Seeds For Change | Growing Faith, Food, and the Future
Seeds For Change
Growing Faith, Food, and the Future
by Victoria Pratt Davis
It's wake up time. Our nation continues to heave under the weight of complicated, layered crises - wars; a failing economy; economic, political and racial divides; collapsing infrastructure and urban decay; environmental devastation; soil and air pollution; and challenges that affect the source, quality, and supply of our food and the health of our people. The crises are so interrelated and polarizing that it is difficult to know where to begin to affect meaningful change. Perhaps, however, the real challenge involves making a shift in the way we think about change. Should you venture to listen beyond the bitter conflicts inside Washington and the deafening rhetoric within city councils and mayoralties; beyond even the overwhelming negativity, fragmentation, and divisive national conversations, you will find quite a different scenario unfolding. Critical numbers of people within urban neighborhoods are demonstrating a powerfully creative approach to issues that adversely impact the quality of their lives. The seeds of change are being quietly sewn and have already sprouted wondrous roots. At first glance, you may never hear or notice them at work as you drive through the neighborhood. Nevertheless, intergenerational bands of earth warriors, urban farmers, people from diverse backgrounds, ages, and cultures are busy at work. And while you may see increased evidence of gardening activity, far more than nutritious leafy greens are being produced.
Everyday folk across the country seem to be responding to an inner call and shared vision to make a difference. They know they can. They include once alienated youth; retired, wisdom filled elders; eager school children; working folk and the under-employed; singles and partners; war veterans; the formerly incarcerated; college students, and apprentices of all ages, now armored with hope and a focused intent to introduce new life. Each is defining the meaning of this unfolding vision as they gradually change the face of their community. Regardless of the signs of despair all around, the seeds for change are being planted and sown. Exiles within urban areas are emerging from out of seeming chaos and obscurity, and daring to rediscover and understand earth's hidden resources; alchemic mysteries of soil and biosphere. After clearing away broken glass and debris, they carry out their tasks with passion, sacrifice, and sacred regard They are providing the world with a template for creative community development that may be imaginatively applied as we all attempt to rethink the re-imaging of new life within our beloved neighborhoods and cities.
FERTILE VOID
Struggling urban areas have historically been victims of the exigencies of modem living and of subjective strategies dreamed up by developers and urban planners. These forgotten and underserved communities have traditionally turned to grassroots activity to introduce change. But rather than mass protest or pleas for government intervention, a different mindset is being employed. This time, new strategies and cutting-edge technologies in urban farming are being employed. And this time, we even find a willingness to discern that darkness, abandonment, and desolateness, may actually be the most fertile pre-conditions for turning things around and making something different happen. For there is great richness, creative potential, and possibility deeply embedded beneath the debris. The locus of activity shifts from tearing down neighborhoods, displacing its "victims" and” disconnected” peoples, to that of intentionally assisting people in redefining and actually growing a neighborhood where they can thrive. Evolving leaders can begin to see the promise of an internally transformed living environment that is emerging without empty compromise. Leaders engaged in this vision will be called upon to conjure ways to intentionally transform adversity into advantage in the face of all those who would dismiss the right to live there and their rightful concerns. Unlike grassroots action that sprung up during the sixties and seventies, this kind of movement is spreading to urban communities both here and across the globe. A way of thinking that initially caused urban crises in this country has now been imported everywhere in the world. The quest to uncover a vision that fundamentally transforms ailing communities is underway worldwide. Devalued communities across the globe are affected by a commercialized food supply through which access to food is often limited to products lacking nutritional value packed with excess salt, sugar, and preservatives. Malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease have become the norm. Our Beloved Communities have evolved into breeding grounds for chronic illness, poor health, and, all too often, premature death from entirely preventable diseases processes. Creating a 'healthy living consciousness' is certainly critical for everyone. But within these particular communities, it is a matter of life, breath, and death. Yet, as grim as the outlook appears to be, and despite city places and spaces seemingly void of healthful living conditions, the seeding for change and fertile goodness is already in progress.
