The thing about presence

The past few days were spectacular. Spectacular because I got to immerse myself in a great deal of natural beauty, and surround myself with incredible new friends.

I started the weekend off with Friday evening devotions at the home of some close friends. Many of the writings we read at our devotions this week were about forgiveness, and how, when someone offends us, we must immediately forgive them. I find this to be a challenging one, and we had a great discussion about forgiveness in our everyday lives, which gave me a lot to reflect on and practice over the next week.

After devotions we had a great BBQ prepared by the parents' of the hostess, who were visiting from Puerto Rico. I have never met anyone from Puerto Rico before, and being such an island enthusiast, I was interested to hear all about the island, and what life is like there. It is interesting to me that no matter where an island is in the world, certain themes run like a current through all islands and island cultures. Like what? Like the high rate of unemployment. The high rate of emigration. A strong sense of community and family. The lower salaries than on mainlands. I have never felt much at home in the country I was born in, but then I have never been to islands that are considered part of the US, and I have always been curious if I would feel more at home if I were living on a US island territory.

Saturday morning began early with a free yoga class with Yoga Aross America, at McKinley Park. Yoga Across America is trying to make yoga accessible for communities all over the United States free of charge. It is a great initiative started by Gina Garcia. This weekend we had live music, provided by Alma Desnuda, which created an inspiring and uplifting atmosphere for the 268 folks that turned up to practice yoga on Saturday.

There was a lovely breeze. The music slowed and picked up tempo based on what we were doing. The birds were chirping away, and it was just an ideal way to practice. At the end of class the band played a number of extra tunes, and some woman even served homemade granola in cups to anyone who wanted some.

On Sunday morning some friends and I cycled over to Orphan for brunch, followed by a bike ride out to see a home that one of my friends has just made an offer on. The bike ride took us out along the river, over a bridge, and along the levee. The river was deep blue. The trees arched over us, and the path stretched out endlessly ahead. We made it to the house in about 45 minutes and sat down on the back porch to enjoy the view of a man-made lake, complete with fountain, and a lovely cool breeze. As we prepared to leave, I discovered that my bike had had a rather nasty encounter with some thorns, and had two very flat tires, which refused to re-inflate, even for a short distance. Two of my friends decided to ride back into town to get their car, and then come back and pick myself and my friend Meredith, who kindly offered to stay with me, up. Meredith and I decided to walk to the nearest Starbucks to get out of the heat, so we took off along the scorching roadway, pushing my flailing bicycle alongside us. We had made it to the Starbucks and sat down with our cold drinks when we received a call from our friends who were supposed to be coming to get us: one of them had two flat tires also, so they were walking to a bike shop to get the tires mended.

Long story short: if you want to take a short bike expedition, stay on the paved trails. Apparently sliding down the side of the levee to get to the house we were going to check out was where we picked up the thorns. We did finally get picked up, and went to grab Mexican takeout and then head to the park for a picnic with a bunch of friends who had been patiently waiting around for us to make it back into town! We spent the evening relaxing on the grass, playing bocce (my Italian grandfather would have been well-pleased!), munching on tacos, and eventually heading off to Gunthers, one of the most well-known local ice-cream joints, to end the day.

I got home last night feeling truly happy, and realizing that I had been so immersed in what I was doing that I had not stopped to think about any other place all day long. This blog is all about presence, and what I realized yesterday is that it is when I actually stop thinking so much about presence and absence, and just enjoy where I am, what I am doing, and the people who I am spending time with that I am most fully here. The thing about presence, it seems, is that it seems to arrive unexpected when we stop thinking and analyzing so much and just get on with life with everything we've got to give. You knew that already, didn't you? Just think how much time you would have saved me if you had just commented on my first entry, way back when. Maybe it's time for a blog title change? ;-)

Speaking of enjoying where I am, in my last entry I talked about the farm I volunteer on, Soil Born, and how gorgeous our youth garden is looking. I had meant to upload some photos, but I had a small accident with my camera a few weeks ago when I was frolicking through the crashing waves of the Pacific, and so I had to borrow a friend's camera to take photos of our garden, and was waiting for him to send me some of the shots so that I could share them with you. He kindly emailed those to me this weekend, so I present to you our colourful youth garden:

 

  

Happy Monday evening, people! And have a great Tuesday!

