We are Spirit Farmers

The first week of February, I was in Colquitt, GA home of "Swamp Gravy" a collaborative effort of the townspeople and mid-wifed by local social worker Joy Jinks and storyteller/director Richard Geer. Swamp Gravy was born twenty years ago after Joy and Richard met in NY at a conference. Colquitt, I suspect, hasn't been the same since. Every year for 19 yrs. the townspeople share and collect stories through a process with which the folks at Epic Productions assist. The stories are sent to a playwright who births a form which the citizens of Colquitt, young and old, black and white, male and female, perform each March and October bringing needed money to a small town, but more importantly returning spirit, creativity and heart to its people.

While in Colquitt, the group I was with had the opportunity to also meet Canadian Charlie Johnston who was completing the town's 16th mural, a peanut farmer ten stories high. (Last October, Colquitt hosted the International Mural Conference.) Charlie spoke with such passion as to the dance involved while painting these works. A literal dance is involved as his body is the brush when painting a mural this large, but there is another dance involved, a dance of spirit and the heart, similar to the one we've witnessed in Egypt's streets.

The next day tears filled my eyes when someone told me the peanut farmer mural is called "The Spirit Farmer." I wish the light were better so you could more clearly see the farmer pulling a clump of peanuts from the Earth. As my friend Karen noted, he does this with such reverence. It's beautiful to witness.

Upon returning home, I shared "The Spirit Farmer" with a group of friends. One person familiar with Egypt said the early Egyptians greatly valued ritual. I thought of farmers, how men and women here in the South, engaged in the rituals relating to the land. Farming before it became agribusiness was about more than survival. This was also how people connected to Spirit. I've letters from my grandparents describing their garden's goings-on as a testament to this.

My friend also shared that the Egyptian early creation stories were of life being born from clay and water from the Nile. I recalled Charlie the artist saying he painted each individual peanut in the mural above as if it were an individual person. He desired that each be unique, not cookie cutter taking the same form. Whether peanuts or people, both are from soil, watered by rains and brought to life by energy, the Sun and Spirit.

We are witnessing beauty in the world today whether it is the joy of the human spirit in Egypt, a connection through a simple kindness in a coffee shop between two people who are just meeting or the reaching out and crossing barriers as occurs during crises as happened in Nashville during last May's flood when people from all walks of life assisted those previously assumed so different from themselves.

We're all 'Spirit Farmers' whether we work with the land, technology, parent or teach school. Whatever we do, however we be, we've the opportunity to tend spirit, the spirit of love and connection or the spirit of fear and separation.

To be engaged as Spirit Farmers, means not just soiled hands but the realization that you've soul-ed hands, that you've reaching, digging, cupping fire-holding, life-sustaining, heart-growing energy whether in the garden and yard or the touching of others through words or a glance.

We are each Spirit Farmers in our own way in these Times!

To imagine and embody: How will you be a Spirit Farmer today? With what spirit will you tend - out of 'have to' or 'want to'?

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 11 Feb. 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

"Tending with love mends the threads of fear." DK