Relax - It's All Already Connected

For what seems like forever but has only been three weeks, I've been working on an epic blog piece(are epics allowed in social media or can someone just get me a book deal?) about the events surrounding my hike into and out of the Havasupai reservation in the Grand Canyon. The essence of that piece is how life unfolds as if woven by an invisible hand when we relax and stay connected.

Practicing R & C, (relaxing and connecting) has proven challenging as I've tried to succinctly and creatively share all that transpired before and after the canyon. (It hasn't helped that I've written all the while imagining a future editor reading my blog and saying "Here's our next best seller." That's the kind of pressure that creates a log jam in my brain.)

In the meantime, during a particularly jammed moment yesterday, I checked my emails and learned father/daughter duo Ed and Wrenna Keller traveling cross country sans car while videoing ecology-related programs and people, showed up on my door step. Well they didn’t exactly show up. Avoiding my writing, I checked email, better I guess than painting my basement floors. I go to all lengths to avoid writing or maybe it's just part of the process. I found an email from Ed saying they were thirty minutes down the road and about to be dropped at the Greyhound Bus terminal to ride eastward. I said, “Don’t go Greyhound. Stay here.” (No offense, Greyhoud.) I thought I had missed the ‘Southern’ portion of Ed and Wrenna's tour or they had chosen to not come South due to the bad press we so often get. (Let’s face it during the election and still months after so much of the negative news was related to a Southern state…including TN.)

Simultaneously Bernie, grower of great organic blueberries in Fly, TN called to say he was running late. Bernie's berries turned me on to jam making last summer. Jam making is a great way out of brain jams.

Bernie, Ed and Wrenna knocked on my door about the same time. "Not an accident," I thought. While I worked, Bernie provided a multifaceted interview touching on the many threads of which his life is woven. Then we headed for a drive-by shot of the Parthenon enroute to East Nashville’s weekly Farmer’s Market where Ed and Wren grabbed fuchsia-colored beet hummus on fresh baked bread and faux cheese (nut-based) on lettuce and cucumber while interviewing Laura Button and Scott Weiss of Journey to Bliss raw foods, Terry Carr-Hall of Provence Breads, the Peaceful Pastures people and others.

Earlier in our connecting yesterday, I told them about my call to Sizwe Herring of Earth Matters, a non-profit ecology based organization of 17 years teaching earth ed especially to kids and sponsoring Kids to the Country a summer camp teaching inner city kids about the earth in the country. Sizwe was headed to The Farm in Summertown, TN for the day and could only provide a limited interview. Ed of course said, he had only driven by the entrance to The Farm long ago and had always wanted to go there. As I write this, they’re at The Farm having earlier interviewd Sizwe by his inner city heart shaped compost pile and gardens.

If Ed had contacted me a week or two prior inquiring as to whether I’d arrange interviews for him, I would have declined since I automatically associate things of this nature as ‘work.’ This required no thought, only their willingness to sleep on sofas, better than a greyhound bus seat and my willingness to make two calls. The rest unfolded with ease.

This is life at its best. When we relax and step aside, the hand that weaves life’s threads does the work. We're shown how everything's already already connected - if only we relax and step aside.

If all goes as planned, Wrenna and dad will leave Westwood and head Eastward early in the morning thanks to a ride from Craigslist. Keep up with Ed & Wrenna at www.isBreathing.com and keep up with me at this site where I hope to soon post "The Rocking Chair, the Rabbit and the Stranger" (my Canyon stories) as well as "Give me Farm-aceuticals or Foods for my Mood" - An update on My Garden in Photos. And dont' forget "Imagine the Shift" ... Dawn Kirk, The Good News Muse