I. Love. My. Life.

I really do. And since it is Friday and I think I might be getting sick despite only being on day 3 of my 19 day Baha'i fast, and am home on a Friday night, in bed, I think it is time for a list. I suggest you join me and make a list too, just for the hell of it. Random reasons why your world rocks. I will go first. But I would love to read your reasons if you feel like posting them here. Here goes. Random reasons my (currently delirious) world rocks:

1. I spent my entire day on Thursday on a farm in the sunshine harvesting vegetables, weeding an herb garden, and canvasing a local neighbourhood with some very cool high school students. We were trying to find out if people with fruit trees in their gardens wanted us to harvest their fruit through a program called Harvest Sacramento. The owner can keep as much of the harvested fruit as they want, and the rest is donated to the food bank.

The Youth Garden at Soil Born Farms

Waiting for the youth to arrive at Soil Born Farms

Youth cooking healthy meal at Soil Born Farms

One of my favourite activities is planting seeds in springtime, like these fancy mamas (a.k.a. Bachelor's Buttons):

and these beans, that are going to be mighty tasty in soup:

 

And not only do I get to plant seeds, but sometimes something miraculous happens from one Thursday to the next. Something that looks like this:

And if you knew me as my friends back in Canada do, you would know that when I see these little fellas pressing up through the earth, I am imagining something like this:

I am told that the seeds above in the foreground are Lupins. I have yet to see whether they grow quite as tall at the PEI variety! 

Oh. I almost forgot. If that was not enough to make me the happiest woman on the planet, I also got to see this yesterday above the farm:

I hope you can make them out here. There were huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes migrating north. They were beautiful!

2. I have amazing friends all over the world who make me laugh; who go running with me; pray with me, and are always there when I need to talk:

California friends

Three Canadian women whose friendship has changed my life

 

3. I am having my first tea descriptions printed on Lady Baker's Tea Trolley tea packages this week. Will post photos when I see the labels on the bags!

4. The round the world journal that I am working on with eleven of my amazing friends made it safely to New Zealand despite the earthquake and the fact that the house it was addressed to was so damaged by the earthquake that my dear friend Pascale had to abandon it. You can keep updated on the whereabouts of our journal, and see a few peeks of the beautiful and inspiring content at unconventionallyinspired12.wordpress.com

5. Tomorrow I am driving to the Bay Area to pick up a soulmate from BC, who will be spending the weekend with me. A fellow writer, we are going to take long walks, drink tea, and write together. I cannot wait to see her radiant face tomorrow!

Ahava, looking radiant on the organic farm she lives on in British Columbia, Canada

 6. I received a package in the mail today from Green & Black's organic chocolate containing a gift certificate for REI so that I can go and start purchasing the gear I need for my expedition at the end of the month. The days are passing so incredibly quickly! I cannot believe that I head to the Dominican Republic in only a few weeks! You can see the monthly updates from the five of us from the US that will be headed down to the organic cocoa farms at the end of the month here.

7. I got my Master's degree in island studies. And although people always look at me funny when I say that, the reality is that it means that I get to go to places like this, and call it work:

8. Spending so much of my time on islands means that I get to experience truly spectacular natural landscapes and wildlife on a regular basis. The natural world, and my relationship to it, is an integral part of what I value most about the world. I will finish up this entry with a video clip from one of my favourite places in the world -- a cape that I used to drive to often after long summer and fall days working on a farm on PEI, in Canada. I would lie in the tall grass and listen to and watch the cormorants. There are hundreds of them nesting in these cliffs on PEI. The ocean crashes up on the rocks. It is wild and spectacularly beautiful.

