Great things are done by aseries of small thingsbrought together”
Vincent van Gogh
A series of small things, now that is something I can relate to. On some days, I can dream of great things and large impacts with grand gestures. On other days, I can not. On those “other days,” I try and find a small thing to do.
If I am struggling with a project, relationship, idea, or whatever, I will try and focus on one small step I can complete. If there is no small step that avails itself or I can not muster whatever is needed to do that small step, instead I will find one small joy about that thing and hold steadfast until I can take another step.
Today I am joyful for the relationships I have developed through the work of Mahala Love. I am joyful for the people who show me perseverance and dignity as they make strides in their lives. I am joyful for the opportunity to have met and to call many of these people my friends.
That great big bundle of joy is what leads me to the next small step.
We chose the name Mahala because it is indigenous to so many languages and always has the meaning of community or free or freedom. And then we chose love…
Choosing love is more difficult than it seems at first look. The act of choosing to love is something that permeates every thought, action, and breath -until it doesn’t. And then it has to be chosen again and again and again, sometimes all in the same day.
I have read a few articles lately that I will in no way be able to do justice to but will link them below. That along with my personal experience has my mind and heart turning, churning, and searching on what love means to me personally and what it means to our mission in Mahala Love.
I would say one of my deepest fears is ironically being afraid – too afraid to experience and feel life to the fullest. Maybe it’s as simple as the standard fear of missing out. But I fear sliding through life allowing myself to be dulled down with mindless chatter and untethered ideas when I know life is beautiful and meaningful and full of work to do. The article, Fragmentation, does a beautiful job of explaining this in a way that resonated deeply with me, I don’t wish to live my life in a fragmented way. I choose to love with all my heart. That is truly a scary and often painful choice. I have lived a life where I have compartmentalized that and only loved that which was safe to love. And I have stepped out to love more fully only to be driven back by the pain of loving. When I mix the choice of loving fully with my insecurities of not being enough, I can create self-fulfilling scenarios of pushing people away while loving them as hard as I know how. To love with all of your heart is wide open, exhilarating, and the greatest gift we get and what I believe we are called to do. But it also means to feel that which is painful and sit with our feelings as fully as possible and reflect and learn, knowing it is part of the same.
An article by Wendell Berry entitled, “Can Love Take Sides?” talks about the Lovers versus the Haters. The haters have the pure and easy job of simply hating. Whereas the lovers have to walk the fine line of loving the haters, accepting the haters as they are, and not trying to change the haters in order to love them. The problem becomes when the lovers began to hate the haters and then all is lost. Love and hate are so close together as they are both full and raw and powerful. And I mean powerful also in the sense that it allows us to wield power, a power for incredible good and a power for incredible hurt – with just the slightest word. This applies to politics, religion, and to simple daily relationships. We can love until we feel hurt or threatened and then we feel we must withdraw the love. And often it is a struggle to keep coming back to that place of love to evaluate the truth of a situation.
Reflecting on the mission of Mahala Love, we choose to empower people. We have four pillars of health, education, water, and food but really what we choose to do is to love the people that we know and the people that we meet and to help them be okay where they are. To stand with them to improve their health and security in life through things as simple as antibiotics, a community garden and heirloom seeds, preserving water resources, teaching new skills that they desire to learn, and supporting them unconditionally with love and caring and community.
In, “Overcoming Faith Barriers”, we read that Moses’s insecurity was a block to his faith. When called to go to the Pharoh and demand the release of his people, he answered with “Who am I?” – this is true in my relationship with God as well as my personal relationships. When I don’t feel whole and secure in myself, it is difficult to believe that others can love me, want me, and trust me to be enough as I am. It is no reflection on them, but simply on my lack of faith in myself. And it is difficult to trust that what I believe or know that God wants me to do is really within my capabilities. At times, God calls us to be ready to step forth and be bold. For some of us, that boldness is speaking to a stranger we can tell is in pain – overcoming the fear that this person is a stranger, or we won’t know what to say, or that we will be in danger. For others, the task is changing your life to better serve God and our fellows. But we are all called to Love one another. Finding the faith that we will not be asked to do more than we are equipped to handle, is often our challenge – not the kind word or gentle hug or even the bold change of life.
