MINISTRY AND PERMACULTURE

/ joseph elon lillie

5 thoughts on “MINISTRY AND PERMACULTURE”

  1. Thank you. I really like what you are sharing – it does resonate with me. Small but value-based steps to the future. There is such opportunity for synergy between people and nature, if/when we can see ourselves a part of rather than apart from. I have had the opportunity for some nature walks recently in NH with a young man who is part of a emerging work on forest resilience .. that is looking ahead to what resilience and native plants may mean as the environment/climate shifts.

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    • This is. very interesting to me Jane. Recently I have been fixated on the thought of working with what grows naturally and discovering what it is “there for” as I am on the thought of creating my won landscape and garden work. I recently did a study on the uses of the Japanese knotweed we have in such abundance around town. Turns out it has some pretty powerful uses as food and even as medicine.

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      • Last night, I finally made the time to start reading a book recommended by the young man I mentioned in my post above. “How to Love a Forest; the Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World” by Ethan Tapper, who is from VT. I’ve only read Ethan’s introduction .. and I’m “hooked”. Here’s some of what really resonated with me and seems to reflect what you are experiencing ..

        “…their branches reaching towards the hope of a better future. I know that they will not reach it without my help”

        “I learned to reimagine forests as complex, dynamic communities, defined by connection and relationship, enriched by death and change.”

        “Slowly, I began to understand the beauty of action, to reimagine what it meant to truly love a forest.”

        “I began to understand how forest management could be restorative and regenerative, how it could enrich forests, how it could help forests rediscover their true capacity for life.”

        “Nowhere have I found a book that recognized that forests are socioecological systems … that the separation of the human world from the wild world is an illusion.” … “We cannot choose if we will impact ecosystems….. We can only choose what that impact will be.”

        “We already have the tools to save this world – we just need to choose to do so.”

        “There are not perfect solutions; only endless bittersweet compromises, choices that dare us to reimagine that it means to live in this world with compassion. There is so much that is wrong and so much worth saving.”

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      • I recently watched a documentary on the place of the forest in mythology and how for millennia mankind has built a wall between themselves and the forest. The forest was the place of adventure, but also danger. It was the place of difficulty but also the place where story happened. Meanwhile the town was the place of order and safety a place where mankind could be safe from the power of dreams deeper draw.

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      • Wow .. how very interesting .. mythology! It’s interesting today how people seem to be redefining or remembering what it means to connect with forests and the natural environment. More attention is being given to the healing power of nature, opening awareness of and options for finding oneself in/with nature. This all seemed very natural to me growing up .. nature and the forests are where we played .. even as an adult, hiking, camping. Yes – places for adventure and imagination – which now seems to have been transferred to the tech we carry around. This seems to come back to your earlier comment of working with what grows naturally and discovering what it’s there for. (Hmm, I wonder how that translates to the bittersweet that is invading my gardens and it’s habit of strangling other plants!?)

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