And with that, I wish you a wonderful Friday night, an excellent weekend, and an enjoyable list-making session! (I would love to read your lists here, if you would like to share). I will be out exploring the world with Ahava this weekend, but I will write a full post on Monday to share some of our adventures with you.

Happy hands and rubber boots

Farming in the youth garden at Soil Born Farms

I started volunteering at Soil Born Farms on a bright, clear, sunny day this past week. I have been missing being out on farmland tremendously, and so when I heard that Soil Born was open to having volunteers, I got on the phone and asked if I could come over. Their response was enthusiastic, so I found myself in their youth garden in my rubber boots, clearing weeds from the paths between vegetable beds on a lovely February morning.

There is a lot to do to get the garden into great shape for another full summer. The fellow in charge of the education program explained that in addition to putting in vegetables and herbs, he wants to add a few raised beds so that youth who are in wheelchairs also get the opportunity to get their hands in the soil and experience the joy of farming. He is also thinking about adding a miniature aromatic raised bed so that blind youth can also come into the garden and experience the delicious smells of herbs and flowers. I am very excited about all of his ideas, and about the fact that this program is giving young people an opportunity to develop a relationship with the land and to learn more about where their food comes from. Farming is also such an empowering activity -- from the perspective of skills that it teaches, to the values it instills in those who engage in it, like confidence, courage, determination, consistency and patience.

After a morning of weeding, I joined the large group of friendly staff at Soil Born for a delicious lunch outside under a tree. We had red lentil soup with kale; red and green cabbage salad with cranberries and nuts; brown rice with currants; a potato, turnip and broccoli stir fry that way to die for, and fresh baked scones for dessert. Sitting outside at the picnic table in the sunshine with a group of great people enjoying food grown on the land all around us was terrific. And the fact that it was February was even more amazing to me.

After lunch I headed back to the garden with Guy to wait for the youth to turn up. Eight of them eventually wandered into the garden and settled themselves on tree log stumps that had been set up in a circle at one end of the garden. It was a very diverse group of African American, Asian, Latino and Caucasian youth. I was excited to see such a wealth of backgrounds and languages. I was introduced to the group, and we immediately got to work. The main task this day was learning to cook a healthy snack. We set up a burner outside in the garden and, after some instruction, the youth got to work preparing their snack using vegetables from the garden. A few mishaps later, we settled down in the sunshine to enjoy the fruit of their labour. Their verdict: fresh vegetables can taste good. Especially when cooked up with some spices and garlic, and accompanied by a bit of cheese!

The youth cooking healthy sandwiches using fresh vegetables from the youth garden

After our snack, the group started working on pulling some of the root vegetables from last season out of the earth and carrying them to the compost pile. After we had cleared these sections of the garden, we decided to go spend the time left by the American River, which runs right along the side of the farm, watching and learning about local birds, and learning to skip rocks! It was a mellow day. The youth were planning to go harvest fruit from trees in the yards of local residents over the weekend, so Guy was letting them have a bit of down time!

The main goal of this youth program is that the youth will be growing food that will go into a box program for low income residents in the area. The youth will learn to grow and harvest organic food. To cook healthy meals, and to give to their community by providing fresh produce to families that would otherwise not be able to afford it. Some of the youth in the group are new, while others have been participating or over a year now. 

The time rushed past, and before I knew it the day was over, and it was time to head back into the city. On my way back to my car I picked a fresh mandarin from a tree covered in bright orange fruit. It was sweet and juicy, and very refreshing after the full day outside. My conclusion: I am very, very excited to be working out on a farm again. I am so incredibly happy to have my hands back in the soil again, and just as excited to be working with youth. I feel as though this service is going to be a great learning opportunity, and I'm hoping that I contribute something to the lives of the youth in the group as I accompany them in their efforts to become agents of positive change in their community.