SACRED LABOR
All vibrant life hinges upon the infinite evolution of mysterious cycles that carry us across the threshold of birth, awakening to vibrancy, gradual decomposition, and regeneration. Following the honored legacy of creative conjurors of social change, the imaginative leadership within this particular revolution, have chosen to begin their work of activity, within the most symbolic of life-affirming places. In the midst of uninviting, urban decay and devastation, faithful co-laborers within the movement now retreat to a garden in which to introduce new directions that may make things happen in a powerful way. From there, they safe-guard a vision that will feed thousands, market fresh, organic produce and foods, restore neighborhoods, and, in time, help make sick people well again.
The religious imagery here is intentional although religion, as such, is hardly the subject. Far from attempting to label the urban farmer as participant in some new kind of spiritual order, we are challenged to think more broadly and go beyond conventional interpretations. For some, there may be debatable spiritual significance in the act of introducing change from within a garden. And there is no particular allegiance to any ideology or system of belief here. The contemporary urban farmer, however, does operate from a fundamentally unifying, inspirational, life-affirming idea: people can be empowered to grow good food and create healthier, more vibrant communities for their families. Farming is understandably a metaphor for the cultivation of life. But from the vantage point of the urban farmer, it also becomes an in-your-face, revolutionary action, carried out in order to return the power of life back to the people.
When we borrow from the insight of Joseph Campbell, prolific religious scholar, writer, and authority on global mythology, we uncover a more in-depth understanding of how religious imagery is, in fact, relevant here. It may even help dispel some misinterpretations about what religious activity truly means. The word "religion" derives from an old Latin verb, "re-ligare", meaning 'to link back', to re-link, or to re-connect that which has become broken off. The emphasis here is placed on the action of some invisible creative force that is pointing toward an ultimate, possible good being activated. The focus shifts to what is possible when the people decide to re-connect to an ultimate, life-affirming reality that is always at work within creation. The driving force of this (re)volutionary vision, then, and the challenge of the urban farmer, is reconnection, to 'hook' people and communities back to the re-creative possibility that is always available. How easy it is to forget this awesome reality amidst the ever-fragmenting experience of city life. Harvesting good food is a fundamentally transformative activity and certainly qualifies as sacred, re-connecting labor. It is work that involves constant reflection, physical stimulation, redirection, and sacrifice. And, ultimately, it offers the joy of providing sustenance for our Beloved communities. It is whole-making and healing labor that, coincidently, also seems naturally fashioned for participation by communities of all Faiths, outreach initiatives, and interfaith collaborations across all traditions. For any community, farming activity is a meaningful way to give birth to more hopeful perspectives, even in the midst of the decay and divisiveness evident all around.The activity itself is re-engaging. We the people participate in a larger vision of wholeness and reconnection within our bodies, our communities, and to our brothers and sisters across the planet.
Every major and indigenous spiritual tradition, especially within the mystic traditions, provides a path for intentional retreat into the realms of re-creative activity, followed by a return to a reality of daily confrontation with particular conditions of brokenness. Gardens provide both a path of retreat as well as a strategy for re-creative community action. They also create space for collective processes that are easily adaptable across language and culture and transportable across the globe. The shared vision of urban farmers co-laboring world-wide, can begin to address issues of hunger, food shortage, and community disruption in practical, profound, and entirely realizable ways.
Whether it is an individual or community in crisis; a neighborhood plagued by broken moments of history, neglect and oppression; or a city attempting to overcome the adverse effects of colonization, a plantation economy, industrialization, discrimination, or environmental degradation, the drive toward transformational insight starts from the single revolutionary act of sacred reconnection with the earth. Beyond the limited labels we like to use, the work of change introduced from within the garden has, in fact, awesome spiritual significance. It is a way of tapping back into the source of all creative energy that exists eternally, without condition. Those who dare labor in the garden become empowered to recharge themselves and return to their life with a different perspective. Despite the disconnected or broken conditions, we exist in a world that is always in need of more harmony, more justice, and more healing. Together, in a garden, there is a way to begin again.
