Are you longing for community? You can create a community, a real one, with people of all ages who become kind neighbours to you. And this is much easier to do in the forgotten back roads of our rural landscapes. If you are willing to step outside the comforts and conveniences of our overbuilt, over-populated urban centres, to where the water still runs free…calling for you to return and lift your heavy spirits.
How are we going find inner peace if we are stuck in a depressing environment. Yet, wherever there is a city there was once a forest, and for those of you who must remain in the city, now is the time to enliven it, clean it up, create the community gardens, plant your yards with fruit tree and berry bushes, learn to save your seeds, and get to know your neighbours as best you can, as brothers and sisters on this journey.
But for those who long to escape the city, the country is ready for your happy dreams of life lived under the stars and the sun, in the field and forests, long forgotten by many. Forgotten by the many who no longer know where their food comes from, which way up to plant an onion, if potatoes grow on trees, if eggs come from a factory…
For those of you who are called, not to mars, but to somewhere still here on earth, you are invited and needed. Your rural areas have been abandoned by you, for the gleaming steel buildings, and layers of cement. Who will harvest the wild cherries and love them into jam for your freshly made bread? Who will appreciate the black-eyed Susans and wild caraway seed on the roadsides, who will visit the hidden swimming holes nature made for you to discover without paying any admission! Where are the bushy-tailed children with flowers in their hair?
Find your place of love. Grow your garden. Raise your family. Start a small school. Make room for others. Make even more room for others, welcome them, give them a place of their own, and watch it unfurl and unfold before your eyes…this is heaven.
I am sending this missive to you dear ones, for I am no longer where you are…I left like an astronaut to mars, over 30 years ago, to make my way into the rural landscape where my loving parents feared they had lost me forever…only to discover their child, and his family, were flourishing by the end of their days.
Our spirit longs to take flight, and is hampered by our current surroundings. There is an adventure awaiting us all, and you are a critical part of its success.