter

from Journey of the Magi
T.S. Eliot

Dear Friends of the Farm,

When T.S. Eliot wrote these words to describe the severe conditions under which the Magi of ancient centuries set out on their journey toward an awaited birth, he was also writing about the perennial human struggle with the meaning of chaos and creativity, death and birth.

We too set out during this time between the harvest’s end and the winter solstice, and see so many signs and portents of an anxious age. We stand between the $30 billion spent on an uninspired presidential campaign, to the more than $30 billion in widespread damage caused by a preventable storm surge. Stairwells of apartment units remain darkened; the way back to normalcy for so many remains unclear. We hesitate between the commercial trivialization of Thanksgiving with its Black Friday hype, and the Mayan calendar’s prophecy of end times on December 21, the same day as this winter’s solstice.

Like the Magi in Eliot’s famous poem, we too have a journey. Our human community is setting out into the early frontiers of “deep time,” a vision to which we have only recently awakened. Like sleepy children, we are adjusting our eyes to realizations for which we had no prior preparation, and we hear ancient strains of the admonition to stay awake. We have discovered this vision through powerful technical instruments that open us to enormous ranges of outer and inner space.
 

Our scientific understandings about the origin and nature of the Universe are compelling, inspiring and revolutionary. But we can tend to interpret these vistas through the lens of human historic time, a phrase often used by cultural historian Thomas Berry to describe our short human memory for interpreting time, meaning, identity, value, and destiny. It is a memory that lacks the depth of deep time, the 13.7 billion year history of the Universe. Thus we can journey even further from the very foundations of inspiration, visions and dreams through which the future calls. Such up rootedness, which we all confront at some time or another, echoes from these haunting words of William Butler Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
from “The Second Coming”
William Butler Yeats

Given the onslaught of natural and humanly contrived disasters that we awaken to daily, it is understandable that many interpret these events as signs and portents of the end of time. Many ancient cultures have spoken in great detail about the end times. Some stories became self-fulfilling prophecies. Similar stories continue to be spoken in contemporary institutions all over the world. They also risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Whether passed in whispers or beamed through satellites, bunkers or parapets, whether they show up in the texts of religious worship, or in military codes, or congressional deliberations, their impact is felt. And, most subtle of all, they are surfacing in digital games that lure the imagination of children into the comforts of fundamentalism.

“Surely some revelation is at hand”

Traditionally in this time of waiting between harvest and the dead of winter, our ancestors would light bonfires to lure back the sun. They wove threads of ideas and new possibilities into stories of meaning and wisdom to sustain them through the darker seasons. Between crises and an unknown future, between endings and beginnings, births and deaths, a deep human impulse gave rise to human hope, to an expectation that rebirth will follow death, and that transformation is possible, but only with immense effort. And so the heroic journey into the further depths of human evolution gave birth to itself. The journey was often begun in the very worst of times, the very dead of winter. If something new was to be born it would demand greater human understanding, judgment, wisdom and sacrifice. It would then give birth to better choices and actions.
 

Some traditions call Hope a virtue. My own Christian tradition does. It’s official catechism, which is a compendium of elements of faith, defines hope as “a Drm trust in God who is all powerful and faithful to his promises and who will in his mercy give us eternal happiness and the means to obtain it.” This statement of faith has long fostered the ineffable capacity of a believer’s heart to sense and act as though something better is always possible.

As we gaze through the lens of deep time and deep space, the Universe itself becomes a kind of catechism, bearing witness to the hopeful continuity of its own journey. It has brought forth this fragile living planet through the dynamics of constant change, constant dying and birthing.
 

 

 

Were we led all that way for
Birth or death? There was a birth certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth
And death but had thought they were different: This Birth
Was hard and bitter agony for us, like death, our death.
from Journey of the Magi
T.S. Eliot

In deep time, a powerful insight is unveiled: the Universe itself is neither diminished nor complete. It is still evolving, still expanding. It draws from within itself that which is yet to come. Its irrepressible impulse is to constantly change, to become something new. It continually collapses aspects of its form in order to release the possibilities yet to emerge. It is ultimately about constantly transcending itself. It is always on the edge of apocalypse, it is always on the edge of rebirth.
    
Therefore, what can appear to the human eye to be an end can instead be a beginning. When we reduce the deeper meanings of apocalypse to a one-time historic event we shrink the power of its meaning.

In these days hope sometimes gets a bad rap, as though it is only an expression of human naïveté. There are aspects of this which might ring true, given our frequent inability to face any number of social and ecological problems, from fuel addiction to war-making, with anything more than vague platitudes. But hope is a core part of what makes us human. It gives rise to our human capacity to truly love the common good, sometimes even more than our smaller personal good.
 

In the tradition from which I come, there are two sins against the virtue of hope. In religious terms they would be an affront to the divine being who is believed to be infinitely powerful and faithful to the future…The first such sin against hope is presumption.

Presumption is a naïve belief that someone somewhere is going to take care of us and our problems. For instance, we might rely on some obscenely rich savior to geo-engineer us out of climate change, or to perpetually control the behaviors of seeds and sperm or even the memory and instincts of life itself. This is presumption writ large. As a nation we seem to give tacit control to decision makers who claim to do these things on our behalf without our knowledge and permission. Are we presuming they will take care of us? Is this the real sin against hope? Is this the undermining of the very integrity of Earth and the basis of our children’s capacity to hope?