INSIDE THE URBAN COSMOS
Contemporary co-laborers inside gardens and hoop houses share more than productive work. They are creating a new story of community building. They are re-storying their lives. They gather and share their life stories, their dreams, and visions of new homes and markets that provide places to work and sell their produce. They speak of new ways to nurture their neighborhood. Abandoned lots, buildings, and warehouses do not representa blight of disintegrating land, wood, and bricks and mortar upon the urban landscape, but instead are re-envisioned as a restorable “projects” and possible financial and community investments. Working together, people discuss opportunities for learning new skills, creating new small businesses, building better schools, and reviving vital organs for community life that can emerge over time.
Along with the growing presence of beautiful and fruitful community gardens, many contemporary urban farmers have also incorporated the process of aquaponics, a visionary fusion of ancient, conventional, and cutting-edge bio-scientific technology. It is a process that moves biology beyond the boundaries of a conventional Cartesian-Newtonian scientific worldview, where humans live in a world where laws of the universe are rigid, absolute and where we exist as separate from our natural world. Inside this particular garden, however, there is a weave of life between humans and nature, not a separation. Human and natural environments exist and thrive in concert. Plant cells and growing life are experienced as highly activating, energizing organisms that thrive within a dynamic complex of living systems, natural and human, far removed from any machine-like imagery. Inside the building, the aquaponics system re-creates a fully organic environment where plant life can grow and flourishes with or without the use of soil. It is an integral system that has proved useful in the creation of green spaces within a variety of urban environments.
The vibrations from within an aquaponics facility, frequently located in an abandoned neighborhood building, are nothing short of amazing. As you enter you are immediately struck by the overwhelming presence of light and greening life everywhere. Folk are busily tending to tanks able to hold thousands of gallons of water and swimming fish, either tilapia or perch. Above the tanks are long rows, sometimes even layered rows of seeding grow-beds that soon evolve into mature, edible vegetables and fruits. And above everything, efficient grow lights are constructed to correspond to the rows of plants growing below. In some facilities solar panels are also incorporated. The creativity evidenced in making all this happen is as great as the imaginations of the people involved. It is simply unlimited. Plants are fertilized and cultivated by the circulation and recycling of water and waste from the fish tanks below. Tanks are monitored regularly for proper nutritional content, toxins, and an optimal growth environment. This is an entirely self-sustaining system. It is good for the neighborhood, good for the community, and wonderful for the production of abundant, fresh food and diminishing food deserts to restore life and hope. It is a person-centered, efficiently maintainable, bio-scientific process that produces a continual supply of fresh fish, vegetables, and herbs. All of this birthed from inside an abandoned old building, inside a garden, inside a so-called food desert of hungry humans. In reality and in truth, through the eyes of creation, there is simply no such thing as desert.
The work of creation unfolds mysteriously, intentionally, rhythmically, and eternally. Liberated from restrictions of denomination, ideology, and dogma, co-laborers of creation-possibility are free to direct their attention away from external signs of neighborhood disintegration and focus upon the movement of creation and nourishment that form inside an urban cosmos. Unbound from the paralyzing polemics of restrictive scientific paradigms, where boundaries between space and matter, people and things prevail, a way is being made out of no way. Life affirming activity is unleashed to perform the work of reconnection at vibrating atomic levels. Subatomic particles move in quantum flights, leaping through boundless growth space within a bio-scientific garden. No separation exists between the creative realm, the laborer, the growth of wholesome foods, and the healing activity of faithful human beings intent upon making a difference. It can be interpreted that a new age of urban farmers is engaged in holy tasks from within the sacred spaces of gardens or aquaponics "temples", critical realms of transformation and change. That is exactly what seems to be happening. They are places where virtual vibrational fields of spirit-filled human and plant energy surround seeds, fish, sprouting roots and created goodness, powerful enough to heal a dis-eased people, resurrect weakened communities, restore decaying neighborhoods, and re-birth dynamic places of hope. What entirely credible dreams can be cultivated from within an urban cosmos!
