I read somewhere that all the round and colorful decoration on a Christmas tree 🎄 represent the wishful thinking of seeing fruits again hanging on the trees once the winter have passed.
So these are just the first wave of the presents this loquat tree is giving us the day before Christmas.
Hey, Kids! Don’t try this at home 😉
Funny thing is this tree is most probably the result from a squirrel that dropped or buried the fruits seed in this narrow patch of soil. Such a fine example that “everyone gardens”.
Harvest-to-mouth goodness
This tree hardly gave any fruit last year. It is amazing how with a little bit of pruning, watering and feeding organic plant based compost can do in just 12 months!
May we all enjoy the ending of 2020 and make food tasty & nutritious again by growing its full potential in thriving environments.
Before “overpopulation” believers go straight for my neck, I would like to utter out that I am Pro Creation. Yes, Pro creation. Not Pro Choice, and not Pro Life.
But what does Pro Creation mean? Well, on the broad sense, it means favoring creation. But it also means Co-creative Procreation. Please allow me to make my case.
How many people nowadays were born because of the following “accidents”:
The condom broke
The pill didn’t work
Or someone saying:
“I drank too much that night”
“I wasn’t supposed to be in my fertile days”
“My biological clock was ticking”
“Everyone else was having babies”
“My partner wanted to have kids”
“I was too hot to pull out”
What is the story most parents are going to tell their kids about their conception as the first generation born during the Covid Crisis?: “The TV broke down during the lockdown”? Or perhaps, “The Internet was not working for a whole day”?
These are the presence-less conceptions of the human beings that are -in the best case scenarios- welcomed “accidents”. Is this really the best we can do as the so called keystone specie in the world?
What if there is another way. What if human beings were meant to be born by invitation of both parents being fully present even before the moment of conception. A beautiful form of pro creation done in co-creation starting from the moment both parents use the power of their thoughts to co-create the possibility of a new being taking human form through the portal of the birth channel.
The opening of collaborative wisdom circles and sharing spaces to have deep listening and meaningful conversations about topics such as this one, may come to be crucial to steer the path of humanity into one we are all for in consent. One of the questions I would personally like to offer in such spaces and circles is: “What are the differences that you perceive between the presence-full conceptions and the absent or, even worse, the not consented conceptions?”
This may sound like a way over the top of a topic to talk in a forum in front of new and old known strangers. Or perhaps people can’t see the importance of talking about this at all. “Would it be the end of the world if more people get born out of presence-less or absentee(s) conceptions?”, people might ask if they get at least a bit intrigued. And my answer would be “Of course it wouldn’t mean the end of the world… at least, not yet”. “And… would it really make a difference if people rushed into pro-creating in co-creation?”. Of course not! Bringing these beings into nuclear families would mean subjecting them to isolation (even more now with the ongoing corona crisis).
That being said, I would like to bring forward that all the people in the world, each one of us, have what it takes to bring MORE people into this world by co-creative pro-creation. Fully present means something beyond mindfulness and even heart-fullness. And even beyond having an open mind, open heart and open will. It involves remembering. Remember who we are. And we will only remember who we are by inserting our nuclear family structures and individualized lives back into the community life, the tribe life, the village life. Living back in the community life will not make things be in harmony from one day to the next. We will go through, and are already going through the lessons of the collective trauma while sensing what is possible. And here is where the joyful efforts will be key to graduate from this challenge: enjoying the rite of passage along with the growing pains it is bringing forward. Favoring creation. Remembering about the lessons learned form the era of wanting to have babies/children, to graduate to the era of bringing beings in full presence. What if nothing is holding us back?
JORGE’s TRANSCRIPT OF HARMONY STORY MEXICO CITY, DECEMBER 29, 2019
NOTE: Harmony Story is a practice that can help us to envision the beautiful future that we have only imagined can be true. It is a way of bringing into the present something that we believe is in alignment with universal truth–a world where all life can thrive. Here are the instructions:
Step 1: Choose a project or goal or vision you are working on.
Step 2: Pick a date in the future. Go into the future as far as you would like. It depends on if you are looking to visualize short term goals or long term goals.
Step 3: Start speaking as if you are in the future, and things that you would like to have happened, have already happened.
Step 4: People can join in as if they are present with you in the future.
Step 5: Complete the story with a short appreciation, going around the circle and sharing what you appreciated about doing this process.
Here is an example of how Jorge envision this project he is working on using the Harmony Story technique:
IMPORTANT: This “LIVING IN A THRIVING COMMUNITY FOOD FOREST 2030” harmony story tells the story of Jorge’s vision 10 years from now. It is NOT speaking about events that could happen in the future. It is an imagination exercise – or role play – as if we were all living already on planet Earth in 2030.
Beginning of Harmony Story>>>
I am living in a thriving community food forest, and it is about to be 2030 in a couple of days…
Wow! To think about that 10 years ago everything was so unclear and full of uncertainty. I was doing all these things on online meetings and courses. And it was really crazy because everyone was talking about how the world was dying and people were talking about stop having children, and all the vegans were not collaborating and fighting against each other, and we divided everybody into vegans and non-vegans, and the the vegans into raw vegans, starch vegans, and, eh, animal ethical vegans, and… it was a mess. It was a very big mess. No one believed in this vision. And… because these ideas were kind of crazy and out there, and not having anything sure for the traditional lifestyle that our parents had and that they would expect us to have and… yeah, it was a very intense time.
