I also wanted to add that I've really been processing what some others have said on this thread about cultivating a relationship with our food. It's really sunk in to me that I need to be more active in helping and supporting my dh with his gardening. He's been growing some food for a few years now, and we have also been composting and gradually putting life and health back into our soil, but the yield from dh's gardens has been really small. So small that I've sometimes secretly wished he'd quit sinking $$ into it, with things being so tight with us and all.
But I've watched the Edible City video on YouTube, and I've started to realize that success in organic gardening really is attainable -- it just takes a lot more love and effort than I've been putting into it. Just taking a little time to think about our loss of a yield this past summer, made me realize that we need some method of storing water whenever it rains and snows, because the main reason our garden died last summer was that we had a practically snow-free winter, and a dry summer, and simply couldn't afford to use huge amounts of city water to water our garden. Plus, of course, the city was asking people to be really sparing with water during the big drought.
Once I thought about the need for us to store water, I realized that we really needed to clean out the cistern in our backyard (it was there when we bought the house). Dh had been using it to store compost, because it had cracks in it and couldn't hold any water. But I looked up cistern repair and discovered that this wouldn't be so hard or expensive for us to do. So dh and I have gotten busy moving the compost from the cistern to a corner of our backyard that is right next to a vacant lot on one side, and an alley on the other.
I've also started taking time to focus my love on the basil and tomato plants that dh has started under a lamp in one of our closets. I've just been sitting in there and singing and talking to the plants, and the connection/communion with our food that you guys were talking about is really starting to become real to me. It's also made something else real to me -- an article I read online about Shakti and Shiva really being one, really being the same. I see Shiva as the "thinking" energy where ideas are born, and Shakti as the "doing" energy through which ideas become part of our tangible reality.
And I think I've spent much of my life loving the dreaming phase, but not seeing how to live out all my dreams -- but since Yoga is all about connection and bringing together mind, body, and spirit, it makes sense that I'm now starting to see that thinking and doing are one and the same. It helps me feel such a peace to know that my dreams won't just fall by the wayside if i don't "do" enough about them. This peace frees me up to just listen to my spirit, and I'm realizing that my spirit often does nudge me toward getting physically involved in living out my dreams. It's really not a matter of forcing myself to act, but rather of listening and responding to my own inner desires to act.
Follow Mothering