BY CATE HENDERSON
Those of you who were in attendance at the spring equinox celebration may remember our meditation on the seed – that through kindness alone plants grow from one seed to produce many, many seeds.
There is no selfish reason for this, and economists and financial planners would be appalled to see so much energy expended on seeds which are then freely given – many are eaten by humans, animals, insects, fungi etc, with no immediate benefit to the individual plant at all. In fact, most of our vegetables are annuals, meaning that the plant that grew from one seed to give many is now likely deceased!
The theme of a recent workshop was “Abundance: out of scarcity through the lens of Providence,” a title to which I was drawn, since I live in a culture of scarcity, but my reality out in the fields is one of abundance. When I look around the gardens I see abundance, not scarcity. I myself bought into the myth of scarcity when I worked in environmental education. To my mind, there was not enough clean water, not enough healthy food, we were losing our soils, we were polluting our air till there would not be enough clean air to breathe, and on and on it went. Above all, there was never enough money to pay for all of our needs!
I now believe – the gardens have taught me – that this is a myth based on a false economy. The real economy that plays out under our noses (but not in our minds) is one of abundance, and it is one of giving selflessly expecting nothing in return. The one seed yields one hundred, or even one thousand seeds and, having given all it can to benefit others, it dies, asking for nothing more. In the workshop we learned that when we share what we have, we experience abundance.