I realized that we were not getting ahead by debating ideas and we needed to move forward somehow, and so I did a couple of courses that my friend Sarina recommended. And I got a lot out of it but also felt not satisfied with the outcome. And I was trying to make the best out of what I had learned.
And I was trying to get clarity on what to do next. What were the next steps. And was asking the universe to give me, like, hints on where to find information and useful contacts, and getting to know more people who also wanted to create this kind of lifestyle. And to have fun while doing it. That was really important! Like, how to organize and enjoy the very hard work and all the efforts necessary to getting a community food forest world of cooperation, of enjoyment, about really thriving not only as humans but with all the, the… beings on this planet. From the water, the mountains, the insects, the big mammals, the smaller mammals, eh…
Everybody was like on board in the transition. And, yeah, it took a while to pick a location. We had very shallow conditions at the beginning like, “Oh, I want warmth all the time”… like, looking for the eternal summer, but at the same time we wanted to be near family. Specially because we wanted to have, eh… the opportunity to bring beings to this planet through the birth channel, and were learning to tap into the knowledge of all our ancestors and found a very nice supporting group of people who wanted to also have conscious conceptions and to be really present and presencing the moment, and the intention of bringing a being into life.
Credit: Unkown
Little by little, we all got clearer and clearer about our vision of the future emerging, that any little or big block, we could easily, just like… go through it. And become stronger, and wiser. Really remembering who we really are.
And we got a hold of old friends and we got together to finally localize all the possible locations for the thriving community food forests all around the world, and just with a dozen friends, people began to come and realized how easy it really was to start making this shift. That took a little while, but things began lining up, and the resources -not only money but talent—- everything that was needed to start creating this place happened. Everything was coming into place, and we started building, we started to use fewer resources, and using them smarter. And luckily all our family members were still around when the first birth arrived through my partner. And we had community around the birth. And we were so happy after facing all the common fears of a home birth, and surrendered to the bigger power of life. My partner’s loving mother and all our ancestors were present with her, and she felt them around presencing the moment of the birth. And she was so… full of light and creating that wonderful moment that helped her see new dimensions of what life is all about. And filled her with so much hope and enthusiasm… Extra enthusiasm for the coming generations. And really realized that all the kids around were really teachers waiting to be acknowledged in a community that was not child-centered but where there was no distinction between child and parent, and student and teacher. Everybody was everyday going about their days creating. So there was no more work and school, but a big learning teaching experience on every thing we did, everything was of intergenerational participation, from elders to babies. Having clear activities, everybody knew how to contribute: When to shift around and rotate in responsibilities, how to collaborate and come into agreements, how to use the best out of what the world was giving us.
And we started planting so many trees! And this was just in the first year, like ten years ago! We started planting all the grown trees we see around us today in this mature thriving forest, and they grew so healthy and so nutritious and they were so happy and they were teaching us so much everyday on how to collaborate, and how to stand together as a forest. And trees have really given us the example on how to not depend on egos, because no tree is more important than the other in a forest. They all are a forest; all together.
I think my partner is just returning from picking some fresh harvests of very delicious peaches and some other very nice tree crops that she loves to eat fresh. And to bring to the children and to share with all the community. And we are going to sing some music to say goodbye to the old year and… and create our common shared vision with everyone around in the community for the next year. And connect to other communities nearby to see how they are going to go about the next year. All right. That’s it! 2030 here we goooo! Keep thriving!
<<<End of Harmony Story.
Check out the Free Food For Future webpage and let The Noble Peace Tribe guide you through the Community Food Forest Network.
So here it goes, I’ll just spill my Mexican beans out for the universe and you to know what is going on in my highly active inner world: I would like this story to go next to the creation of Experimental Peace Research & Learning Centers.
Two months and a half ago, this 4-bedroom “co-housing” space had only one couple occupying one of the rooms and NO blender in the common kitchen.
Then, one and a half months ago, we occupied a second room and got a blender 10 days later (unfortunately, getting a second-hand blender did not work out). A few days after that, the other couple got a blender as well – exactly the same model as ours. Total 2 blenders so far.
And just at the beginning of the year, a third room was occupied, bringing a 3rd brand-new blender to the same common kitchen space.
I would guess, having 3 blenders available in the same kitchen would be an uncommon feature of any apartment – even if it was in the USA or Europe. But it is specially weird to find this in a country like Ecuador, where most of the electronic equipment is imported and very highly taxed. Plus, the currency in this country is the U.S. Dollar! So you can get an idea of how having 3 blenders available in one kitchen would be out of the question here.
But that is NOT all. One of our “co-housers” complained that we use the blenders too much, creating too much noise and so it was proposed to ban the blenders from the kitchen and use them on the terrace only! (Good comedy material, right?)
In any case. This is a good lesson for me to pin point the importance of having a vision in common when it comes to living together. Given our actual situation is NOT meant to be an intentional community nor an eco village, this current experience has given us perspective of how clear things need to be agreed prior to moving in together with people that may or may not share the ideals, practices and values that The Noble Peace Tribe people have in common.
If you would like to check out more of what having a vision entails, you may want to take a look at the Living Vision page.
