Your Heart Knows Where It Wants to Go

So I was at my mother's the other day, dropping off my younger daughter so they could sew together during an overnight visit, and I suddenly realized that I was 15 miles or so, completely out of my way, from a community garden I've been meaning to visit for two years now.  Well, gosh, I might as well swing by! I thought to myself, as if that made sense, and I immediately head out as the crow flies.  

I was blown away beyond my wildest expectations.  Harvest Farm in Suwanee, Georgia is a surprisingly rustic and charming master-planned community garden in a little off-the-beaten-path park on a simple two-lane road complete with a white clapboard church and horses on a hillside. 

And then, on my way home, well, that voice started again. If I just swing southeast a couple of miles, I'll be at another garden I want to check on.  And so I did, with no tired-of-going-to-gardens passengers with me.

Just a few days before this, I had been driving innocently down the road, when the next thing I knew, I had made a few turns and gone a few miles.  My older daughter called me and asked where I was, if I could meet her somewhere, and I sheepishly told her, "I'm at the children's hospital."

"What's wrong?" she asked, nervously, thinking I was there with her sister for an emergency.

"Oh, um, nothing . .  . everything's okay," I answered, and then I admitted what I was doing, as if I were caught gambling our mortgage money or at a bar in the middle of the day.  I said it, almost in a hushed voice.  "I'm visiting the garden."  

Another day I slipped away to go to the opening of a brand new farmers market, but I knew in the back of my mind what my real intention was.  At the same location as the farmers market is a community garden, with 50% of members being Burmese refugees who had been farmers.  Just look at these bamboo structures! I took photos that show exactly how they are split and cut, and how strips of trash bags hold them together, so that I can replicate them (once I get access to a machete).  I thought all the way home about how I now have a life that could use a machete.

My younger daughter and I took a walk through the woods yesterday, and I knew where it would end, but I don't think she thought that far ahead when I suggested the woods. Yet, of course, there we were, yet again, in a garden.

On the way home from lunch out at a deli a little while later, I suggested my husband and younger daughter meet me at home.  I didn't mean to stop and check on those front yard gardens along the way, or that  new one at the high school.  I simply could not help myself.  I often come home to the question, "Where were you?"  As if they need to ask anymore.

This is what I do.  This is what I am meant to do.  I've been exploring many possibilities for the next stage of my journey, and any talk of cubicles and heels and suits and hanging up my pitch fork seems futile.  The heart knows where it wants to go.  And this is where it goes, again and again and again.

Anthony Delgado knew it, and told me it, months ago.  My friend, well-known urban farmer Rashid Nuri, emailed me and reinforced that life direction for me in precisely the words I needed to hear (as it always is for me with Rashid's words).  And then, just recently, I got a phone call from someone who changed my life, poof, like that, about eleven years ago.  After meeting with him this week for hours that felt like minutes, it became clear to me which road in the woods was the one less traveled, which one, dappled with sun and bending gently just beyond my vision (like the one I walked in the woods yesterday, pictured) would be the one I would choose to follow.  

Stay tuned for an announcement.  And believe me when I tell you: Yes, your heart knows where it wants to go.  Just listen.

Your Heart Knows Where It Wants to Go

A Jubilee of Ideas, Connections, Harvests (including IdeaMensch and the African Children's Choir) UPDATED

It is suddenly Blackberries.  Well, no, I shouldn't say that.  I saw it coming--the flowers, the fruit.  But every year when the deep purple appears, it somehow surprises me. They are hidden under leaves and thorns, and getting to them requires some work (and usually pain).

This week, as the school year was ending here in metro-Atlanta, I cleaned out closets and drawers and the garage, even finally letting go of my push reel mower (which is part of the most documented lawn story in the United States).  Feliciomo recycled it for scrap metal.  The clutter is gone now, and I have room again.  Literally.  Figuratively.  And I realized that, like the blackberries, great opportunities await us if we make the room for them, and notice them when they appear, and endure the pain it sometimes takes to embrace them.

I used to think it was all about the food.  I still have that voice inside me that says, "Two pounds per square foot times five dollars per pound . . ." and yes, this is a useful and satisfying voice.  But it's not the whole truth, is it?

It's not about the food (although I am totally loving the potatoes and onions).  It's about an energy that creates an ecosystem, in our gardens, in our hearts, and, inevitably, in our world.  It's about connecting what's good and connecting with others.  It's about ideas that grow into action. 

Two new people entered my life this week: Susie Newday and Mario Schulzke.  Susie is a Jewish mother of five in Israel who works as an ER oncology nurse and who somehow got wind of a site a 20-something German man in L.A. created named IdeaMensch.  Susie sent Mario so many ideas day after day after day that they now work together, half a world and half a lifetime away (you can read the cute story about their relationship on Mario's blog here).  

The email I received from Susie this week was, like the blackberries, a surprise, but shouldn't have been, I guess, as I have been growing as well.  She and Mario wanted to feature me on the site, and the questions they asked me were so soul-searching, that, frankly, I feel almost like the garage--cleaned out. I'm also particularly honored to have had the chance to share with the world some of my heroes, and to share space online with others bringing their ideas to life. I am part of their ecosystem now, and they are a part of mine.  Here is the interview.  Thank you, Mario and Susie, for all that you do and all that you are.

And somehow, as I think of Susie in Israel and Mario in L.A., and Betty in Cameroon now (although her latest posts are from Nepal), I wonder if, perhaps, we, you and I and all of us, are truly the people for whom we've been waiting.  You and I and all of us, from across generations, across continents.  We are the ecosystem we have been trying to create. 

My friend Erin Levin (pictured) quit her job at Better World Books a week or so ago, and is currently fulfilling her dream to film a documentary about the African Children's Choir.  The African Children's Choir is a group started years ago because of the idea of one man who heard one child sing, that if a choir of the world's most vulnerable children traveled the world and raised their voices in beautiful song, they would raise awareness and show that despite the desolate circumstances they come from, they have beauty, dignity, hope and unlimited potential. The following just-released music video, in honor of the Queen of England's Diamond Jubilee, features the African Children's Choir, and clearly demonstrates our human connection.  I showed this video to my daughters last night, and a new level of understanding of what we're all doing, separately, together, stirred inside of me.

A jubilee = a season or an occasion of joyful celebration.  

Blackberries.  Summer.  Simple joys.  A community of people who bring ideas to life.  Voices singing out, being heard.  A world connected.  

Yes, a jubilee indeed.

 UPDATE 5/30/12: Mario is taking IdeaMensch on the Road!  See what he's doing, and why, here.

A Jubilee of Ideas, Connections, Harvests (including IdeaMensch and the African Children's Choir) UPDATED