Permaculture class is over. Yay! Permaculture class is over. Boo!
I am a bigger person now, than when I started. I'm more... whole? wholesome? Collaborative? Willing? Hopeful? All these, yes, and more. Some of who I am now is from the incredible journey my family and I have been on, the previous 5 weeks, but much of it is from the new connections in my head from this class.
Heh. I just realized, I brainwashed me.
Yep, sleep deprivation, uprootedness, cultural immersion, full sensory integration... I have rewired myself. I now have permie wiring.
I think I've written before, about how I don't know how I move in the world. I see me, and what I do, and my perception is that I'm just trying to keep up. My real contribution is opaque to me. My fellow permies weren't letting me get away with that. I heard several times today, how glad people were that I was in the class: that the way I conducted myself gave people permission to be silly, to be risk takers, to be open about themselves, or even to keep showing up. "If anyone had an excuse to not show up, it was you, Bob, and yet you kept showing up. I knew that I had to keep showing up too." One of my new friends, Evy, even presented me with a new bat house to hang up at our new house. I also learned today that the facilitators had set an intention, to the point of praying ofr it, to have a really great class. We were the answer to prayer. I was the answer to prayer. I'm pretty amazed and humbled by that.
I want my whole life to be Permaculture Class. I realize this, as my first time, was a once in a lifetime experience (duh) but I also look back at the past few years and I realize I've been exploring all the bits already: ritual, learning, discovery, connection, saving people, saving me, saving the world, honoring diversity... and so here it is, all that at once, wrapped together. I wanted an outcome of what I learned here to be that I inspire people. I find that I am already an inspirer. I inspire silliness, risk taking, openness and dedication.
I'm not getting tears in the keyboard. I'm sitting back far enough. How great is it, to discover that one's dearest, most secret hope, has come to pass?
I inspire people. Enough so that they take the time to tell me. Enough so they name it, in public.
We had a talent show last night. It's really a passion show, a chance to show off what drives us, what we care about. I didn't take pictures of it, because I felt it was private, in the sense that you had to be there, to be a participant, and my reporting couldn't possibly pay proper respect to the event.
In the context of inspiration, however, there's this:
I shared with the group something that I only do in private: I improvise songs. Once in a great while, a song I'm composing will come out as I'm about in the world, but mostly they are for me, and for God. So I alerted everyone that it might not work, as I stood and tried to compose and sing a song for them, but they were fine with that, and they provided a beat, and I launched into something about driving up to sign loan papers and Nicholas' desire to have a pet rabbit. It rocked the house, and as the applause afterwards exploded I knew the risk was worth it. I don't really have the capacity to accept the outpouring of love, enthusiasm and appreciation that come out of everyone, but I have stored the memory of it. I keep playing it back, trying to be big enough to receive it. I got most of it, I'm pretty sure. I might have to do it again.
Then Moe got up a little bit later, and said I'd inspired her, and she improv'd a song about a conversation between two bats living in my new bat house. At one point, she mimicked me, making up a song in the backyard, and one bat said to the other, "What's that?" and gets the answer "It comes with the place." I was so honored, and laughing so hard, tears were squirting the people sitting around me.
My new, dearest wish, is for you, whoever you are, to feel so connected, to have your most deeply held hope come to pass, that you may know the kind of joy it brings.
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