Great changes are coming to Mahla Love. We have received our 501(c)3 designation meaning we are now a tax-exempt charity. We expect to have a full-time Director starting in September (me) and we will be ramping up our projects in South Africa and our fundraising to support those projects. We have worked for the past 5 years here and there as we could make the time and scrape together the funds. But now is the time, we will be bold and step up and have the faith that Love is the most important thing we can give. We hope you will follow us on this journey and let us all rise to the challenge of embracing love fully together and supporting each other through the beauty and challenges that it brings.
A week or so ago, Mahala Love applied for the Slow Food Negroni Week Fund grant. I will start by saying I love writing grants!. I love the freedom to let my mind wander through all the ideas Mahala Love and our partners discuss, the plans that have been created and then attempt to pare them down into manageable and logistically sound paths to be constrained within a specific set of funding goals. Perhaps, I am a bit of a nerd in that respect.
Once I have written a grant, I feel complete with the process. True, I occasionally check the email to see if there is any word, but I feel very satisfied with knowing that the path forward has been laid. The details have been thought through and I now know just what we need to make it happen. Perhaps we will be fortunate enough to receive the funding and can now focus simply on getting the work done. If not, I know we will move forward, it will just take longer to find the proper resources, and the phases will be slower or smaller. We will still plant a food forest, but will plant seeds and seedlings versus trees. We will still offer seeds to the families, and invite neighboring folks to our teaching garden, there will just be less varieties and offerings to start. But Mahala Love is focused and determined and know we will reach our goals to share in food security with our neighbors both here in the US and in South Africa.
Our partners in Limpopo, have also applied for the same grant. Themba has applied to further the progress of the seed bank and the efforts there to catalog, collect, and share seeds among the community. The two grants have some overlap in community and sharing of resources. Mahala Love staff will be attending the Seed Festival in September of this year and can’t wait to see and share more seeds with the folks in Limpopo.
So, as always, we welcome your prayers, good vibes, happy thoughts and ideas! And we will continue to work to make changes in our food systems and provide our neighbors and ourselves with healthy and nutrient dense food and build community in which to share it.
The beginning of 2023 has brought many adventures – Getting married being one of them! I am so happy to introduce Sam to the picture here at Mahala Love, not to mention to my life all around! He is funny, organized, and loves to do projects. He is a great asset to ML!
We had a combination Mahala Love working trip and honeymoon in South Africa in March. Sam got the crash course in people, food, places and our projects there. Except for the fact that he is very tall and South African shovels are perilously short, it was a great fit!
Together, Sam and I worked on the Seed library with Themba in Limpopo (see that page), met with Cinderella to design the new permaculture garden at the beautiful new school location, (See ML-South Africa, Mpumalanga) and did a little touristy sight seeing.
The trip was fantastic and never long enough. But September will be here soon enough and we can continue our work there. In the meantime, those locations are in very competent hands and the work continues there while we continue to work here.
It’s been pointed out lately that I tend to be, “reductive.” I think that’s code for terse, curt, short or any number of other words meaning not only – “to the point,” but most likely, “ too to the point.” Perhaps it is true. I do like a good basic noun-verb combination to start a conversation, with a few adjectives thrown in because I’m Southern by raising. Examples, “pick up your shoes” – Southern version – “Pick up your stinking shoes.”
I think it is in ideas that I tend to be reductive as oppose to words though. What seems to be complicated issues to some people, I seem to think are more simple. If you’re lost, either metaphorically or literally, why flounder alone driving in circles? Pause and ask for directions. When everyone is getting on my nerves, pause, look in the mirror, there is the source.
Here we are in the most confusing times of near history, with a nonstop onslaught of verbiage coming at us nearly 24/7. I find this hard to take. I don’t know why the same story is reported on 73.65 times in a single day, with 18 points of view from 13 people that I can see as having no connection other than someone handed them a microphone and a makeup artist to pat the shine off of their nose. Wait, who is this and why do they have an opinion and where did they get those facts and are those really facts and why do I trust her opinion and who told him to have that opinion in the first place and have any of these people actually searched for a fact on their own or are they merely regurgitating the spew from social media that will keep them existing as a persona, as opposed to be erased if the unpopular view dare be brought in to the light as anything that might beworthyofevenlookingatbutthenwhatabout… You get my point. Does anyone else feel this way?
