"Be kind. Be connected. Be unafraid." Rivera Sun - The Dandelion Insurrection*
As I sat in gratitude for a simple but delicious meal this week, I took time to imagine with gratitude everyone who played a part in this food being on my plate. I don’t just mean the people who raised the chickens that laid the eggs or the baker who baked and packaged the bread or the dairy that made the butter. I mean everyone!
We don’t often think further than the food itself or, maybe, the growers. As I reflected upon just how many people it takes to get a few simple things on my plate (not to mention, the plate, the cutlery, the placemat, the napkin, the table, the stove, the cookware, the fuel, etc.), I realized in some new way just how connected we are and sensed the power of this awareness as a seed for creating new stories and new systems for our time.
Imagine for a moment how much love the world would be flooded with if we took time in our thankfulness for everything to have a moment of awareness and gratitude for everyone involved. Take that egg for example. Here’s the start of my list of who it took to get that egg on my plate:
- Linette and Scott who raise the chickens that laid the eggs
- Yours truly who picked up the eggs at their farm
- Everyone involved in creating the materials to build the chicken coop and those who built it
- Everyone involved in growing and transporting the food that feeds the chickens
- Everyone involved in creating the carton for carrying the eggs
- Everyone involved in building the vehicles that transported the above AND the roads that were travelled AND the materials for those vehicles and roads
And, that’s just the eggs (before they were cooked)!
There’s a power and possibility here that I’m only just glimpsing as I write. Our systems today use our inter-connectedness to create dependence and fear. Through awareness and gratitude, we each can choose differently. We can choose to honor our inter-connectedness with thankfulness to each and every human being who plays a part in the bounty, however great or small, that we experience every day. Imagine a world with that much love and gratitude!
Although the sun has set on yet another Solstice and Christmas, let the year ahead have us feel gratitude not just more deeply, but more broadly as well.
Experiment for the Week: For one thing on your plate at a meal, create a list of everyone involved and lovingly honor all those whose efforts made it possible. What do you notice?
*Rivera Sun weaves a powerful story of and for this time in The Dandelion Insurrection. Always and all ways a great read! You can find her here: http://www.risingsundancetheater.com/wpblog/ and on Facebook.