I have been reading Janine Benyus’ account of experiments in growing native perennial grasses and legumes in order to identify polycultures for sustainable food production on the North American Prairies, responding to four critical questions:

Can a perennial produce as much seed as an annual crop?
Can the polyculture yields stay even with or actually overyield those of monocultures?
Can the polyculture defend itself against insects, pests, and weeds?
Can the polyculture sponsor its own nitrogen fertility?*

Exploring mixes of perennials found that some worked and some didn’t, that others worked in the beginning and then struggled but were still important to development of the polyculture.

By the way, the results are promising, though they take time, sometimes decades of figuring out, yet it is critical work for sustainable farming in the future that will see us using less, if any, oil-based fertilisers and pesticides. Nature has a way of finding its own.

So I tried a different kind of polyculture, throwing together a number of texts that would not normally reside close to one another, just to see what happened. These are the ones that “survived”: the first from David Brooks, the second from Benyus, the third from Seth Godin, and the fourth from Joseph Campbell:

There’s always something in every community out of joint, corrupted and unjust in some way. People in community live at the crossroads where their pride of place and anger at injustice meet.**

In other words, having a history is what makes a community last.*

But there isn’t a guarantee. In fact, most of what we seek to do will not work. But our intent – the tent of being off service, of making things better, of building something that matters – is an essential part of the pattern.^

What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfilment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfilment your gift to the world, which is your self.^^

What I take from these is that, whether we are thinking of people “planted” together or perennials on the prairie, history matters, and history doesn’t happen quickly. There’s also a lot of messiness and failure involved, but our intent will carry us forward. It is an adventure, though, that isn’t over by the end of the week, but can take a lifetime in making.

Nature teaches us and encourages us in many things.

(*From Janine Benyus’ Biomimicry.)
(**From David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)
(^From Seth Godin’s The Practice.)
(^From Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.)

Aum is the sound nature makes when it’s in harmony with itself.*
(Carl Jung)

There exists a sweet spot between chaos and order, gas and crystal, wild and tame.**
(Janine Benyus)

Nature teaches its own and we are nature.

As Janine Benyus reflects on how species of plants thrive:

natives are tuned through evolution to sing in harmony with the melody of local conditions**.

Another lesson for us to learn.

(*Carl Jung, quoted in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.)
(**From Janine Benyus’ Biomimicry.)

Most of us hew to a code of privacy that leads us to not know our neighbours. Most of us live with technology that aims to reduce the friction in any encounter and you get used to ta that mode of living. But community life – care for one another – is built on friction, on sticky and inefficient relationships.*
(David Brooks)

It’s possible to use the status hierarchy as a sort of fuel, a way to motivate yourself to push a little harder. But it is also possible, and far more resilient, to use connection and possibility as fuel as well.**
(Seth Godin)

Here are a few thoughts I’m playing with.

The dependent self is No Self:

“Connais-toi pour t’améliorer” (“Know yourself to improve yourself”).^

The independent self is Ego Self, something that get started on being someone different to your parents of guardians, but can can lead to False Self, if not helped to let go of the unhealthy beliefs through the five elemental truths:

Life is hard;
You are not as special as you think;
Your life is not about you;
You are not in control;
You are going to die.^^

If this doesn’t happen, then,

After you have spent many years laboriously building this separate self, with all its labels and preoccupations, you are very attached to it.*^

The interdependent Self is Eco Self, which leads us to True Self. We become all we can be through reciprocal relationships with others in identity and contribution.

(*From David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog: The persistence of hierarchy and status roles.)
(^Auguste Comte, quoted in Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists.)
(^^From Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.)
(*^From Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.)

All work and life exists within an imperfect space. […] Imperfect spaces are your friend. […] Imperfect is a superpower if you know how to use it.*
(David Wolstencroft)

gratitude is a soil in which egotism tends not to grow**
(David Brooks)

I can do little about tomorrow, but today is a different matter.

Here are competencies we are each capable of developing and making the most of this day:

Reflection to stop and notice.
Apprehension to be open to possibility.
Imagination to begin playing with said possibility.
Synchronisation to make it personal and something that will change us in the process.
Designing to begin making this possibility tangible.
Creation to bring this possibility into being.^

(*From David Wolstencroft’s post for gapingvoid’s blog: Imperfect is a superpower.)
(**From David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)
(^Six future protocols from my friend and mentor Alex McManus.)

Your soul is much larger than you! You are just along for the ride. When you learn to live there, you will live with everyone and everything else too.*
(Richard Rohr)

Some need possessions to create a story of their significance.