So, with all of that, I would like to get to my point. Times are strange, people are stranger. I probably don’t understand you, and you probably don’t understand me. But I can still love you, honor you by listening to what you believe, and know you are a person as worthy of your opinions and place on this earth as am I. As we navigate unknown, unprecedented waters, let’s grow together – whether it be community, flowers, food, a government responsive to the folks who elect them, let’s all try and remember that we are neighbors, friends, and family long before and long after the stress and politics and pandemics of the day are over. Let’s just be kind, and grow some stinking things, shall we?
Where to begin updating you on Herban Renewal – After a pretty productive lock-down period of installing gardens, trying a few hugelculture beds, testing aquaponics, setting up the vermiculture, getting our chickens set up and starting to lay, we did the next logical thing and decided to sell the Herban Renewal property in town! Yep.
However, after finding Buyers, then finding another property, things just didn’t go as planned. The house was packed into boxes, utilities were set to switch, many, many plans were made. Also, there were the way-too-many plants and seeds ordered and hatching eggs set to deliver, the sketches of raised beds and food forests, all in anticipation of a few acres and a couple of awesome out buildings, and then, on the final day, –(cue dramatic music) things…fell … apart.
You could say I was a bit shook, but I am a big believer that things work as they should. What has been unsettling is my lack of ability to decide if I wanted to stay put or move. The plants and hatching eggs arrived because I couldnt bring myself to cancel them. The plants made lovely gifts and egg hatching is always fun, even though I was not planning to have 30 plus chickens in my laundry room. But we hatched them because, well, because we could. There is nothing as fun as the anticipation and hearing those little eggs when they begin to peep. And the chicks are also delightful for about the first week. They continue to be delightful, but their odor inside your home – not so much.
Now here we are at the beginning of fall and we continue to live in our home and it’s still not for sale. So I am publicly declaring – I’m going to stay put!! Let fall planting begin.
After a crazy year, it’s time to update our projects and thoughts in MahalaLove! I thought I would start by re-posting this blog, which is the basis for all that we do. I would love to hear your thoughts.
The word regenerative kept popping up, as things will do when something resonates with you. I was telling my kid’s dad that my goal has always been to create a regenerative home and life for our family. He asked me to explain and here is part of my reply.
Regenerative- practices that create abundance; Actions and thoughts that leave you full rather than depleted, Time spent rejuvenating energy, mind, and soul. Time spent with family developing bonds, ideas, and support. Creating a place where people can develop their next level thinking and plan their futures based on their hearts, not on needing to chase the dollar.
The whole permaculture design concept is about this. Permaculture is not just about how to plant a garden, it is about using regenerative practices in your life, for the benefit of yourself, others and the planet. Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share – in…
The word regenerative kept popping up, as things will do when something resonates with you. I was telling my kid’s dad that my goal has always been to create a regenerative home and life for our family. He asked me to explain and here is part of my reply.
Regenerative- practices that create abundance; Actions and thoughts that leave you full rather than depleted, Time spent rejuvenating energy, mind, and soul. Time spent with family developing bonds, ideas, and support. Creating a place where people can develop their next level thinking and plan their futures based on their hearts, not on needing to chase the dollar.
The whole permaculture design concept is about this. Permaculture is not just about how to plant a garden, it is about using regenerative practices in your life, for the benefit of yourself, others and the planet. Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share – in its simplest terms. It’s a systemic design process using natural patterns and rhythms to create abundance- food, joy, community, habitat.
It is definitely taking some stretching in my mind to move these ideas from the garden into daily life, and it’s a process I have barely consciously tapped, as of yet. But as the word, “regenerative” continues to resonate with me, I will continue to bring it into the daily life of myself, my family, and my community.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you do this? What are ways you see to be regenerative in your relationships with others and the planet? 😊
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