THE URBAN SHAMAN
This radically new change in direction cannot move and fulfill its purpose without the presence of extra-ordinary, visionary leadership, shaking and moving in the midst. Such leadership does exist and for the purposes of this writing, we can suggest that it performs the role of the traditional Shamans. Within most indigenous cultures, a Shaman is thought of as practitioner of healing, a conjuror of extraordinary phenomena. They are believed to be individuals who possess special gifts that enable them to identify and address particular conditions of destruction, imbalance, and dis-ease within their communities. We can easily adapt this role within an urban context. Many indigenous cultures and people who understand the term well now live within urban communities, and the work performed by these special leaders demands the kind of sensitivity, wisdom, and healing engagement that is asked of the traditional Shaman. They are leaders who deeply understand the conditions within their communities and serve as co-creators in order to bring about a change. Leaders within this revolution of life-possibility, combine personal skill, wisdom, experience, and care, along with contemporary technology know-how, to create a new reality within the communities where they live and work.
There is an African proverb which speaks of a wisdom that is an essential challenge and charge to a new generation of Urban Farmers and Shamanic-Leaders everywhere. It says very simply, "The creator may send a famine, but always provides a way to find food". This saying also helps us to understand that, within the African sacred dynamic, all life is imbued with a vital life affirming, spirit-filled energy that comes from the Creator of all life. Other cultures believe similarly. The responsibility for the care of creation on earth, however, is assigned to the human being. The Ancestors, who play an important role as guardian of their descendants and over community life, are always a shire or an invocation away and can be called upon to intervene in human affairs. They are believed to respond to the people's call through visions and dreams. Those who listen and respond to their ancestors must often go to extreme lengths in order to restore a sense of balance and restorative vision and possibility within their communities.
NEW VISION GROWS
There is an energetic presence of a gifted African American urban leader within the shamanic context, who has been quietly at work within hidden sacred spaces on Chicago's South Side. Emmanuel Pratt is the Executive director of Sweet Water Foundation, which he co-founded with James Godsil. Emmanuel brings his particular life experience to the vision of healthy, vibrant urban living. Musician, artist, architect, and urban designer, he is also a husband, father, and weaver of connections between people, institutions, and organizations. His life and study of struggling urban communities world-wide, gives him a panoramic view of the challenging issues that city-dwellers face every day while attempting to forge a life and create community.
Through his work at Sweet Water, Emmanuel communicates a vision of healthful living by creating an intricate web of resource networks that all together, empower communities to create good spaces in which to live and grow. Emmanuel is not alone. He represents a new generation of artists, architects, and urban planners who have shifted away from conventional emphasis upon blueprints, brick and mortar buildings, city planners, and developers intent upon the production of anonymous housing subdivisions, housing "projects,"or lonely, disconnected housing options. This growing new reality in urban planning seeks to create habitable, safe spaces that foster a sense of belonging, where people want to live, engage, contribute, be respected, and, just as within the garden, have invested in the total well-being of the communities where they live.
The shift in thinking about inner-city urban life serves as an important corrective to planning schemes which dismiss the hopes and dreams of those who would live there. And where, despite decades of living and serving their community, people can be uncaringly uprooted like useless weeds, then forced to find other alienating neighborhoods miles away. A new emphasis considers how easily people get caught up in entrepreneurial or political re-zoning and gentrification schemes that significantly and adversely affect neighborhood demographics. The creation of urban farmers within the community, initiates a direction that can move people from institutionalized victimhood to that of empowered personhood. The vision is growing and is slowly being recognized well beyond Sweet Water Foundation’s site known as The Commons. In 2019, Emmanuel Pratt, the Sweet Water Foundation, and its co-laborers there, have become the recipients of some timely and helpful resources through the MacArthur Foundation. Emmanuel has received the MacArthur "Genius Award" after a decade of tilling south side soil and providing his particular style of visionary/solutionary leadership. New vision is, indeed, alive and well in the neighborhood.
