The Sacred Principle Project

  We go in circles.  We have been here before. It feels familiar, and yet something happened on the way.  The journey is not linear. The progress is not always evident.  The circle is a spiral; sometimes the curve is tighter while other times we spring ahead.  In a Western mindset, we want to cross the finish line. Cross it off our list.  But ancestral traditions, nature, and science teach us that there is no beginning and no end.  The circle is a cycle.  How about instead of seeing ourselves as caught in a loop, we see it as traversing a sacred cycle? What can we do to help ourselves learn from every repetition, note the similarites and differences, the growth and stagnation? What rituals can we put into place to honor each phase? I recently perused two books from radically different fields that each touch on this theme:  The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and Food and women´s health ( Alimentación y salud femenina )   by Marta Leó...

Imagine a field.  You are standing in the middle of a field.  All around you are stalks of corn. Deep green, eye-high plants in every direction. Soft tassles hang from ears of corn on each plant, swishing gently in the wind. The ground beneath you is hard, brown-grey. The rise and fall of the rows are like waves, up and down, up and down.  Notable is what you do not see: no bugs, no birds, no weeds. Just stalk after stalk of corn, so dense you can hardly walk through.  A tractor planted this corn. Each seed placed in the dirt was identical, property of a multinational corporation and modified genetically. Herbicide and fertilizer is sprayed routinely along the rows.  This corn will be harvested by machines. It will be processed and packed by machines. It will be turned into feed for factory-farmed animals or high-fructose corn syrup for junk food. It will not nourish. It will not be stored for seed for future plantings, because each seed includes a "terminator ...

 What would a food system based on the Sacred Principle look like? It may take many names, but the common approach would be that this food system would be built on values.  Four values ground this food system: relationship, reciprocity, respect, and reverence.  In relationship, we would understand that we are interconnected and interdependent with the food we eat. We would be in deep relationship with the land. We would honor our relationship with water - rain, streams, catchment systems. We would be in right relations with our neighbors, practicing trade as mutual aid, community, circular economy, to fulfill needs and flourish together. The principle of relationship would shift us from the center of control and domination to one of fluidity and interconnection in a web of relations.  The type of relationship is one rooted in reciprocity. A mutual give and take, offering and accepting. The land is generous, and provides for us abundantly. And we must care for the lan...