First Fruits

It's the beginning of August, and the time of the Pagan feast Lughnasadh, better known through its Christianized name of Lammas. This is the time when the first harvest begins, the first things are brought from the farm and the garden, a time sometimes known as the time of 'First Fruits'.

It's a good time for taking stock and looking at what is beginning to come in from your (sometimes metaphorical) garden. In my case, I am assessing what is going on with my blog, with my zine, and with my efforts toward community.

In terms of the blog, I'm two-thirds of the way through this segment and hoping that all this work is going to be useful to someone. I still have another fifteen posts left in this part. To review what I'm doing, I am cataloging what I think are the real needs people have and how we can meet them. I identified forty-three specific needs ranging from air to breathe to our needs for freedom and I am also listing some resources that I know of that might help us toward meeting those needs. I am certainly open to suggestions for needs I may have missed, or other things to help meet those needs, or even pointing out how something may not be a real need. My thinking on this is that we need to start focusing on meeting these real needs and stop trying to fulfill some of the artificial, consumerist 'needs' that this society foists on us to replace our real needs (plasma screen giant TVs, SUVs, owning multiple McMansions, etc).

The first issue of my zine, Bodhisattva Revolutionaries and Social Alchemists, is out and I have it available at several places in the Boston area (the Lucy Parsons Center, the New England office for the American Friends Service Committee, and the Papercut Zine Library) as well as being available through Spirit Movers Enterprises. I am now working on the second issue which should be out by the fall equinox (September 22nd).

And I am beginning next steps on my ever evolving path to community. I have come up with a plan, and in my careful and unhurried fashion, it begins next summer/fall (2010). I already have a few people on board with it and I am looking for a few more. I feel hopeful about this.

These are the fruits I am beginning to see from the work that I am doing. (Although what is actually growing in my garden is another story...) What are the early fruits of your work?

Next, back to my needs segment, where I'll be focusing on communication.


Quote of the Day: "We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those that do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it a strength beyond endurance. ... For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation and with the numbness that often seems like their only alternative in this society." - Audre Lorde