permaculture

["Michael Kramer" <MKramer@hawaii.rr.com>]

As many of you know, John Wallace passed away recently. I wish I could be in 
Santa Fe to attend whatever memorial service there may be for him, but in 
lieu of that, I wanted to share a little about this very wonderful man. 
Others new him better and longer, but I really resonated with John for 
reasons I wish to share with you. For the world needs more people like John - 
full of integrity, conscious action, spiritual centeredness, and the desire 
to improve the human condition. The world is indeed better off because of his 
contributions.

John was an adventurer. He was innovative - I remember his Terra LLC which 
produced "The Box", a fabulous spiritual awareness kit with all sorts of 
exercises, insights, and tools. It was a great kit, hand-crafted, a work of 
art in itself, one of the first really great New Age products designed to 
help people connect. It was permaculture applied to the intrapersonal realm, 
what John and close friend Vicki Marvick later coined Zone 0 (using the 
permacultural zonation concept). I loved the way John was committed to 
intrapersonal process; his whole notion was that we could not be of service 
to others in helping them to connect to nature unless we were internally 
connect to the "guild within", namely the relationships between our emotions, 
psyche, intellect, soul, spirit, and body. John was very eloquent in 
discussing these realms and he was very committed to bringing "presence" to 
any aspect of business.  John was Treasurer of Permaculture Drylands 
Institute when I was Executive Director and he was a terrific mentor. We 
would always start every business meeting with some form of grounding 
meditation. He loved to have "council", a sharing circle where each person 
could speak from their heart, uninterrupted, as long as they held the talking 
stick or whatever other sacred object was available. John always thought that 
a group of people couldn't really make good business decisions unless they 
were fully grounded in the present moment, and so he did what he could to 
bring countless groups to that sacred place, whether through visiting the 
kiva he built and stewarded in Northern New Mexico or just through offering 
to cleanse the circle with sage smoke. I loved that about him.

When John spoke, he used very precise language and I got a kick out of a lot 
of it. I particularly loved how he used "juicy" to describe people, ideas, or 
events he was jazzed about. But no matter what, you always got the truth from 
John - no bs, just the straight honest truth, even if it wasn't easy to hear. 
That courage to be direct is something I always respected in John, and I 
tried to model it. He suggested to me that there is nothing to fear by being 
straightforward, especially if you speak from your heart and try to be 
respectful and non-judgmental while doing so. A powerful lesson indeed.

John was there with me at a great Advanced Permaculture Design Course with 
Tim Murphy and Ben Haggard in the Chiricauha Mountains of Southeastern 
Arizona back in 1995, and he was very interested in how patterning applied to 
human relations. In driving down to the course from Santa Fe, I remember 
thinking, "this guy really wants to get right to the thick of human 
experience" and I think that's true.

John spent a lot of time facilitating vision quests for people, and this was 
something for which we both shared a great passion. After his experience with 
adults and my wilderness leadership education background, together we tried 
to create rights of passage programs for teenagers to transition to adulthood 
through a wilderness-based food-free ritual experience; unfortunately we 
couldn't find teenagers who were brave enough to give it a try. I wish we 
would have done that, but even so, the passion we shared about the importance 
of giving this to today's teenagers really hit home for us, and I really 
respect John's interest in working with youth and trying to connect to a 
generation far removed from his own.

At Permaculture Drylands Institute, John was my chief counsel and confidant, 
and I really valued his insights and business planning expertise. Of course, 
ultimately, after 10 years, PDI faded, but John gave it his all, and I cannot 
help but think that in some ways he and PDI were a little ahead of their 
time. Pioneer species often are, and I think the seeds he planted have 
germinated now. I'm glad he was alive long enough to see some of them bear 
fruit. His dream to create an ecological retreat center in the desert based 
on the theme of water was a tremendous idea, and unfortunately he didn't see 
it through, but I always admired his passion for trying to do something bold 
like that. I remember a great meeting with John, Christopher Peck (who was 
also on the Board of PDI during John's tenure), Hal Brill, and I where we 
discussed our emerging concept of "regenerative investing" to funnel 
investment capital to local sustainability ventures like John's. There's 
certainly a niche there, much different than the social venture capital 
movement (which is more about corporate expansion phase investment than 
start-up), and we have long imagined that John's project would make a fine 
cornerstone in a portfolio of "green" developments. We've imagined, along 
with Jonathan Scharfman (another former PDI teacher and green development 
expert), creating the first public-traded green Real Estate Investment Trust, 
and it was John who was right there in the thick of encouraging us to do so.

So John was a true visionary, but he also had this amazing ability to 
manifest, which is something rare in this day and age. John could dream, but 
he could turn his dreams into reality, and being in his presence you had this 
sense that you were part of something big and important and spiritually 
significant.

I honor John Wallace, a permaculture pioneer, a true warm-hearted spirit with 
an interconnected lens on reality of the universe. Blessings and gratitude in 
this time of transition for him.

A hui hou, John,

Michael

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Michael Kramer, M.Ed., AIF (Accredited Investment Fiduciary)
Natural Investment Services
P.O. Box 390595
Keauhou, HI 96739
 
Michael@NaturalInvesting.com 
www.NaturalInvesting.com  
808-331-0910
Toll-free: 888-779-1500
 
Socially Conscious Portfolio Management & Hourly Consulting 
Sustainability Strategic Planning and Education
 
"Be the change you wish to see in the world."
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