MORE SEEDS FOR CHANGE
"We are part of the earth and it is part of us." Chief Seattle, 1854(Re)viewed (Re)membered (Re)Ieased
The award-winning Sweet Water Foundation and its Executive Director Emmanuel Pratt have arrived at a clear turning point. The same is true for the neighborhood where their beautiful site, known as The Commons, is located. The Commons, which spans four city blocks, is part of the once active Englewood community. What we see happening there now compels us to look again, to review it and understand what is actually taking place. With more public recognition, however, comes the challenge of asking critical questions about its presence, its process, its significance, and its future direction. The evolution of Sweet Water is now in full view, open for greater public appreciation, understanding, misunderstanding, and, even, misappropriation.
At first view from the street, The Commons may resemble a growing community garden. Sweet Water does have its origins in the areas of aquaponics and urban farming. Firmly grounded in the rich soils of The Commons one sees an abundance of busy farming and gardening activity. But it is soon evident that Pratt's background is, in fact, not in farming, but is one of a musician, artist, social activist, and architect. As an artist, his work really begins deep within the inner realms of the imagination, the senses, and vision. The imagery that an artist ‘sees' or discerns goes far deeper than any surface view. While the visible location of The Commons is characteristic of Chicago's South Side and blanketed by bleak, abandoned, decaying real estate, to this artists view, another kind of seeing, you might call it in-sight, becomes activated. Beneath the neglected surface soils of Englewood, Emmanuel sees the earth with all its creative potential and imagines people working the soil to bring it back to life. This is in stark contrast to what we may see a few streets away; images of human creations who live on the earth, but who are still disconnected from it. They might consider themselves members of the older community, but dis-membered from one another and from the land upon which they live. The discerning artist, however, imagines the creative activity that dwells within the earth; dormant, asleep for a long time even, but always awaiting the vision of those who dare see beyond all appearances.
ON THE GROUND REALITIES
The act of seeing is complex. Beyond the activation of physical features of the human eye, the mind also immediately joins in. It interprets the captured image and quickly begins to impose on it a stream of personal information; our experiences, our feelings, and our judgements about what we see, whether we want to or not. As you drive to The Commons, you will see many scenes of community life, a range of different income levels, people of every age and stage of life and degrees of connectedness. You drive through less thriving communities where homes and real-estate are in serious states of deterioration and decay. You witness conditions of homelessness, unemployment, hopelessness, and despair. The appearance of ‘grand old homes’ amidst blocks of abandonment and dumping grounds tell a story of a city's lost land, history, and its estranged people.
Many have left the old neighborhood. But those who remain have memories of family ties that represent several generations, folk caringly referred to as "my people". The blighted conditions in which life now finds people and land, alike, impact all concerned with a sense dis-ease and disconnection. Blight is a condition that just takes over. One may learn to adapt and survive, but see very few images that nurture new possibility or way beyond the experience there. Other on-the-ground realities reveal the consequences of adapting to a place of disconnectedness; rampant crime, drugs, violence, and death. All that happens there is vividly and rapidly communicated through newspaper, social media, and television. One sees painful images and nightmarish crimes involving police and gang life, slain children, and victims of gun violence.All the while, little ones simply want to play, go to school, and do what they do in the place where they live. These images are deeply imprinted into the minds of people there, but they also affect the minds of others, wherever news travels. Those who must live and survive the old community, however, exist within environments shut in by invisible cages of fear, anger, grief, and hopelessness. Survival, in some cases, becomes the ability to kill or be killed; to thrive becomes doing whatever necessary just to survive. Any light that may come from being able to hope for alternative ways of living is so dim that it blurs images of possibility, and gets in the way of even trying to see something different. Daylight may arrive and temporarily interrupt the nightly terror, but the death and destruction, blood and fury is not deterred by the light of day. And those who live outside the distressed community are left with images of fear, threat, and helplessness communicated over the airways.