 

The second sin against hope is despair. It is easy to succumb to this when we begin to take as literal truth the diverse cultural versions of apocalyptic commentaries.
There are so many lengthy descriptions of our human limitations that we could believe we are inherently evil and our species is doomed. We can give into a self-fulfilling assessment of our human behavior as inevitably tragic and beyond our ability to change. Might this too, be a rejection of our own nature, the capacity to mature into persons of compassion and caring?

 
If our frame of reference is fixed only on the insights of the past, yet remains closed to the spiritual nature of the Universe,  Earth, and all life, then we will indeed cease to evolve. We will become “an alien people clutching our gods...Our children will no longer be at ease here, in the old dispensation, and they shall be glad of another death…” (T.S. Eliot)
 

Seen through a “deep time” interpretation, the sins of presumption and despair are an affront to the very nature of the Universe and the power of its journey of self-transcendence. Thus, too, in the context of religious faith they are an affront to the Mystery of the Divine. Hope becomes the axis on which we and our children can navigate the difficulties we face as we journey into the further reaches of our own evolution. Especially now, at a period of immense tension, hope is essential.

But there are conditions for our evolution. As expressed so eloquently in the Dlm, Journey of the Universe, written by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, the Universe expands at an exquisitely precise rate. It is held in the tension of two forces: that of gravity which pulls it back, and that of electro-magnetic forces, which compel it outward. The conditions are breathtaking. It is held in the tension between the forces so that neither collapse nor explosion occurs. The Universe remains one with itself. Everything which emerges in space and in time is an integral expression of the very self of the Universe. This includes you and me and every person and every blade of grass. This is the revelation of the Unity that binds all things together.

If we can understand our role within the human phase of Universe and Earth, then our very selves, in the full range of our self-conscious identity, can be understood as the Universe consciously holding this present tension in an aware, free and engaged range of possibilities. It is the tension that is essential for opening the future to hope. It demands the deepening, rather the shrinking of our capacity to love.

The Sufi poet Hafiz offers timeless insights into the nature of this mature love: “Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, ‘you owe me.’Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole world.”

Again and again we ask what it would look like to cherish the land and our bioregions with something approaching the sun’s depth of love for Earth. Perhaps the natural disasters which have so chastened us are moments in which a new, more mature love can emerge. Are we ready to ask deeper questions of ourselves and our relationship to all the living and non-living beings of this planet? Are we ready to rethink our beliefs about the right of all beings to exist? Can we gaze upon our homes and the lands that support them as trust rather than commercial gain? Can we rethink investment? Are we ready to look at the consequences of our belief in usury? How many more years of “you owe me” can continue, how many more generations in relentless pursuit of diminishing returns, before every last drop of “profit” has been wrung from a generous but depleted planet?

There must be alternatives. As we consider the long-term future of Genesis Farm, these questions are far from theoretical for us and while they have no easy answers, they call to us from the future. And you, dear Friends of the Farm, you are part of the reason we continue to hope. We invite your response, your engagement and your Dnancial support as a new season emerges after the turn of this winters’ solstice.

Blessings and Peace,
Miriam MacGillis, OP

With appreciation for contributions to this letter from Liz Marshall

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
A thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.
Rumi

Our temporary retreat from 32 years of intense programming in order to discern how we might be of greater future service has been wise and healthy. It has led to a deeper guidance revealed in the very structures and dynamics of an evolving Universe. We describe this process as a “chrysalis phase” for Genesis Farm. It has been and continues to be a time of study, dialogue, transformation and a greater availability to work collaboratively with other organizations and institutions.

Until we gain a clearer understanding of the evolving expressions of our mission we have suspended our search for new leadership to help implement them. Likewise we have suspended our traditional programs as we continue to ask “what is Earth asking of us now?”

 

We are strengthening the foundation of our Five Smooth Stones project. So, too, the Ancestors to Seed endeavor by which we call on the “beloved community of the dead” who have been honored here to guide and foster our efforts to save heirloom seeds and to resist the genetic-engineering of the seeds of the planet. We commit to the further design of the Valley of Aluna, formerly known as the Hillside Garden, which will be comprised of small demonstration gardens to assist people in becoming more food self-reliant, no matter how small an area is available to them. The significance of this garden is deeper than we had originally imagined.
It has been described in our former newsletters and on our website
at www.genesisfarm.org.

A wish list from the Chrysalis

Here are two items from our wish list if you would like to assist us over the next year. Every gift, large and small is gratefully welcomed and honored, and donations can be easily made here on our website. Thank you for your faithful support. May you and your loved ones be blessed with the deepest graces of this sacred season.

$300,000
Over-all operating Budget for 2013
Even with all our cost-cutting, this is a realistic figure for
providing very modest salaries for a very small staff of 1
full-time and 3 part-time persons and 1 full-time volunteer.
It includes the cost of maintaining our office, library, utilities,
and the maintenance of 11 buildings, 181 acres of cultivated
gardens, open spaces, forests, public spaces, and trails.

$25,000
Tractor
A much needed new or used multi-tasking tractor and the
implements for maintaining our meadows, gardens, public
trails, lawns, orchards and the Valley of Aluna.