Others know their being here is already significant and use their possessions, which they have gathered because of their meaning and purpose, to help others to awaken to their significance.

(*From Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.)

To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt.*
(David Whyte)

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.**
(Paul the apostle)

Wisdom is forged in action. Beyond the mind and even the heart, it is both the way and the end. It does not wait for reciprocity. In this it is both vulnerable and unbalancing, though some might say foolish.

We may not be on the receiving end of the kind of treatment named by the Christian apostle Paul – compassion, kindness, humility, weakness, patience, forbearance, love – but we can “wear” them ourselves. Civil activist John Lewis encourages us in these words:

Our actions entrench the power of the light on this planet. Every positive thought we pass between us makes room for more light. And if we do more than think, then our actions clear the path for even more light. That is why forgiveness and compassion must become more important principles in public life.^

If we are to be fools, let us be Wisdom’s fools.

(*David Whyte, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: John Lewis on Love, Forgiveness and the Seedbed of Personal Strength.)
(**Paul’s Letter to the Colossians 3: 12-14)
(John Lewis, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: John Lewis on Love, Forgiveness and the Seedbed of Personal Strength.)

The artist is not a special kind of man,
but every man is a special kind of artist.*
(Meister Eckhart)

A lifetime of brainwashing has taught us that work is about measurable results, that failure is fatal, and that we should be sure that the recipe is proven before we begin. And so we bury our dreams.**
(Seth Godin)

We can cause those around us to stumble or succeed when it comes to who they are and what they can do.

Just because they are not like us or we fear that we may be left behind is no excuse.

And it may just be that the person we are most critical of and tripping up is ourselves right now, and we need to sort ourselves out first:

And sometimes I don’t know who I am until I’m down on the page. Oh, there I am.^

An abundant world is one in which we help each other to start, to fail and learn and continue, and to do what it is we must do:

An abundant society can’t be created with a narrative of scarcity.^^

(*Meister Eckhart, quoted in Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning by Heart.)
(**From Seth Godin’s The Practice.)
(^From Austin Kleon’s blog: On solitude, and being who you are.)
(^^From Bernadette Jiwa’s The Right Story.)

The fool views himself as more unique and others as more generic; the wise views himself as more generic and others more unique.*
(Nassim Taleb)

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.**

Wisdom is less what we know and more how we live, an attitude of wanting to live out what we know towards goodness, always desiring to know more.

We are, at our best, lifelong learners taking time each day to reflect on how well we are giving expression to the things we know and value.

Richard Rohr identifies four splits we make to create our False Self:

1. We split from our shadow self and pretend to be our idealised self.
2. We split our mind from our body and soul and live in our minds.
3. We split from death and try to live our life without any “death.”
4. We split from other selves and try to live apart, superior, and separate.^

We’re all prone to these dangers, at times moving towards our False Self, at other times towards our True Self.

Wisdom notices, Foolishness doesn’t.

(*From Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes.)
(**Proverbs 13:20)
(^From Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.)

I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it used to finish. I have an inner self of which I was ignorant. Everything goes thither now. What happens there I do not know.*
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Because the ego is inherently vulnerable, its predominant mood is one of anxiety.**
(Alain de Botton)

There is in each of us a desire to be acknowledged and recognised and respected for who we are and what we do.

Perhaps it is the False Self, where our ego finds a home, that seems to desire this most of all, more likely to be duped into wanting what it does not really need or find helpful. Our True Self, though, knows the recognition we need comes from the person we are serving, and certain others who make it possible for our contribution to be received by even more besides.

Which all goes to say that when we find our True Self, we can trust it to lead us.

(*Rainer Maria Rilke, quote in David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)
(**From Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists, reflecting on the instructions of a Buddhist retreat.)

[Christianity’s] theologians have known that our soul suffers from what ancient Greek philosophers termed akrasia, a perplexing tendency to know what we should do combined with a persistent reluctance actually to do it, whether through weakness of will or absent-mindedness.*
(Alain de Botton)

If you’re holding back and looking for a reason why, and that reason is replaced by another reason, then… you might be stalling.**

We’ve all done it.

I’m rather good at it.

We’ve all stalled at some point or other.

We’ve found something else to think about or do rather than what needs to be tackled.

I am prioritising.

Clearing the deck to be uninterrupted.

Waiting for the urge.

Something urgent just came up.

Someone needs my help.

Is that an email?

(I have plenty more good reasons.)

Sometimes what we don’t do tells us what we should do.

(*From Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog: Are you stalling?)