What is experienced in the mind's eye is still poor visibility, life lived through the lens of confinement within invisible cages, one desolate block at a time. Many homes, in fact, keep their blinds closed, curtains, shutters, and shades drawn, cutting off the light of day and any possible threatening image from the outside. Fear, mistrust, anger, hopelessness, and stress are the toxic seeds that sprout quickly within, dimly lit, invisible cages. It is certainly difficult to conjure beautiful stories, feed healthy images of hope, or identify healing images of themselves. It is more difficult, still, to believe in a life that affirms growing children and nurtures them as the wonders of creation that they truly are. There is however, just a walk away, a place to see and experience quite another image of life being sown.
A PLACE BETWEEN STORIES
A woman in a walker moves slowly along the acres of The Commons. She nods at someone working in the garden. They speak. The worker smiles and extends her hands to offer a bundle of crisp collard greens. Grateful, the woman places them in a bag and moves on. A motorized wheelchair passes by, then shifts speed to pass more slowly. The older woman in the wheelchair soaks in all the images she sees and smiling, gradually returns to the route she had been on. Later on, a man who appears homeless walks by. He stops to sit on one of the hand-crafted benches conveniently anchored beside the street and stares at a dazzling cluster of bursting yellow sun flowers. "You okay?" he is asked. He nods yes. "I just like to come on by here to set a spell. Feels real peaceful here." He is welcomed and invited to sit as long as he needs.
The location of The Commons is wondrously significant. It exists as a place between two worlds, two stories. The visible, fresh green beauty and the imagery of people regularly at work from morning light to setting sun, presents a dream-like quality that is, by contrast, both enchanting and seductive. It signals safety, peace, and a stolen moment in time, but just enough time to feel a moment of reconnection. It offers a curious sense of belonging and a quiet suggestion that there just may be a way out of no way after all, and not even very far away. A new story is evolving right before their eyes, where people and plant life may stretch toward the sky, sprout new growth somewhere in their mind, and envision a new life for themselves.
DIGGING DEEPER
These reconnecting moments are frequent and fundamental to the Sweet Water visioning experience. Most people become uncomfortable when pushed to express their vision of what they see with the naked eye. It is risky to describe in front of others what you are not quite sure of yourself. But this challenge is so important to Sweet Water that one of the restored houses on the property is dedicated to this work. It is called "The Think-Do House" and that is exactly what is done inside. A colorful, wall size mural has been painted on the outside facing one of the garden areas. People who pass by can see it and those working in the garden can look up and see people who look like them watching over them. Inside the house there is an ever-moving flow of activity. Nutritious food being prepared by "Mama Betty" and her crew; conferencing and work areas; large eating-thinking spaces; guest rooms; art space, and, as wallpaper, you see photo images of Sweet Water participants who are thinking and doing the work that feeds the visions and dreams of the people.
A wisdom saying from the book of Proverb tells us that "Where there is no vision, the people perish." While this may be true, it is only part of the story. Scholar, Abraham Heschel has another perspective. He suggests that the problem for people is not the lack of vision, but the lack of wonder. The Commons clearly began its new story in wonder.
