permaculture

["Emily A. Noble" <guinep@theriver.com>]

Title: Permaculture as Vision

Threshold 2000: Critical Issues and Spiritual Values for a Global Age by Gerald O. Barney (President, MI), Jane Blewett & Kristen R. Barney, Arlington, VA: Millennium Inst. & Grand Rapids MI: CoNexus Press, 1999/158p/$13.95pb. a new ed. of Global 2000 Revisited (1993), prepared for the 1993 Parliament of theWorld's Religions in Chicago, which served as a brief, updated version of the 1980 Global 2000 Report to the President [Barney was the Study Director of this controversial report, which sold 1.5 million copies in 8 languages].......Critical issues include population growth & basic needs, food production and arable land, agricultural yields, genetic resources, energy, environment, & the cluster of poverty/violence/hatred/despair. Our real problem is that "our shared moral basis for a sustained, cooperative effort--our development model--has failed. We are now a people--a species--without a vision." A new model is needed tht sees the human economcy as part of a much larger, but still finite, global biosphere. One cannot flourish without the other. "The first principle of the new model must be that humans and Earth be in a mutually enhancing relationship." Humans have begun to ask questions about "sustainable development," but must also begin to ask questions about "sustainable faith"--a faith tradition that provides progress for the whole community of life ("I doubt that there is a faith tradition on Earth today that can provide the moral foundation needed for the 21st century").
>From : FUTURE SURVEY April, 2000.
Whatever you think of that......the fact remains that Permaculture as a philosophy and as a practice provides the vision of continuity, of food being available again next year whether you plant anything more or not.....the asparagus you planted 7 years ago will come up again, the lambs quarters will re-seed itself, the nopalitos will still be there for the harvesting.
For too long we have, as a culture, thought of children as the providers for the tomorrows instead of the earth's bounty.
The goading of grandparents and pastors to be fruitful and multiply has resulted in less long-range security instead of more, as more and more land is taken up with malls and pavement and apartments and tract homes to provide space and jobs for more and more people, and for agribusiness to provide for millions who have no knowledge of gardening let alone permaculture if they do have land. It had been years since I had access to good land and helped plant and harvest and share butternut squash......then a small CSA garden was planted and I got to eat fresh okra for the first time and ate corn off the cob in the garden. Now, I have a little garden and the tomatoes and squash are thriving to my delight. My dream is to enrich a corner of high desert and plant permaculture crops. Having permaculture when you may have to move in a few months and the next people there may just mow down what you've nurtured is another issue to consider.
Permaculture can surely be a real Vision to promote to neighbors and relatives and preachers and teachers. If the people will lead, the leaders will follow? A friend got to give a sermon recently while minister was on vacation......she spoke on stewardship and blew milkweed seed into the audience.....I hope she asked them to catch the seed and plant it far and wide to restore that small part of the ecological balance for monarch butterflies.