People from across the country and, now, from across the world, join in with local apprentices and introduce what amounts to a cross-fertilization of ideas and dreams. They all gather in the Think-Do House to feed their bodies with good food from the farm. They feed their minds and spirits with intense re-thinking, visioning work and nurture the sense of "inner wonder" which is experienced out on the grounds. The dried up, neglected dumping grounds of a decade ago have come to life, larger than life, as lively spaces in which to live, work, and grow-together as a community. The area is re-viewed by us now as a four city block art installation of thriving, flowering green space and crafted works, all co-labored by people deeply invested in its total recreative process. Strategically installed across the grounds are other built wonders such as a newly-raised open-air barn, the first in a few hundred years, which serves as a local theatre, a performing arts space, a community workshop space, and craft house where a diverse, intergenerational intersection of humans gather to listen, learn, share, and create. The Commons is also home to a community Work-Shop where local youth apprentices and college interns, alike, learn the carpentry and furniture making. They use repurposed and recycled materials. One of the Lead Mentors is a retired union carpenter whom they call, "Big Mike." Mobile units have been crafted to serve as smaller workspaces and can move where needed. Across the street from the Work-shop is [Re]Construction House, a once-abandoned home that has become an art gallery and live-work space. In contrast to the view just blocks away, The Commons emerges almost magically out from the life-oppressed scenarios that spread far and wide across the city’s South Side.
We can now say that The Commons has been re-membered and re-connected to a hub of transformative creative activity that is making a difference. It has moved from blight back to a humming song of life, from space once filled by neglectfulness and history lost in time, to a bustling, breathing community of people who belong and who appreciate how to express new life from the inside out. In the eyes of the artists, it has become an enormous canvas upon which re-imagine the fullness of life. The spaces of Sweet Water represent more than room to grow further. They serve as a symbol of a field of all possibility. An aged community can, indeed, re-emerge with regenerated life, new purpose and drive. Art-making here at Sweet Water, has activated an inner-drive to express those visions and dreams nurtured inside the Think-Do House. And the Sweet Waters flowing through The Commons since 2014 have irrigated the dreams of active solutionaries who help make manifest this outward expression of abundant life.
THE STORY GROWS
The work of Sweet Water is not confined to one location. The Humans of Sweet Water carry this dream work, thinking, and doing across the country. Others also see and become attracted to what is happening here. This, after all, is the function of powerful art-making and creative activity. It calls out from the hidden, forgotten, truncated depths within hearts, minds, and souls. It awakens those who dare to wonder, to see, and to learn how to seed their own vibrant expressions of life. And those who are called to ''just stop by" - the teachers, planners, architects, preachers, neighbors, or homeless - are all invited to see something different, to grow new stories in old communities and to become solutionaries who will dare seed new ideas. Those outside the community are now beginning to surrender their fearful images and see something hopeful. The sacred laborers from within the garden are calling us all into something far larger than Sweet Water.
What is being woven here, being revealed, are the missing pieces of a wonder-filled, ancient story that can fit very comfortably within a growing, new universal story. And what we are "seeing" here is just how giving and forgiving the universe really is. The recreative energy exercised here may be revealing to all who dare see, that enfolded within the earth here, and in similar depressed communities, are deeply enfolded secrets of the earth. In our ignorance of her bounty, we have done great damage to her and to those who depend upon her. Yet the secrets themselves are indestructible, very discernable, and patiently in wait of visionary thinkers and doers to get busy sowing their seeds. With a new consciousness, "We the people," can become greater stewards of the earth, of all created life, and more responsible for her restorative, order - creating secrets that have gone too long unseen. Failing to answer the call, we are condemned to repeat the old, dying story of care-lessness, destruction, and abuse of land and her people. Far more promising, however, is a simple move to just stop by, to listen, and labor in the garden, then gratefully observe how "There Grows theNeighborhood."
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
What is the deep role that art can play in the re-imaging of place and transformation of space?
What are some human-centered dimensions that become activated through the visioning process?
What person-centered dimensions become activated through the cultivation process at work inside the garden?
What may be some unique features within the Sweet Water experience that promote relationship-building between people and land?
What process can be created to call upon new resources that are sensitive to a vision of community regeneration rather than community redevelopment?
What real challenge do people from a community face as they move between the older and newly regenerated community?
What is the role and visionary work of the architect in contributing to the life of a regenerated community?